Rides on RIPTA buses are frequently punctuated with this creepy AI voice. On the more practical side it announces (some of the) upcoming stops. Also reminds passengers that they have to wear masks, and sometimes other policies. This voice is nominally female and--as is often the case with AI--doesn't know where to put stresses.
The announcement added most recently is about the fares. All paper products have been eliminated, so if you don't have a WAVE card or app you have to pay exact fare. And hearing this droid say the word "eliminated" is more than a little unsettling.
The same announcement in Spanish is just a recording of a guy. Not sure why they didn't go that route for the English.
2 comments:
Since we don't ride a bus when we go any distance I don't know if they do the same here but it wouldn't surprise me. The light rail trains in Portland had instituted the unmodulated AI voice to announce upcoming stops too.
The ones that get us here are the overhead broadcasts in the grocery stores that pronounce how much they 'value the safety of our customers and staff and require masks and social distancing'. The mask policy in the stores everybody adheres to but nobody seems to bother with the social distancing part anymore. They took away the direction arrows too. We can only hope our practice of removing our masks before leaving the store catches on.
It's funny that RI has a Spanish announcement whereas Canada, an officially bilingual country never has announcements in French.
Not too surprised about the trains in Portland, even if you've been out of there for a while. Stop announcements aren't too bad, but when the statements are any longer than that you notice just how unnatural the voice is.
The direction arrows were just a fantasy to begin with. Almost nobody has a set order for picking up groceries and sticks to it without backtracking. The social distancing has degraded out of existence over the course of two years, as was always going to happen, it being such a pain in the ass. As for masking, if you want to evade it, just go in barefaced from the start. If somebody bothers you about it you can just suddenly "remember" but oftentimes they won't.
It's kind of weird that Canada doesn't do bilingual announcements, given that the street signs and product labels all have both languages. Elements of Quebec have always pushed for a national divorce, so maybe it's on both sides now.
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