Melton Mowbray offers decent pork pies. And it offers a decent bus network too. Arriva Midlands provides a bus every 20 minutes to Leicester, the sum total of Arriva’s involvement. West End Travel operates comprehensive town services, while Veolia Paul James Coaches runs inter-urban services to a wide spread of destinations such as Loughborough, Nottingham & Grantham, usually at hourly intervals. All the above use accessible buses from two nearby streets in the town centre. Main provider Veolia’s publicity is attractive, even Stenning-esk, and it’s well packaged in a handy small booklet, perhaps only let down by the rather imprecise map.
So far, so good.
But take a look at the following images. Though we’ve come a long way with informative destination displays, there seemed a high proportion of buses in Melton that fail to inform. Attention to detail lacking? OK, it’s a pain having to reconfigure destination displays on short town services that keep spinning around housing estates. You could argue that a visitor need not know precisely where a town service bus goes so long as the locals do, but what of the motorist who’s decided to try the bus?
And then there are the longer distance services whose destination displays hark back to the 1970s and 1980s. Even Arriva Midlands gets in on the act with its “Contract Service R4” though to be charitable to Arriva it doesn’t appear top be a public service even though the dashboard slipboard states Stamford (no Arriva local buses serve Stamford, as far as I know).
The most intriguing was the display on a West End Travel bus reading “Town Centre Only”. What did that mean, I wonder, especially as it seemed unsure whether it was a 16 or a 17 (it could be the driver is making the change on the hoof).
Does this destination presentation situation happen often where you are?
OK, the last is a bit unfair but it does provide some levity. It was taken in Melton at the same time as the rest.
Wednesday, 30 September 2009
Telling Porky Pies
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
11 comments:
Blinds are far better than they used to be. The arrival of mass digital blinds has helped but that doesn't mean a driver always gets the right direction or the right route! At least we see fewer "Service" or just blanks.
"You could argue that a visitor need not know precisely where a town service bus goes.."
I wouldn't agree with that. As I understand it, 'PlusBus' encourages rail travellers to use buses to complete their journeys, so that in those cases, informative destination displays for local services would be desirable. I don't know if Melton Mowbray is included in PlusBus, but it would probably not do the operators any harm to get their publicity up to a suitable standard.
The use of the word 'Service' instead of a location name used to be a trait of Eastern Counties, and to some extent, the original Wilts & Dorset. In German-speaking lands, I have occasionally seen the use of the terminal points with 'und zurück' ('and return') to save the need to change the display at each terminus - however, not often recently.
This post is surely the best advert those who still advocate the use of conventional roller blinds can be given to prove the benefits of digital displays.
Yes, I know there are power driven roller blinds available, but there is still the difficulty of keeping up-to-date with tender wins etc. With a digital blind package, it is just so easy to programme in new routes and to give as much or as little detail as you wish/see the need for.
Here in Plymouth we see what can be done when a company makes the effort. First / WN used to be a joke with many buses running around with just "Western National" as the destination. Now almost all of the fleet have nice bright electronic destination displays.
Citybus have always had high standards of display too even with older buses still having old style blinds it is rare to see a Citybus without a full destination on display.
The Arriva bus to Stamford is correctly blinded. You must have been there on a Saturday as it's running the rail replacement service from Leicester.
Dennis Dash said...
"This post is surely the best advert those who still advocate the use of conventional roller blinds can be given to prove the benefits of digital displays."
In terms of the flexibility and ease of updating, yes, I would agree - but definitely not if you are looking at the visual clarity of the displays themselves.
I think a brief look at the photos that have appeared on the blog recently will confirm my point - compare the First Wright-bodied double decker last Thursday with the Veolia Solos today. Transport for London also appear to think the same way as I do on that point.
rubbish destinations are not necessarily a problem if there is decent information on the stops (i.e. about which buses go round which estates). Much like London, really.
The locals will know, and the strangers will ask the locals!
Not great marketing though, as if you are bothered enough to run a bus company,why let your clientele down in this way ?
First impressions count.
A Cumbrian said...
"rubbish destinations are not necessarily a problem if there is decent information on the stops (i.e. about which buses go round which estates). "
Errr, possibly. That does, presumably, take for granted that the route number at least is correct - which appeared not to be the case all the time in Melton.
You have to remember that, for the majority of people, the destination display (route number and/or location) is, initially, the only thing that distinguishes one bus from another. The route number alone may be sufficient in some circumstances, particularly if the roadside publicity provides the complete picture - but correct destination names will always be helpful, especially if the bus stop timetable has been vandalised!
RC169 said: "but definitely not if you are looking at the visual clarity of the displays themselves.
I think a brief look at the photos that have appeared on the blog recently will confirm my point - compare the First Wright-bodied double decker last Thursday with the Veolia Solos today. Transport for London also appear to think the same way as I do on that point."
But there can be crystal clear digital displays and dirty, unlit and unclear conventional displays; it's not so much about the medium used in my opinion as about the pride taken by the operator in presenting the information. One wonders what could be displayed on the blinds of the West End Travel Darts in the original post - do they have the specific terminal points for the town routes, implying that the driver's just don't see the need to use them, or do they only have the generic displays shown?
I will admit that the last conventional blind that I specified had 'town service' on it, but it didn't have suitable destinations for the very next tendered service which we secured after ordering it !!!
And there's also a number of operators who register School Contracts as Local Bus Services (to claim FDR), yet display 'School Bus' on the blind, which is illegal - as a normal registered service it should display its destination.
Post a Comment