4 Wheel Drive/SUVs: Bus ticketing machine.

Question
Dear Carl

The Bus ticketing machine is used for issuing Bus tickets to passengers.

Do you feel that it can be useful to enhanced to have push buttons Triggered by Bus conductor to raise a Bell ring which will inform the driver to stop or start the Bus?.

Thanks
Prashant

Answer
Prashant,

Until the 1970s and early 1980s, conductors, or clippies, were a common feature of many local bus services in larger towns and cities in the UK and Ireland. Conductors were portrayed in the British TV series On The Buses.

The main reason two-person crews were needed was that most towns and cities used double-decker buses for urban services. Until the 1960s, all double deck vehicles were built with front-mounted engines and a "half-cab" design, like the familiar Routemaster London bus. This layout totally separated the driver from the passenger saloons. The conductor communicated with the driver using a series of bell codes, such as two bells to start (the well-known "ding-ding").

Many half-cab double-deckers were boarded from an open platform at the rear, while others were equipped with a forward entrance and staircase and driver-operated doors. Each case required a conductor to collect fares and, especially on the rear-entrance design, supervise passenger loading and unloading. Some bus services in the late 1960s and early 1970s experimented with later-model forward entrance half-cab double-deckers—removing the conductor and having the driver sell tickets, as on the rear entrance buses that were common by that time. The hope was to have the benefits of one-person operation without the cost of replacing vehicles that still remaining service life. This idea was soon scrapped, and the buses reverted to conventional conductor operation.

It seems that if there is a large distance between normal bus stops, and it is a large bus with many passengers, then it would be a great help to the bus driver to have this convenience.  This would let the driver know when any intermediary stops are needed, without being bothered by the passengers.


Carl