'Allo! I'm not contributing to Ciao for the time being but if you are bored / desperate / weird enou...
'Allo! I'm not contributing to Ciao for the time being but if you are bored / desperate / weird enough to wish to continue to read my ramblings, you can find me on Dooyoo under the user name plipplop. See you around! :P
Member since:15.07.2000
Reviews:694
Members who trust:826
FirstCity Line is the primary bus operator within the City of Bristol and its surrounding area. There is virtually no competition for service in Bristol, despite the de-regulation that took place some years ago, enabling much greater opportunity for companies to compete for, and provide service on bus routes. As a result of this, and other factors, bus services in the area are generally very poor.
Service varies in frequency, quality and reliability from one route to another, but in my time in Bristol, I have relied upon various different routes, and have found them to be largely the same:
Fares
City Line Fares are probably set at an average rate, compared to other cities and services. A single journey of three or four miles typically costs between £1 and £1.30, with considerable savings to be made if you purchase a return ticket. Like most other forms of public transport, return tickets cannot be purchased before 9.00 a.m. Monday to Friday, so the commuter stands to lose out on the reduced price of a return. The Company offer various types of "Rover" card, which deliver potential savings. A City Ten, for example, retails at £11.00 and allows ten single journeys - average journey price, therefore £1.10. This can be used on all services within the City Line are. Similar single journeys would cost £1.75 each way, so this could save you up to 38% over the ten journeys. Other tickets are available,
including Monthly, Quarterly and Annual Passes, which offer increased rates of discount, according to the period of travel you require. Regular passengers are strongly advised to invest in one of these tickets. Reduced price tickets are available for pensioners and other concessionary passengers.
City Line have just started running a limited range of night buses - much to the disgust of the local taxi drivers - at very reasonable rates - £1.50 any single journey - which I am sure will become more and more popular.
Many newsagents and local shops act as agents for City Line and you can buy the rover style cards at hundreds of shops. Additionally, if you buy your tickets at the bus station you can pay by credit/debit card. You can now also purchase tickets online and have them delivered to your home.
Reliability
This can differ from one route to another, but as an indication, City Line have recently been fined £260,000 for failing to provide timely, reliable services. On some occasions I have found that buses are very punctual, but there are certain times of the day/week, when you can wait up to 45 minutes for a service scheduled to run every 10 minutes. City Line suffer greatly from the general problems of traffic congestion, and bad road layouts in Bristol, but the City Transport department have attempted to put Bus Lanes in place wherever possible. As there is no central bus terminus, there are key stops on certain routes where drivers will change over, and this will tend to add at least 10 minutes to your journey time - somewhat unnecessarily. Evening and weekend services are good, with a comparatively comprehensive service, albeit at a reduced frequency. Sunday and evening services tend to be subsidised by the City Council, and as such, you may find that the bus only completes 75% of the usual journey - you may have a long walk home!
As with most bus Companies, there is little daytime control over services, and once a backlog has built up you may rest assured that three or four of the same number bus will arrive. You would expect that a controller would instruct one of the drivers to divert and try to recover some of the timetable, but this seldom occurs.
Quality of Vehicles
This also varies greatly from one route to another, but the Company has invested heavily in new coaches over the last few years. Many services are now 100% fulfilled by brand new vehicles, with access for Disabled passengers and air conditioning. Sadly, the converse of this is that certain routes are consistently fulfilled by old, dirty vehicles. The older, double decked buses tend to fill up downstairs with fumes from inefficient exhausts and engines. Many of the older vehicles are disgustingly filthy - I tend to find that my clothes need washing whenever I have travelled. The newer buses lack supervision, and are already suffering from vandalism and a lack of day to day cleaning.
Another issue with the older vehicles is that breakdowns are relatively common - I travelled on a bus for nearly two miles where the automatic gearbox had broken. Gear changes involved holding your breath and bracing yourself for when the bus lurched and propelled you into the person in front. I am sure that the Company is breaking many Health and Safety regulations - a theory supported by the recent order that they should take 90 vehicles off the road.
City Line also runs three or four Park and Ride schemes on behalf of the City Council, and the service and coaches used on these routes are always excellent. The main Park and Ride scheme - on the A4 Bath Road - has seen two completely new batches of stock in the time that I have been in Bristol.
A major factor in delaying services is that all tickets are issued by the driver - which with some passengers can be a timely process. From the City Centre it is not unusual to wait for 20 minutes or more for all the passengers in a queue to be issued with a ticket, and a simpler fare structure, and better ticket technology would vastly improve this. Additionally, if your rover card is not accepted by the terminal the driver lets you on free - something that many passengers have cottoned on to and have deliberately damaged the magnetic strip to allow fare-free travel. Rather unfair to other, paying customers.
Customer Service
The company runs a local rate service for enquiries and complaints. You tend to have to wait a fair time to get an answer - which can be very frustrating, and some of the advisors to whom you can speak are somewhat unhelpful. For information purposes the Company also have an excellent website, with detailed timetables and fare information - much quicker than phoning the helpline number.
The drivers are generally rude and unhelpful -although there are some exceptions. They are generally very scruffy and one of the things I hate the most is that they still smoke in their cabs, even though the bus is supposed to be non-smoking throughout. They pay little attention to passengers, and if there is trouble on the bus don't expect support. This is evident in the damage caused to seats etc, and the amount of other passengers who smoke upstairs.
Last year, City Line turned record profits of £146 million, brought about by a lack of competition, and by putting profits before customers. This is evident in the penalties that the Company has recently incurred. Congestion in the city centre is a major problem in Bristol, compounded further by the dreadful public transport. The two factors are gradually making each other worse.
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I live in Bristol and have first hand experience of the awful bus service. The rudeness of the drivers and the lateness of the buses don't encourage me to use public transport!
Miss-D 02.06.2001 23:24
Hmmm..Kinda reminds me of the bus drivers in Bolton who have no consideration for passengers whatsoever! Our bus drivers like to see how hard they can slam the brakes at every traffic light - once I was sat on the front seat (the ones meant for OAP's) and the bus driver decided it would be fun to slam the brakes and do something short of an emergency stop. I didn't know he wasgoing to do this (like you don't) and poor me flew out of my seat, hit the railing in front of me, richoted off it, hit another pole and ended up almost knocked out on the floor with my long skirt somewhere around my knees - Very embarressing indeed!! Erm...I better stop rambling! :o)
davidbuttery 03.02.2001 04:43
I have a relative in Bristol who has recently moved to Henleaze [a rather nondescript suburb, for anyone who doesn't know the city]. "Great", I thought, "that's on the 54 route between the Centre and Cribbs Causeway - it'll surely be a showcase for the company". Er... no. It does at least have the new double-deckers, which are nice, but the unreliability is quite appalling - I expect to wait at leat half an hour almost every time for a service which is supposed to run every 15-20 minutes. I think one of the major problems with Bristol is that it's not a metropolitan council, so doesn't have a co-ordinating Passenger Transport Authority/Executive. Still, at least they give change, which is more than they can be bothered to do in Birmingham.
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Jan 11th, 2001
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