py_megapixel
Established Member
I was in Manchester recently and it struck me how poor TfGM and the operators seem to be at providing bus service information. Examples
Why?
- Live departure screens are apparently only available in indoor bus stations, and not at any outdoor stops at all that I could see (so not even Piccadilly Gardens, one of the biggest interchanges, has them)
- The timetables at stops list where the buses go to - something like "42 to Fallowfield, Withington, Didsbury, East Didsbury, Heaton Moor, Stockport" - but only show departure times and give no indication of how long it takes to get to any of those places, nor who operates the service.
- The TfGM website does not distinguish school services from public ones at all - not even by showing the school name as a destination. Also you can't search for bus stops on the website unless you know a route that serves the stop (and then you have to scroll through all stops on the route). Pretty useless for looking up which routes serve a particular stop!
- Stagecoach don't seem particularly minded to sort their website out either. Look at route 313 for example. It is a linear route running Stockport-Adswood-Cheadle-Airport and reverse, but for some reason their website has it encoded as a circular route, which operates Stockport-Adswood-Cheadle-Airport-Cheadle-Adswood-Stockport, for no clear reason. Another example is route 42, which is treated by Stagecoach as the same route as 42A, 42B and 42C, despite them serving completely different destinations. Even if you specifically select "42" in the route search it will sometimes decide to redirect to 42A, 42B or 42C, depending on which one is due to leave Piccadilly Gardens next. This sort of thing defies logic, especially considering the 142 shares as much of its route with the 42 as the 42C does, for example, but gets its own page.
- Finally despite the equipment being fitted for about 2 years, possibly even more, now - Stagecoach do not have automated announcements on seemingly the vast majority of services operated with the new E400s with the grey interiors. This includes, for some reason, the flagship 192 route. This is despite the ones that do work being in a text to speech voice - it's not like special recordings need to be made or anything!
Why?
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