Virus Variety Part 2

Roller Restricts Roll-out

Bus Full on electronic destination blinds is fairly straightforward (although why the word "bus" is needed is something of a mystery). But Transport for London, always at the forefront of new public transport technology, still specifies roller blinds.

Whilst the McKenna bros would doubtless be revelling in their increased profits from so doing, the idea of glueing in "full" blinds to several thousand London buses might be deemed a step too far.

So it is back to good old sheets of cardboard on the dashboard from Tower Transit ... 

... and even, outside the Capital, from Centrebus ...

... complete with sad emoticon. Aaaah!

Bank Business Blocks Bus Business?

Here a telling (telling? as in bank teller? Groan!) picture from Crystal Peaks bus station near Sheffield.

Crystal Peaks is a medium-sized shopping mall serving the Mosborough development to the south east of the city. It has a rather splendid multi-stand bus station ...

... and, some distance away ...

... a less convenient tram stop.

Nobody seems to know why the tram stop was not built right outside the shopping centre, namely here.

The two bus stands that are closed are up against the wall of the mall (is that worle of the morle? or wall - as in pal - of the mall?).

Presumably queues for cash take precedence over bus passengers?

Hmm? But what about social distancing at the other fairly narrow stands?

And so to the centre of Sheffield and busy stops on the north side of Arundel Gate. Here there are no shelters but there are benches and information monoliths under cover.

Here the good folk at Sheffield City Council have come up with a cunning plan to assist with social distancing.

Make bus passengers wait in the rain!

But first, close the bus layby and make the bus lane into a new layby.

This will, of course, make it more difficult for buses to pull off the stand as they will have to fight for road space with the one "other traffic" lane. And there are always plenty of buses waiting to pull into the layby from the now expunged bus lane.

So you turn the layby into ...

... a waiting area (exposed to the elements) with a very steep ramp for thore of impaired mobility. It's actually too steep for wheelchairs with no raised kerb by the bus - and possibly dangerous for pedestrians.

And where do the socially distanced passengers actually wait?

Apparently they stand on those dinky little tarmac "islands" Holding about 4, possibly 6 at 2 metre distance.

Maybe the queue can splurge into the rest of the ex layby?

Yes it will help if it isn't raining and while passenger numbers are low. But as people return to the shops, 2 metre social distancing will become increasingly unrealistic.

So will the "science" win the distance battle? Or the economy?

And will Arundel Gate clog up solid at evening peak as it used to in the good old days of the Great Privatisation Bus Wars?

But what happens, you may ask, when it is not possible to move buses to neighbouring stops, or to widen pavement areas for social distancing passengers.

The people of Sheffield have just found out (on Sunday last) how it is too be achieved. the bus companies are not at all happy ...

... as we shall see tomorrow.

Meanwhile ...

Great Western Mask

Probably this will become a nationwide rail company craze.

Twice The Price Twice As Nice?

fbb commented that he would be unlikely to gain approval for a £60 pre war Hornby Dublo tank wagon - even less likely for this one!

Super Ouch!

It Was All fbb's Fault - As Usual!

Did you know that when you delete stuff from you computer it is not always deleted; sounds illogical but it is often true.

Very helpfully, fbb's email server (that's a tiny bit of a huge computer somewhere) stores all the emails that he has ever sent - even all those that he thought he had deleted. That includes lots of pictures sent to himself for blogging use.

But nobody tells you that.

So on Monday his bit of the server filled up to the brim.

And stopped.

It would take no more. 3 gig of stuff was packed into the little box. That is quite a lot.

So emails wouldn't work; incoming emails wouldn't come in as there was nowhere for them to come in to and pictures would not download because there was nowhere to download them to.

The ensuing traffic jam caused the ADSL to crash - perhaps you heard it!

And the modem flashed frenetically trying to connect to the pipework that was utterly clogged and utterly inaccessible.

No 3 son, once he had worked out what had happened, called up a a team of cleaners who sucked out all the gunge and ...

... by 1600 on Monday everything had pinged back into place.

fbb must, however, apologise for the vast amount of technical language used above. Hopefully readers will be able to grasp the basics!

Perverse Packaging - a P.S.
Alan recently received a delivery from Amazon "chez lui" in Northampton. It was an order for crumpled light brown paper.

As Alan reports ...

... the crumpled brown paper did not quite fill the box, so a thoughtful Amazon packer had used a surplus pot of Ronseal filler to do its job and fill the gap. Well done that man ...

... or woman!

 Next Virus Variety blog : Thursday 18th June