First bus route announcements

[whole diary]

[froome]

The buses on my local bus route, the number 1 in Bath, run by First, had announcements of each stop introduced a few months ago. This ought to be very useful, but for some reason the automated voice cannot pronounce places correctly, and even gets commonly used words wrong, e.g. Cemetery is pronounced with the emphasis on the second e!  Some names which ought to present no problem with pronunciation are almost unintelligible - it took me ages to work out what road was being announced before I worked out it was Avon (which sounds like it starts with U).

However, this all pales into insignificance today, as the announcements now seem to be in a foreign language! Some unintelligible string of words comes out, and then the road name in English (except for my local one which had a foreign word in it, again unintelligible!). After a while I thought (and some others on the bus also thought) that it might be Welsh (as it sounds like the ramble of words starts with 'safle' which I believe is the Welsh for 'stop', but the first word said actually sounds more like Staffle. We tried asking the bus drivers what is going on, but they didn't reply (they probably don't know anyway). All very odd.

At least it kept us all bemused. I look forward to my next journeys on them. 

[JayMac]

Have heard one in Bristol pronounce Coombe Dingle as "Coo mebbe Dingle".

Humans can be little better sometimes. You know your Train Manager isn't from the westcountry when you hear Frome announced, rhyming with Rome. Teignmouth (Tin-muth) as "Tayn-mouth". Or Keynsham (Cane-shum) as "Keen-sham".

[froome]

Indeed. If I hear Keen-sham on those trains one more time I'll scream!

[Western Pathfinder]

Can't wait to see what happens when the line to Port Zed is opened.

[trainer]

I am amused by the Portway Park and Ride bus announcements in Bristol that are (were?) ending every time with the spoken phrase 'double quote'! 

[Tim]

Does some kind of announcement become compulsory in 2020 to meet the updated disability regs?  My understanding is that the current mess is the bus companies trying certain systems out. 

[froome]

Does some kind of announcement become compulsory in 2020 to meet the updated disability regs?  My understanding is that the current mess is the bus companies trying certain systems out. 

Thanks, that might explain it, but why test them out on live routes without any explanation to passengers? If they do need to test them out in that way, at least put up a notice in the bus explaining this, like they do for fare rises.

If they were testing systems out, this one obviously failed!