"Roland Perry" wrote:

In message , at 14:45:12 on Tue, 8
Mar 2011, Paul Terry remarked:

I believe some new arrangements were made regarding bus stops
recently, although there seems to be all sorts of confusion about what
exactly these arrangements are.

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/reques..._at_compulsory

I can hardly believe I've read it correctly, but it seems to say that TfL
are standardizing on the "compulsory" flag, at which passengers must
always request the bus to stop.

No, it seems to be saying the driver must treat every stop as compulsory,
unless convinced otherwise.

In Geneva, all stops appear to be compulsory (and the bus does stop) even
if there's no-one stood at it and the bus clearly has no passengers either
standing or making their way to the door. This gets a bit tedious when the
route is lightly loaded!

What a muddle.

The one thing I'm definitely very much against is the bus having to stop at
each and every stop regardless, i.e. like the Geneva situation you outline
above - that'd just be utterly daft.

My practice these days is to generally always hail the bus or ring the bell,
though that said I don't think I ring the bell when the bus is approaching a
major bus stop as I know it'll stop (though someone else will prob ring the
bell anyway) - though if it was late (or v early) or the bus wasn't at all
busy then I probably would ring the bell just to be sure (the old rule for
night buses was that every stop was to be treated as a request stop).
Likewise if I'm at a relatively busy bus stop and it's self evident that
people want to get on the bus then I quite likely wouldn't hail it, though
again it's quite likely someone would (albeit perhaps a 'half-hearted' hail,
IYSWIM).

Some clarity and passenger instruction / communication is needed, me thinks.