Large operators with radio contact?

[Geordie driver]

Talking to some old mates online today about the weather, and associated bus chaos, they have mentioned that Arriva North East STILL don't have radios fitted for the driver to contact the company!

I would have thought this was standard by now across the country, or am I being a bit naive?

Edit, title should have read without, not with.

 

[Robertj21a]

Naive.....

 

[carlberry]

Talking to some old mates online today about the weather, and associated bus chaos, they have mentioned that Arriva North East STILL don't have radios fitted for the driver to contact the company!

I would have thought this was standard by now across the country, or am I being a bit naive?

Edit, title should have read without, not with.

An operator needs to setup all the equipment to transmit and receive, and a radio band to do that on. This can only cover a limited area so, for city based operators, it was fairly easy (and at the time the bands were easier to get as the government hadn't started trying to flog off the all the bands that could be used). Even for city operations there will be large areas of poor or no signal which are costly to deal with. For rural operations it just wasnt viable to put in all the equipment, even in flat areas.
Once mobile phones became established they offered a much cheaper way of dealing with the issue and, I suspect, the radio bands are fairly crowded now (and they may be costly to licence).

 

[Observer]

Some radio operators have replaced them with Ticketer machines, which allow you to do messaging to and from the depot.

 

[Aictos]

Some radio operators have replaced them with Ticketer machines, which allow you to do messaging to and from the depot.

Really? Didn’t know that, is there a character limit tho with the messages?

 

[Bluebirdscot66]

Really? Didn’t know that, is there a character limit tho with the messages?

Not that I’ve seen, and sometimes there are long long messages with different diversions on . You can print out the messages too

 

[Aictos]

Not that I’ve seen, and sometimes there are long long messages with different diversions on . You can print out the messages too

Wow, what else can Ticketeer do?

 

[175mph]

Wow, what else can Ticketeer do?

Do your washing up for you?

 

[Geordie driver]

I hadn't considered that bandwidth is expensive now, nor did I know ticket machines could send and receive messages. Makes sense when that's how taxis seem to operate. Do they have an " attack/ emergency" button?

 

[markymark2000]

Stagecoach Chester and Rock Ferry don't have radio control. It's cheaper for them to use the ticket machine ticketing (though they use Vix so you are very limited on what messages the driver can send back to the garage)

 

[carlberry]

Stagecoach Chester and Rock Ferry don't have radio control. It's cheaper for them to use the ticket machine ticketing (though they use Vix so you are very limited on what messages the driver can send back to the garage)

I suspect there wont be many drivers trying to type an emergency message onto a ticket machine!

 

[markymark2000]

I suspect there wont be many drivers trying to type an emergency message onto a ticket machine!

No, I agree. I think it's limited to something like basic messages. Most drivers phone the depot though