>Buses travelling out of the city show their >route number and destination. Buses travelling >into the city centre show the route number and >destination for their next journey out of the >city centre...........' (!!!!!!!) This good old >Irish approach is presumably to do with the fact >that *every* city route goes to the city centre -> there are [somewhat surprisingly] no semi->circular or inner-ring services linking suburbs.
Dale, just to pick up on one of your points, I assume you are talking about Derry. In Theory drivers are supposed carry their outward detination to their timing point, then change the detination to 'City Centre' until they get to Foyle Street (ie the city change over point), then change the destination to their next run. but, drivers are allowed to change their detinations before arriving in Foyle Street. But the porblem arises when a driver has say in the case of duty 8 where your whole duty is made up of the Hazelbank run, drivers couldn't be bothered to change the destination every 20 minutes or so. People in the city know that if a bus is on it inward journey and is displaying say Hazelbank, people know that it is going to the city centre.
The rule of city centre destination on inward journeys came about because, people on the likes of Spencer Road were waving on buses comming from the 'other side' ie, nationalists were waving on Nelson Drive (a loylist area) buses and loylists were waving on Gobnascale (a Nationalist area) buses. But if a bus had 'City Centre' on the destination, poeple would not know where it was coming from so, this problem was avoided. The rule was aheared to for the first 2 or 3 weeks but what drivers found was that on say a Friday afternoon when the town was busy and time between runs was tight, drivers forgot to change the destination and so because the driver had the wrong destination, s/he got booked. So this rule is nearly relaxed on a friday, and at nights because there is only one inspector on duty, this rule cannot be enforced so changing destinations doesn't happen.
Hope this answers your query
Ciaran