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cosmolinguist) wrote2024-11-13 09:22 pm
An honest bus driver
I was sent to Coventry today for work.
When I wanted to get a bus from Warwick University (no I don't know why that's in Coventry either) back to the train station, I went to the bus with the most people standing around it trying to get on and found the driver out there too, on a smoke break.
After ascertaining that this was the correct bus (Me: "Does this go to the train station?" Driver: :big sigh: "Eventually, but with all these roadworks it takes ages!" Sounds like a you-problem, buddy!), I remembered just in time that a lot of buses are more advanced than these we get Oop North, so I added a new question before my usual question to bus drivers when I'm going somewhere unfamiliar. "Do these buses have audio announcements?"
He looked at me pensively and said, "You know, I don't know if they do!"
That was not an answer I was expecting. In a work context, I'm aware of the problems created for visually impaired people by drivers who can turn the announcements off, or turn them down so far as to be useless, because the drivers get irritated listening to them all day. I did not heretofore know that it was possible for a driver to not know whether their bus had this functionality one way or the other!
And of course it wouldn't be great that he was so uninterested in the topic! Even seeing me standing there with my white cane, having been lead there by one of the people I'd been meeting with who said she wasn't going to leave until I got on the bus (big mom-vibes, bless), he didn't seem so much as sheepish that he didn't know about this important accessibility feature.
So I moved on to the question I am used to asking bus drivers when I am going somewhere unfamiliar: "Can you let me know when we get to that stop?"
In Manchester, the drivers usually just grunt at you. ("Or lie," V said when I later regaled them with this story. It is an accurate addition; they do lie because sometimes they say they will do this.) This guy said something like "Yeah! I can do that. If I remember..."
It was extremely clear that he was going to forget by the time I got on the bus.
Which I immediately did. At least I knew where I stood with this guy!
A combination of Citymapper, watching and following the biggest group of people off the bus, and the huge Double Arrow over the doors of the station, I was able to find it fine.
And I proceeded to have absolutely no passenger assistance despite having booked it. I was shown the platform by exactly the kind of bored/helpful/keen/friends with grown-ups teenager that I used to be, and I had to push on to a crowded train myself and try to find a seat myself, which I detest doing and avoiding which is one of the main reasons I rely on passenger assistance.
I'd rather have an honest bus driver tell me he'll forget to help me than a dishonest app tell me that my assistance booking has been confirmed and then show up to nothing at all.
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I remember coming home and asking a Stockport bus driver if they could say when we got to X, he basically had a massive go at me. I replied "I know I'm home, you bus drivers are all miserable bastards!". Then a little old lady who'd heard it all, called out that she'd tell me when we got to X.
Turns out the driver was changing just beyond the town centre, but instead of saying "I'm changing before the end of the route" he had just been horrible.
Brummie drivers are very similar to their Stockport counterparts, sadly.
I love your travel strategies. I have similar ones for managing things I don't hear, or working out there's been some serious announcement that I didn't hear (hearing aid off for sanity). I know when everyone starts looking pissed off, to ask someone nice looking what I missed.
Fuck the Passenger De-Assist App, it honestly is a disgraceful piece of shit. I really must write a template "Oh hai, here's a letter before claim for failed assistance you discriminatory fuckers, pay up £1600 damages, fix the issue or I'll go to court" letter... I'd love 100 people to sue the rail companies in a week for failed assist.
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I know when everyone starts looking pissed off, to ask someone nice looking what I missed.
Ha, yes, sounds very familiar.
My thoughts about Passenger Assist as a system much less an app are probably better saved for when we're in the same place, haha.
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What a ton of work just to take the damn bus.
(I overheard a “will you let me know my stop” request during the grim 24 years when the announcements were timed wrong. The driver said, “just listen to the audio” — I let the passenger know.)
For way too long, the bus announcements happened 15 secs before the stop, instead of immediately after passing the previous stop. Oh I complained….
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24 years is a very long time for this!!
We're only just starting to get audio announcements on buses in my city. They haven't reached my part of it yet but I'm still very excited about them.
Next stop announcements
are such a useful service, I'm amazed at bus company resistance. It is one more thing for the driver, but gee whiz, they help
Next stop announcements are ubiquitous on trains (where the stop locations are expensively fixed), and I suspect their lack is one reason people feel more uncertain about taking buses.
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Warwick university is apparently in Coventry because ‘Warwick’ sounded posher than ‘Coventry’ but they weren’t able to build in Warwick.
I went to cov and my wife went to Warwick. She told me at some point that in her time at university (in the 2000s) they called us ‘cov poly scum’ (because we were a post 92 university)
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My friends, at uni in Manchester in the late 90s and 00s, make a big deal of UMIST and the former poly and all that kind of thing.