It’s been a long time since I’ve used public transportation. I’m surprised at how little things have changed. I was expecting to read about cellphone apps that allowed you to request a stop.
Something not mentioned yet in this thread; something obvious to those who ride public transportation, but not obvious to someone who never has is…requesting a stop doesn’t mean the vehicle will immediately pull over and stop. It only means that the driver will prepare to stop at the next official bus stop for that bus, which could be blocks away. There even can be official stops for other buses or bus lines that will be passed up for the right one. If you don’t know this, you may be quite disconcerted, as I once was, when the bus refuses to stop.
I haven’t seen those, but I’ve seen some which let you know when are which buses next coming to the stop you’re waiting in; they access the information that the buses themselves are sending to central. Some only have that, some combine it with a route-planner.
Voyager:
Colibri:
Most, if not all NYC MTA buses now also have a button on the poles that can be pressed in addition to the cord. Not sure if the buses that have that still have the strips.
New Jersey Transit. Some buses have strips, some have buttons to push. The sign that announces the stops will say “Stop Requested,” and the sign flashes that information. If you tell the bus driver “Next stop,” they will stop the bus for you.
Wow, thank you for all the responses! To add one more data point, which prompted the question: All the public buses in Germany I have ever been on have buttons, and when you are the first to press one, a buzzing sound plays for the driver.
I’d never heard of the rope or cable before - do people sometimes grab it by mistake when they are trying to just hold on?
Musicat, I’m genuinely curious how you came to not know this. Had you always lived in places that didn’t have public transport?
By coincidence, I once missed my stop along the Yangtze, and ended up in Shangri-La.
Also, Ludovic: That’s a better pun than what I was considering for the title…
London has invested a lot of money in buses for public transport and has both single and double deck buses. They have a lot upright poles for passengers hang on to when standing and you are usually in arms reach of button to request the bus to stop at the next bus stop and they go ‘ding!’ like a bell. The buses have LED dot dislays that show the name of the next bus stop and ‘bus stopping’ if the bell is rung. There is also a big red bus stopping sign next to the driver. There is also a recorded announcement of the name of the next stop, which is helpful for those with poor eyesight.
I am always impressed by how the buses steadily improve as new models are introduced. Lots of them are hybrid, some electric and a few hydrogen powered. They seem to be hedging their bets. They are also festooned with cameras and TV screens that show different views being recorded to discourage bad behaviour from schoolkids. I noticed that the latest single deckers have a big screen display inside in the middle that helpfully shows the bus route and where the bus is on its journey along the route. Finally, you can get on, work out where you are an how many stops before you need to get off. No need for an app! None of the buses take cash any more, they are all contactless. The drivers don’t really need to have much interaction with the passengers, which is just as well because most of them are grumpy characters who prefer not to have their day interrupted with questions from passengers.
All the talk of cords running down the length of bus seems quite nostalgic. They keep a few of the old Routemaster London buses going on ‘heritage routes’ in the tourist areas. A friend who used to drive these buses in London many years ago told me the drivers loved the design. They had a seperate cabin for the driver because a conductor took care of collecting money for tickets and signalling to the driver with the bell cord. The driver had his radio playing and often spent the day in splendid isolation in a smoke filled cabin that smelt distinctly of ‘jazz cigarettes’. Given the slow pace of traffic in the congested city speed was not an issue.:rolleyes:
I’m not sure what “this” is, but if you are referring to the bus procedure where you “ring” the driver to get off and the bus doesn’t stop until the next designated bus stop, here’s why I didn’t know much about that.
As a child, I either walked, took my bike, got a ride from a parent, or borrowed a parent’s car wherever I went. There were no bus lines with any useful frequency or routes anywhere near my suburban home (a bus that only comes by once every 3-4 hours and stops a mile away isn’t very useful). The first time I took a regular bus to work was at age 19, and it was an express bus; only a few “on” stops, and it wouldn’t stop to let you off even if you begged until it got downtown.
The next time I had to use buses was in a much larger city. It had so many bus lines that each line only stopped for riders every 3 blocks or so since there simply wasn’t enough space at one bus stop for all the lines. It took me a while before I figured out the reason so many buses passed me up at a bus stop was they weren’t designated to stop for several more blocks, and I had to read the very small signs very carefully to be sure which line at which stop was going where. If you miss one, it’s a long wait until the next (this was not NYC, you bet). As soon as I could afford a car, I never took a bus anywhere, ever again. I don’t miss them.
Where I live now, there are no public buses within a 60 mile radius in any direction. They don’t exist in my world, and I suspect some of my neighbors are ignorant of bus rules, too.
NJ Transit busses as well (or they have an orange button above the seat).
NY Waterway runs free shuttle busses that generally use a cord running the length of the bus.
The older buses here in Chicago (back in the 80s to the early 90s for my early bus-riding days) also had a buzzer that buzzed for as long as you held the cord down. Then it became a singular “ding” at some point with a light up “stop requested” light at the front. And then I forget, but Tim R. Mortiss filled it in. Sound like they no longer do the ding? I’ve only been on the bus here in the US maybe a dozen times in the past ten years, and I just haven’t paid attention.
As for people accidentally pulling the cord, I really can’t think of a time I’ve seen it. Back in my high school days, I took the municipal bus (CTA) every single day to and from high school for four years, and I can’t recall people grabbing it by mistake, or at least with any regularity to make an impression. I’m sure it happens, but they’re not really conveniently located to catch your balance, if that’s what you’re thinking. Here’s a picture of (one kind of) a CTA bus interior. The cord you pull runs along the window frame there between the narrow top windows and the main windows. It’s not really the most convenient thing to grab if you lose your balance.
I’ve been on busses that BUZZ when you press the button. It’s interesting that there are still so many that 'DING". On our old system, the cord was actually attached to a sprung bell-striker, and struck the bell when pulled, load enough so that everybody could here it. Also, you could see the cord tighten if you were watching it. Once to stop. Twice close together to start again after the conductor could see that everybody was clear. Thrice as fast as he could if he needed an emergency stop.
That’s not particularly rare; in most of the US for example (actually, in most of the Americas), public transportation is either non-existent or worse. When I lived in Miami (which ok, was the Dark Ages), Metrorail was great but the buses ran on such fabulous schedules as “once every two hours”! Try running a public bus every two hours in Barcelona and see how long it takes until someone tries to shove said bus up your nethers.
Here in Olympia, the buses use the pull-cord system. You pull on the cord, there’s a chime, the “STOP REQUESTED” sign near the front of the bus lights up, and the bus pulls over at the next marked stop.
We also have a cell phone app that tells you when the next bus will be arriving at any given stop, and adjusts the arrival time if the bus is running late. It doesn’t handle early arrivals, so well; I’ve had it report to me that the bus would arrive 26 minutes ahead of schedule when the bus doesn’t even leave the station until 24 minutes from now.
Where I am in the UK, when I travelled regularly by bus for school (not a school bus, a regular bus I used for school) I used to walk down the aisle to where the driver was and ask him nicely if he could let me off at a particular place that wasn’t a stop, and he usually would.
The closest thing to that that’s happened to me is when I pulled the cord too early when there were several stops within a couple city blocks of each other and told the driver where I was going and he knew there was a stop closer to my destination and so continued on instead of stopping at literally the next stop.
You mean, the bus doesn’t always stop at every stop? Mind blown! What about the people who are running to the stop to get on? They just get ignored?
I remember the pull cords from the few times I rode the bus when I was a kid. I was not allowed to touch it. Interesting they still have them.
The light rail in Phoenix stops at every stop (of course!) but the doors open automatically, as the stations can be on either side, and it wouldn’t do to exit in front of the other train.
Bonus question: in every old movie and TV show set in San Francisco, people jump on and off the cable cars seemingly at random. Was that legal to jump on and off a moving car? Was it safe? How did you pay when you did that?
There are also little vans that run on NJ’s Route 4 from Paterson to upper New York 24/7. Generally, people just say “Next Stop” and the driver obliges.
If the bus driver doesn’t see you, and you’re not at the stop, yes. If the bus driver sees you, then they might stop, they might not, depending on how far away you are, what mood the driver is in, what kind of human being the driver is, if they’re running behind schedule, etc.
It would be positively a slog if the bus stopped at every single stop here on my main thoroughfare. There’s pretty much stops every eighth of a mile for most of the route. If nobody is getting off, and nobody is at the stop to get on, the bus goes on to the next one.