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Re:Why's that company so big? I could do that in a weekend by creshal on Monday October 03, 2016 @08:25AM (#12626855)
> Or... microphone and speakers for the driver to announce the stop.

Breaks down quickly if you need bi- or tri-lingual announcements, which is the norm in many popular tourist destinations.

Re:Why's that company so big? I could do that in a weekend by ljf on Monday October 03, 2016 @10:54AM (#12627806)
Really? Either it's a location 'Piccadilly Circus' or its a place type 'Airport' - any of those can easily be learnt by the driver. Or writen on a printed sheet that they can easily see. Don't jump to making it more complex than it needs to be.
Re:Why's that company so big? I could do that in a weekend by creshal on Monday October 03, 2016 @11:12AM (#12627965)
I see you have never tried it in practice. Train conductors in Austria/Czechia/Germany – which tend to be more trained and less busy than bus drivers – tend to stumble around for half a minute for each unintelligibly badly pronounced sentence. Even the pre-recorded messages in buses are of so bad quality that tourists prefer asking other passengers rather than trying to figure them out.
Re:Why's that company so big? I could do that in a weekend by clarkmoody on Monday October 03, 2016 @10:54AM (#12627797)
Laminated card in the cab with phonetic spellings for the other languages.

Aside: I'm impressed with the amount of bike-shedding for this one. Though I'm part of the problem, too :-)

Re:Why's that company so big? I could do that in a weekend by ljf on Tuesday October 04, 2016 @07:40AM (#12634795)
Ha, indeed. Just thought of another - even lower tech - a printed list of all stops, visible to passengers on the bus, then clear signage for each stop. If the bus stops every stop by default, then this is simpler, if not then the passenger needs to be able to see this on the approach, with another time to signal that they want to get off. Can this get even lower tech?