so it turns out buranda has no overly verbose train announcements….
they just start from boggo road non-stop, until roma street 
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Does it make any mention of the Buranda busway station? Even a more concise “customers for the Buranda busway station, prepare to disembark”?
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Yes there is still an extended announcement for Buranda. Possibly not as long as Boggo road etc. I’ll try to capture it next time
Hopefully it is a decent announcement that mentions possible connections with a busway station with no waffle.
Do we have overseas annoucement to compare with should we advocate for change should QR needs to improve their automatic(?) timed annoucements?
Singapore, Hongkong, Japan, New york, London etc to compare against?
I think announcements should be:
(a) 100% automated unless there is actually some need for the guard to interject (eg the announcement is wrong for some reason, to provide extra awareness of planned trackwork, to keep passengers in the loop about disruptions); and
(b) assumed to be intrusive and in need of being kept to an absolute minimum, so only made to deliver necessary or useful information.
On a trip from say Robina to Brisbane Airport (domestic terminal), I would expect to hear only the following after getting onboard.
- The following cycle between each stop
- “Doors closing.” - on doors closing, and only if the relevant doors are actually open.
- “The next station is #” - shortly after departing.
- “Now arriving at # station” - shortly before arriving.
- (optional) - “# station” - when doors are unlocked.
- Other than the “standard” cycle above, I would expect to hear the following.
- At Helensvale, I would expect to hear “Change here for the G:link tram”.
- At Beenleigh, Loganlea and Altandi, I would expect to hear “Change here for the Beenleigh line”.
- At Boggo Road, I would expect to hear “Change here for the Cleveland line and Eastern Busway”.
- At South Bank, I would expect to hear “Change here for the South-East Busway”.
- At Roma Street, I would expect to hear “Change here for the Springfield, Ipswich and Rosewood lines and the Northern Busway”.
- At Central, I would expect to hear “Change here for all railway lines”.
- At Bowen Hills, I would expect to hear “Change here for the Ferny Grove line”.
- At Eagle Junction, I would expect to hear “Change here for the Doomben, Shorncliffe, Redcliffe Peninsula, Caboolture and Sunshine Coast lines”.
- At International Airport, I would expect to hear “Please stay on the train for the domestic terminal”.
- At Domestic Airport, I would expect to hear “This service terminates here. Please leave the train.”
Anything else - redact, curb, cut, scrap, bin.
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I’m fine with the way QR does their ‘raw announcements’ without any extra info, like announcing the current train and it’s stopping pattern, next station, and change train. Brisbane has these announcements for a while and definitely feel engrained into Brisbane itself.
But QR’s more recent attempts at providing us with more information about busway connections and all those PSAs are definitely waffle. The busway connections announcement could revert back to the previous announcements. For the PSAs, they could definitely reword the announcements:
e.g
Current [sic]:
“Customers, please be reminded to keep personal possessions on your lap or underneath your seat. Please consider fellow customers, and do not place your items in the aisle or on the seat next to you as this reduces seating capacity for other passengers. For more train etiquette tips visit the Queensland Rail website.”
Improved:
“Customers, please keep your personal possessions on your lap or underneath your seat and refrain from placing them in the aisle or on your adjacent seat. This allows for more space for other customers.”
Current [sic]: “Please travel with care. If your travelling with a bike, luggage or other large items, please use the lifts. Avoid rushing at station, and always use the handrails on stairs and escalators”.
Improved:
“Customers, if you’re travelling with large items such as a bike or luggage, please use the lifts.”
“Customers, please use the handrails when using stairs and escalators.”
They could also definitely play these annoucements at better places too, like between Bowen Hills and Albion instead or between Wooloowin and Eagle Junction.
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I don’t want to have the announcements deviate too much from our current announcements since most of the Brisbane commuters are used to the announcement format. Surely there could be a tone of waffle cut, but it definitely shouln’t differ too much to the point of become unfamiliar.
For example, the train announcements for Boggo Road could be more like: “Now arriving at Boggo Road station. This is a Brisbane City & Shorncliffe train. Customers for the Beenleigh or Gold Coast trains, or the Boggo Road busway station, please change here”.
When approaching major stations and interchanges, the announcements should draw more attention from passengers so a large proportion know to prepare to disembark. Otherwise, the passengers may miss their stop from dozing off in the train and complain to QR that they haven’t been reminded.
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Wasn’t that what it was before this change I believe?
Too basic and honestly quite arrogant.
Passengers should know about bus connections and nearby places of interest so that then don’t get lost.
“We are arriving at Robina… Change here for bus services to the Robina Town Centre, Bond University, Mudgeeraba and Tallai… Alight here for Robina Hospital and Robina Stadium… The doors will open on the right hand side…”
It might be long but at least it has the most important details, all in one go.
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Couldn’t agree with this less I’m afraid.
As somebody who works with language for a living, the best drafting advice I have ever been given was “omit unnecessary words”.
There is nothing inherently special about Queenslanders that we need so much word salad. Announcements should be treated as inherently “rude” and so should be kept to an absolute minimum. If there is no need for a word to be recited, it shouldn’t be.
In your specific example, you can see how the length is nearly double what my version would be. I don’t think it is particularly important to keep repeating the final destination of the train (certainly not after every stop), and the second sentence is twice as concise in my version.
““Now arriving at Boggo Road station. This is a Brisbane City & Shorncliffe train. Customers for the Beenleigh or Gold Coast trains, or the Boggo Road busway station, please change here”.”
“Now arriving at Boggo Road station. Change here for the Beenleigh and Gold Coast lines and the Eastern Busway.”
If a stopping pattern has to be announced, QR’s method is the worst going. A more sensible one would be something like this
-
Inbound Cleveland train from Thorneside (express pattern) - ”This train goes to Brisbane City and Shorncliffe, stopping at Lota, Wynnum Central, Manly, Morningside, then all stations.”
-
Outbound Gold Coast train from Roma Street - “This train goes to Varsity Lakes, stopping at South Brisbane, South Bank, Boggo Road, Altandi, Loganlea, Beenleigh, then all stations”.
If we want people to feel welcomed on public transport, being rude is pretty much the worst thing you could do.
Think like a passenger, not a linguist, or worse… A journo.
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Yeah basically. An announcement that Brisbane commuters have been familiar with for years. It would be fine if they reverted back to the previous announcements.
I think if you asked majority of SEQ residents they could recite their local line’s announcements for the amount of time we’ve had them. Don’t change them for the sake of change
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You also cut out an important detail from the shortened announcements: the info of where the train is headed. For example, if someone on the Beenleigh line wants to travel to somewhere one the Ferny Grove line, they would love to confirm that the train they’re catching goes to Ferny Grove. If it’s announced that the train they’re in goes to the Airport or Doomben, they would be more prepared to change for the Ferny Grove line.
Edit:
I realised you mentioned it here:
But it would be handy if they mentioned where the train is headed when approaching a major interchange so passengers can confirm whether they want to change trains to head to their destination.
Also our I prefer the current announcements for the express stopping pattern as it feels more fluent and human-like compared to listing down station.
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This is especially true given the amount of track closures QR loves.
I think Cleveland trains are filling in for the Gold Coast → Airport ones a fair bit this summer instead of Shorncliffe and it’s a great addition to know where your train is headed for things like that
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Also one a less serious note, I feel like QR’s stopping pattern announcement is nothing like the absolute blabber that Melbourne’s station announcements make.
I know this announcement is the worst-case scenario, but that’s how bad Melbourne’s station announcements can be.
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With respect to everyone, I think what we need is a happy medium between SurfRail’s very condensed but possibly a little blunt announcements, and Sherooda’s improved but still fairly wordy variation to the current messages.
The announcement regarding placing personal possessions under your seat badly needs to be condensed - it is probably the only one where the wordiness annoys me.
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You’ve misinterpreted me - not sure why, I’ve set it out very clearly. Here it is again, reworded.
QR needs to operate on the assumption that it is a rude act to subject passengers to any announcement - meaning they should be used sparingly and where necessary, not just to fill dead air.
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I have only heard the new versions via this little video: Roma St ‘now arriving’
It puzzles me why long distance trains are mentioned, given the tiny number of services and users (I know it’s been in the announcement for as long as I remember). And it’s odd to hear reference to ‘suburban lines’ when this isn’t language that is used elsewhere. Also I think the detail about Northern busway etc is excessive.
But for now I think I will regard this as progress, which is good.
In general I agree with @nathandavid88 that we need a happy medium between (what I understand to be) the current over-the-top wordy announcements and @SurfRail ‘s very concise proposal.
While I am on the side of making the announcements more concise, I believe that it is necessary to have the train’s destination in the announcements - it’s common sense, in line with other suburban rail networks that I’ve encountered, and even I as a seasoned PT user, get reassured by hearing the destination when I am travelling on a new or different route.
I 100% support Surfail’s guiding principles that on board announcements should be (a) automated, except for planned/unplanned changes, and (b) considered an intrusion into the customer experience (i.e. ‘rude’) so to encourage QR to keep them as short and sweet as possible.
I find the current announcements offensively intrusive – The tone, the volume and the verbosity (wordiness). I understand that new, infrequent, and unconfident users probably want an announcement that specifically describes their particular journey, but that isn’t achievable.
The fact the announcements have been around for a while and people are familiar with them shouldn’t be reason to keep them as-is. If they can be improved, they should. (the voice was changed some 10? years back).
In terms of progress, I would like to see automated announcements that are shorter and delivered in a less-shouty, more conversational tone – the G:link tram strikes me as a good example – does anybody else have an example of an ‘ideal announcement’ from some part of the world?
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