New technology in buses
New technology in buses
I listened to a podcast this morning which guest starred Emma Hignett.
As it was transport related they talked about her voice over work with TFL and discussed next stop announcements on London Buses. Interestingly she said that for London they wanted to give out the essential information people needed, while not annoying people or giving out too much information, hence it was kept to the route number & destination as the buses depart a stop, and the name of the upcoming stop as it is approached, (plus the prerecorded messages the driver can play manually if needed).
They then discussed how other cities have since decided to prefix the stop announcements with "Next Stop", or "The next stop is" (or "This is the X service to Y", rather than simply "X, to, Y"), which they thought was unnecessary as the audience knows what it is you're announcing, and it becomes very repetitive sounding and more likely to either annoy people or make them less likely to tune into the vital bit i.e. the stop name, as they've made the announcements all start off sounding the same. They pointed out in any other context you would never start every paragraph or sentence with the same thing, would you.
I just thought it was interesting, and I agree. I would certainly drop off the "Next stop," bit as that does get annoying hearing it over and over in such close secession. If it was purely the stop name it wouldn't sound so repetitive.
