On Sat, 4 Sep 2004 12:39:34 +0100, Annabel Smyth
wrote:
Neil Williams wrote to uk.transport.london on Sat, 4 Sep 2004:
[...]
As a minimum, all buses should have a large-font LED-style display
mounted at roof height at the front (one upstairs and one downstairs
on a decker) displaying the name of the next stop. Ideally, there
would also be an automatic announcer (though obviously with the number
of stops in London this would take longer to implement), and certainly
a public address system so the driver can speak to all passengers
(e.g. to advise that the bus is terminating early). None of this
would be exceptionally expensive to implement, and to someone using an
unfamiliar route would be very useful indeed.

I don't think the number of stops matters really. I've heard voice
synthesis used for bus announcements and it works well. A simple
means as mentioned below is to get the driver to do it. This is
standard in Zurich, though as it's in Swiss German it can be hard to
tell whether someone's announcing a stop or clearing their throat.

They do have PA on many buses. But I agree, I wish we had more on-board
information - couldn't it somehow be linked with Countdown, or with
whatever is due to replace Countdown in the near future?

I'd argue that the above is vastly more deserving of investment than
Countdown displays and their ilk.

I think these are all aspects of the same thing. The most important
thing for service regulation and quality-of-service reporting is
knowing where the buses are. I think that once you know that, the
Countdown displays are a useful way to show the information to the
passengers, but the operators still need to know anyway. Things like
bus lane enforcement cameras and traffic light priority could also be
done by the on-bus part of the system.

In Paris the bus displays occasionally show the journey time to the
next main place, which seems to be calculated in real time. That
might be useful here.

Richard.