Around 6 weeks ago I wrote about child fares. On my last trip to Salisbury today a young guy boarded the buses and asked for a child return to Salisbury. He certainly looked older than 15 but before I could say anything he said “I’ve got proof of age, all the drivers want to charge me the adult fare”. He then held out his passport. I guess most drivers, myself included most of the time, would think that someone who’s gone to that trouble must be genuine and simply issue a child ticket. Today it was different, I’d picked up no passengers at all up to that point and I was in danger of running early so anything to delay things would be of help. I took the passport and opened it at the back page …….. Date of Birth – 16 September 1992. “You’re nearly 18!” I said. “Child fares are for under 18’s, aren’t they?” he said. I then told him that once you’re 16 full fare is payable, he seemed genuinely shocked and surprised. So much so that I almost felt bad charging him full fare. I honestly believe the guy was genuine in his belief but it seems that for nearly two years he’d got away with child fares by offering his passport which nobody then checked.
New readers
Following yesterday’s Blogwatch posting on the Omnibuses2.0 blog (today simply renamed Omnibuses) 101 readers clicked through to read ‘another day on the buses’! This just goes to show how large a following the Omnibuses blog has – well done and a Happy 5th Birthday.
I guess for the the majority of the 101 it was quite likely a first visit here. They wouldn’t have bothered clicking the link in the posting if they came here regularly? So, welcome and I hope you enjoy what you see :-)
I’m getting a message
And the message is that people are far more interested in breastfeeding than the life of a bus driver. Analysis of the last 7 days search terms used to reach this blog show that ‘breastfeeding’ was the biggest single search term by a country mile – three times more searches on the single word ‘breastfeeding’ than all the search terms including ‘bus’ in them added together!
Perhaps it would be a good idea to change ‘Buses in the News’ to ‘Breastfeeding in the News’? :-)
Customer complaints
I came a across this website having seen it referenced in a comment to a posting on Omnibuses2.0 The site is basically about the old Manvers Street bus station in Bath which was demolished in July 2007. The page I’ve linked to is about customer complaints and it’s a gem. I instantly recognised one our Winchester drivers! I had no idea he’d worked for FirstBus but he must have, in my mind I can picture him doing this. Here’s the complaint.
The newest passenger to avoid
Lauren McKenna, 22, of Manchester.
Just 6 months after Amy Wootten of Bristol was proven to have lied about being thrown off a bus for breastfeeding her six-week-old baby we have Lauren McKenna making the same claim and also being proved a liar. About the only difference between the two stories is that the first involved FirstBus and the latest was an attempt to get a Stagecoach driver dismissed.
Here’s some video of Lauren McKenna making her false claim.
Be careful what you wish for …….
…… you may receive it. And we did on 16 May 2010; the day we started using the new ERG Ticket Systems TP5000 ticket machines. A week after their introduction I posted my first impressions adding that I’d “update my opinions having used the machine for longer”.
It’s now 3 months later so this is my updated opinion which isn’t very different to my first impressions. I’ve still not been able to discover much to enthuse over apart from the immediate impression I had that “Finding adult day tickets of the numerous types, child tickets, family tickets, week tickets etc. is now much easier”. The overwhelming problem, for me, is the number of key presses required to issue a ticket. There are several steps required to issue a ticket, the first is to ensure that the ticket machine is already set to your current location, I’ve not included any key presses to set that since the machine should already be correctly set. As I drove our Winchester to Guildford route today I counted the the presses required to issue either a single or return ticket from Winchester to Guildford. It’s 7 using the new machine compared with 3 using the older Wayfarer. If the next passenger to board also wants a ticket for the same journey it’s 2 key presses for the new machine against 1 for the Wayfarer. The next passenger then wants only to travel to Alton (half way to Guildford) which is 5 key presses which used to be 4. If the next passenger wants Guildford again it’s 7 key presses again. Because each route has a varying number of stops the key presses required to issue a ticket using the ERG TP5000 compared with key presses to issue the same ticket using the Wayfarer is not constant. However, I think it’s fair to say that the new machines require about double the number of key presses to issue a single or return ticket when compared with the older machines.
Have a careful look at each key board.
Don’t the Wayfarer buttons look more ‘business like’ and easier to hit? Very, very importantly it’s got a proper numeric keypad, compare that with the TP5000 where numeric input is via the two wavy vertical columns, 1 – 5 vertically down the wavy left column and 6 -0 vertically down the wavy right column! Every keypad I use – telephone, calculator, computer keyboard. chip and pin machine, cash dispenser etc has a regular numeric keypad like the Wayfarer. It’s very difficult and odd to input numeric data using the TP5000’s dual function wavy vertical columns. The other obvious difference just looking at the photos is the neat, nice, solid looking squareness of the Wayfarer buttons compared to the varying sizes and shapes on the TP5000.
The second worst feature of the ERG machines is the display in which numbers/characters are formed from pixels. The background is light grey and the illuminated pixels dark grey. Dark grey print on a light grey background doesn’t give the greatest clarity, especially in bright light. The old machines used an LCD display in which sectors were activated to display a number, these sectors were solid black against a very light background. Much better.
I could write a lot more but it’s too late now. We wished for new machines and received them!