My trip to the library for my volunteer work teaching “The Incomputerate” on a Tuesday morning has to be accomplished by public transport – for the simple reason that my lovely wife needs the car to convey her to a nearby village hall for her weekly keep fit session.
Not, I should just mention, that she actually needs it having not an ounce of fat on her and looking WAY younger than her years!
My free travel “over 60s” bus pass comes into effect at 9.25 on the bus ticket machines leaving me 1 hour 5 minutes to get into Peterborough city centre which is about 4 miles away as the crow flies. The route the bus takes is a much longer and rather tortuous one but is still only supposed to take 40 minutes.
This route is also scheduled (and there are signs proclaiming this on EVERY bus shelter) to run “every 10 minutes.
So, assuming that I just miss one at 9.25 I should still have the next 2 arrivals (9.35 and 9.45) to get me to the library for my 10.30 start time.
This morning (written on Tuesday 6th March 2018) I went out a little early to post a letter and just as I got to the letterbox adjacent to the bus stop one pulled up and unloaded the usual hoard of call centre workers for the nearby business park. According to my watch it was then 9.20 so the driver would not have allowed me on with my pass even if he hadn’t just changed the destination board to “Not in service”! He left and I waited.
And waited……….and waited!
The 10 minute mark for the next arrival came at 9.30 without the slightest hint of a bus – as did the 20 minute mark!
We (and by now “we” is quite a substantial group) didn’t quite make it to the half hour mark as at 9.49 a bus suddenly appeared. The driver explained that no less than SEVENTEEN of his colleagues did not report for duty that morning with unsurprising dire effects on the timetable! He also warned us that he was expecting to hear some extremely bad language as we approached the “less genteel” area of Orton Goldhay!
And sure enough, within a few stops, some large, tattooed, “chavvy” mummies were soon mouthing off at the driver as if it was his personal fault that they’d had to wait over an hour. Then, when they got to the front of the queue they kicked off again when they discovered that they were not allowed on because the driver had already filled his permitted quota of three baby buggies on board!
This time the people to blame were the driver AND all the other passengers! We were all told in no uncertain terms that we were all “blanking, blank blankers” for having had the audacity to get on this bus before them.
As they weren’t going to be allowed on I was tempted to ask them how their course at Charm School was going but my instinct for self-preservation prevented me – probably wisely!
Of course, being the first bus along this route for over an hour meant that every stop had long queues and we soon reached our maximum legal passenger capacity. I could no longer hear the things being shouted as we sailed straight past some of the later stops but I’m fairly sure that our rear windows would have been in some danger had there been any rocks lying around.
I reached the library at 10.35, rather remarkably only 5 minutes late, and still before my current “pupils” who were similarly delayed by problems with other bus routes.
My first action before I had to start imparting my computer know-how was to send Faith a text warning her that if the service was still screwed up at midday she might have to come and get me!
On leaving the Library at 12.00 I do sometimes take a stroll through town to the main bus station but it seemed sensible on this day to get over the road to the nearest stop on the Citibus No. 1 route that would take me home. This time I only had to wait just under 20 minutes for my ride but by the time we reached the next stop, just under a quarter of a mile away, another on the same route had overtaken us and a third was right behind us! This, I find, is even more infuriating than no bus at all!
By the time we reached the bus station a couple of stops further on both were ahead of us and all three played “leap frog” along the route to Orton Wistow. More by luck than judgement the bus I was on was actually the first to my stop!
It was all very frustrating for the passengers (and, I’m sure, for the drivers who had bothered to turn up but still got to take a lot of undeserved crap from the chavs) but it’s all really down to bad management at the depot.
I am aware that all these buses have “trackers” as well as two-way radios so it shouldn’t be beyond the managers’ wits, even with staff shortages, to keep those buses that are available evenly spaced even if the advertised regularity cannot be met.
These “three bus bunchings” happen extremely regularly even with a full shift of drivers so it would seem that there is either total incompetence at the head of the company running the transport system (which I’m not going to name but it sounds like they would be better off using horses) or simply a “couldn’t care less” attitude.
It would be really nice to have an actual RELIABLE 10 minute service rather than “roughly every 10 minutes on average if you’re lucky” which is what we get and which seems to be the best we can hope for!
As I have explained before, both here and in other posts on this site, my Bus Pass means that my travel after 9.30 a.m. on weekdays and all day at weekends is FREE – I certainly do get the service I pay for!
Alfie
Little Alfie's world 