NEW bus routes in Plymouth city centre are causing confusion and missed appointments, say traders. Plymouth Citybus has rerouted most of the buses that used to run down Mayflower Street.
Confusion over Plymouth bus routes
The new routes in the City Centre for Citybus services were announced back at the end of October, and featured in this blog back on the 23rd October. Also featured on that page were some of the publicity maps that Citybus put out, and I have seen quite a few of these at bus stops since then. Buses also carried notices about this change, but it seems that many people are claiming not to know anything about them...
"Nobody knew anything about this. To have it dropped on us at this time of year is short-sighted and arrogant."
"Citybus is dealing with their problem without telling anyone. There wasn't even an announcement in the paper."
It does make you wonder just what a bus company has to do in order to let people know about changes like this. The notices in the buses are often missed as you only get to read these if you are on the front seat behind the driver. Notices in bus stops often get vandalised and probably get missed by most passengers anyway. Radio and news papers adverts only catch passengers that bother to listen to the radio or read the paper.
There must be a better way of displaying important notices like this inside buses. The noticeboard behind the driver will only ever catch a few passengers who sit in one or two seats. You might get a quick glance as you exit the bus but you wont get the time to read it properly. Perhaps bus companies could make more use of the internal adverts above the windows to display some notices like this. It will certainly cost more though but it might be effective for some notices, even if its just pointing out the basics and telling people where to find more information.
You are never going to get the attention of everyone and there will always be people who somehow miss things no matter what you try and do. As one Nick Rice' pointed out on my original post: "Expect the letters page in the Herald to explode with angry and outraged pensioners about the new changes, and how the city council has gone to the dogs (again)." He was right!
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I was expecting this post to appear on the blog last night, and was surprised it wasnt on line when I checked at lunch time! I guess I probably pressed the wrong button again - you would have thought I would be better at this by now!
when first changed there services they had people out on the buses telling passengers of the new routes, people out at the broadway, st budeaux sq, fore street etc telling passengers and they had a info bus in royal parade for a fortnight as well as radio and newspapers anouncements so YES citybus could have done a lot more!!
ReplyDeleteThe re-routing of first's ugobus system was a big change, new numbers and new routes etc, all citybus have done is stop a few buses going down one road! The advertisement of this that citybus had displayed was in my view completly adequite. Just in response to your question though Graham about how bus companies can advertise these changes, shall we say 'more obviously' is to make use of the hanover displays inside many of their buses, first and citybus have these fitted to a number of their vehicles but they generally display nothing more than *%"^*>?>>// or gobeldygook such as! Take a leaf out of Stagecoach Devons book who ulilise these inside displays to relay such information extremely effectively. Great fan of the blog Graham, keep up the good work,
ReplyDeleteBrendan Davies.