Stagecoach East
You might expect two things from this information; one, the timetable is the same seven days a week and two, there are no buses between Cambridge and Bedford.
WRONG on both counts. here are the timetables:-
MONDAY to FRIDAY
SATURDAY
SUNDAY
So it does run all the way from Cambridge to Oxford, basically every hour seven days a week but with different start and finish times.
Well done Stagecoach for confusing your potential passengers.
Stagecoach South
You have to be impressed with all these green ticks ...
... all designed to keep your passengers informed. The timetable changes came in on June 6th so being "busy" the week AFTER the change is not quite so praiseworthy.
And where are the green ticks for "at bus stops" and "printed leaflets"?
Not good, Stagecoach, for the majority of your customers who do not have access to all this new-fangled technology or, at best, cannot be bothered to use it. Life is just too short for all that prodding and poking.
Stagecoach, The Nice Guys ...
... or how to encourage co-operation with social distancing.
Horror Happens At Hulleys
Death and destruction to non mask wearers! But not all non mask wearers - as listed on the headline pages of their web site. These folk do NOT need to wear a mask; those with ...
- Breathing difficulties and other respiratory conditions;
- Conditions or impairments effecting their dexterity, meaning they are not able to put on a face covering safely, accurately, consistently or without pain;
- Mental health conditions such as autism, anxiety or panic disorders;
- Cognitive impairments, including dementia, who may not understand or remember the need to wear a face covering;
- Visual impairments if they rely on lip reading, particularly if any residual vision is at the lower edge of the normal field view;
- Hearing impairments if they rely on lip reading, including a carer who are travelling with someone for whom a face covering will inhibit communication;
- A condition that requires them to take essential medication, but may only be removed while taking the medication.
The web site continues in a really welcoming mood.
Welcome to Hulley's, the friendly family bus company.
So before your " Adveture " (sic) starts, the driver has to exercise his medical skill and judgement to identify genuinely sick (sic) people and/or their carers and or their dog? Or parrot?
Unless the law has changed since fbb "read the book", no bus driver can "remove" a passenger. The passenger may be asked to leave but can only be removed by a police officer.
"I don't think you are deaf, so I am going to call the police to remove you. The rest of the passengers will have to wait until the noddy car arrives from Matlock, or maybe even Derby if Ginger is on another job."
Welcome to Hulley's, the friendly family bus company.
A more realistic approach comes, as you might expect, from James Freeman, boss of First Bristol (etc.) in the latest staff newsletter.
But, hey, don't you dare wear a mask when you are driving the bus. Perhaps you have to put one on when issuing tickets or answering passengers' queries and then take it off before driving away from the stop. OK the plastic shield is probably good enough providing that the athletic viri don't leap over it, round it or through the gaps.
The little beasts can ONLY be seen under a microscope.
The little beasts can ONLY be seen under a microscope.
But please remember, you are not "safe" if you are wearing a mask. Combining a whole range of protection practices will reduce your chances of catching one of these microscopic nasties by an ill-defined but small amount. You may, then, be a little safer. The full procedure includes hand washing (probably the most effective), staying apart by an ill-defined distance but almost certainly less than 2 metres and not rubbing your eyes at any time.
Maybe we should all be blindfolded as well?
A Kinder Approach From Transdev
Whilst it is a neat idea, fbb does wonder how many of Transdev's passengers will realise that the white blob on the front is supposed to be a mask and not another variety of Ray Stenning's "interesting" livery designs.
Above, Ray Stenning, ready for an adveture on one of Hulley's friendly welcoming buses.
Hey, he's reached the ripe young age of 70 - so perhaps he shouldn't be going out at all. Stay safe, Ray, stay at home with your pets and the piano.
Is that dog real?
And for the record; fbb DOES take the virus crisis seriously - but what he finds frustrating is the free-flowing fear factor, failing to feature the facts.
One author, a year or two ago, did write that the main business of government was to keep the population afraid - that way they are easier to control.
Tomorrow, we look at one city's attempts to control its populace, keep them socially distanced, encourage them into town to shop, discourage them from travelling by bus and persuading them to keep the air clean by leaving the car at home.
Hurry! They've just restocked the shelves at Tesco!
Next Virus Variety blog : Tuesday 16th June
For the umpteenth time - what evidence is there that most passengers don't access information via the internet?
ReplyDeleteBased on the contact we receive from customers, the number that write compared to those who email and tweet is a small and diminishing proportion.
People just don’t write letters anymore, but it doesn’t mean they can easily find the answers to their questions “on-line” either... as FBB has said umpteen times, in a disappointingly high number of cases you need to know the answer to the question you have in order to find the information at all on the internet, which rather defeats the object.... as an example, do a search on what time an ENCTS card will allow free travel from in London today.... did you get the right answer back first time??? I very much doubt it! (And if you don’t know, its not all day, and not 09:30 either)
ReplyDeleteI quite agree with Mackay. As an example of frustrating web nonsense I offer you Great Western Railway. Try this for yourself - type 'GWR timetables' into Google and then see if you can find their PDF timetables. They do exist on the site, but you'll have gone through a lot of clicks before finding them. And no, I don't want to use their journey planner. As an extra bit of misdirection, their current home page (banner photo) even suggests Greenford can still be reached by direct train from Paddington.
ReplyDeleteMany will be satisfied with using journey planner type offerings, but I'm a potential passenger too and I want to see the full schedule.
Me too. As far as buses go, pdf timetables on the website are very useful but printed ones seem a bit pointless these days as how will they be distributed (except on the buses themselves which seems a bit "after the event")? Times on bus stops are a different matter but of course putting them up is often the responsibility of Councils rather than operators, so a degree of co-operation is required. By the way the full National Rail timetable - as per the old-style BR books - is available on the Network Rail website, as are Working Timetables, although not many punters will know about it! It's a work of fiction at the moment anyway.
ReplyDeleteIt's worth pointing out that FBB does often make things deliberately over complicated, as many commenters have corrected him at times. It's also worth commenting the usual X5 timetable is different each day of the week, AND that it is nothing more than FBB's assumption that the times would be the same... Stagecoach say nothing of the sort.
ReplyDeleteWhilst FBB is fanatical about everything being printed at all times ever, even if it will only have validity for three mornings and an afternoon eight weeks next Wednesday, the fact still remains: at the moment, travel is still advised as being for essential journeys only. If you can't/won't find the information, your journey clearly isn't that essential!
In the interests of accuracy, the Stagecoach tweet is from South East, not South. Many of the changes implemented on either 8th or 15th June (there are changes nearly every Monday at the moment) now see normal school holiday timetables in force, so yes, there are printed timetables for many routes, even if most of the usual outlets for them are still shut. But expect more changes as the pattern of travel develops - as LWBM says, anything printed probably has a very short shelf life at the moment.
ReplyDelete