Sidelines

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A ride on York's new purple bus / tram, the FTR, was memorable more for the wait than the ride. At York Uni is what they call a "super stop" with a large silver infotainment column. This provides real-time bus information as you'd expect, but also has a multifunctional touchscreen. This includes a multimaps style map of York (navigation around the map by direction arrows) which lets you print a map (almost illegible due to ink running out) on cash machine type paper, and also included a number of games. (Annoying if someone is playing one and you want to use the map urgently). There are also links to BBC pages, and promotional stuff about the FTR.

The FTR looks quite sleek, it's quiet for a bus, and the seating is plastic and tram-like with a large standing area around the articulated part. It was hard to get much of a feel for the priority traffic signalling from a single journey. There was the usual heavy braking and jerky gear changes of bus travel, and hopefully First are taking driver training seriously.