Monday, November 21, 2011

Bus Arrivals Boards

I don't know how long this info has been available but I noticed today that you can now see bus arrival times in the same way as for trains. On the LU web site you can select a location to bring up a street map then click on a bus stop symbol on the map and up pops a list of the buses due to call there with estimated times of arrival. I don't travel much by bus but for those who do this information is a real boon. I wonder if there is a smart-phone app for it? Bus travellers have it worse in some ways because they have nobody to ask if the buses don't run. At least we have the pleasure of clicking on a big green "Help" button and hearing a recorded announcement that there is nobody available to answer the call.

I exaggerate, of course [No! Really?: Ed]. In the main there is plenty of information about the state of the Tube and I think the service level has been pretty good in recent months. I don't bother about the Help buttons because I can see on the phone how the trains are running. It is not easy to convey how amazing this facility still is to me. I once stood for an hour at a bus stop, ignorant that they had cancelled the services for a while.  I have spent God knows how many hours wondering where my Piccadilly service had got to - in the bad old days when I had to go that way into London. The buses may be stuck in traffic and the trains held up by signal failures but at least you can get to know about it and knowledge is power.

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