The award for “Inability to Communicate” today goes to Centro/Network West Midlands for their apparent lack of communication in the changes to the Birmingham Bus Network.
Now, this shouldn’t come as a shock to most of us who have lived in Birmingham for many years, but this change-around is going hit in a big way with the reorganisation of a lot of the bus routes in and out of the city.
The problem is that they wish to run the Midland Metro (a tram line) from Snow Hill, to Upper Bull Street and then all the way to New Street Station when the current upgrade work to the station is complete. As a result, a lot of Birmingham City Centre is having to change to meet this requirement.
Now for a change that will hit a lot of people. Considering Birmingham has around 1 million residents – and a greater number who travel through the West Midlands conurbation (around 2.2 million people) who commute in and out of the city, this needs communicating.
Except Centro/Network West Midlands have done a poor job of it.
The first some people have known about it is when a lonely inspector was giving away maps of the changes – which elicited some shock from the person standing next to me at the bus stop on Sunday evening.
There have been little warning notices on buses, but these have been few and far between, with the first big hit 6 days before the routes change with the maps finally published in Metro (a free paper)
And then there is the distinct lack of accessible information on the Centro web sites.
For example, for a map of the changes that will you’d put in Adobe Acrobat PDF file like most normal people. Centro in it’s wisdom have put it in an Adobe Flash File, with a hint to right click to zoom.
I’m sorry. What designer thought that would be a good solution? For starters, some devices don’t run Flash. Secondly, there is the small matter of readability on smaller resolution screens. And how are you meant to get this information out of the application?
The bus companies and Centro have been making an effort (and not a great one) getting the message out since the 5th July (and lets be honest, they’ve done a crap job it), so I’m going to help get the message out.
Bus Stop Changes:
The new Birmingham Bus Stop Map is up. To summarise:
- Upper Bull Street is CLOSED
- Corporation Street from the junction with Upper and Lower Bull Street is CLOSED
- The majority of routes that served Upper Bull Street and Corporation Street are rerouted into six hub points. These are:
- Bull Street
- Birmingham Markets
- Moor Street
- New Street
- Paradise Circus
- Snow Hill
MAPS:
- The Centro Map is at http://www.networkwestmidlands.com/connectedcity-new/Maps.swf. Good luck using it if you’re on a small screen
- National Express have released a map that Centro haven’t been bothered to release at http://www.nxbus.co.uk/files/news/BirminghamBusStopsMap_July2012_v2.pdf
- You can also get a copy (if Centro/National Express decide to delete the maps again) here or see below:
Click the above to enlarge – Map: FTW/Centro, Data: Centro
This is a big change – and with the message only getting out now, I fear on Monday 23rd July, there are going to be a lot of angry and confused commuters who are looking for where their bus stop have moved to….
Centro’s failure of communication has been a deliberate operation of deceit. Proof of this is at http://www.tramscam.com. They went out of their way to avoid all honest publicity, let alone any consultation, and instead told lies and lies for a decade.
Full details in my Statement of Case you can find at http://www.tramscam.com
My judicial review challenge will have a hearing on 8th November 2012 at bull st court, come along to get this scam reversed. Bus users are already angry at these “improvements” but they’re going to get even angrier soon.
By the way, thank Kevin for putting out your info post and also posting the only decent map of the new arrangements (which Centro didn’t)! (The black “new look guide”s are a joke, not to mention stink for ages, but at least are colour-coordinated with the “new look” bus stop flags which are thoughtfully coloured invisible black – you couldn!t make this nonsense up.)
Robin – it’s Centro. I sadly don’t expect organisation or anything out of them.
Expect chaos sadly.
It’s reminded me to put a post out of Sunday for those who are heading back to work after the School Holidays though.
Latest thing is on the (NEWM) bus this morning they’d taped up ad-hoc notices on the railings in the bus stating “important notice….(etc about the bus stops)”. Clearly the “smooth changes” have become less smooth in some way.
Also ironically while none of their “exhibition” buses have ever been put anywhere near Corpn St (e.g at the New St crossing), yet they have NOW found space for a whopping long-term works compound right there!