Friday 16 October 2015

Partnership Publicity Published! (Well, Partly)

Better News for November 1st
The North and South maps have appeared on-line. fbb assumed that hard copies will be available somewhere, but as the enquiry offices are all closed down it is not going to be easy to get them. The only "official" option is the Customer Service "desk at Sheffield Interchange. Perhaps some of fbb's Sheffield readers will confirm (re refute) their availabilty in any useful form.
Although labelled "Sheffield Bus Partnership" these are simply updated version of the PTE (Travel South Yorkshire) product but with the benefit of a few errors.

Geographically the village of Dore is a nonsense ...
... and route numbers at Woodhouse are quite wrong!
It is the 52A, at last renumbered renumbered from 52, that terminates at Woodhosue Station (First Bus) and does not trundle straight along Retford Road to get there. Stagecoach's 52 is correct.

The SL (Supertram Link) is shown as dotted to Unsliven Bridge ...
... when (almost) all journeys go there.

Old Mother Redcap is actually ON Prospect Road and not down a side turning.
These (and many others) are indicative of a map drawn by someone who doesn't know where the buses go. You would have thought that the Partnership could have afforded to employ someone who knows enought to get it right?

Also received by fbb, courtesy of "the management", are copies of the general information leaflets being delivered door-to-door.
These highlight the new multi-operator tickets which are now only a smidgen more expensive than the individual companies' versions.
We’re also introducing a simple, great value CityBus ticket which
can be used on any bus in Sheffield regardless of which bus
company runs the service*. This means more buses to choose
from and more affordable travel for you.

They also have no time restriction but (daftly) are not valid on the trams. You have to pay more for that.

Why?

Then each "area" flyer explains, in textual form, the changes for that area, route by route. One might quibble with some of the groupings of services but at least Joe Public can know that something is happening. These are set out across a landscape format of pages and thus hard to reproduce for this blog. They look much neater in print.

There is a table of frequencies for Monday to Friday, Saturday and Sunday but fbb has just included the Monday to Friday offering.

1/1a
First / Stagecoach
(1) High Green - Chapeltown - Ecclesfield Common - Firth Park - Northern General Hospital - Burngreave - Sheffield - Newfield Green - Hemsworth - Jordanthorpe/Batemoor
(1a) High Green - Ecclesfield village - Firth Park - Northern General Hospital - Burngreave - Sheffield - Newfield Green- Hemsworth - Herdings
Combines every 7/8 minutes
Replaces 79 (1) and 48 (1a).

20
First
Hemsworth - Norton Lees - Heeley - Lowfields - Sheffield - Burngreave - Northern General - Southey Green - Parson Cross - Ecclesfield.  every 15 minutes 
All journeys will run as service 20 via Warminster Rd. Service extends cross City to Ecclesfield via NGH.

51
First
Lodge Moor - Crosspool - Broomhill - Sheffield University - Sheffield - Arbourthorne - Gleadless - Charnock No change to frequency.
Service will now operate direct on East Bank Rd to improve punctuality. Eastern Avenue is replaced by 40/41.

Don't we need a 40/41 in this list? It isn't there despite being closely related to the 51.

56
First
Herdings - Newfield Green - Heeley Green - Sheffield - Park Hill - Wybourn. every 12 minutes
Replaces 47 between City and Herdings and will now extend cross City to Wybourn.
Adopting the idiot mode, fbb wonders what "NGH" is?

And where is the map? A serious failure here because the visual impact of a "before and after" map, however crude, is far more effective that banners of text. But, overall, the service information on the leaflet is much better than the nothing which seemed likely at the start of this process.

At least the route descriptions are simple and avoid the appalling misinformation of those in the TSY on-line timetables; an example here for the new 56; that's the old 56 joined to the old 47 and numbered 56 because that's the shortest "half"!!!

Herdings, Raeburn Road : Gleadless Valley : Leighton Road : Newfield Green : Gleadless Road : Heeley : Richards Road : Spencer Road : Prospect Road : Lowfield : Myrtle Road : Highfield : Shoreham Street : Sheffield : Eyre Street : Furnival Street : Paternoster Row : Pond Street : Flat Street : Waingate : Exchange Street : Park Hill : Duke Street : Wybourn : Manor Oaks Road : Manor Oaks Place : Boundary Road : Southend Road

Without going into detail, every red name (so coloured by fbb) in the TSY route list (aka list of "stopping points" which misses out about half of the stops) is misleading or just plain wrong.

And Finally!

The "changes" leaflet has a completely incomprehensible map of the city centre stops.
Routes through the city have been a mystery since the one-way systems provoked by making High Street one way. Blame the trams! But the map above does not show what service stops at which stop. In another panel you have a full list of ALL Sheffield services

in very small print

to guide you to the stop you might, desperately, be seeking.

Awful!

We are promised timetables from 25th October.

fbb can't wait.
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Maybe Not Such Good News
Blog reader Alex lives on Dobcroft Road; served by current route 83 and soon to be route 82. For most of the day, however, buses from Millhouses will show 81, a potentially confusing nicety that is ignored on the map!
Alex reports on the "posters at bus stops" as promised.

Anyway, on a rare act of good(ish) idea the Sheffield Bus Partnership have decided to put signs up advising the changes on all bus stops (at least round where I live). I have attached a sample sign for you from one of the signs near where I live on Dobcroft road. (Click on the picture to get a readable size)
There are some problems with them:

They are made of paper and it has just decided to start raining here in Sheffield, i'd suspect that many would be soaked at this rate and possibly unreadable in a day or to.

The services listed are also troubling and in a few cases incorrect: 

Service 10/10a doesn't stop within 1.5 miles of this stop.

Service 120 is also utterly irrelevant - fbb.

There are changes to buses 65 and 215, it is just that these are happening on the 25th of October instead of the 1st of November, but I still feel the line "There are no changes" should not have been used to refer to these services.

Other routes which stop far closer have been missed:

Route 88 stops less than 700m away, but doesn't get a mention.

97/98/218 stop less about 0.6 of a miles away, but don't get a mention.

And we know why it's mess, don't we? The poster is derived arbitrarily from the Sheffield West information leaflet and, thus derived, lists most the services on that sheet. Missing services 97/98, for example, although the obvious frequent route for the bottom of Dobcroft Road are on the Sheffield South leaflet.

Why route 88 is omitted from the "poster" is more problematic. That would be the ideal main route for the top of Dobcroft Road.

But surely you go to a bus stop for a bus, not to explore a network change. The Dobcroft Road "poster" should say:-
Never mind; according to Alex, the partnership poster will have rotted away in a few days.
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 Next blog : Saturday 17th October 

3 comments:

  1. What a complete farce. This is from an organisation that for 12 months has put out a 'self-serve' or nothing message. Basically, if it isn't online you "aint gettin nowt". Now? Paper publicity that will be haphazardly distributed and doesn't address the key issues facing the none online punters. Get id of the PTE now or restaff it with people who might actually care about the message they put out. This is a crazy situation that we are powerless to do anything about.

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  2. Just got a PAPER copy of both North and south maps from sheffield transport interchange. Each map says the other version be obtained from sy interchanges in sheffield.

    I asked if paper timetables would be available and was told some would but it was the responsibility of the bus operators - I bit my tongue !

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  3. Dirty old men who use the internet for hours on end every day sit around complaining that they can't get information in paper form.

    ReplyDelete