Comment by pluma | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pluma | Hacker News Reader

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The most infuriating part for me with the local transport agency in Cologne (KVB) is the verbosity. They use a 90s style unbearably slow ticker display. So if you catch a glimpse at the wrong moment you're stuck reading all the unimportant garbage while trying to figure out whether the message is even relevant to you.

This is especially bad with cancellations because it lists every major stop (with station name and time) for the canceled tram. So instead of getting the important information instantly you are stuck waiting for the message to end and then repeat to the point that's actually important. I realise this is a technical limitation because apparently all affected stations get the same message but this seems fairly archaic while at the same time also being an obvious cost-cutting move over having actual announcements.

In general however the infuriating part about the apologies is that instead of "we apologize for the inconvenience" a more literal translation of the one you see most often -- "Danke für Ihr Verständnis" -- is "thank you for your understanding", which comes off as super passive-aggressive compared to the more apologetic but much less frequent "Wir bitten um Verständnis" ("we ask for your understanding"). Sure, they're both hollow phrases but thanking you seems extremely condescending.

The best display technology IMHO is the old electro-mechanical split-flap. They update pretty fast, and they make one hell of a racket when they do so everybody in the train station knows when something updated (this is a feature). They're sufficiently versatile to display information a train station needs to. They also have a certain aesthetic that simply cannot be touched by modern LCD/LED displays.

You must be one of those hipsters who lugs around a typewriter to cafes.

- They are very slow compared to digital. - They aren't versatile, they can't display arbitrary information. Each message has to be crafted individually and fit in among the rest. Which makes it nice for station lines since there are a small number that never change. Anything else? Not so much. - The noise is not intentional, it's more of a bug than a feature for sure. In a busy train station they change every minute or more so as an alerting mechanism it's near useless.

We're talking about train station displays, not arbitrary displays. Nobody has ever done word processing on a split-flap display so obviously I'm talking about a restricted domain. They don't need to display arbitrary information and the range of information they need to display rarely changes since that typically involves construction. The noise, an unintentional consequence of the mechanism, provides utility to train travelers and is therefore a feature.

In a busy train station the duration of the split-flap change provides an auditory clue to what's going on. If you hear one or two rows update then nothing out of the ordinary is happening. If you hear several rows update that might be a good indication that your train is now on the board, or it could signal mass delays. For many years I went through 30th Street Station in Philadelphia with a split-flap board in the middle and I loved that board. When I'm at airports with LCD boards, I always miss it. LCD boards are trash, you don't notice them changing unless you're staring at them, almost always have text too small to read unless you're standing directly in front of it, and are completely soulless.

I learned to type on a Selectric years before my family bought our first computer. I haven't touched one since.

> Nobody has ever done word processing on a split-flap display

You say that, but I'd be willing to bet that this guy has: https://scottbez1.github.io/splitflap/

Oat Foundry Split Flap displays do real-time typing, real-time display of 3rd party data, and oh so much more.

> They use a 90s style unbearably slow ticker display. So if you catch a glimpse at the wrong moment you're stuck reading all the unimportant garbage while trying to figure out whether the message is even relevant to you.

BART in the SF Bay Area is the same. The tickers slooowly scroll through repeated public service announcements and ads before eventually showing the train ETAs and current time for five seconds. They should show that important information all the time.

The American subways I've been to seem to all suffer from the realization that you can put advertising anywhere you could put a map.

I, and many others I'm sure, would appreciate it if you would actually put some effort into your half-hearted America slams. All the subways I've been in, EU and US, have plenty of both ads and maps.

How about the English one, copied from [1] with an example train included:

"May I have your attention please on platform 1. We are sorry to announce that the nineteen-fourteen South West Trains service to Windsor and Eton Riverside has been cancelled. This is due to a failed train at Richmond. South West Trains apologises for the inconvenience caused."

At least some parts of that one are useful. I found hearing things like "This is a safety announcement. Due to today's inclement weather, please take extra care whilst on the station. Surfaces may be slippery." and "Security personnel tour this station 24 hours a day." very annoying.

(And I said "English" intentionally. You can at least double the length of these, Welsh first, in Wales.)

[1] http://automatedannouncements.wikia.com/wiki/Generic_Station...

I wonder if that's a limitation of the (likely ancient) systems they pull the data from, or just a terrible convention. Even a vertical refresh, one complete line at a time, would let you show a lot more updates to the passengers than a horizontal scroll.

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