Ah yes, train 92! Please remind Gladys from Tutbury what the ultimate destination of "92" is? And which station the train calls at immediately prior to the station where she is alighting?
As a local and fairly frequent traveller, I should rather expect you'd be aware of your imminent arrival into Stockport without any audible announcement whatsoever. Tyler from Frome is probably somewhat less familiar with the journey and the local area, and being somewhat unaware of where he is, rather appreciates the announcement that gives him sufficient time to put his iPad and charger away, put on his coat, grab his bag from the overhead rack and make his way towards the doors without having to do so in a mad panic and in fear of missing his stop and ending up at Piccadilly, facing a penalty fare or prosecution or whatever for travelling beyond the validity of his ticket and ending arriving at his intended destination significantly later than planned.
I'll agree that the barrage of automated announcements at some stations does indeed seem rather excessive, although it's easy to see the arguments for why most of it is felt as necessary to have, so it would perhaps be difficult to significantly reduce this without omitting some information that one person feels is not needed but others may argue is important.
I’m guessing you work for Greater Anglia. The bins by the exit doors are minuscule and always stuffed. Presumably they were approved by the same people who thought tiny basins in the toilet, which always result in the floor getting wet, were a good idea.
Reading this, I'm thankful that on my part of the SWR network guards are much less vocal, or in some cases not at all! Of course in the latter case it's not so helpful when the auto announcements are also not working!
Chiltern Railways still have Arabic and Mandarin announcements on approach to Bicester Town station.
I took a class 159 from Salisbury last week that had the message expanded even further, and started talking about only being able to use advance purchase tickets on booked trains only. It was tagged onto the end of the usual penalty fare announcement so I’m not sure if it was on a unit for a trial but I don’t think it was manually triggered.
Thanks for confirming! The Desiro fleet definitely doesn’t play those announcements automatically, they were manually triggered by on-board staff, either Driver or Guard. ^^
No, because the surveys have loaded questions.
The advance ticket warning is automatic and on all the diesels.
However, those people are unlikely to take the slightest notice of announcements, making them pointless additions to the existing barrage. Even the announcements are not concise. Then add irritations like stations being called 'calling points' and other useless invented terms for existing, perfectly good words, plus staff cutting in over them to repeat them manually (and often badly), and it becomes almost irresistible to wear ear buds to block the rubbish out, this also making them pointless.
The class 385s are some of the worst in the country when it comes to verbal diarrhoea, so won't be letting ScotRail off the hook personally.
And they're illiterate. "I am currently located" and "On behalf of the driver and myself". Grating for decades since the beginning of the SWT days. The announcements should be for everyone, but nobody needs to be accused of being a violent fare-evader every time they travel. The 61016 announcement should be cut short to end with that number. The thank yous and take all your belongings (I haven't got all my belongings) is best done as a personal one from the guard I think but certainly doesn't need to be repeated. Try Southeastern, much quieter, although the Electrostar does fancy a list of every station in Kent after each stop.
Same in the Netherlands - this is all that's required. The rest is extraneous noise.
I think it may mean that Google has done internal detailed mapping of the station. If you zoom in on New Street for instance, it will allow you to select from three levels: 1 = shops, G = concourse, B1 = platforms. I don't know how long that's been the case.
There’s a set of changes coming to the system imminently to address this, which will allow much better targeting of announcements eg only make them within x minutes of a train departure time, to ensure there’s an audience etc. this should stop the barrage of announcements or at least provide the ability to do so.
I must have been in a bad mood last night! "I am in the middle of the train" still seems a lot better to me.
"From the driver and me". It's more human, and more correct. But yes, clunky is a much better word for it.
I guess you could argue that you don’t need ’located’, and only need ‘currently’ if you are planning on moving.
As ever, the kind of people who specify such announcements lack any common sense reference points such as these. They only work on an abstract concept of risk, which they probably lie awake in bed worrying about whilst the rest of us are soundly sleeping.
The Elizabeth Line used to be really good with stripped back but meaningful announcements:
