It's not surprising that the usual London/Europe inferences were made almost immediately, even though they were slightly misplaced.
To the casual outsider with an overarching (but not necessarily precisely-detailed) interest in Manchester, it has seemed pretty obvious for some time that TfGM (Transport for Greater Manchester) and its previous acronyms have favoured Tram, and sizeable all-singing, all-dancing bus stations, over more prosaic, day-to-day matters they could easily improve (such as real time at bus stops). That said, the financing of it obviously comes in different ways, and there is now a real question to be asked whether capital expenditure on RTI (Real time Information) at bus stops is the way to go, when they could just as easily direct people to an app - their own or a third party, such as Bustimes or Nextbus - which provide the same information for substantially fewer thousands of pounds.
"Sorry Mrs Miggins, we've had to decrease the frequency of your bus service from 60 to 90 minutes and diverted it around a few more housing estates because we needed to provide real time information displays on the every-4-minute 192"...
It's worth noting that at least for the moment, Manchester seem happy to continue printing timetable leaflets, however basic, which is more than can be said for Arriva (who did I really see them being held up as a good example upthread) or the sainted suburbs of Londonland. Although some years old now, and of the last set really were quite poor (did Stagecoach Devon use their cartographer!), Manchester has also produced (free) maps more recently than the capital, and unless anything has changed, more recently than some major European cities. I think it's important to look at the good as well as the bad if there is to be any claim of balance.
I was in Manchester recently and it struck me how poor TfGM and the operators seem to be at providing bus service information. Examples
- 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)
See above. That said, I do think Piccadilly Gardens is big enough to qualify, although if you're a regular reader of the "Public Transport Experience" blog, you'd know the author there moans incessantly (among other things) about how invisible these sort of screens are in the wrong sort of sun/wind/rain, etc., and they also rely on a useful data connection. Those at my (non-Manchester) local bus station regularly show blank screens, or where the feed ceased updating hours earlier. If you put them at each bus stop you'd need more than a dozen, if you used a "totem-pole" at either end you'd get complaints about where you put them... perhaps the most ideal situation would be - if it is still there - inside the Travelshop window?
- 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.
In fairness, this is something mostly favoured by enthusiasts. I'd like to suggest the majority of people who go to use the bus work on the time they plan to arrive, rather than turning up at the bus stop to know how long it's going to take to get there. We need to increase information beforehand (in whichever form) and keep bus stop information simple.
- 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!
True, but having just checked, you do get "no more times today", and there is no PDF download. If you search by number, the times also show school time only journeys. In most cases, people will find routes from a stop via Google Maps or a journey planner... It must be a pretty small subset of people who know where bus stops are but cannot recall seeing the number of any bus they've ever seen go past it - I know a fair few car drivers who can recall the number of the bus they pass, even if they don't use it!
- 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.
Operator websites are increasingly favouring those who don't already know the answer to half their question before (i.e. journey planners) rather than those who do (and go immediate timetable seeking). This often seems to be missed by those of us who do know where to start. I think the better way to show the 42 group would be with a summary for Didsbury) which is presumably why they show them together.
- 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!
Next Stop Announcements are marmite material, as evidenced by the many discussions on this forum. Some people regard their absence as a blessing, others a dire state of affairs.
You might as well ask "Why is the earth round?" Obviously buses in Manchester suck in lots of ways. I'd be more surprised if you were posting about how good information is in Manchester. London has had automated announcements and internet real time information for at least a decade and bus stop real time information since the 90s with old technology. Obviously deregulation hasn't helped Manchester in this regard. In other words, Manchester is poor on those things by design. There is no regulatory compulsion for operators to carry such information. But many if not most people on this forum prefer it that way.
As others have said, Manchester is a "PTE" area, and one that isn't afraid to use it's strong hand when it suits. In some ways (e.g. information at bus stops), it is
exactly like London, and equally out of date. One wonders what use they could have found for the money spent on franchising proposals...
They are completely useless too, It's not even realtime as I found out last Thursday. 'Bus due now' - oh no it wasn't - flicks over to next service not long after and even confuses bus-drivers who have to check the duty roster number in the cab (or whatever it is), so they don't have a clue what is going on too.
At least when First ran the Diamond services they had realtime tracking and was spot on. Oh Yes, Diamond have a 'bus tracker' but it's in the land of the magical fairies ... e.g : is it 5 minutes away? I'll set off then. Hang on it's just past me! I think it polls the data really slow or correct.. who knows.. It's a lottery.
When back in London, it's a complete breath of fresh air using the buses.
This is more than likely to be a common experience with all tracking apps, given their (I presume) reliance on GPS tracking. It was a regular complaint of commuter coach passengers at Canary Wharf that the coach "suddenly bounced after five minutes static", having seemingly failed to realise a Satellite couldn't see it in the Limehouse Link tunnel. There may not be many tunnels in Manchester, but even bustimes only updates once a minute - that's a long time if it misses a ping.
Stagecoach and Diamond North west can not even get the right fleet numbers tracking on bustimes the latter has one double tracking at Bolton and Preston
With respect, this is really only something enthusiasts worry about. The general passenger is unlikely to know or care the bus has a fleetnumber, and as long as the company can associate what they need to in the back office, this is something that is "nice to have" and little else. I don't think this can really be used as a general example of poor information provision.
