This week on Reconnections:
Customer service and de-escalation
The six points to employ:
- Validate
- Build rapport
- Empathise
- Reframe
- Offer choices
- Set limits
The five principles of wayfinding through any transport system
- Understanding the journey – People often go where you don’t expect them to (or want them to go), and you need to plan your wayfinding to be adaptable to their needs.
- The system is legible – It is easy to read, to understand quickly, and gives people the right information at the right time.
- Accessibility is critical –Different people with different needs must be able to read and interpret the information that you are giving them.
- Clear signage is a must – Clear fonts, colours and pictograms applied consistently.
- Consistency – A consistent design, applied in the same way across the network.
[I believe this is TfL but if anyone can confirm please leave a comment – Ed.]
More transport portmanteaux
- anticipointment – looking forward to something actually or potentially disappointing.
- carteriosclerosis – When parked cars block flow of cars on major arteries. Although easily diagnosed, car drivers fail to do anything about it and live with it, despite significant impact.
- chondola – a chairlift-gondola, as on ski hills.
- Carbucks – Starbucks’ transition from cafes to drive thrus.
- contrail – condensation trail of aircraft engines at high altitudesl
- crazing – cracked glazing (of tiles in Underground station).
- dischronbobulated – when you wake up from a long nap and can’t figure out what time of day it is and how long you were asleep.
- disemvowelment – a word with some or all vowels elided, popular with overly clever tech companies & marketing agencies. Sounds similar to disembowelment. Eg Tindr, Foamr.
- outerchange – out of station interchange.
- streatery – street eatery.
- trainography – train geography.
- tramography – tram geography.
- trelfie – train selfie.
Technology side effects, unplanned & planned
Osborne Effect
Company sinks itself by announcing cool technology/products still in development, undercutting its current products and cashflow. Named after the Osborne Computer Corporation, which announced its next product but took over a year to launch it, bankrupting the company in 1985.
Ratner Effect
Jewelry manufacturer Ratner made a speech to the Institute of Directors in which he said:
‘People say, “How can you sell this for such a low price?”, I say, “because it’s total crap.”‘
He compounded the problem by stating that one of the company’s earrings were “cheaper than an M&S prawn sandwich but probably wouldn’t last as long.”
Word got out and the company’s value quickly dropped £500 million, nearly going bankrupt.
enshitification
The experience of modern technology that is promoted as being ‘better’ but is a definitely worse user experience, ie chat help robots not a person that can actually resolve your issue; fully electronic and internet-connected appliances that break down after only a few year and are impossible to repair, &c.
techcrastination
Announcing a next generation disruptive but unproven technology, like electric airliners, to push companies or individuals to delay on investing in new, proven technolology.
Transport and other modern collective nouns
Assemblage, nouns of, modern:
- an arrogance of barristas
- a chain / flight of escalators
- a chorus of leafblowers
- a cluster of gauges
- a clutch of shops
- a conspiracy of plotters
- a dash of commuters
- an inhumanity of billionaires
- a farm of wind turbines
- a field of candidates
- an inevitability of sequels
- a misery of goths
- a multitude of sins
- a pavement of good intentions
- a pool of motors (motor pool)
- a price of consultants
- a promise of tomorrows
- a quibble of pedants
- a raft of reforms
- a riot of colours
- a shower of lobbyist money
- a sneer of vinyl record enthusiasts
- a spate of crashes
- a transplant of suburbanites
The Tragedy of the Destruction of New York Penn Station
“Through Pennsylvania Station one entered the city like a god… One scuttles in now like a rat.” – Vince Scully, architectural historian about the original, grand New York City Penn Station, which was demolished in 1963, and its subterranean replacement station.
Lost in Translation – Perdu en traduction
- un billet-doux – a love note, where billet refers to ‘note’ not ticket, and doux meaning in this case ‘sweet’.
- la bombe artisanale – improvised explosive device.
- un chasse-neige – snow plough, literally means a snow chaser or snow hunter.
- un dirigible – from the French term for airship, balon dirigeable, meaning ‘steerable balloon’.
- GSM – stood for Groupe Spéciale Mobile as it was originally a French technology, but the Americans couldn’t accept that, so it now officially stands for Global System for Mobile.
- le saut-de-mouton – flyover. Literally means a sheep jump, as in the game ‘Saute mouton’ (leapfrog).
The velocity of transport
- BMW – Bus Metro Walk
- PACE – Project Acceleration in a Controlled Environment, created by DfT and NR, to replace GRIP.
- GRIP – the framework to deliver project. See also SPEED.
- SPEED – Swift, Pragmatic and Efficient Enhancement Delivery, jointly developed by the DfT and NR for rail projects. See also PACE.
Previously on Reconnections’ Transport Miscellany
Check out a previous Miscellany post.
Correct at the time of writing.
Check before you travel.
I got into trouble at work this week for using the word enshittification (thanks Cory Doctorow) because of the way certain TOCs treat their customers as errant children.
And there’s me remembering being forced to wait on the floor for hours on a vinyl line at King’s Cross waiting for a “brilliant” InterCity train to Yorkshire (“double seat ..”) unable to visit WH Smith or a toilet because I would loose my place in the queue.
“transport portmanteaux”
“CON-Trail” – also called a chem-trail – a mythical conspiracy nurtured by insane US politicans, especially in the state of Louisiana & others in that area – see also: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/08/chemtrails-us-states-legislation
“Enshittification” – should this have two”t’s” ??
Weren’t the Sautes-de-Moutons specifically referring to the old Alsace/Lorraine boundary where French Railways & drive-on-the-left transferred to German Railways (1870-1918) & drive-on-the-right?
What would be a collective noun for rail enthusiasts?
During my enthusiast years the term “crank” or “hairy” were used. The hairy has, I believe, some link with new recruits to the French army but I cannot recall why.
Many years ago, in my early ‘trainspotting’ days, we were alluded to as ferroequinologists.
@Alex McKenna ‘What would be a collective noun for rail enthusiasts?’
An excitement of rail enthusiasts?
An eruption of rail enthusiasts?
A timetable of rail enthusiasts?
SPRAIN
Simply Perpetually Replacing Acronyms Improves Nothing
I read “an arrogance of barristas” as “an arrogance of barristers”. Both fit!
Collective for rail enthusiasts?
“Gricers” (??)
I’m not entirely sure that definition of enshittification is correct. I’ve always taken it as the needless degradation of products that were once good (often under pressure from “the market”)
For example, Instagram insisting on forcing AI and loud music into its “pretty photo” app. Or Amazon creating a marketplace on their store that has resulted in endless identical low quality non-brands selling 700 versions of the same office chair.
With a nod to Armando Iannucci: a thickness of politicians
@Strabismus
Poetic.
Surely rail enthusiasts are collectively known as the Bourgeoisee these days?