Rochdale bus station staff become multilingual

Date published: 13/12/2005

Staff at Rochdale and Middleton bus stations have become among the first in Greater Manchester to be able to understand nearly 150 different languages.

An innovative new system has been installed in the GMPTE Travelshops at the bus stations to allow employees to have conversations with people who do not speak English as their first language.

The free Language Line service enables customers to have a conversion with a member of staff through an interpreter on the telephone. People who wish to use the facility simply have to point at the Language Line sign in the Travelshop and indicate in which language they wish to speak.

GMPTE’s Service Delivery Director, Denise Lennox, said: “It’s important that non-English speaking customers are able to get the most out of the public transport services available to them in Greater Manchester.

“The Language Line service will make it easy for people who find it difficult to understand English to get around the county. I hope that both visitors to the UK as well as people already living in Greater Manchester will take advantage of and benefit from it.”

There are plans to introduce Language Line at all GMPTE Travelshops in Greater Manchester in the future.
Detailed information on all public transport services in the county is available on the GMPTE website (www.gmpte.com) or by calling Traveline on 0870 608 2 608. Lines are open from 7am to 8pm, Monday to Friday, and from 8am to 8pm at weekends and on Bank Holidays. Textphone users should ring 0870 241 2216.