Wanstead announcements

“This bus is about to move.”
So glad they told me, I thought it was a static exhibit . . .

I've yet to hear it when the bus is not already moving!

Diamond Geezer sums it up perfectly... diamondgeezer.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/please-hold-on-bus-is-about-to-move.html

Do I need to hold on, even if I am seated?


But we don't have a bus sub-forum! Probably for the best!

This thread strays into several of my pet hates. Yesterday I travelled from DLR City Airport to West Drayton switching onto several different lines/rolling stock along the way and the quality and quantity of announcements was all over the place - and certainly if they cannot get it right at fairly simple stations like Wanstead how do they think they will keep dwell times down at busier locations?

Inside the waiting room glass box on the platform at City Airport the announcement was barely discernible and from my perspective wrongly timed. Surely shortly before the train arrives at the platform you should usually only give out information pertinent to waiting passengers such as the destination and any risk factors like mind the gap when boarding. By all means after a train draws into the platform provide necessary information for alighting passengers but that should not be at the cost of telling boarding passengers where the train is headed or be reason to delay the prompt departure. Inherently all pertinent information should already have been delivered to those alighting passengers whilst they were inside the train shortly before it arrives at the stop.

Again yesterday showed variable effectiveness with on-board announcements on the Piccadilly at places drowned out by rail squeal. I guess whoever is responsible for these announcements needs to do an end to end trip on every line to identify those high noise locations and ideally trigger the on-board announcements so they do not coincide with excessive noise. They should also be forced to get out from behind their desk and witness first-hand the behaviour of passengers at every platform for a few peak hour departures - to work out what if any announcements could be improved (re-ordered - enhanced (both content and volume) or indeed eliminated) to improve passenger throughput.

However at least for me, the tube tries to get it right, meanwhile the reasonably new OHLE unit on the GWR service out of Paddington seemed to be very confused with the in carriage displays taking great delight in telling passengers we were approaching Ealing Broadway for connections to the Central and District on the approach to every station on the trip to Twyford/Reading (well at least it was still doing so when I got off at West Drayton). To my mind providing no information at all, is far better than providing wrong information - which was obviously causing great uncertainty to a group of Japanese tourists desperately trying to figure out from the hopeless on-board maps if they were on the wrong train or indeed heading in the wrong direction.

I agree but I think there should be a standardised announcement system across all lines and I'll use wanstead as an example.

The first announcement should be 
"Central line... (so people know they're on the right line at interchange stations)
...The next train to Ealing Broadway will arrive in 2 minutes, next station: leytonstone" (people know what direction and branch the train is heading on, they are alerted the train is coming soon and the next station bit ensures you're on the right platform.

Before the train has entered the platform, there should be another announcement: "central line, the train now aaproaching is to Ealing Broadway, please stand back from the platform edge".  This is what's currently used on many parts of the network and I quite like it. The 'central line' bit is just to get people's attention since 'ladies and gentlemen' isn't allowed anymore, it could be replaced by some sort of tone but that seems excessive

When the doors open, almost immediately (or as soon as they play on the s stock) I expect to hear "Mind the gap between the train and the platform. This is Wanstead." Straight after, in the back carriage (if necessary) "the rear doors will not open here, please use other doors". It may seem pointless as people would been previously told but I have seen people get caught out by it and the announcement helped.

If every station had the earlier platform announcements then I don't feel it's necessary for the train terminus to be played straight after as I actually find it kind of odd on the Vic line when it says "THIS is pimlico. THIS is a Vic line train to Brixton" then a silence before the doors close. At busier stations, an automated "mind the gap" can play 2 or 3 times whilst people are alighting and boarding.

Straight after "please use other doors" it would then say "The next station is leytonstone, this is a central line train to Ealing Broadway". "Please stand clear of the closing doors. BEEEEEEEEEEP"

As alpinejohn earlier mentioned, it's important announcements are audible and the section south of wanstead can get quite loud so at an appropriate point it would say "the next station is leytonstone, doors will open on the right hand side. Change here for central line services to epping. Mind the gap between the train and the platform".


I don't think it's the end of the world if they repeat interchanges when at the station but at bigger stations like Liverpool street, maybe shorten it to "London underground, overground, crossrail and nation rail services". Obviously a full announcement is fine between stations.

Have I just spent 10 minutes explaining announcements? yes but it's always been something I thought should be standardised to provide sufficient info for those with disabilities but not get on the nerves of people that know where they're going. A well voiced announcement has never annoyed me really.

I agree with all of the above.

Another issue is that there are a certain breed of manager inside TFL to whom the answer to every single issue is to have an announcement go out.

<senior manager to middle manager>
There has been an increase in accidents on escalators, can you look at implementing measures to reduce this.
<middle manager to local staff>
Please can the attached PA script be broadcast with immediate effect...

With the amount of people who don’t listen or don’t have a good grasp of English (the latter being something which has increased greatly in the last decade or two), it’s hard to see why the company places so much value on announcements.

It’s like the LIS service update messages which get broadcast to train cabs every half hour and often more frequently. I can be sitting there with someone else in the cab, who will hear the message and comment on it. My response is often “what message?”, as the routine and frankly often completely unimportant (*) nature of the broadcasts means the brain simply tunes out automatically.

(* as an example, how on earth is it important for anyone on the Northern Line to know that the Metropolitan Line has just gone down from severe delays to minor delays between Moor Park and Watford? Does anyone think that meaaage is ever going to be relayed to passengers? Yet I believe the LIS is actually scored on this sort of thing)...

Maybe there were delays on the branch through Hammersmith (only relevant to s/b passengers at Shepherds Bush market) but not on the Edgware Road branch (only relevant to n/b passengers)?