I had to do a couple of trips round south London today, and it struck me the number of messages around which just seem designed to put people off choosing to travel by train altogether increases every year. It must make the marketing team, and rail supporters, despair.
On London Overground out to Croydon, at every one of the many stations there were constant scrolling messages and PA announcements about being sure you have got just the right ticketing, otherwise there will be Penalty Fares. Notices elsewhere were about this, multiple references to prosecution and the implied threat that you will end up with a criminal record if you don't get your ticket usage just right. At the start of the trip at Canada Water there was a notice about how you will be overcharged if you didn't used the pink Oyster reader (which was in an obscure corner), while on the Croydon Tram there were multiple notices about what you had to do to avoid getting overcharged (and maybe penalised) that were so longwinded that I never got to the end of them or understood quite what they were going on about before the tram came.
There were severe notices to mothers with babies in pushchairs that, compared to anyone in a wheelchair, they are very much second class citizens.
Then there are all the cautions about imminent crime, which seem to multiply by the year. LO also constantly did both a scrolling message and a PA announcement about keeping your belongings tightly with you to "reduce crime". Hijacking the scrolling PIS for blah-blah messages seems to be very much a new toy for the purveyors of constant messages to take over. The Croydon tram onward to Wimbledon had self-congratulatory bold notices inside from two seemingly quite separate organisations in Croydon about them being "anti crime partnerships", presumably against things that have happened on the tram. There were a range of sundry notices about all this as well.
Is there any understanding that this constant reference to you being fined, taken to court or assaulted on these services is a real message of deterrent to using public transport. It must put a number of the more impressionable members of the travelling public right off.
On London Overground out to Croydon, at every one of the many stations there were constant scrolling messages and PA announcements about being sure you have got just the right ticketing, otherwise there will be Penalty Fares. Notices elsewhere were about this, multiple references to prosecution and the implied threat that you will end up with a criminal record if you don't get your ticket usage just right. At the start of the trip at Canada Water there was a notice about how you will be overcharged if you didn't used the pink Oyster reader (which was in an obscure corner), while on the Croydon Tram there were multiple notices about what you had to do to avoid getting overcharged (and maybe penalised) that were so longwinded that I never got to the end of them or understood quite what they were going on about before the tram came.
There were severe notices to mothers with babies in pushchairs that, compared to anyone in a wheelchair, they are very much second class citizens.
Then there are all the cautions about imminent crime, which seem to multiply by the year. LO also constantly did both a scrolling message and a PA announcement about keeping your belongings tightly with you to "reduce crime". Hijacking the scrolling PIS for blah-blah messages seems to be very much a new toy for the purveyors of constant messages to take over. The Croydon tram onward to Wimbledon had self-congratulatory bold notices inside from two seemingly quite separate organisations in Croydon about them being "anti crime partnerships", presumably against things that have happened on the tram. There were a range of sundry notices about all this as well.
Is there any understanding that this constant reference to you being fined, taken to court or assaulted on these services is a real message of deterrent to using public transport. It must put a number of the more impressionable members of the travelling public right off.
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