I am a 32 year old married man and father of one little princess - I work in Birmingham city centre ...
I am a 32 year old married man and father of one little princess - I work in Birmingham city centre and my main interests are books and music (proper music)
Member since:30.11.2004
Reviews:78
Members who trust:11
I have little choice but to use these services everyday from Oldbury to Birmingham and am yet to be surprised by receiving a good service.
The drivers are all surly boy racers who obviously hate their jobs so much they would love to end it all and take all of the passengers with them.
They look at you like you have just eloped with their mother everytime you get on, they fill the buses way beyond the safety limit, they love to speed up between stops so that you have to stagger down the aisles to get to the door before they pass your stop - recently I fell down the stairs and bounced off the walls so hard that I was left with painful and bruised shoulder for a week. If you tell them what you think of the, and I've seen this done, you get a mouthful of 4-letter abuse and alot of times you get thrown off the bus.
Only last week I went to work with muddy and wet trousers as the upstairs of the bus I was on was literally awash with dirty water upstairs - it was swishing from one side to the next everytime a corner was turned.
My main issue with the service is that they seem to have no idea about scheduling the buses - every night for the last 2 weeks I have waited for over 30 minutes for either a 128, 129 or a 120 service only for none to arrive but in the space of 5 minutes there are 5 82's and 5 87's pulling up and pulling away, all double-deckers all 1/2 empty because the previous 3 82/87's have taken all of the passengers.
When one of my buses eventually turns up it is always a single-decker (whereas it was always a double untl a fortnight ago) and they are always full so I cannot get on.
I've been on the ICBirmingham Travel MoanZone website where commuters can sound off about these problems but the drivers seem to misunderstand that it is for commuters and use it to moan about how they are paid peanuts and treated badly - isn't that where they union is for. Also if you behave like an uneducated cretin in your work then you deserve a pittance - I don't know how much of the wage thing is true as only recently the fares went up from a pound to £1.10 - what do we get for this extra 10p? An even worse service - by this logic if they reduce fares to around 50p we could have the best public transport system in Europe.
I could go on but I would just get angrier and ruin my own day as TWM sicken me that much - the fact that I have no choice but to use their backward service sickens me even more.
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I feel a bit sad now - I use to love Birmingham buses (in the days of the WMPTE - and they were known as Wumptys) when I moved from Brum I use to tell everyone how good the bus service was - I think it's best if I don't bore anyone with the details anymore as they've obviously gone down-hill (at some considerable speed, by the sound of it!) Jo
metcaljl 07.04.2005 12:56
great review! bus drivers seem to have no consideration for the elderly either and im pretty sure they compete over who can throw the most customers over on a bus journey
The_Nursey 06.04.2005 19:19
I had to giggle when you classed the drivers as homicidal maniacs. When i first learnt to drive I lived In Wolverhampton, I would NEVER ever dare overtake a WMT bus at a bus stop due to one unfortunate incident when I over took, it pulled out as did the bus on the other side of the road and I honestly thuoght i was gonna be squished between two double decker buses -they are maniacs and last time i was in Brum a few weeks back they hadn't improved!
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Advantages: They only run buses in the West Midlands, not anywhere else in the country Disadvantages: Exact fare, unfriendly drivers, very poor reliability, often don't turn up...
Advantages: They only run buses in the West Midlands, not anywhere else in the country Disadvantages: Exact fare, unfriendly drivers, very poor reliability, often don't turn up...
Apr 6th, 2005
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