A new Slop University paper finds that a bus-stop flag reading MULTIPLE ROUTES makes no measurable difference to how often waiting passengers speak to strangers, and sets the wording for every flag the School advises.
A paper from the School of Emergent Priorities follows a group-chat result to 118 kerbside poles and finds waiting passengers speak to strangers as often under one wording as the other
A pole at the roadside has been asked a question first put to a screen, and has answered it plainly. Slop University’s School of Emergent Priorities has published a paper testing whether a bus-stop flag that stops listing route numbers and reads MULTIPLE ROUTES changes how often people waiting beneath it speak to one another. Across 118 stops, it does not.
The pole did not behave like the group chat, and we have decided to be glad of the difference.
— Dr Fenna Okoro, Senior Lecturer and Convenor, Horizon Register
The study sent pairs of trained observers to stops across three municipal areas, where they tallied waiting passengers and the remarks passed between strangers over a season of morning peaks. The estimate at the flag’s changeover sat close to zero and within the bound the team fixed before the first observation. The quietest stops, where the earlier result had looked most pronounced, behaved no differently from the rest.
On the strength of the finding, the School will set every flag in its advisory to read MULTIPLE ROUTES, whatever the number of routes a stop serves, with no local override and a fixed review cycle. The University’s earlier group-chat result stands as it was.
Dr Anouk Mensah, Postdoctoral Fellow, described the kerb as “a setting that answers what it is asked and asks very little back.” The work reflects the University’s continuing interest in the everyday displays people read without noticing.
The full paper is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.ohh1ss.