(24 Aug 2018, 6:23 pm)S830OFT wrote Passengers on the Crusader services don't appear to be liking the new announcements. "This is the Crusader 27 service to South Shields" was driving passengers crazy, and with the bus stopping at pretty much every stop it must be extremely annoying, especially for the driver who has to listen to it for the entire journey and back. 

A better idea for informing passengers would be to have the announcements go off at key destinations, for example Heworth Interchange.

Hopefully Go North East change it as it was driving passengers mad.

The inclusive transport strategy forms part of the Government's proposals to make public transport more accessible for disabled people.

Should they go ahead, these proposals will mandate the fitting of audio-visual Next Stop Announcement systems to almost all buses operating public services.

These proposals also have specific requirements for the audio - one requirement is for the service number and terminus to be announced at every stop where the doors have been opened.

So whilst this is not currently required by law, I'd suggest it's not too far away, and isn't something that is likely to disappear any time soon...

I've driven a lot of buses with Next Stop Announcements, even more so over the last few months since the announcements were changed to announce the service on doors close, and in my view from a drivers perspective you barely hear the announcements. It just blends into the background noise, along with the accompanying rattles, squeaks, talking passengers, etc.

From a passenger perspective, it's much of the same story in my opinion. If you concentrate on something else (your phone, a book, the views outside, the person you're travelling with), have music coming through your earphones, etc, then in my view you tend to blank out the announcements.

If it was "driving passengers mad", I'd expect Customer Services to be receiving a large volume of complaints about it. I wonder if they are?

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