One often wonders, amongst many things (such as why one has
started using the pro-noun “one” and whether as a result one would be accepted
into the royal family), why it is that buses have been allowed to continue to
exist, and have not yet been replaced by a more efficient, appropriate and –
frankly – friendlier substitute. I know that I have before written about the
problems surrounding public transport (An
Ode To A Cherry Bakewell), but that was more centred around the issue of
trains, and it seemed due time to turn my attention to their four-wheeled
friends.
I have never been a fan of buses – largely in part to the
time I was unable to locate the right bus stop and time to get home for twenty
minutes before realising I was looking at entirely the wrong route and it was a
bank holiday Monday, and buses were not running. However, when one’s school and
work place lies on a bus route and one has neither finished learning to drive
nor can afford a car anyway thanks to extortionate insurance prices, one
quickly becomes familiar with the local bus service. Not that this is an
enviable acquaintance, particularly when one must join the masses on the bus
home after school when one is unlucky enough to have no free period last thing.
Rude, smelly and horrible children, who shove and poke you, swear at you
without an ounce of respect for anyone. It’s like I’ve walked into some
futuristic thriller, where the inmates of a juvenile prison have been let loose
and allowed to rule the streets. Admittedly, I know I am only five or so years
their senior, and my height immediately puts me at a disadvantage where most of
them probably assume I’m the same age as
them. But what has happened? When I was their age, one look from a sixth form
student had me running in terror for fear of what they might do, and that
applied to even the toughest guys in my
year. Still, another rant for another time - the point being here that such
arrogant, selfish, icky little toe rags serve only to enhance the already
delightful experience.
Not that it is ever helped by supposedly grown adults – and
that includes the bus drivers themselves. Now I’m not applying this to all bus
drivers. Some of them, such as my regular “Sunday Bus Driver” as he shall be
known here (mainly in part to the fact that I don’t actually know his name),
are truly lovely and helpful. However others choose to be irrationally rude,
such as driving off from the bus stop five minutes early, despite the fact you
are clearly running to catch it, and refusing to accept £10 notes, when it’s
all the cash machine gives out, you are disinclined to waste money on something
just to get change and there is a large sign on the bus itself stating that
they only have a problem with £20 notes or over. As a fellow worker of the
public sector (retail counts, right?), I know that the general public can often
be stressful and frustrating – but that doesn’t mean you have to be downright
rude, especially when the customer has in no way done anything wrong.
My experience yesterday only served to emphasise my
detestation for this mode of public transport. Having arranged to meet someone,
I specifically woke up and left early in order to catch a bus - a task that
anyone else on their Easter break knows is arduous enough. And yet I was
rewarded for my good-natured efforts by having to wait an hour for one bus (by
which time, there should’ve been three of them) in the freezing cold with a
woman who insisted on standing upwind from everyone else waiting and smoking,
forcing everyone out of the bus shelter (which incidentally, I’m pretty sure is
illegal – the law prevents anyone from smoking in areas covered by three walls
– if one counts the fence that met the bus shelter roof (which I do), that’s
three walls and therefore illegal). If it weren’t for that fact that she looked
a bit crazy and I feared for my safety, I would have said something; still I
was forced to make do with muttering loudly, to much approval from those around
me. Still the icing on the freezing cold, smoky cake was the bus driver’s
response to me politely asking whether there was traffic on the roads this
morning – a caveman like grunt, which only served to entirely concrete my
opinion that buses are the metal hounds of hell.
And yet, surrounding us are encouragements to use said
public transport! I am forced to contest the government’s reasoning for this:
they are barely cheaper, and things such as passes and week tickets and
inconsistent and hard to come by and I doubt that the huge, fuel guzzling
monsters are better for the environment, especially with the development of
green technology for private transportation. And, to a great extent, they are a
complete waste of money. In some areas, buses run every twenty minutes,
entirely empty. The fact is, they are completely unattractive to anyone trying
to travel. They are entirely unreliable, unpleasant and unclean – and let’s not
even start on the driving that has now caused me permanent whiplash. Those who
hopefully put faith in them or, like me, are faced with no other option but
their use are thought of as excellent examples to use in statistics, but realistically,
we are just warnings to other potential users of the dangers of public
transport.
Realistically if the government want the public to use the
buses en masse, they will have to do an entire overhaul of the service.
Personally, I suggest some futuristic tram system in the air – anything that is
not subject to overly frequent break downs, operators that belong in solitary
confinement and the horrors of morning traffic. Until then we are faced with
the travesty that is the bus service; but to all transport ministers who are
encouraging us to use them and yet have never placed one shiny polished shoe
aboard a bus in their life – bus off.
