On 16 May 2010 19:13:48 GMT, "Michael R N Dolbear"
wrote:

Obviously it will take some time before the customers work out a
suitable protocol.

The German one is to stop unless absolutely sure there is nobody
wanting that bus. That generally means nobody at all at the stop,
unless there is one person only at the stop who visibly either waves
them past or shakes their head and steps back.

(a) at some stops the driver can't see whether there is anyone waiting
when they are in the shelter, sitting on the bench.

The German assumption would in that case be to stop to find out.

That said, there is one big difference between German and UK bus
operations in that the stops in Germany are far further apart (often
as much as 1km rather than the usual few hundred metres over here).
Stopping everywhere and opening the doors would make routes very slow
indeed in the UK.

That being the case, unless we close some (that would cause outrage),
a more sensible approach is the "UK standard" one that all stops are
treated as request stops, possibly modified slightly to say that if
the driver can't see the stop clearly e.g. because of another bus,
even if of the same route[1], they should proceed slowly and look
carefully if someone wants the bus. (Stopping anyway at the rear of a
long queue of buses may still cause people to miss it!)

[1] The front bus might, for instance, be full and dropping off only.
Or it might be terminating short (TfL, of course, only display the
number on the rear blind, not the destination).

Neil
--
Neil Williams in Milton Keynes, UK
To reply put my first name before the at.