new ibus announcements

[londonbridge]

Didn't really want to start a new thread so searched around but suitable ones I found are closed. On the TFL X26, when approaching a stop and announcing the stop name, the ibus is now also telling you the route numbers and destinations of buses you can catch by alighting there. For example, "Cheam Broadway. Alight here for bus route 470 towards Epsom". Or "Carshalton High Street. Alight here for bus routes 157 towards Morden and 127 towards Purley". All very well but when you have a stop such as Kingston with multiple routes and destinations it just drones on for nearly a minute. As I found posted on another thread, there is information and there is information overkill. Announcments such as 'this bus is on diversion' and 'bus will wait here whilst the drivers change over' can be useful but is it really necessary to have a continuous cacophony of noise?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Sounds a good improvement to me - accompanying the long-overdue change to the fares system to stop discouraging people making connections with details about those connections to further improve passenger confidence. Though at stops with a very large number of connecting routes it might be good to use a more summarised version as an override.

Another good improvement along these lines would be to have a couple of larger TV-format screens which could show the next departure on each route from such connecting points and when it is due (next two if it's very close to now so people don't run if they don't need to and so cause safety issues).

 

[daveshah]

I think this sort of thing is common in Europe - when I was in Vienna both the U-Bahn and the buses had announcements for bus and tram connections (although nowhere there had anywhere near as many buses at one stop as London!)