Did bus drivers manually announce stops in the days before automatic announcements?

[marc224]

Hello, it's Marc and I'd like to take a look around in this topic area.

When there were no automatic bus stop announcements in London and other cities in the 1980s and 1990s, did the bus drivers announce the stops?

How high would you estimate the rate of bus drivers who announced the stops without being asked?

Many greetings Marc

 

[ChilternTurbo]

Hello, it's Marc and I'd like to take a look around in this topic area.

When there were no automatic bus stop announcements in London and other cities in the 1980s and 1990s, did the bus drivers announce the stops?

How high would you estimate the rate of bus drivers who announced the stops without being asked?

Many greetings Marc

Based on my experience of this period drivers didn't announce bus stops. You might get an 'all change' or the interior lights being switched on and off at a terminus. Passengers unfamiliar with a certain route would certainly request the driver (or indeed conductor on crew routes) to let them know when the bus got to a particular place.

 

[Roger1973]

from my recollection, very few if not none of them, either in London or elsewhere.

At least some 1970s DMS type buses were fitted with internal PA systems, I'm not sure if all batches were, and I don't think that the subsequent Titan / Metrobus generation was.

The only journey I remember with it in use, I'm fairly sure it was accidental on the driver's part, as it was on all the time (on a DMS that was rapidly approaching the end of its working life) but no announcements were being made.