fbb was looking at bus services to Syston (Leicester) in Friday last (read again) and, by way of completeness, a look at is rail service is appropriate. Courtesy of Wikipedia we discover thus (fbb expurgated!):-
The first station was opened on 5 May 1840 as a minor intermediate station on the Midland Counties Railway line from Leicester to Nottingham and Derby. A replacement station was opened in 1874 when the Midland Main Line was increased from two to four tracks.
The station closed on 4 March 1968. The station building, having been hidden by fencing for many years ...
... was later dismantled and rebuilt at Midland Railway Butterley (named Butteley Junction) with the help of David Wilson Homes, who erected a housing estate over the old station land in 2006.
The original station was on the "fast" lines between Leicester and Loughborough, located on the west of the tracks.
The new station reopened on 27 May 1994 as part of phase one of the Ivanhoe Line. It is served hourly in both directions by East Midlands Trains.
Th "slow" lines have been reduce to a single line with two-way running, so Syston today has a minis station, just big enough to take a two car DMU. It is now on the east of the lines and offers car parking on the site of the former goods yard.
Its "facilities" consist of a bus shelter!
The web site says it has an ATM machine ...
... but this technological delight was not in place when the Google Streetview man peered round.
ATM machine? Automatic Ticket Machine machine?
Piles Of Activity At The Tramway
Steady progress at the Seaton terminus of fbb's local tramway. Also a picture of the shuttle bus lurking at the Riverside depot having deposited 6 customers for the next tram departure.
Sewards coach returned to town with just two arrivals.
Loadings from Seaton have been parlously low; maybe folk have taken the company's advice and started from Colyton?
Publicity On The Go
Alan sends this shot from Northampton. It shows the lads from Stagecoach Northampton out on the road posting notices at bus stops. This is marked contrast to fbb's bête noir, Sheffield where the operators care so little for their customers that they leave it all to the PTE who do it all badly. That is because the PTE subcontract it to a company based in Ireland whose staff no nothing about buses in Sheffield.
So well done Stagecoach; have one of fbb's coveted chocolate peanuts!
The bus began its life as a Street Shuttle (in Bedford?) ...
... then had a spell as an overall advert.
The Merc gained the revised Stagecoach livery ...
... before retirement into "service vehicle" use.
What the publicity bus was publicising will be revealed in a later blog.
A Sign-off Silly
fbb does not waste his rapidly reducing bank balance by playing the lottery, but this news snippet amused you parsimonious blogger. It happened with the Irish version.
Shock Horror! A lotto ball numbered 38 AND 33! Panic. Crisis. Accusations of fraud!
In fact there was no crisis. A reflection of the studio lighting created a bright patch just where the 8 should have been joined. Maybe lottery balls should use the "less rounded" number three?
Oh dear, under similar circumstances that could be a number five.
Remarkable Roasties
This is the Sidmouth Arms which, as we all know, is not at Sidmouth.
The fbb's were there, road testing a meal prior to booking up for a Christmas Dinner to be enjoyed with Senior Isle of Wight Correspondent and his better half.
Mrs fbb downed a delicious cold ginger beer that was hot ...
... but the real highlight of the meal was the crunchy roast potatoes.
How often are your roasties rubbery and microwaved? These were superb.
The Sidmouth Arms is at Upottery; but you couldn't get there by bus for a Sunday Lunch.
The 0905 Thursdays only) from Sidmouth to Taunton (service 387) makes a lovely two hour ride.
Or the 682 offers a round trip ...
... with a second circular trip in the afternoon.
Tomorrow an unexpected trip to Scotland.
Next Bothy Bog-up Blog : Monday 16th October
Those station information webpages are often inaccurate. To take a local example, Caerphilly station had an extra platform built a couple of years ago - but it's not mentioned! Equally facilities inside Ipswich station were reconfigured over the last year but the information hasn't caught up. And the south entrance to Cardiff Central is shown as "under construction" whereas it's been upon for well over a year.
ReplyDeleteOperators do not leave it to SYPTE, SYPTE do not allow the operators to put any information up (& in SY all stops, cases & shelters are controlled by the PTE). About half the local authorities my employers serve take such an attitude and can be incredibly & unreasonably protective of the position even where they are very tardy in updating, we've had one who wouldn't allow us to put up our own timetables to replace very out of date ones because the layout didn't meet the criteria they agreed internally (they use very large font for disability reasons but that means they can show very few timing points) and another who refused us permission to put up notices on the stop telling people to use the stop opposite when the direction of travel was reversed through a village (a notice the council wouldn't normally put up themselves).
ReplyDeleteIn Northamptonshire the County Council actually take the same position, they just contract the provision of information to the major local operator in the area/at the stop (so largely that is Stagecoach) who do so in their standard house style which can be an issue for some of the smaller operators whose identity is subsumed into the larger operators style & the layout may not match the clarity & information required on some of the lower frequency rural services.
Thanks dwarfers - BUT. The operators should be declaring UDI and putting up their own stops and signs if the local authority will not behave properly. With LAs desperate to save money, they should be thrilled to lose this cost.
ReplyDeleteBut, of course, it would involve operators in extra cost. So that gives the LAs carte blanche, then!
Would Tesco tolerate having to delegate their publicity to a local authority?
The point to remember, particularly in PTE areas, is that the Local Authorities own the poles, cases, shelters & Bus Stations so there is physicially nowhere to put anything even if you wanted to, bus operators have no power to erect anything on the pavements or roadsides (bus stations are an entirely different ball game) so can only attach them to an existing infrastructure which is almost always owned by the local authority (bus stop poles or street lights). All the PTEs have always been very controlling over the provision of information for buses going back to before 1986, why do you expect that to change now? In fact, if anything, more and more authorities are taking control of bus stops & information provision though none of them are resourced or funded to do so properly anymore and there is nothing operators can do about it (at least 5 local authorities my employers serve have gone this way, none properly resourced to do it, and only one has gone the other way when we offered to manage our own stop information and even then it is a more case by case basis). Some do rely on the operator staff to put their displays up but even then they are very bad at organising getting the displays ready and booking the staff early enough to get it up in time (we have had instances of offering the staff member only for the council to forget to let us know when they wanted him, only to complain that he hadn't turned up at the time they hadn't told us he should be there).
DeleteAs I said my employers have tried and were told in no uncertain terms to cease doing so immediately and everything was removed by the council concerned very quickly (I suspect if it was pushed there is actually a law that would cover it - flyposting or something similar could probably be used to fine the operator for putting timetables, or adverts as the council may call them, on other peoples property without permission).
As Man Of Kent points out Tesco only provide detailed advertisements on their property (which for a bus company is generally limited to their buses), any marketing beyond that is only posted with the permission of the site owner (at large expense) and provides almost no detail of product beyond getting the name out there.
But you can't declare UDI because that makes you the equivalent of a utility contractor - though without any statutory rights to interfere with the property of the highway authority - and subject to reefs of streetworks legislation.
ReplyDeleteTo continue the Tesco analogy, they don't publicise their products on other people's property without complying to the rules - so a Tesco advert might appear in a bus shelter sited with planning permission, but not as a freestanding poster attached to any old piece of street furniture.
And if you have either competition, or two routes run by separate operators which happen to run along a common section of route do you want 2 flags, 2 cases, perhaps of ever increasing prominence? Is the next step the disappearance of the rival's cases under cover of darkness?
ReplyDeleteOr would you prefer an LA display showing all buses with equal prominence?
But, are roadside displays and paper timetables important any more? I mean important to those who really matter, paying passengers, not bloggers trying to make a point. The answer, I would venture is "no", they are not important. I reach that conclusion because the operators have let SYPTE get on with it. If passenger numbers had dropped I'm sure the operators would have done something. Does FBB really believe the lack of publicity means that the operators are sitting on piles of de-registrations just waiting for a date when the inevitable happens?
Here in Happy Hertfordshire we have Intalink, a Herts CC creation which also has bus operator input in re marketing, bus stop publicity etc. Intalink also administers various tickets / passes valid on all operators in an area, which isn't as simple as it sounds as Competition legislation (from 1986!) still means that operators may not talk directly to each other about service improvements / rationalisations or joint fares initiatives without an "honest broker" in the room!!
ReplyDeleteThe operators pay a subscription to Intalink which cover the maintenance of the website (which, whilst not perfect, is pretty good and intuitive to use, as well as being mobile-friendly); this annual sub also contributes towards the various transport research and marketing exercises across the County.
The operators also pay a fee to have timetables (to the Intalink house style; although if the operator supplies their own, with the Intalink logo, then they will be displayed instead).
I haven't been involved directly for a few years. but ISTR that the price for each stop on a route was around £10 . . . . that includes cleaning and general maintenance at the stopevery few months. There is also RTPI displays at important stops; either using timetable information of actual RTPI if the bus is fitted with an INIT ETM.
Downsides? Route numbers aren't displayed on the flags, although identification letters are, which in my view isn't good.
In general, though, Intalink works well, although suffers from the usual Local Authority malaise of the inability to make decisions without full consultation and deliberations.
Are roadside displays important any more? You're darn tooting they are! I was in Gwynedd last week, and the standard at the roadside is appalling. As a visitor, I would have given up if I wasn't reasonably savvy and had done my research before. {And I'm one of those with an ElderBerry phone - internet access pretty useless, which suits me fine!!}.
If other operators or LTA's are interested, Intalink is always keen to talk and to export the idea elsewhere; it will involve ALL operators buying into the concept, and the LTA WILL have to add some funding of its own, BUT the result will be worth it. Advert over!!
OOPS - a bit of text went walkies . . . . here's the full sentence again:
DeleteThe operators also pay a fee to have timetables (to the Intalink house style; although if the operator supplies their own, with the Intalink logo, then they will be displayed instead) posted at bus stops - regrettably in departure list style, but better than nowt!