Monday: Where are we going?

Niggly, frustrating day with lots of little problems - nothing too major, just lots of those "oh for (insert word of choice here) sake" moments.

However, that's not the reason for the title - this isn't some reflective musing on the state of the universe. No, Monday's theme was destinations. All our buses (apart from V384 which has a piece of laminated card - albeit a professionary produced piece!) have electronic destinations. That means we programme the destinations we want on a computer in the office, transfer them to the bus using something called a "Portable Memory Unit" that looks more like a dodgy prop from a 1970's sci-fi movie, and then at the touch of a button the driver can display the destinations on the front.

On the basis that it's really easy to do, I'm surprised that more bus companies don't have a little bit of fun with what they show on the front. When you are running on service, the rules are very very clear. Service number (or letter) and destination. If you don't show those things you stand to get fined, because the lovely Traffic Commissioner (if he/she catches you doing it) deems that failing to show the service number (or letter) and destination effectively means you haven't run the service - because if the public can't see which bus it is and where it's going, how do they know it's their bus.

However, when you have a bus parked up in the bus station for ages, or running out of service then I think you can have a bit of fun!

All our buses are programmed so that each driver can display a screen showing "Black Velvet Travel - (insert name here) says 'hi'". Slightly to my surprise, this has been universally accepted by the drivers (and Taz and me of course) as the normal thing to display if you drive a bus between the yard and the bus station, especially if you are leaving the bus in the bus station for lengthy periods. Numerous passengers and bystanders have commented favourably on this.

We have also done special destination screens for Maria's birthday and Nickie's birthday (see below), and for Taz and Jamie in particular (who have most got into the spirit of this exercise) have developed a number of variations to this theme, such as...

Black Velvet Travel - OMG it's Taz! :-)

and...

Black Velvet Travel - Jamie spreads the love

Now some people will look at these and think we are completely barking (or just not understand them) and we really should have far more important things to concentrate on, but my view is that this kind of fairly simply touch makes a big difference in whether we are seen to passengers as an approachable, friendly organisation or an impersonal, anonymous corporation. The main audience is probably the students of Wildern School, who see one of our double deckers just after 1500 every day, and I *hope* this kind of thing is appreciated by at least a few of them.

The moral of the story is, why don't more bus companies do this kind of thing???

By way of an afterthought, writing this paragraph much later in the week, SBL have an open-top Volvo Olympian on hire from Southern Vectis for the special Docks Tours they are running this weekend, and the destination that has been programmed for that is fabulous, matching the 'Do the Docks' logo complete with outline pictures of ships - but nothing too detailed or fussy - so it can be done!