What better way to spend a sunny Sunday afternoon than to enjoy the peace and quiet of the garden with a good book. I settle down in a shady corner of the garden, listening to the bird song and enjoying the stillness. Then it starts – someone has decided it’s a good opportunity to try out their latest electronic gardening gadget and the wonderful stillness is shattered by the noise of whatever this latest gadget might be. And it goes on for hours. Given the size of all our neighbours gardens I can’t imagine what this machine might be doing that lasts for so long. I give up on my hope of a quite rest in the garden and mow our lawn instead (with a hand-pushed, unmotorised lawn mower). On Monday, the sun continues to shine. I should be working but perhaps I can make up for Sunday. Everyone will be out at work. They won’t be home to play with their electronic toys. I will just have half an hour with my book and catch up on my work later. Again I settle down with my book and again the noise starts. Another neighbour has some workmen in. They don’t seem able to do their work without having their radio blaring out some music which wouldn’t be to my taste even if I was in the mood for loud music. Oh well, I was supposed to be working anyway but why is it so difficult to find a bit of peace and quiet and why do we feel it is acceptable to inflict our noise on other people?
So what has this got to do with public transport?
In my early days with West Midlands P.T.E., I had a spell as Personal Assistant to the Director of Operations. The main function of the role was doing his filing but while I was there an advertising company came up with the idea of playing music on buses interspersed with adverts. The local press got hold of this and gave the impression that a deal had been done. In the days before social media more letters and phone calls were generated about this topic than about anything else while I was doing the job. People did not want their journey to work spoiled by loud music and adverts. They wanted a bit of peace and quiet to prepare for, and to recover from, their day’s work.
When I commuted to Warrington on the train the constant flow of announcements, not just about the next stop, but about security precautions, safety procedures, what was available on the refreshment trolley could get a bit trying when you were hearing it for the third or fourth time but re-assurance that you are on the right train and the knowledge of when you are approaching your stop is an essential requirement for some people.
This technology is coming to buses. How big a deterrent to using the bus is the uncertainty about when it is time to get off? Drivers cannot be expected, alongside all their other pressures, to remember that someone asked to be told when they were at a certain stop. I remember a foreign tourist asking the driver to be told when we were at the Youth Hostel in Chester. We were half way to Mold before he remembered. So audio and visual announcements on buses of next stops can be a major encouragement to new customers to try the bus. Denbighshire County Councils promotion of public transport has resulted in visual next stop information on some of the buses on their supported network (although I did have to refer them to the Society for the Correct Use of the Apostrophe for one of the stop names). No audio announcements yet so the peace of my journey to work wasn’t disturbed. Not far away Arriva have got visual and audio next stop announcements on their Cymru Coastliner Llandudno to Caernarfon service. By the end of a ride from Llandudno to Bangor the frequent next stop announcements were becoming a bit irritating but if you have impaired sight, your apprehension about using the bus must be even greater and the reassurance of an announcement of the next stop so that you can follow the journey even more important.
So I will not allow the noise of next bus stop announcements to irritate or frustrate me. I will remind myself that they could be a way of encouraging what I really want to happen – get more people using the bus. Next time my neighbours start playing with their electronic garden gadgets however……….
