Thursday, November 24, 2016

Y'all ready for Bitching Betty on trains?!

We already have her on the GO bus. She yells every time the doors open, thanking us for pre-purchasing our fare with Presto, screams out the stops and sternly reminds us how to conduct ourselves. Now she may be joining us all on the train! Good times.


Here's what Anonymous had to say about it:

I've observed a fair number of different automated stop announcements on various train systems over the years. The best systems limit the announcements to just three things:
1) As you approach a station, providing the name of the station ("This is Oakville station")
2) At the station, providing the crucial information about the train for those boarding ("This is an eastbound train to Union station")
3) As you pull away from a station, providing the name of the next station ("The next station is Clarkson")
... AND THAT IS IT. 

You'll notice the ideal matches pretty nicely with what CSA does now. However, I worry that someone at Metrolinx/GO will feel compelled to add a large amount of surplus information, and we'll end up with something like the external announcements on GO Buses ("Thank-you for pre-purchasing your fare. For passengers using Presto, please have your card ready. Thank-you for choosing GO Transit"). 

I'm hoping GO Transit doesn't overengineer this either. No feet on the seats reminder -- next stop -- and then shut the hell up -- works for me.

3 comments:

  1. RobertNovember 24, 2016 at 9:44 AM

    It dies say that they will be automated visual information about your ride. This sounds like they are going to put in display screens not automated voice announcements (I hope.) I don't know any other method of doing non automated visual information displays unless the CSAs did pantomime or sent semaphore signals at which I was once proficient.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tal HartsfeldNovember 25, 2016 at 9:58 AM

    Oh, they'll need to remind all passengers of the various APPs they can download to their phones.
    And they'll need to emphasize that "if you see anything suspicious tell an operator. Again: See something, say something".
    And they'll have to consistently tell everyone to "Thanks for riding GO Transit and have a great day!"

    And they'll make sure the P.A. speakers are turned up to level 10 (maximum) lest anyone be mid-sentence in whatever they're reading, or thinking too hard about something complex or involved.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousNovember 25, 2016 at 5:51 PM

    The Kitchener line get the added bonus announcements of buying tickets for the UP Express.

    Think they're making GO announcements on the UP Express too?

    ReplyDelete

This website is not only read by GO Transit passengers, but also by employees of various transit agencies across Canada and the US, members of the media and enjoys an audience from around the world. Please take that into consideration.

You can remove your comment but a copy of that comment is retained by the software and is immediately available to the editor.

ThisCrazyTrain.com's commenting rules are simple: If you make an overly offensive comment (racist, bigoted, etc.) or go waaaay off topic, your comment will be deleted. Please conduct yourself accordingly.