Count to 40

[bugshaw]

"Buses up to every 10 minutes," the sides of the Cambridge Citi buses, and their bus-stops, proudly proclaim.

"This is great," you might think, "the time between buses is a maximum of 10 minutes, often less!" Over the next forty minutes I managed to rotate the appealing interpretation of the phrase into an alternative that is also true: the frequency of buses is a maximum at 'every 10 minutes', but the frequency is often less. Much less.

Comments

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

Indeed they could truefully say 'buses up to every 30 seconds', when they start stacking up.

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

That would be so true, yet so misleading!

[j-lj.livejournal.com]

The bus service in Cambridge run by Stagecoach is a complete shambles. I hope they and the council sort the mess that is public transport out in the city before the controversial congestion charge plan comes in.

[sparrowsion]

There's a political problem here in that transport matters are regulated by the county council, not the city council, so are implemented for the benefit of central government seeing that "something is being done" and providing money, rather than to actually resolve the issues for those of us living or working in the city.

[alex-holden.livejournal.com]

Misuse of the term "up to" in advertising is a pet hate of mine.