Seen Around

Thursday 29th February 2024

Welcome to the BusAndTrainUser month end round up of noteworthy sitings spotted on my travels over the last few weeks.

Sign language signs

I was interested to see the replies and comments I received on X after posting photographs of the departures boards at Doncaster station where LNER are carrying out a pilot with Doncaster Deaf Trust whereby “screens display videos alongside the latest customer information, translating updates into sign language, with the integrated messaging providing true parity of information”. I naively thought people with hearing loss would still be able to read the information on the sign which just goes to show how wrong I could be as was pointed out, people can also have immense difficulty reading and understanding words on signs like this and the British Sign Language (which is designated as an official language) is a great boon in such cases. So well done LNER for trialling this and let’s see how it develops.

Southern’s greenwash doesn’t wash

I do my bit for the environment with my fortnightly bin collection for landfill almost negligible these days. I even take all those plastic wrappings and bags that come as packaging to the supermarket recycling point, but until I saw the above poster at Hassocks station recently I had no idea orange paper rail tickets can’t be recycled. However, I always keep my tickets as a record of my journeys and much prefer that to a digital version and frankly with the state the world is in right now, I really don’t think it’s going to make a huge difference to the future of the planet if people do or don’t use orange tickets for their train journey.

Crazy links to websites 1

The above promotion on the side of a Stagecoach bus caught my eye recently. I reckon I’m definitely a “hashtag bus person” so excitedly logged on to stagecoachbuspeople.com to take the quiz.

But it turns out, there’s no quiz at all. It’s just a portal for Stagecoach to advertise all its vacancies across the country, which when I checked earlier this week, had 438 different categories of jobs vacant nationwide …

… which are all listed when you click on the “Apply now” tab.

Crazy links to websites 2

I saw the above cove panel on an Arriva bus the other day and it reminded me of the time when someone with a fancy sounding Director of This Or That job title was at the helm of Arriva’s marketing a few years ago, for about six months, and reckoned this was going to be “the greatest thing since running small minibuses on Hemel Hempstead’s town routes”. It was a system of loyalty points when you bought Arriva bus tickets.

Obviously it didn’t work and was quickly and quietly abandoned (after all the PR hype to launch it). But it’s memory lives on with these cove panels that can still be spotted, even if the website is dead.

Crazy links to websites 3

Much more sensible was the idea from the next person with a fancy sounding Director of This Or That job title at the helm of Arriva’s marketing, for six months, who reckoned partnering with attractions all over the country – even in places where Arriva didn’t run buses – could see bus passengers enjoy money off entrance fees, cups of coffee and other delights on presentation of a bus ticket.

Seeing the above cove panel on display the other day I thought I’d check out what attractions I could enjoy “money off activities” so eagerly logged on to the website. But there was an inevitably I’d receive the following response.

Crazy cove panel messages

I also noticed the above cove panel while travelling on Stagecoach’s route 100 between Lincoln and Scunthorpe a few weeks ago. What on earth do they mean by “send us your best road trip playlist ideas”?

Why?

Are you standing comfortably?

I noticed Southern have recently introduced new perches at East Croydon station but interestingly some passengers still find the piping a more convenient place to wait, especially if attending to emails on a lap top on the go.

Are you sitting comfortably?

And on a similar tack I noticed East Midlands Railway have installed new seats at Leicester station…

… but some people continue to enjoy the comfort …

… (or is it the discomfort?) of the piping. Or are they actually part of the officially provided seating?

All The Stations Tickets

Whereas Southern are disuading us from using orange tickets, staff at London Northwestern run Northampton station are famously continuing their task of displaying one ticket from or to every station on the National Rail network with the journey ending or beginning in Northampton.

So when I was there recently I spotted Hassocks was missing – and didn’t even have a slot waiting for it so was obviously pleased to put that right and gladly surrendered my ticket to the staff member on the gateline rather than entering it into the machine.

Derby’s still Midland

I know there’s a station called Derby Road near Ipswich but there’s really only one Derby station as confirmed in all timetables, journey planners, fares and tickets. So I wonder why the station still goes under the Derby Midland Station name on its sign, as I spotted on a recent visit to the city?

Nice one TrentBarton

It’s always a joy to travel on a nice clean TrentBarton bus when in Derby and I love the music stand arrangement at the front of the upper tier seats on this bus on the Mickleover route together with the pink branding.

Bedford-on-Sea

Whereas Stagecoach buses on its route 9A/9B were displaying maps of Peterborough’s city bus network (as highlighted in Tuesday’s blog) the bus I travelled on the about-to-be-withdrawn route 2 from Flitwick earlier in the month displayed a helpful diagram of Bedford’s town network….

… as well as the slightly less reassuring information we were hopping along the North Norfolk coast. Stagecoach withdrew from Coasthopper in 2018.

A shout out for CLJ’s new toilets

For far too long Clapham Junction station – it’s claim to fame being Britain’s busiest interchange station (a train departs every 30 seconds – around 110 trains an hour) – has had an appalling provision of toilets – the sole remaining facility after the awful toilets in the subway were closed many years ago – was at the western end of the footbridge where the gents had just two urinals, two cubicals and two wash basins. But in this month’s toilet news, I’m delighted to praise Network Rail for installing brand new excellent toilets now open and worthy of the status of the station’s busy-ness.

Well in with Welwyn

Welwyn Garden City isn’t the only station accessible via a shopping centre, but I can’t think of another one outside of Merseyside where the ticket office is located along with the retail units, as seen above in the town’s Howard Centre, together with Ticket Vending machines and well out-of-date Where To Board Your Bus poster – probably because everyone’s forgotten it’s there.

Ramping up the variety

Thanks to Adam who kindly sent me this photo showing the variety of ramps at Worcester Foregate Street. Who said standardisation was a good thing? This is art at its best.

Contravision woes

Readers will know my dislike of so called ‘contravision’ (other makes are just as bad) on bus windows. While in Hitchin the other day I came across the remnants of a contavision advert on the end of a bus shelter – the very place you want to be able to see clearly through to check what bus is coming. People who authorise this stuff must never wait for a bus, otherwise they wouldn’t do it. Some bus destination screens are bad enough to read even in the best clear light.

Put an advert on the other end of the shelter if you must.

Loughton’s Bu Stop

Why do contractors do this? Normally it’s the opposite, and you find a freshly painted bright looking part of a letter or line where the road has been repaired because they’re not paid to go over all the other letters to make it match. They must have had some yellow paint available as they completed the yellow line. Perhaps they weren’t trained to do a curvy line as the S needed? And ran out of pink dye for the tarmac.

Only for staff

It’s good to see Arriva have found a use for those minibuses the Director of This or That bought for Hemel Hempstead…

… as a staff bus to ferry drivers between the Stevenage Interchange and bus garage and nice to see former Watford Click minibuses, gainfully employed at last …. on the same work (but probably carrying more people than ever!).

Panel problems in Newbury

I’m usually impressed with the excellent presentation of the Reading Buses fleet and its subsidiary companies including Newbury & District but a visit to Newbury last week indicated there’s been an outbreak of bus panel replacement coupled with a shortage of vinyl company names and logos. I’m sure it will be quickly put right, because that’s how they do things down there.

Uncharacteristically the company is also displaying an out of date bus timetable on its website for the recently uprgaded Lion route. The web page timetable is up to date but the pdf version is an old one dating back to April 2023.

Britain’s closest bus stops are no more

While in Caernarfon last week I popped along to see my favourite quirky bus stop outside Asda on the Bangor Road where for many years three bus stop poles and plates in close proximity could be found..

Goodness knows why, but that quirkiness is now no more as I noticed a new bus shelter was being installed together with a TrawsCymru branded electronic real time departure totem sign.

Caernarfon will never be the same again.

LNER and TfL follow ups

A couple of follow ups to recent blogs….

Thanks to CLondoner92 for highlighting the Mayor’s answer to the alleged overcrowding problems on TfL route 18 as featured on BBC London and in this month’s BusAndTrainUser Verify blog (which attracted a record 77 comments) ….

… (which sorts that one out then) … and to RailFutureEA for a couple of social media posts updating us on how LNER’s fares pilot is going and which readers will recall “aims to make buying tickets even easier and give customers a better experience”.

All the London buses

And finally for this month a shout out to my friend Geoff Marshall, pictured above stepping off a bus on route 549 in South Woodford as he competed his quirky task for the first six weeks of 2024 of riding all TfL’s 544 bus routes experiencing either a ride of a few bus stops or even the whole route on each and every one. Geoff’s produced a fascinating documentary explaining all about the experience including what he learnt about London’s bus network, its routes and the bus drivers, It’s well worth a watch. Click here for a link. Well done Geoff. A quirky achievement and a great video.

Roger French

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