No wonder you're so annoyed if that's how many messages you hear every time you board a train.
Good job it's auto announced otherwise those conductors must be forgetting to do their actual jobs!
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Trains told to get rid of torrent of 'Tannoy spam'
- Thread starter johntea
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Good job it's auto announced otherwise those conductors must be forgetting to do their actual jobs!
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It's not necessarily just the number of announcements, but the sheer verbiage (particularly when these are repeated word for word on the scrolling screens - preventing important messages such as what the next station actually is being displayed. Example of just part of the spiel that is played on the approach to Temple Meads (I apologize if I haven't got the wording exactly correct): "Please mind the gap between the train and the platform. Please mind the step down from the train to the platform. [some other announcement]. There is a larger gap than normal between the train and the platform at the next station. Please take care when leaving the train to avoid injuring yourself. If you see someone who needs help, please offer assistance or contact a member of staff"
To start at the end:
1) quite apart from it being a pretty savage indictment of our society if we have to be asked by tannoy to help someone in need of assistance, what difference is an announcement going to make? If you're inclined to help, you'll do so anyway - if you're not, you won't.
2) Do we really need to be told that the reason for taking care is to avoid injuring ourselves?
3) Possibly pedantry here, but "there is"n't always a large gap between train and platform at Temple Meads - the last couple of times I alighted having been treated to this announcement the gap was about 1 or 2 inches. If this is someone's experience over and over again (always travel by the same train which almost always stops at one of the straighter platforms) they will "learn" to ignore this message with potentially unpleasant consequences. (Has "crying wolf" ever been tested in court in terms of liability?)
How about: "We are now approaching Bristol Temple Meads. Change here for xyz. Please take care when alighting [yes, treat a journey as an opportunity to broaden your vocabulary by 1 word - it's not difficult] as the gap between the train and platform may be larger than you expect." as a verbal announcement, with "Approaching Bristol Temple Meads. Change for xyz. Mind the gap" on the scrolling screens" - meaning the station and changes are displayed far more frequently. After all - the number of people who can read the scrolling message but can't see the gap should be vanishingly small.
To start at the end:
1) quite apart from it being a pretty savage indictment of our society if we have to be asked by tannoy to help someone in need of assistance, what difference is an announcement going to make? If you're inclined to help, you'll do so anyway - if you're not, you won't.
2) Do we really need to be told that the reason for taking care is to avoid injuring ourselves?
3) Possibly pedantry here, but "there is"n't always a large gap between train and platform at Temple Meads - the last couple of times I alighted having been treated to this announcement the gap was about 1 or 2 inches. If this is someone's experience over and over again (always travel by the same train which almost always stops at one of the straighter platforms) they will "learn" to ignore this message with potentially unpleasant consequences. (Has "crying wolf" ever been tested in court in terms of liability?)
How about: "We are now approaching Bristol Temple Meads. Change here for xyz. Please take care when alighting [yes, treat a journey as an opportunity to broaden your vocabulary by 1 word - it's not difficult] as the gap between the train and platform may be larger than you expect." as a verbal announcement, with "Approaching Bristol Temple Meads. Change for xyz. Mind the gap" on the scrolling screens" - meaning the station and changes are displayed far more frequently. After all - the number of people who can read the scrolling message but can't see the gap should be vanishingly small.
Annetts key
Established Member
You forgot “thank you for travelling with Great Western”… etc.
Or the automated announcement telling you to change for X,Y and Z, including some of the stations the train has just called at!
This sums up much of the anti responses on this thread, - in effect it's saying:
"I already know what this station is like - I am a regular traveller, I don't want/need to hear this announcement". If that is true then the message isn't intended for them. Other passengers are travelling on trains.
Has it not dawned on them that however few they may be, some passengers might never have alighted at that station, never have even been throuh that station, never travelled on that type of train and even never travelled on a GWR (or whichever TOC's) service before, If the railway is to survive it needs many more people to travel, including those who haven't done so much or at all before now.
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Pakenhamtrain
Member
I like our displays in the City Loop. Sometimes it will spit out something like "Change at Flinders Street for Upfield" Never mind you can get off one stop earlier and change for the exact same train.
I’m not sure how being warned that “ the gap may be larger than you expect” ( which is true) is less useful to a first-time arrival than “ there is a larger gap than normal” ( which is only sometimes true - and implies that you know what “normal” is). I’m sure that the things a first time user is most concerned about knowing is that the next station is Temple Meads and that this is where you change for xy and z ( preferably with times and platforms). In the last month I’ve been treated on the approaches to Temple Meads with “We’re now approaching” Filton Abbey Wood, Keynsham and even Aldermaston - but that’s a different story. While appreciating that a first-time user needs to know more than a regular one, the current verbal diarrhoea dilutes the stuff they really need to know. (Am I on the right train? Am I about to get off at the right place?). Dangerously large gaps- and, yes, they can occur at Temple Meads - do need a mention, but not three in a single announcement. It would also be better as a “real human announcement “ only when the train has actually stopped on the tighter curves ( to avoid the “crying wolf” syndrome) - but I accept that that is too complicated / risky.
As an aside to this - yesterday's journey through TM was "enlivened" by the need for all passengers to vacate the train temporarily there due to a wrong-side door-opening. This was achieved not by an announcement over the tannoy, but by the crew walking through the train and making un-amplified announcements at both ends of each carriage - interrupted as they did so by prerecorded announcements telling us that "This is Filton Abbey Wood" (which it wasn't). Where's the tannoy when you really need it!?
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43096
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The windows are wanted. The endless crawling repetition of the same 25 stations is not. The problem is some aspect of brain function which results in the practical negation of the "but you don't have to look at it" argument.
I don't know if it's the colour, the brightness, the speed of scrolling or even the multiplex rate of the display - could be any or all of them, and probably other things too - but something about the bloody things is hypnotic. You're trying to enjoy the view out of the window but there's this brightly lit-up moving thing in the corner of your eye and it keeps intruding itself on your attention and then subtly taking over, until suddenly you realise you've just watched "...Droitwich Spa, Worcester Foregate Street, Malvern Link, Great Malvern, Colwall..." come past for the 6th time pissing you off a little more with every repetition and have to forcibly wrench your attention away from it again... and so the cycle repeats.
It's like people who don't turn the telly off when someone calls round. They may turn the sound off, but they leave the picture going, and bits of conversation keep trying to get going and then petering out after a few sentences because it's impossible not to keep paying attention to the brightly lit-up moving thing in the corner instead.
Nothing wrong at all with the basic idea of showing the train's calling pattern on some kind of notice, but there's no need for it to be an annoying kind of notice, and it's not even a good design to begin with because you have to wait such a long time for the bit you need to know to come past. Once upon a time, it is true, a one-line scrolling LED matrix display was about the only practical option for providing the kind of readout required, but we have better alternatives available now. For instance there are purely reflective flat-panel displays which achieve a contrast ratio comparable to ink on paper without any kind of light source being involved, and with good enough resolution to display the entire calling pattern statically on the one screen and still have it clearly legible. You could mount them on a bulkhead like the safety notices which nobody reads or cares about, or even on the doors themselves, and they would not only not be annoying but would also be more useful for their intended purpose.
I can't say I've ever turned the TV off when someone visits, it would never cross my mind to. Just like the displays on trains, I forget they're there, totally tune out to them, and the announcements too.
But then I always have something on as I like background noise, silence is awful.
TSWFan2020
On Moderation
so glad they are getting rid of them. they are seriously annoying and gives you headaches
I very much doubt they will. They may conclude that some announcements are unnecessary, but most will stay due to their importance for the visually impaired. Even then, I doubt they'll do anything to properly restrict announcements and will just issue guidance.
I also don't think announcements give people headaches, and if there was ever cause for a strain on my ears it would be down to other passengers on the train.
yoyothehobo
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Using Leeds a lot there is the frequent see it, say it, sorted. The frequent announcement that the lifts are behind the stairs for those with baggage, pushchairs etc... and my personal favourite of "due to todays wet weather" in a station that is 95% under canopy and will often come on when not wet.
The problem is that due to the sheer number of services at Leeds, it becomes non-stop announcement mush and it becomes very easy to miss an important annoncement for platform changes.
The problem is that due to the sheer number of services at Leeds, it becomes non-stop announcement mush and it becomes very easy to miss an important annoncement for platform changes.
There was an absolute torrent of 'tannoy spam' on LNER yesterday.
The 1801 from Newcastle was particularly bad, with overly loud automatic announcements followed by difficult to hear manual announcements including incorrect threats of fines.
I can't see LNER willingly complying with this initiative, and who is going to make them?
The 1801 from Newcastle was particularly bad, with overly loud automatic announcements followed by difficult to hear manual announcements including incorrect threats of fines.
I can't see LNER willingly complying with this initiative, and who is going to make them?
Can be very useful in times of disruption - e.g. when you've bought a direct ticket, but are travelling on a alternative route due to cancellations - e.g. St Pancras to Nottingham becoming King's Cross to Grantham to Nottingham. The train you are travelling on my of course be totally unaffected by said disruption. Also, as someone who's student days involved journeys where the connection changed (Piccadilly, Oxford Road, Warrington, Crewe, Tamworth) depending on when I travelled and what tickets I was sold that morning, those announcements were a handy reminder!
I think it is to me and you, but you get people who wait till they get to the barrier and then start rummaging through their pockets/bags looking for their ticket and this causes queues to build up.
TrainTrackJack
Member
Several Snow Hill lines services which I’ve travelled on with WMR Class 172s state upon approach to Snow Hill and Moor Street to “have your tickets ready for the automatic ticket barriers - they may be in operation!”
The fact that I hear this in London when 99% of travellers are using contactless is probably why it annoys me so much!
They do that anyway though. They get to the till in shops and then act all surprised when they find they now have to pay for their stuff. You don't get announcements in shops reminding them to have their payment ready, and I can't see it making any difference if they did.
That's because Snow Hill is manned 'first to last' whereas Moor St is similar to New St in that it's manned at some points during the day.
On the continent most tickets are Anytime or Advance.
Fares with mid boggling time restrictions, railcards with more time restrictions and then flavours of operator(s) specific 'flexible' and partially flexible tickets and it is no wonder people are confused...
Culture doesn't change as a result of pronouncements from politicians trying to save Big Dog by tossing us some red meat.
Please be aware this platform only has partial yellow tactile paving on some of the platform edge, followed by a lengthy exposition on how the part that didn't have yellow tactile paving might change your life in a not very good way.
As long as that is the culture, the announcements are going nowhere.
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Nothing to do with the disruption at all?
What's that got to do with number of announcements onboard a train?
Nipped down to the West Mids on Saturday for the first time in years. The auto announcer on the cross city got irritating very quickly.
"Please step onto the platform before removing any large items of luggage or pushchairs" or similar, at every station near enough!
"Please step onto the platform before removing any large items of luggage or pushchairs" or similar, at every station near enough!
Well that won't change, the vast majority of accidents/incidents are PTI based with ones including luggage and pushchairs being the ones that can be avoided far easier through announcements.
Same as the stand back from the edge/behind the yellow line announcements on platforms with near misses being a near daily issue at some stations.
Jim the Jim
Member
Regarding screens - people will look at these when they want specific information, usually things like upcoming stops and arrival times. The more other information is included, the longer they have to wait till it gets to the bit they want, which can be annoying. I was on a train recently (not in UK) where in order to get the information I wanted I had to keep looking at the screen as it cycled through about 5 pages of covid-related information that didn't communicate anything that isn't well known or obvious anyway.
Is there evidence that is more than anecdotal that the announcements actually change many people’s behaviour, though?
Yes you're right in respect to most incidents being PTI related, but does this announcement need to be played for every station especially those where the gap/step isn't particularly large?
I'm used to the occasional announcement on Merseyrail at stations with large step/gap down where it just says something along the lines of "when leaving the train, please mind the step onto the platform" so it doesn't get annoying.
Personally, I'd say yes purely based on seeing babies/children be tipped out of pushchairs onto platforms by people not alighting trains correctly. Obviously they weren't strapped in but the point it still there, it's not just large gaps that can cause a trip/fall.
Some of the stations I call at have significant gaps/steps and so these have mandatory special announcements. I get why people think if it's said at every station it looses it's focus, but I'd rather say it and hope it stops an incident than not an wish I had.
I guess that's half the problem: if you can you don't see the problem, if you can't you don't see why other people don't see the problem.
Me, I'm pretty good at tuning out the information content completely, so there are just these words going by but they might as well be in a foreign language for all they actually convey to me. But the presence of a lit-up moving thing (which would include the clock with the luminous pendulum, if such a thing existed on trains) or a non-constant noise made of varying sounds (of which speech is a prime example) is infuriatingly impossible to tune out.
I expect you'd be one of the people who would insist on having the radio on all day in the workshop, and have me wanting to smash the thing before half-way to the morning tea break
Either way, though, it's still an important lesson for the pro-announcement enthusiasts: the response they elicit is not to take note of them, it's to try and make them somehow or other not exist. Whether they're annoying or not depends on how good you are at doing that, so people not being annoyed does not mean they're useful, it means the people who aren't annoyed are better at making them useless.
See this says to me that the announcements are indeed useless. You have mandatory special announcements but you still see people displaying the quite remarkable degree of basic incompetence at everyday actions needed to tip their babies out onto the platform. (Presumably the babies are quite used to being tipped out over every step or kerb they get wheeled over, think it's a perfectly normal way of descending things, and are tough as old boots by now.) If someone's going to be a div then they're going to be a div whether you tell them not to or not, and the more divvy the thing they're wanting to do the less chance there is of them taking note of any persuasion not to.
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