London-Blog.de

Im Anschluss an mein Posting vom 22. März schrieb ich eine email an den Transport for London (TFL) Customer Service und wollte wissen, warum die Bushaltestellenschilder immer so angebracht sind, dass man sie aus dem Bus heraus nicht lesen kann und dies mangels eines Stoppansagesystems zu Schwierigkeiten bei unbekannten Reisezielen führen kann
(mit anderen Worten: es kotzt mich an, dass ich nie weiß, wo ich dann aussteigen soll und jedes mal entweder raten oder frage muss).

Hier ein Auszug aus der Antwort:

Concerning the height of bus stop signs, we need to ensure that they are high enough for several reasons. Firstly, they need to be high enough to be out of reach of vandals. As it is, some people climb bus stops to cause damage to them. Having an additional sign at window level would attract increased levels of damage to our infrastructure. Secondly, the bus stop sign has to be high enough for people to identify them from a reasonable distance. The current height of bus stop signs achieves this goal. Lastly, there are already a number of other signs which are half way up the bus stop post i.e. timetables. Adding any additional signs to the bus stop post would see the various forms of publicity competing for space.

Die ganze email und was iBus ist:

Dear Sir or Madam

Thank you for your recent email regarding announcements on buses.

I have very good news for you. We are currently developing a system called iBus that will provide important real time information to our passengers and bus operating companies. This system works off satellite tracking otherwise known as GPRS and will improve our service delivery to our passengers and bus operating companies.

The iBus system will know the precise location of all buses at all times and passenger information will be provided via audio and visual announcements onboard buses. As you can imagine, this will help passengers on an unfamiliar route to know exactly where they need to alight the bus.

We have recently trialled this system on route 149 and implementation of this project is expected to start next year.

I have provided a link that takes you to our website explaining iBus in more detail.

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/buses/ini-ibus.asp

Concerning the height of bus stop signs, we need to ensure that they are high enough for several reasons. Firstly, they need to be high enough to be out of reach of vandals. As it is, some people climb bus stops to cause damage to them. Having an additional sign at window level would attract increased levels of damage to our infrastructure. Secondly, the bus stop sign has to be high enough for people to identify them from a reasonable distance. The current height of bus stop signs achieves this goal. Lastly, there are already a number of other signs which are half way up the bus stop post i.e. timetables. Adding any additional signs to the bus stop post would see the various forms of publicity competing for space.

While I understand that easily identifiable bus stop signs are important to our customers, there are unfortunately various operational difficulties that prevent us from making certain changes. The introduction of iBus however should solve this problem for those passengers who have difficulty seeing the bus stop signs from inside the bus.

Please be assured that we do want to provide you with the very best service. When our customers write to us with their concerns, they are taken seriously as this helps us to understand what is important to them.

Once again, thank you for taking the time to write to me. If I can be of any further assistance, please feel free to contact me.

(Hervorhebung von mir)

Immerhin, eine direkte – wenn auch aus Standardbausteinen zusammengebaute – Antwort auf meine Fragen. Cheers, TfL.
Aber der Name… iBus. Bitte, was?! Double-uTF. Im Ernst, als Ende vergangenen Jahrzehnts jedes dritte Wort mit eIrgendwas anfing, war das ja schon schlimm. Geht das jetzt mit i weiter? Weil es nach Apple, nach iPod, nach “cool” klingt?
Mir ist jedenfalls ziemlich egal, wie das System heißt; wenn TfL es damit schaffen sollte den nächsten Stopp anzukündigen, dann ist alles gut. Und die 149er Linie würde ich gern ausprobieren, nur leider wurde die Displays und Ansagen laut Website Ende Februar nach einer Testperiode entfernt…

This entry was posted on Donnerstag, April 6th, 2006 at 10:05 am and is filed under city life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.