Morning:
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No matter how small the milestone in British railway history, there will always be a trainspotter to mark it. And so it was, last week, that a little group gathered at Ealing Broadway to mourn the demise of the Underground bobble.
You know, the Underground bobble - those round things dangling from the carriage ceiling that you were meant to hang on to. D7115, the very last unrefurbished District Line train, the very last one with bobbles on the whole network, finished its final run at 12.30 last Saturday morning. Another of those little only-in-London things that's no longer anywhere at all.
Also gone: the nice ridged wooden floors (maple, they were), and the cheerful orange insides of the doors - both replaced by the ubiquitous suicide-grey plastic so beloved, and so revealing, of our ghastly masters. But worst of all, they have taken away the silence. D7115 was the very last Tube train without automated announcements.
Once, you could travel by Underground hearing no more than the noise of the wheels. It remains, of course, a serious crime for any Tube passenger to speak, but TfL has given us some new friends to fill the gap. Well, just one friend - Emma Hignett, the "voice of London transport" - but she won't bloody shut up.
This station is Bethnal Green. This train is for Hainault via Newbury Park. Please keep your belongings with you at all times. Beggars and ticket touts operate on this station. If you see one, please inform a member of staff. The next station is Mile End. This train is for Hainault via Newbury Park.
Then there is that jarring, jangling screech to tell us the doors are opening, and those high-pitched beeps to let us know the doors are, well, closing. But we can see, and we can read.
And in the unlikely event that we are blind, we can count the stops, or ask. Every trip is an aural shelling, and now it's on the buses too.
The 253 boasts about two announcements a minute. At each stop, they say its name, the route number and the final terminus. Loudly. But if I'm getting off, what do I care where the bus will be in 20 minutes' time?
Once the bus pulls away, they announce the route number and destination again. Perhaps it's another thing for the blind. But does any blind person just board a random bus, then wait for the announcement to check they're on the right one?
Interspersed with all this: bossy little reminders that fare dodging is a crime, and you should pull up your socks and get an Oyster card. I don't know about you, but being lectured by a robot makes me want to hit someone (although not the robot, obviously - I'd hurt my hand).
The autistic announcements are another sad example of how London Transport, a beacon of aesthetics and consideration for passengers, has become TfL, an anti-human, technocratic, bendy-bus-loving disaster - not unsuccessful, but to many of us somehow hateful.
Reader views (8)
I have been protesting about the encroachment of recorded and electronic noise on London transport for a decade. I now travel on tubes and buses absolutely as little as possible, because I know I will end my journey feeling stressed.
- ohn Davison, London SW1, 24/01/2009 22:00
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I find the announcement of the route number and destination on buses annoying to the point of serious stress. And as Mr Gilligan says, it is completely and utterly pointless.
I wrote to London Buses about this. Their reply treats the announcement system as a whole, saying it's useful for blind people etc etc. They completely fail to address my main criticism which is of this specific aspect - the route and destination announcement.
I'm prepared to accept most of the rest of the babble but we need to stop this stupidity. Could the Standard take this up as a campaign?
- Mark Lester, London, UK, 22/05/2008 13:34
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After twenty four years of living and working in London I'm getting to the stage where I just can't take travelling on the Tube and trains any more, and am seriously considering moving job and home to somewhere I don't have to use public transport... Andrew Gilligan is so right - our once peaceful(ish) commuter journeys are now made a noisy nightmare due to this politically correct nonsense which insults the intelligence of everyone, including the visually impaired. My own daily return journey of twelve miles on South West Trains exposes me to over seventy noisy, repetitive, nannying and intrusive announcements, followed by even more ear-splitting cacophony on the Underground - a typical example being announcements inside Victoria Line trains telling us to let passengers off first...Logic failure?
Complaining about this stupidity to TfL or SWT or course is useless - the same automated responses full of pious claims about "85% of travellers find the announcements useful".... Can we see the survey results in full, when it was taken, what the sample size was, how the questions were phrased? Doubtful...
- Steve, Teddington, Middlesex, 28/03/2008 20:16
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Dave, I am sure you are right that TfL are not doing it 'for fun' - it costs them (us) an enormous amount of money and effort. On the contrary, TfL should be throwing this nonsense back to the EU. I have never seen a disabled person travelling when there has not always been more than enough willing helpers amongst fellow-travellers - that's where the real thoughtfulness is. Everybody feels sympathy for those less fortunate than themselves - it is in our nature to try to help - and we do. What I find unacceptable is that the 99.99999% of us have to endure constant misery for the questionable advantage of the 0.00001% who are quite capable of asking for help if they need it and, anyway, probably find the nanny-state-busybodies even more irksome than we do. Personally, I find the volume of the announcements in our trains painful and entirely without purpose - please don't tell me that it is for the infinitesimal chance that there MIGHT be a completely stone deaf person around who does not already know where they are going and how to get there... and that's if they are too blind to read the scrolling text and too dumb to ask for help.
P.S. Did you see the ridiculous signs in the (now beautifully restored) fountains in Trafalgar Square? - I am sure they are placed deliberately so that nobody can take a decent photo without the garish signs spoiling their picture!
- Raymond,, London, 27/02/2008 16:59
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TfL aren't doing this for fun. There are specific EU directives that are aimed at disabled people that require systems such as these to be put in place.
This is also one of the reasons why tube trains aren't painted in red (or silver) any more - the disability discrimination act says (basically) that doorways must be easily identifiable for people who are visually impaired. Same thing goes for main-line trains and their colour schemes and announcements.
- Dave, Bournemouth, UK, 26/02/2008 20:33
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Gilligan - my hero - how right you are about the inane announcements which prevent us from carrying on a normal conversation or having a quiet snooze! Indeed, it is important to include in this crusade the shrieking of absurdities every time we get into a lift or the bellowing of fatuous nonsense (repeated nauseam)that we are subjected to in South West Trains. None of the passengers are both deaf and stupid. The (no doubt)highly-paid and rather myopic consultants who introduced these forms of torture should be shut in a room and subjected to the recordings for two hours every day - just like we are!
- Raymond, London, 26/02/2008 11:40
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I thought it was just me being driven mad by these inane commentaries. There's too much noise around in the first place.
- Max, London, 25/02/2008 19:10
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Everything used to be done in such a civilised way. The design of the Tube trains and the stations and all the associated graphics was classic. The Routemaster bus was a perfect example of functional beauty. But the entire transport system has been vulgarised. It is all sadly a result of the vulgar people who have been running London for far too many years.
- Ken, Bexleyheath, UK, 25/02/2008 13:53
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