I don't know about you, but I am less than impressed with the new announcement system installed at South Station. While the T has made long overdue improvements with visual displays, the announcements leave a lot to be desired. It's some sort of computer voice, and often times the syllables of certain words are run together too fast to make the words almost unintelligible. On top of that, the volume level is too low and seems a bit muffled. During during busy times like rush hour, you can barely hear the announcements. Most of my fellow Natick passengers have agreed with me about not being able to understand or even hear the computer voice. I wonder how much the T spent on this poor announcement system.What do other South Station commuters think? Is the new announcement system working or does it need to be improved? We have a mini-poll running where you can share your answer about the new announcement system.
Frequent site visitor AJ has already shared his observations about announcements at Back Bay Station.
Natick Train Rider - thanks for the email!
2 comments:
Thanks for the shout out! I just wanted to throw out a reminder that I can't vouch for South Station, only Back Bay. I've boarded at South Station twice in 2 years, and the messages there previously seemed very nice. It made me feel bad that Back Bay was such an armpit of a station. But the announcements at Back Bay, in my opinion, are definitely an improvement. They're the perfect volume and much easier to understand than the shrieking woman who did them before.
At South Station, the new boards are excellent. I had absolutely no problem with the previous announcements, but turning the volume up a little on the new system should work fine.
Operations staff had problems with the computer voices for the announcements on the red and green lines and in subway stations, so they just had someone record all of the station names and common announcements. Perhaps they can do this with the new commuter rail announcement system.
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