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Old July 16th 07, 08:35 PM posted to uk.transport.london,uk.transport.buses
MIG MIG is offline
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First recorded activity at LondonBanter: Jun 2004
Posts: 3,154
Default Strange buttons on Bendy buses

On Jul 16, 9:19 pm, Paul Corfield wrote:
On Mon, 16 Jul 2007 20:06:26 GMT, Mojo
wrote:

I've noticed by the "bay" of 4 seats near the front of the bus on
Mercedes Articulated buses there is a button which reminds me of the
door open buttons on mainline trains. They only seem to light up when
the bell has been pressed.


Does anyone know what they do?


Aren't they simply a bell push? This saves people having to stand up or
stretch to a push mounted on a vertical stanchion. I'm guessing but I
assume they illuminate to show that the bell has been pushed elsewhere
and there's no need to bother. One of the nicer design features on the
Citaros and better than the location of bell pushes on a number of UK
manufactured buses. The location of bell pushes should be one of those
things that is standardised on every bus [1] and yet bizarrely TfL seem
to leave to the bus companies to decide.

[1] try sitting on certain seats at the back of the lower deck on a
double decker and then finding a bell push!

--
Paul C

Admits to working for London Underground!




On the top deck of double deckers there used to only be one bell push,
at the top of the stairs.

I assumed that this was to stop people finding one by their seat and
being tempted to stay there, ie force them to already be on their way
out rather than delay the bus at the stop.

Maybe the different accessibility of upstairs is the reason for the
different approach, but there are often extra buttons upstairs now.