Have you got a timetable leaflet for Kimberley?
13 February 2022
ABOVE: First West of England 37590 and 37355, Volvo B9TL / Wright Eclipse Geminis, in central Bristol on Saturday 11th April 2009. Yes, it’s a long time since I photographed buses in Bristol and this is the best I have to illustrate this story!
I was wandering through the centre of Manchester last summer, wondering which way for the Witch Way to Burnley. I was passing a bar, outside which an employee was changing some of the publicity posters. A young woman approached her and asked: “have you got a leaflet”?
I noticed this because she sounded exactly like one of the late, great Victoria Wood’s characters – the one who was “looking for her friend Kimberley”. Sounded quite spookily like her, actually. I also remember this because the employee very quickly sourced a leaflet for Kimberley’s friend.
If you try and do the same on a bus, there’s a good chance that you’ll be disappointed. First West of England is the latest operator to ditch printed versions of its timetable leaflets. The proud tweet declares that it will no longer print timetables, “to reduce waste”, and reassures people that timetables are on the website:
It’s that word “waste” that really grates. It is true that some leaflets will be picked up by people who never look at them, and some might have to be pulped, but why do bus companies, and local authorities, perceive the provision of printed information about bus services as “waste”?
Sadly, there seems to be an increasing trend towards saving money on printed timetables, whether leaflets or roadside information. Many people do not have access to the internet; especially those with less disposable income; arguably the people who are most likely to use buses.
A timetable leaflet serves many purposes. It’s a handy piece of paper that you can readily carry in your pocket and access in a split second (how long does it take to ‘open’ a phone and find a timetable, even if you have it as a bookmark)? It’s an aide-memoire, a physical advert and a marketing tool.
When I’m travelling, I always peruse the tourist leaflet racks to find out what’s out there. Some years ago, a leaflet led me to a delightful transport museum in Bradford called "Transperience". Sadly, the museum didn’t last long, but I had a lovely day at an attraction that I would never have discovered if not for that leaflet in the rack.
And how do you attract new customers? In Burnley last year, I picked up a leaflet for the Transdev "Hotline" service 152 to Preston. I didn’t have time to try the service out that day, but I would certainly like to do so when I am next in that region. And I’d also like to try the "Little Hotline" 153 to Leyland, which is covered in the same leaflet. Thanks to that leaflet, Transdev’s coffers will swell by the price of a £10 Day Ticket, hopefully sometime later this year (I vow now to write about it afterwards)!
And leaflets, when used correctly, can also provide an enticement to use a product. A nice little money-off coupon might tempt someone where they would not otherwise go. Fifty pence off your next trip with us? Why not the whole hog and offer a pound?! (OK, a leaflet like that should go through local letterboxes, else the racks would be stripped immediately, but you get the idea!)
I always maintain that the lack of publicity is why the Ealing Slide Demand Responsive service in West London failed. I live in the middle of what was the designated zone, but I never had a leaflet through my letterbox, never saw a poster about it in a bus stop or on a community noticeboard, and never saw a full page advert in the local newspaper. Transport for London did send me one email, and that was it. I saw the buses parked up around the borough, doing nothing, on quite a few occasions. If a casual traveller, without access to the internet, saw one, how would they find out what it was about?
Products and services have to be ‘in your face’ to get people to notice them and talk about them. Have you heard of Sainsbury’s? Did you know that you can sell your car using Cazoo? Are you aware that the next Batman film is out soon? Thought so. Do you know who runs your local bus services? Hmm.
There will still be roadside timetables, apparently. I don’t know what the quality of these is in the West of England, but I hope it is better than three examples I have found recently in other parts of the country.
I was in Colchester in November, to catch the 93 bus to Ipswich, for a trip to the theatre. The first pick up point in Colchester is in Osborne Street, and the below was the timetable display that greeted me there.
ABOVE: Timetable display in Osborne Street, Colchester, Saturday 13th November 2021
I presume that this display is the responsibility of someone other than the operator, but it is appalling. This is one of the main town centre stops, so must see a reasonable throughput of people on a typical weekday. How does this entice a curious potential customer to give the bus a go?
The timetable for the 93 is one of the more legible ones in the stop, but it’s an old timetable. On the day I was travelling, the scheduled departure time was 1115, not 1102 as shown here.
On a two-hourly frequency, it’s important to ensure that the correct times are shown. As to whatever other routes serve the stop, who knows when they run!
And I found the below in Thirsk, in North Yorkshire. Again I think it’s fair to say that some attention to detail may be lacking, and / or maintenance overdue. (A blurred picture taken from a bus, but hopefully you get the drift.)
ABOVE: Bus stop display in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, on Saturday 14th August 2021
Still better than West Yorkshire, which used to be one of the better areas for roadside publicity. But I was startled by how many stops now just show posters asking people to visit a website, like the one below (poor picture as it was taken from a moving bus).
ABOVE: ‘High Street, The Grove’ in Normanton, taken from a 147A bus on Sunday 9th January 2022
Admittedly there is a phone number as well, but phone lines are generally only open for certain hours. What do people without internet access do outside those hours?
(To add insult to injury, this stop is one of those “Both Sides Of Road” flags that means there is no marking on the other side of the road to show that there is a bus stop, never mind a timetable case.)
I know that COVID has had a massive impact on services, and that timetables have been badly affected. But at the very least I would hope to see a list of routes that the stop serves, with an apology if a full timetable can’t currently be offered (although, like many others, I am fed up with COVID being used as an excuse for customer service failures everywhere)!
Timetables on the First West of England website have been produced as PDFs, for those that want to print them at home, and it has to be said that First has done a good job here.
It’s surprising how many PDF timetables on the web are just copies of printed leaflets (ironic, given what we are talking about today). They are often published with some pages sideways or even upside down, with no regard for web conventions.
Still, I suppose it’s better than the timetables offered by Arriva.
There are still some good advocates for printed publicity out there – Southern Vectis, for example (though I haven’t been to the Isle of Wight since 2019 to check), and Transdev, as noted above.
Let’s hope that, when Kimberley’s friend is looking for the way home after her night out, she finds the bus timetable in her handbag (for the night bus!) before she finds the taxi card.