Great Western Coffee Shop

Has anyone experienced Bath bus station's new passenger information screens?

The good: they're of a more appropriate size for the bus station, though given the length of the building, anything's going to be a challenge.

The challenging: three screens, one of which is devoted to rail information (despite several of Bath's bus routes having been altered and no longer serve the bus and rail stations...)

The curious: the rationale for the order of display of services isn't clear - and the fact that the screens change frequently and without warning means that it's difficult to scan them for the service in which one is interested as the screen will likely change while the passenger is still part way through it.

The very challenging: the bus screens scroll at slightly random intervals with a maximum display time of around 10 seconds but sometimes very much less.

The peculiar: within the 10 second complete rewrite, a screen's individual fields will sometimes update and that's very disruptive.

While the screens are initially attractive, it's difficult to gather useful information from them.

My suggestion would be:

*Ditch the rail information. Use that third screen for bus info.

*Given the additional real estate provided by the third screen, on all three, cease switching the pages: just provide a list of times for upcoming services with an orderly right to left progression, dropping 'em off the top of the first screen as they depart.

Oh and lose the plastic owl, as the pigeons aren't bothered.

Mark

I had a look at it the other week.

FoSBR is currently campaigning for better bus/train integration (https://fosbr.org.uk/interchange-between-buses-and-trains/) - making it easier for people to switch modes. We had a meeting with WECA a month or so back to discuss this, and Bath Bus Station was mentioned as one of the few places in the region where real-time train information is made available to bus users. It's actually fairly cheap and easy to set up, and we think it should be made available at other interchanges. As well as giving useful information to people who already swap modes, it also raises awareness of travel options for people who may not realise that a train may get them where they want to go quicker.

Someone travelling from Radstock to Swindon, for example, would probably change from bus to train at Bath, whereas someone travelling from Keynsham to Box might start on the train and finish their journey by bus. Both would presumably welcome this additional real-time information.

However, when I pointed out the display at Bath to my teenage daughter, she said she though it was just confusing: 'How do you know which ones are trains and which ones are buses' was her main observation! So there is clearly scope for improvement.

At our meeting with WECA, one of the main issues they raised was a lack of space for information. This, along with clear presentation, costs money. And there's not much of that about at the moment.

>>FoSBR» is currently campaigning for better bus/train integration - making it easier for people to switch modes.

Good, bus/train integration is a bit of a dirty word locally, since earlier this year when First changed the route of Bath's 6 and 7 bus to terminate at Bath's Guildhall rather than at the bus and rail stations. The local authority has a little say in this as they fund the last three services of the day and those *do* run from the bus station, but being hourly, it's very fortunate if, eg. trains connect.

Something I didn't expect for 2022 that we'd have another cycle in which the government would be so good at talking up public transport while at the same time taking steps to grind it into the dust.

Mark