Scene: Eastbound bus stop at Charing X, evening of Thursday Nov 30. Bus
Stop is marked out of use with services diverted. (Strand was closed in
this direction due to a broken manhole.) However the countdown screen
showed the usual list of buses due and a number of hopeful passengers
believed this and were waiting patiently but in vain.

Can the screens not display more helpful information in this sort of
situation? (Presumably "walk to Aldwych for all routes" in this case.)

Peter Lawrence
Also sent to TfL.

On 02/11/2013 12:12, Peter Lawrence wrote:
Scene: Eastbound bus stop at Charing X, evening of Thursday Nov 30. Bus
Stop is marked out of use with services diverted. (Strand was closed in
this direction due to a broken manhole.) However the countdown screen
showed the usual list of buses due and a number of hopeful passengers
believed this and were waiting patiently but in vain.

Can the screens not display more helpful information in this sort of
situation? (Presumably "walk to Aldwych for all routes" in this case.)

Peter Lawrence
Also sent to TfL.



When I arrived at my local stop the other week I was told it's ip address.

On 02/11/2013 15:12, Paul Corfield wrote:
an involved set of tasks given the various systems are not, AFAIK,

Thankyou for the analysis Paul. I suspected that it would be complicated!

Meanwhile my simple mind asks why the man who visits a bus stop to put
up the "out of use" sign could not also switch off the countdown display?

On Sat, 02 Nov 2013 13:28:24 +0000, Tony Dragon
wrote:

On 02/11/2013 12:12, Peter Lawrence wrote:
Scene: Eastbound bus stop at Charing X, evening of Thursday Nov 30. Bus
Stop is marked out of use with services diverted. (Strand was closed in
this direction due to a broken manhole.) However the countdown screen
showed the usual list of buses due...

When I arrived at my local stop the other week I was told it's ip address.

Mine was less helpful:
"Stop: 34145 ID: 1377
LAN IP: XXX.XXX.XXX.200
Connected (IP: XXX.XXX.XXX.194)
Authenticating... "

The Xs are as displayed, not my doing - a public address range? Stuck
forever on the Authenticating.. stage. Still, my first thought was
relief it wasn't running some sort of useless MS embedded OS.

--
Old anti-spam address cmylod at despammed dot com appears broke
So back to cmylod at bigfoot dot com

On 03/11/2013 20:53, Paul Corfield wrote:

You might or might not be amazed at the numbers of people who do not
see the stop closed "hats" that are placed over bus stop flags or the
great big yellow panel inserts saying "stop closed". Similarly the
numbers of people who are unable to spot that no buses are running on
a bit of road. They'll happily sit for ages and ages and not realise a
single bus has not passed them for ages because of a diversion or
accident. I've told umpteen people that no buses were running in such
circumstances and they've been both grateful and surprised. This was
before the advent of mobile countdown info.

I've just been to sunny Bishop Auckland. Having spent too long in
London, I assumed the town's bus station would probably have some
timetables on display... and/or a network map... and/or an overview of
which bus routes routes use which stands at the bus station.

I found my destination's website on my phone, and it suggested using bus
route 50, so I Googled it and downloaded the timetable from the Arriva
website. Having failed to identify any on the ground evidence of a route
50, I tried going in via the front page of the Arriva website, and found
the service has been withdrawn, but the timetable is still live on the
website.

As a result, I gave up. I hope Mrs Merkel misses the money from my fare...
--
Arthur Figgis Surrey, UK