Getting around in Birmingham

Are you coming to the Ciao Meet in August? If so you need to know about transport in the area unless you are planning on walking! So let me tell you all about it...


*Bus*

The main form of transport in Birmingham is the bus service run by Travel West Midlands. I have used this service daily for over 10 years so am pretty qualified to slag it off. Bus prices are average, a standard adult fare is £1 in peak time. ...
...from specified newsagents which work out cheaper than fares: it costs £10.90 for a weeks pass, and if you pay by direct debit it is only £30 a month. School children can buy passes for a whole term for £60 which is pretty good as it lasts for 4 months. You can get insurance for £15 which means if you lose your pass or it gets nicked you get a new one for nothing. OAP’s get free bus passes which they can use after 9:30am any week day and any other ... more

Are you coming to the Ciao Meet in August? If so you need to know about transport in the area unless you are planning on walking! So let me tell you all about it...

*Bus*

The main form of transport in Birmingham is the bus service run by Travel West Midlands. I have used this service daily for over 10 years so am pretty qualified to slag it off. Bus prices are average, a standard adult fare is £1 in peak time. There are a range of bus passes available to buy from specified newsagents which work out cheaper than fares: it costs £10.90 for a weeks pass, and if you pay by direct debit it is only £30 a month. School children can buy passes for a whole term for £60 which is pretty good as it lasts for 4 months. You can get insurance for £15 which means if you lose your pass or it gets nicked you get a new one for nothing. OAP’s get free bus passes which they can use after 9:30am any week day and any other time. They used to not be allowed to get on the bus between 3:30 and 6:30 but they complained so TWM changed it. I thought it was perfectly reasonable as during the rush hours the buses are very busy and there are not enough seats as it is without having to give them up to the oldies. You can also buy a daysaver ticket on the bus for £2.50 (£1.70 for a child) which lets you use all the buses for a day. The child ones used to be £1 but too many naughty people like myself got them so they put the price up. You can also get a special ticket for 4 people for a day for £4, but you have to all stay together. A nice idea for a family day out. Oh, and after 7:30pm you can get an evening saver for £1.40 which lets you go up town and get pissed and come home on the last bus. Actually it’s just an unlimited ticket for that evening.

There are hundreds of different bus services, most covered by TWM but look out for a few others like Midland Red and Pete’s travel. You can only use Busmaster bus passes on these or else you have to pay a normal fare.

Most of the bus services just run to the city centre and out, then you have you the number 8 Inner Circle and the 11 Outer Circle Bus Routes. For 7 years of my life the 11 bus was a major cause of frustration in my life. It is a 12 mile long circular route, which has a habit of not coming for 3 hours and then 10 come past at once. Avoid using the 11 if you can, but at least you avoid having to go into town and back out again to get somewhere. Unfortunately when I go back to uni I will be forced to use the 11 daily for 3 years (hence me going to get my provisional driving licence later).

Most of the bus stops in town are on Corporation Street or Temple Row by the Cathedral. The conventions on Birmingham buses is that you pay when you get on, by putting the exact fare into a chute thingy by the driver. There is no change given which visitors find annoying but imagine how long the bus would be held up if everyone needed change! It’s a pain though if you only have a fiver cos you have to go to the shop and buy some chocolate or something to get the change (OH NO!)

Fare evasion and fraud is fairly common, mostly with people using out of date daysavers and bus passes or paying child. Children in Birmingham schools are all supposed to get Under 16 bus cards and 16-18 Bus cards entitling 16-18 year olds to child fares if in education. The under 16 cards are to prove your age- the problem with these cards is that they cost £5, (why should you be forced to pay?) and take ages to come when you fill in the forms. Oh, and you need a teachers signature so you can’t get one if you are over 18 (damn). I just pay child when I can and am never asked to show ID. The bus passes are harder to forge now and a crack down on evasion has resulted on one poor 15 year old boy being dragged to court and made to pay a £100 fine. Glad it wasn’t me!

Every now and then, inspectors will do a crack down on a particular bus route to check everyone’s tickets and passes. They used to do this a lot on the bus route to and from my college and it was a frightening experience! There are about 5 huge men in black uniforms who all leap on the bus and demand to see everyone’s pass. Luckily people get tip offs about which route they are doing and I often found myself walking home from college to avoid them. If you are caught having paid the wrong fare or without a ticket you get a £10 on the spot fine (SEE HELLYPHANT’S OP ON MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENTS- she got caught pretending to be me, ha ha haaaaa!), a red face and a telling off at the side of the pavement. If you have actually forged your pass (*whistles innocently*), unless you can find some crocodile tickets and flash your cleavage, you are looking at something more serious. So don’t do it children. Ahem.

The buses have all recently been changed to new models, lovely Mercedes ones which kneel down to let people with pushchairs get on easily. There is a mixture of double decker, single decker and long bendy buses. On all of the buses there is a rack for putting shopping or folded pushchairs in but I never leave anything in there unless I am sitting next to it for fear of someone running away with my Kwik save bag of economy beans (hey you never know, they might be desperate!). There is an area with fold up seats which is for wheelchair users and people with babies and small children in pushchairs. There is only room for one, maybe two small ones but it’s better than nothing and means the aisle doesn’t get blocked. There are rails throughout the bus so you don’t fall over, and bells by every seat so you can request that the bus stops. There is a no smoking policy on all buses with signs warning of a £500 fine but people always smoke, especially at the back of the top deck, so sit downstairs if this will bother you. Never ask anyone to stop unless you want a face full of abuse, I have seen it happen far too many times sadly. I think the buses should have more inspectors to protect the passengers safety. Although many buses are now fitted with CCTV I am not convinced that these work. I have seen all sorts of things on the bus such as people being beaten up and been abused and even spat at myself. Now I tend to sit on the bottom because I don’t want to get involved in anything like this. It makes me angry though because why should I have to sit in a certain place when I have not done anything wrong? My friends Dad is a bus driver and they now have glass partitions between them and the passengers due to a number of violent incidents. I wish there was a way of banning these people from the buses.

There are a number of night bus services but I don’t use them anymore. Some are run by TWM and others by Pete’s travel bus. I used to always get the Pete’s travel night bus home and had a lovely driver called George. He would always drop me at the bottom of my road although there was no bus stop there and let me off the fare till next time if I had no money. Lovely man, wish all bus drivers were like him! The night buses cost a flat fare of £1.50 and run on the hour from various stops in the city centre and along Broad Street. It is worth it if there are one or two of you but for more people you may as well get a taxi. I have seen all kinds of fights and been involved in one too many nasty incidents on night buses- alcohol, early mornings and buses do not mix well.

I do not like the bus service but there is not really any other choice when you do not have a car. It is relatively cheap but not exactly reliable. You may have to wait an hour for the bus and sit next to a nutter but at least you will get home (eventually).

*Trains*

There used to be a lot more inter city travel by train in Birmingham but for some reason many local stations have closed down and services inactivated. This is a shame because I would much prefer to take the train home than the bus, therefore avoiding the traffic. The few trains there are run from City Centre-University-Selly Oak- Bournville (a lovely station where all the rails and painted Purple because of the Cadbury factory), Kings Norton and the non to Redditch and other distant non Brummie land places. The trains are clean and run on time when there are no leaves on the line or other problems. It is rare to have an inspector on the train so is a very cheap way to travel (although they are installing barriers soon so you will have to pay up).

*Metro*

I have only used the metro a few times, to go to Wolverhampton and the Jewellery Quarter but was very impressed. This is a new tram system serving the North of the city linking Birmingham with Wolverhampton and numerous places inbetween. It is clean, punctual and has an inspector on board to collect fares and keep order. The prices are more expensive than the bus but still reasonable and I recommend the metro. There are plans to extend the metro to Five Ways and the Merry Hill shopping centre in the near future which is a good thing.

This turned out to be rather a long review but I found I had a lot to say about a service I use daily. There are improvements which could be made but most of the bad points about public transport in Birmingham come down to the users rather than the actual services. The day I get my licence I will be a happy kitty but until then I have no choice but to use the bus. Even when I do have a bike I will still use the bus occasionally as it is far more convenient to hop on the bus to go shopping in town than to get in a traffic jam and pay £5 to park in a multi storey.
 

...less