A great announcement by Auckland Transport today, that we’re going to join the realms of having a “proper” rail system by having automatic station announcements on board the train:
A new audio information system Auckland Transport is introducing on trains next week is expected to make a big difference for blind and vision impaired people.
The automated announcements are part of on-going improvements to the quality of public transport information. They are also part of Auckland Transport’s efforts to make public transport accessible to a wider range of people.
They will let people know what station they are arriving at, what service they are on, including special event trains, and where to change for other services. They will add to the visual electronic information signs, which are also being improved.
A big deal is made out of the benefits for blind people, and while that is certainly great, I don’t think that blind people are by any stretch the only beneficiaries of this move. I think it will be useful for tourists, people travelling at night and also for new users of the system. I’m also glad to hear that the announcements will let people know where they can change for other services. Hopefully this doesn’t just mean at Newmarket between the southern and western lines, but also at Mt Eden station people will be told they can transfer to Mt Eden Road and Dominion Road b.line services, or at New Lynn it might say they can transfer to buses for Green Bay, Titirangi and so forth.
This is picked up by Auckland Transport:
Auckland Transport Public Transport Operations Manager Mark Lambert says announcing the next station is a simple thing that will improve the quality of public transport information for passengers.
“Better information is one of the things that makes public transport more attractive and easier to use.
“The announcements will be of benefit to people who are blind or vision impaired, but will also make it easier for everyone using trains, such as people who aren’t regular users and those who are busy reading.
In the various overseas cities that I’ve visited you become quite fond of the train announcements. I really love the “stand clear of the closing doors please” on the New York Subway…
…Or “mind the gap”, which has become a cultural icon on the London tube:
Let’s hope that our voice announcements become a cultural icon too, and not just an annoyance.
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I miss the Melbourne and Sydney “Doors closing, please stand clear”. A rather shaky video, featuring a new electric unit, shiny doors, and station announcements. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsVDwdpGC84
Auckland is slowly getting there, but I don’t think NZ’s politicians, at least the older ones, understand how far it is behind. Slowly, slowly.
I’m quite used to audio announcements in trains: in Rome on the Metro you get something along the lines of ‘Prossima fermata Termini: scendere per l’altra destra’, or something like that, and in the UK, audio announcements, as you imply, are pretty standard. The thing that bothers me is that in Auckland, rather than relying on standard verbal announcements, they’re apparently going to be prefaced with a jingle. I suspect that this will be more than annoying. When will AT’s customer service people realise that its passengers want basic, timely and accurate information, not an enhanced travel experience that, more often than not here, is usually quite misleading.
“prefaced with a jingle”. Oh dear. Why can’t we just do what WORKS?
It isn’t like trains are some magical new technology. Everything, literally everything that is done on the Auckland system is based on ideas and technologies that have been around for many years. There’s no reason to stuff it up, apart from bald incompetence.
My biggest concern is that they will set the volume way to loud, already the door closing sound can be quite piercing.
Based on the door alarms I would say that the train operator has difficulty setting the volume to an audible but not painful volume.
I can’t wait to hear. “The next station is Karangahape Road.”
Something like this would be good on board:
“This is a western line train to Swanson, first stop Newmarket, then Grafton, Mt Eden, Kingsland, Morningside and all stations to Swanson.”
Could have useful announcements like “the next station is Kingsland, please exit here for Eden Park and to transfer to Sandringham Road and New North Road bus services.”
Excellent to read. Just on my tram home from the centre of Basel yesterday I was thinking about why there were no announcements on Auckland trains, or buses.
In the Nagoya Subway they give the next station, where the station is bound for and anything of interest to tourists, like museums. They also give the announcements in Japanese, English, Korean and Portuguese.
Rather than the trains themselves having jingles, the stations in Auckland should have their own unique jingle, like the Yamanote line in Tokyo whenever the train doors are about to close. They could make one based on the Goodnight Kiwi song or something.
Oops I mean “where the TRAIN is bound”
Well jingles or short tones are used extensively on pretty much all trains in Switzerland and I never found them annoying
e.g. on trains (right at start)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrCWDTxNuk4
or on trams (49 secs in)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0UuF3WhV28&feature=related
If they do something along the lines of this then it’s perfectly fine IMO
Fantastic and it’s about time, but next-station and location-based “regular” announcements should not have a jingle.
The jingle should be reserved for non-standard events like delays, cancellations, diversions, emergencies, as a way to get everyone’s extra attention.
This is good news. So in the next couple of years we will be getting audio announcemnets, real time information, full network station upgrades, new electric trains and integrated ticketing. Auckland’s rail system will finally begin to resemble something like a modern commuter network. Great to see.
Please no endless. “Do not leave your personal belongings on the train,” messages.
I prefer quiet trains so that I can get on and read a book. Tourists can just work out where they are and where they’re going by looking at the onboard train map and the platform signs. Assuming the platform signs are big and plentiful… London does them well but Sydney is abysmal with a couple of tiny signs at some stations.
That doesn’t address the issue of blind people tho. I was traveling by train in the UK years ago when a blind teenage girl asked me for assistance. She was on her way to her blind person boarding school and needed to change at the same station (Newport) in Wales that happened to be my destination. I helped her off the train, got her to the departure platform, and found some station staff who would help her on to her transfer when it arrived. In the middle of that she asked me whether Newport was a big place or not. She’d been changing there for years and without a visual reference didn’t know if it was a village or a city.
@Lee: the song used for the iconic Goodnight Kiwi shutdown was the Māori lullaby “Hine e Hine.”
@obi: Perhaps LED text displays could be used instead. South East Queensland’s IMU (Interurban Multiple Unit) trains, for travel between Brisbane and the Gold and Sunshine Coasts, have such apparatus, showing scrolling information such as the approaching station.
The announcements should also be in both of our official national languages… ie: Māori and English.
I’m nostalgic of the subway in Barcelona (great service by the way) with the announcements in catalan and spanish “propera parada: Urquell” and “proxima estacion: Badalona”.\
The only problem with the subway there is so good that after 2 weeks I realized that I could have walked more and admired the city instead of always taking the subway.
I’ll never forget the big Jamacan rasta who stuck his head out of the train to answer the tannoy on the Central Line during the Carnival with ‘MIND DE GARP MON!’ while waving the biggest ‘Cambelwell Carrot’ I’ve ever seen. Brilliant parody of the 1940s toned recorded message, Bethnal Green I think….
Matt L, the door closing sound is nothing compared to the station sound in Japan (and not just Tokyo) for trains about to arrive and depart. Infact the cacophony (no that`s not overstating it!) of station noises and announcements in Japan has I`m sure lead to partial deafness of those commuting by train every day over a long period. There was even a big discussion on NHK`s (their version of TVNZ) Close Up (Yes it`s called that in Japan too!) about the noise level at stations there being excessive. Haven`t been in the couple of years since so don`t know if there`s been any improvement!
I will say that it`s good the announcements are automatic as on the older EMUs that ran in the slightly more rural area south of Tokyo where I was living had onboard announcements made by the driver but quality of the soundsystem and noise of the train often made it hard to hear the next station`s name. I hope they do have the message not to forget belongings as that will take me back to the announcements in Japan “Owasuremono wo nai you ni shite kudasai” and of course when near arrival at the final stop on a line “Mamonaku shuten …(station name) desu, …desu.