Where Is Aberdeen?
The bus station, known universally as "Guild Street" stood alongside the railway station.
It was never a particularly distinguished edifice (being opened in 1963) and, when fbb visited briefly in the early 70s, it already looked old and grey.
It always was home to Alexander Northern routes which then begat Stagecoach. Uncle Brian took the name of the coach services of Northern and called himself Stagecoach Bluebird.
The greyness was not helped by the granite of the eponymous city which looks glorious in the sunshine, but thoroughly miserable when it rains - which is often. The venerable pile was demolished in 2008 to make way for a shopping mall (of course) and a multiscreen cinema (what else?) and, again obviously, the bus station was moved "out the back" further away from the railway station.
Buses load nose-in ...
...whilst passenger access is fully under cover. The development, dubbed Union Square (will it be renamed "Independence Square" if a certain "fishy" politician gets her way?) has a tasteful link with the old station building ...
... but a swanky new ticket office area lies alongside the shoppers paradise.
So we can see that Stagecoach buses from Bucksburn all run to Union Square which might be better called "Union Square Bus Station round the back"!!
With this in mind, we return to Bucksburn and the tweet which started this whole farrago of Aberdonian investigation.
The twitterer was waxing lyrical about the new passenger information display that he had spotted at the Bucksburn Howes Road stop, which has been the focus of these utterly fascinating articles (??).
Look, NESTRANS claims ownership! The shadow is from the bus upon which the photographer was seated, not some failure in the technology.
Now let us look at the destinations of each of the routes above, starting with Stagecoach and in the order as shown on the display.
727 JET - City Centre
37 City Centre via ARI
35 Aberdeen
10 City Centre
220 Union Square
It is, of course, immediately obvious that all five terminate at the Union Square bus station, but, according to SUSTRANS technology, only the 220 goes there.
Potty!
What of First Bus?
X27 Guild Street
Aha, dear reader, do not be deceived. This Guild Street is not Guild Street as in bus station but Guild street as in Guild Street, outside the bus station and just a bit further away.
The stop is lower left in the piccy above which can be enlarged with a clicky on the piccy. The exit road from the new bus station is on the right.
Whilst on Guild Street itself we can turn towards the bus station exit and note that the prestigious JET 727 to the Airport (via Bucksburn, of course) is relegated from the enclosed comfort of the main bus station ...
... to an outside shelter open to the wind and rain. Prestigious indeed!
Also from First Bus
17 Kincorth
Because the 17, 17A and 172 are "cross city", the idiot technology cannot tell you they DO go via Aberdeen centre (Adelphi, remember!).
Which leaves the one independent.
305 Music Hall
It is good to know that the good old-fashioned entertainment of our forebears is well and strong in Aberdeen.
No? fbb wrong again? Actually the Music Hall is a 1300 seat hall where you go to listen to music ...
... which opened in 1822. It is spiffingly splendid ...
Bains Coaches thinks the terminus is Union Terrace ...
... which crosses Union Street very close to "Music Hall" C6 which is Traveline's take on the stop name and location.
Of course, First Bus has a superb map of bus stops in the city ...
... but only mentions First Bus routes.
Meanwhile, Stagecoach has a very poor bus stop map ...
... which recognises stop C6 but only shows which Stagecoach routes stop there.
Aberdeen Council has an on line scaleable map showing every bus stop in the city ...
... but when you zoom in ...
... it only shows three stops labelled "C" none of which is C6! Click on a blob and ..
There is one other mystery from the new departure display at Bucksburn.
In very small print, almost illegible in sunny light, it shows the next bus after that listed in the main display. Sometimes it shows the next bus twice (see main display "19 min"), sometimes in real time and unreal time, also the same ("18 min").
What is sillier is that once the headline bus has passed (passed in theory, not necessarily in practice) the big print time will disappear and the next bus will become the next bus for real. What is the use of the small-print column?
But, be positive, it does imply that the 10 DOES stop there.
In case you wondered, the stop does have a large display with departure lists ...
... and fbb would admit that timetables so close to Aberdeen centre are probably not necessary.
Of course, NESTRANS has big plans, including a Metro for Aberdeen (yes really!), so trivialities like providing proper and useful co-ordinated information for humble passengers (always getting in the way of "Strategy") must be well beneath the strategists dignity!
fbb is only too willing to help whoever is really in charge (somebody, everybody or nobody) for a reasonable fee, 1st class travel to and from Aberdeen and a stay in a posh hotel for the duration. For slightly less expense, he could probably do a better job that we experience above from his office desk cum modelling workbench cum dining table.
Contact fbb@xephos.com
But you are right - nobody is bothered. Strategy that will probably never happen is a lot easier that making public transport information useful and better.
One final question. Are the fares the same on all buses of all operators? Are there return tickets and are they interavailable between all operators?
They should be!
Next Variety blog : Saturday 3rd June
I'm not seeing the problems with the next column. To me "19 min" is telling you there are buses in 34 and 54 minutes, not at the same time (I suppose that does back up the argument that the display is almost unreadable, as I'm looking on a close up on a large monitor and I bet it's not much clearer in reality than the photo). Also I think based on a current time of 1.05pm what we are seeing with some data displayed as "XX mins" and some as "XX:XX (time) is not a mixture of real-time and timetabled data, but a rule of anything under an hour you get told how many mins, over it and you get told a time. Of course this should really be clearly explained as we all know systems that work differently, but again it would suggest the data and it's display isn't as buggy as suggested.
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