I am glad I am not the only one that was thinking about the similarity of announcements to "Airplane" especially when one gets alternate male / female voices. Was it at Chester or Shrewsbury I have heard that recently? Might have been both!
I think on most stock the pre-programmed PIS messages come with text on the screen so hearing impaired passengers get the information too.
That gets on my nerves too but only because the voice is so awful. Anything that announcer says does. I think it might be Elin, though she sounds slightly deeper on the MK4s.
I haven't encountered it yet, but as far as I understand it's planned for the incoming Tyne & Wear Metro fleet.
Headcorn and Staplehurst used to have these bus connection announcements until 2012 when Southeastern switched from the Amey system to the Worldline system.
GWR have added them for some stations - e.g. arriving at Bath Spa, you are told where the buses to Radstock, Midsomer Norton and the Universities depart from, and arriving at Bristol Temple Meads, you are told where the buses to Wells, Street and Glastonbury depart from.
Likewise, it won't be practical where two different companies have routes with the same number. For example Monument on the Tyne & Wear Metro, where it connects with two completely different route 1s from Stagecoach and Go North East!
In that case, one of them should just be made to change the number. There are plenty of numbers to go around; the fact that there are overlapping ones is symptomatic of poor, fragmented planning.
Plenty of that in the North East!
Well, quite.
British transport planning of the last 30 years in a nutshell!
One of my local supermarkets has travelators with those recordings, except it's set up wrong. If I recall correctly it says "Please hold the handrail whilst travelling" at the top of the upward travelator and "please prepare to push your trolley" at the top of the downward travelator. It's been like this for years; clearly nobody's bothered to fix it.
Barmouth was quite funny. During the Cambrian blocks, the station endlessly announces 'due to engineering works this weekend, some times may be changed'. There are no block anywhere near the Cambrian other than the ongoing block. It's a useless announcement. Even more useless when no one would be on the station since buses stop outside. It's just useless noise pollution.
Shrewsbury is rife for this, the auto announcer starts then station staff start manual announcements saying the exact same thing. They really don't like auto announcers.
Invariably the staff who do this have no idea how to make clear announcements. The whole point of a microphone is that it makes your voice louder electronically. You don't have to shout into it!
Manual announcements can add value but they have to be done right. The best I've seen are at Ely where the auto announcer clumsily announces the trains (I don't like the GA one, it sounds very stilted and robotic) but the platform staff once the doors open announce the next principle connection, IE if the Liverpool - Norwich arrives they'll announce platform 2/3 for the Ipswich and Cambridge connections
I've lost count of the number of times I've been on a train and due to one incident or another the train has been diverted or terminated short of destination and somebody has remained on the train once everybody else has got off because they've been wearing headphones and haven't heard any of the announcements the guard or driver has made.
Given some of the conversations I've overheard (not by choice) on public transport, I try to make sure I always have a pair of headphones with me. I do, however, make sure the volume is low enough to hear the chimes, and will take an earphone out if the announcement might be relevant to me.
