Arriva North West - Runcorn Depot

[Quackdave]

RE: Arriva North West - Runcorn Depot

(27/07/2018 19:01)Raawwwrrr! Wrote:  Can anyone reliably tell me why Runcorn depot opted to use London Style fonts on their roller destination blinds following re branding from North Western in the early to late 00's?

A complete guess rather than the definitive answer you were hoping for, but wasn't that around the time they received the Wright Pathfinder bodied Scanias from London? If any of those arrived with blinds still in place, they might have inspired management to adopt a similar style locally...

On the subject of Runcorn destinations, I don't know whether this is still the case, but a few months ago I noticed a gas bus displaying "In Service" on the side destination. This intrigued me, as destinations are usually a little more specific than that... at which point the display changed to "Sorry Not".

I don't know who thought it was a good idea for a display to alternate between the meaningless phrase "Sorry Not" and the outright mendacious "In Service", but it looked to me as though "Not In Service" would have fitted the display just fine, and the problem stems from a misplaced desire to include the word "Sorry". In recent decades this seems to have caught on across much of the industry, and yet it's always struck me as somewhat inappropriate. The vast majority of the time when a bus is not in service, it isn't meant to be; and there is no reason to be apologising for the fact - especially when doing so sacrifices clarity.

On a similar note (and linking nicely back to your point about the conciseness of the aeroplane symbol), whichever depot it is that alternates between "Liverpool John" and "Lennon Airport" should reconsider whether spelling it out in full is really worth spreading it out across two alternating phases, when an abbreviated version (even simply "Airport" would do) would convey the necessary information so much more effectively in one go.