Back after a very long absence! Cant believe I've only written one review in nearly 2 years! Anyway ...
Back after a very long absence! Cant believe I've only written one review in nearly 2 years! Anyway back now and hope to be reading, rating and writing lots!
Member since:16.09.2001
Reviews:160
Members who trust:49
*UPDATE AGAIN* Nearly a year on and I'm out in the community working. And has it improved, shamefaced to say not. I think I managed my longest bus journey a while back, I was on the bus stop at 8.15 for a 25 minute journey and got into the centre of Bristol at 9.40. I am also currently demanding compensation from them as one driver attempted to be Stirling Moss and rush through some lights, hitting and mounting the kerb on the way round. I flew and damaged my ulnar (funny bone) and median nerves. Hence 2 days, unpaid, off work. Thankfully I am now taking driving lessons and have my car ready to go!! Never will I get on a bus again when I have passed!!
*UPDATE* Aahh our beloved local council have come up with a new and improved way to get us onto the buses. How may you ask....more drivers, more buses, more efficiency, cheaper fares, more reliability? Well Duh!!! This is Bristol City Council! No their way to get people onto the buses is to raise the prices of car parking...by 66%!. In the central car parks it will now cost up to £3 for four hours, more than four it will be £5.50!. On Saturdays it will now cost up to £2.50 for more than 2 hours. This is of course the council ones, the private one in Broadmead can cost
up to £15 for the whole day. Apparently this will relieve traffic congestion by reducing long-stay parking and providing attractive alternatives in the form of public transport!
Councillor Holland, get your head out of your ass, I would gladly pay £5 a day (if I could drive) to park if it meant I didnt have to get on a stinking dirty, overcrowded bus, which by the way would probably cost around £4, and I would get to work on time! With public transport the way it is, people will be willing to pay a lot more than that to avoid it!!
There, rant over, time to go get my bus, but thats ok, it will probably be late anyway!
~Oh what a beautiful morning, Oh what a beautiful day. At the moments its not raining, but how long will it stay that waayyyyy~ Not bleeding long I'll bet!
Well I'm bored, bored, bored, "Oh dear Emma", I hear you ask, "what could possibly be the matter?" Well Bristols public transport of course! FirstBus/City Line was recently voted the worst in the country and persistently punished by the Government watchbody over its performance, does it deserve its bad reputation? DAMN WELL IT DOES!
Lets just say that this morning is fairly typical of mornings when I have to go to uni, my 6 buses of hell, yes 6! You see there is no bus that goes from South Bristol to my uni in North(ish) Bristol, so I have to go into the centre and back out again, but first I have to make a short trip to the childminders. So here I am at 9am waiting for the bus into town, I shouldnt have to wait too long, the bus is every 10 minutes. 10 past, 15 past, 20 past. I'm still here! I watch as 5 buses pass the other way! 25 to and Lordy its here. Funnily enough it isnt one of the buses that passed in the other direction!
So me and the 9 other people hop on the bus, its quite frankly a disgrace, noisy, dirty, torn seats, etc. But beggars cant be choosers, this now leaves me an hour to get to uni. Theres 23 people on the next bus stop, over the next two theres another 38. So within 4 bus stops approx 71 people get on the bus!, it can only accommodate 70, so at near enough the start of its journey, its already full, over full in fact. I'm crammed in the back corner so I cant move, old people are having to stand up, one woman even has to sit her toddler in the luggage rack because she cant carry him and hold on.
Then lo and behold another bus appears behind us and its empty, this doesnt deter our driver who keeps stopping to cram more people on. We fully expect the bus behind to overtake us as he has no passengers to pick up, but he seems to have vanished, in fact we only spot him behind us once, in fact after I got off and was waiting for my next bus (yes another) he didnt appear at all. I can only assume he was kidnapped by aliens or disappeared in the Bedminster Triangle.
I heard the best excuse of why the bus before us didnt turn up, according to our driver the police stopped him (or the bus) for drink driving and they couldnt find another driver for his bus! Do I take it the other 3 buses and drivers who should have come along suffered the same fate?. Do Bristol FirstBus have a habit of employing drunkard drivers, or were the local bobbies trying to make some extra cash for their summer hols again? So there we are I finally get into the centre at 10.15. Lets put this against a cars time. Bedmister, a midway small shopping area, it takes 10 mins in a car, I get there an hour later, the centre is a 15/20 min drive, it takes me an hour and a quarter. Who in their right mind would give up a car to suffer this everyday?
Then theres the prices, they change twice a year, usually upwards, there have been some reductions and sticking but that isnt normal! There are so many tickets it would be an op on its own! The minimum price is a 60p adult single, this will get you at the most 4 stops. The most expensive is the £2.50 return, this will get you to the Centre or the journeys end and back but not before 9, that would cost you a whopping £3.80. Personally I use the First Day £2.60 after 9am, £3.00 before, this allows you to make as many journerys as you like.
Over the years First Bus have done several ruses to rip the traveller off, First Days were unlimited at first, then you could only use them 6 times, due to public pressure they are again unlimited. Buses used to go from one side of the city to the other, then they stopped them in the Centre so you had to pay a repeat fare for the rest of the journey. FirstBuses statement? "well we havent raised our prices this year". No you devalued our tickets instead!
So lets look at the evidence- dirty buses, late buses or buses that dont arrive at all, no coverage of the most important business areas, stroppy drunk drivers, extortionate prices, who runs a bus company like this?
Well David, were they recently voted the worst bus service in Britain? (loud applause)
Were services drastically cut on Sundays because there werent enough drivers? (more applause)
Do the drivers blackmail the bosses with threats of strikes for higher wages? ( even louder applause)
Were they recently punished by the Government watchbody with fines and buses taken off the routes for poor services? (ears starting to bleed because of the applause)
Well David, it can only be Bristol FirstBus/City Line
So whats the solution? More and more frequesnt buses, more and better drivers, cleaner, more efficient buses, better prices, more coverage. Until then no one in Bristol is going to get out of their car and onto a bus. And how that Government bloke thought that taking buses off the routes would be beneficial to the travellers of Bristol I will never know!
And no I didnt get to uni on time, missed the lecture but was rather cheered up with my lecture on lesbian pornography later in the day!
P.S If you dont understand the title, just ask!!
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May 15th, 2003
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