Call Your Stops! It's The Law! but call them clearly.

When I used to live in Southern California, I used to follow the operations of the Southern California Rapid Transit District (RTD), which eventually became the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). When a bus operator was given their assignment for the day, it was placed on a piece of paper called a "paddle". The term "paddle" goes back to the old days when the bus run assignments and times were printed on wooden boards that looked like paddles.

In the RTD/MTA world, there is a message on all of the paddles that reads "Call Your Stops! It's The Law". A reminder to operators to follow the provisions of the ADA that require transit operators to call stops.

Some transit operators have looked at various ways to call the stops. In cities like Denver and Chicago, there are automated voice announcements on the rail system to announce the next stop. On some other systems, such as here in Phoenix, GPS based automated stop calling systems are used. Unfortunately, the GPS systems are sometimes inaccurate and therefore will not always call the correct stop or not call the stop until the bus passes the stop.

The one thing that these automated systems have in common is that the systems use the same voice throughout the system on each bus/train. This means that a blind user or other patron who is dependent on the stops being called will always hear the familar voice instead of the different voices of different operators.

On a recent trip to the San Francisco Bay Area, I have decided to ride BART from SFO Airport to the city.

The BART station platforms have synthesized speech systems that are used to advise of current trains on the platform as well as the departure times of future trains.

With my recent exploration into issues that affect the blind and visually impaired, I decided to try something. I decided to take my seat and close my eyes (I was tired from the trip already) and I was planning to depend on BART to properly call the stop in order for me to determine which stop to get off at.

The first thing I have noticed was that the quality of the speaker in the train was very bad. It was almost up there as the stereotypical fast-food restaurant drive-thru speaker. Not only that, but the train operator had some lingual difficulty saying the station names. Oh yeah, did I mention that BART still uses their train operators and not an automated system to call the stops on board the trains?

Now, even though I am familiar to the basics of BART, I am not totally familiar with the stations along the route, especially the names and locations of stations along Market St. So, I came on board this BART train, unfamilar with the system and depended on BART to get me to the right station.

I needed to get off at the Powell St. station. I was meeting my sister in Union Square.

As we get closer, I have noticed mumbling that sounds like "Civic Center". I knew that was one of the stations along the route but I did not know how many stations there was between Civic Center and Powell. I do know if I was to hear something like "Embarcadero", I better get off that train or else I will wind up in Oakland. After Civic Center, I have heard something that sounded like "Pawastree". Because I needed to go see my sister, I opened my eyes and noticed, yes, I am at Powell St. I exited the train.

I think that my experiment has proven that a blind, visually impaired or other user who is visiting a particular city (like San Francisco) can not always depend on the names of the stations being clearly called. Seasoned users of the system may be able to count stops to their station but for us visitors, we are at the mercy of the train operators, at least when we are riding BART.

I really hope this changes soon.

p.s. I did the same experiment on the way back to the airport. I was able to hear the stops much clearer on that train and I was able to exit the train to the SFO station.