Last week we linked to an article describing the firing of the woman who does the voice of the London Underground. On Thursday, the National Post had an article on the two (not fired) women who do the voices for the TTC. Read the rest, and see a photo, here:
[Cheryl] Bome, a hard-working single mother from the west end, is one of the unlikely voices of the TTC‘s new $6.6-million automated stop announcement system. She can be heard on buses and streetcars across the city, letting riders know when to get off in a perfectly calm and measured tone — at least, by the time she was finished recording.
“Fortunately, we have the opportunity to record them perhaps two or three times if I get tongue-tied,†Ms. Bome said.
Exactly 11,202 bus stops and 1,347 streetcar stops have been geo-coded on the TTC’s GPS system so far; the remaining are to be completed by February. Many of the stops have the same names — there’s a Finch East stop on all the north and south routes that cross the road, for instance — so Ms. Bome had only about 5,500 voice files to record. She has already done 4,669, which are in use on buses throughout the city.
The task was big, but, in keeping with the transit system’s perpetual money crisis, the recording process wasn’t a costly operation. Both Ms. Bome, a TTC administrative assistant, and Sue Bigioni, a TTC communications assistant who taped the stop announcements for the 70-station subway system, are regular TTC staffers plucked from the crowd after a little market testing.
There were lots of comments when we first posted about the new TTC voices. Most were positive, with a few hardcore dissenters.
Photo by Dubes.
9 comments
sneaky photo
The drivers I have spoken to do not know when the current batch of errors will be corrected.
For example, the Ossington bus 63 northbound stops at Burlington Cres north of Davenport.
The voice does not call Burlington, but rather Salem Avenue – it is just wrong, and the driver has to correct it.
Apparently there are a number of errors on various routes … will passengers be stuck with them for months or years?
(Also what is with the world’s ugliest font on the LED signs?)
Actually, the displays use arguably the least awful technique for handling descenders, for which they don’t have room in the first place: Small caps.
What would be nice to see is a second pixelboard display in the back half of articulated streetcars. Why was this not thought of I wonder? VIVA in York region doesn’t have them back there on their articulated busses either and you have to strain or move to see the sign.
Overall I do like this new system but I must admit I miss a few things from what is becoming a bygone era. There are two streetcar drivers in particular that I’ll miss hearing. One is the fellow who sings the stop names and the other is the man who has a joke, phrase, or riddle associated with every stop on his route. The creativity of both of these gentlemen will be missed as we move to a new universal-design that removes all sense of originality and individualism. Of course, the advantage to this UD system is that everyone can know when to get off the transit system. I agree drivers were not very good, for the most part, about calling out stations and stops. It is sad that the creative ones will be silenced and replaced by the automated UD GPS triggered ones though. All that being said it was time for Toronto to get on board with the automated station calling and signs. It is good that it is happening.
I suspect that the reason you only see one pixelboard is to avoid the need to run a wiring harness from the control equipment at the front of the car back through the articulation into the rear half.
This would be easy to do as part of an original build, but much more complex for an existing car.
Definitely, this is something that should be a basic requirement for new cars (and buses when we get that far) along with a display that, as Joe Clark points out, presents the text in a clear format.
Finally, I don’t know whether there is a formal process for operators to report problems with announcements, but I was present one day on a car where an operator explained to Chief General Manager Gary Webster about problems with info missing in some announcements (eg calling the street name but not a major destination at that stop). At Webster’s level, there is a recognition that the system needs fine tuning, but the info has to come in from the field.
Steve
I don’t see why drivers can’t call out their fun little trivia tidbits after the automated announcement. There’s usually plenty of time.
Some of the errors people notice, like the one LisaRR mentioned can just be a result of the system not being complete. The Ossington bus doesn’t have any stop announcements recorded for it yet, however at some points where there is overlap, it broadcasts stops for other routes. The Davenport bus has the stop at Salem Ave that it picks up. Once the Ossington stop are coded into the system, it should call out Burlington. Then again maybe they will screw this up and it will call out both horribly confusing everyone for years to come!
In case the TTC is reading: I’ve noticed that on St. Clair West, the bus no longer calls out Vaughan Road. This may be an acknowledgement that the Vaughan stop was moved to about half way between Vaughan and Bathurst but there’s still an actual Bathurst stop on the east side of Bathurst and I’ve seen more than a few people confused because they thought they had missed Vaughan all together.
Well, I’m making an obvious proposition (now in a couple of places): Somebody gin up a screen-reader-compatible wiki where we can enter TTC route announcement mispronunciations/misspellings.
K-Hug? Gabe? This sounds like a 10-minute project for youse.