I was in York last month, and when one of their new ftr buses arrived at the stop, I confess to a feeling of genuine, child-like excitement.
Satellite tracking, a space-ship like interior, room for three buggies or wheel-chairs, and (both the cherry and icing on the cake) a friendly conductress who gives you change when you buy your ticket. What’s not to love?
The ftr of Bus Travel?
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Still a bus though and therefore claustrophobic.
It’s still a bus and therefore you’ve still got to stand in the cold rain for what seems an age, and a ten minute walk from your house and to where you’re going and still a nightmare with lots of shopping and probably not too cheap either and…
Yes. Also, I can’t help noticing these things you like about it are novelty items. If all buses were like this, you’d lose the novelty factor, in which case you’ve got to ask, what’s left?
Such bile and reactionary comments to such a sleek and beautiful thing.
< < sighs >>
sleek and beautiful now, because it’s new. Wait until it’s been in service for a while and then get one home on a friday or saturday night and see how beautiful it seems.
Yeh. Also, it probably seems a lot more nicerer when you use it out of choice or as a one off. As opposed to every relentless day, out of necessity, with crying toddlers and bags of shopping in tow, when you have to wait half an hour for it in the pouring rain and you haven’t got enough money for the gas meter when you get home, and your mother’s a hooker, and your father was murdered and your baby-father is a violent drug addict. Doesn’t seem so nice now, does it, eh?
The problem I would say, with public transport, is that it is public. Therefore, if you use it, you are forced into proximity with all sorts of people, and a disproportionate number of damaged and/or badly-brought-up ones in particular. That’s never going to be nice, is it? On top of this, one also has to contend with the aggressive appropriation of the “public” space by over-hormoned teenagers and their noise pollution. This is also deeply unpleasant, and appears to proceed unchecked, because people are too busy being grateful not to get stabbed.
I think if you added behaviour police, and taught people how to behave in public, then this bus would get my approval.
Hooker!
Clarice, Humm great chosen words for the people of Acomb.
not every one like you can be born with a silver spoon in their mouth.
Bloody horrible when you’re waiting for the thing in the freezing cold outside the station in the morning and it doesn’t turn up for half an hour. Then on the way back in the evening it’s so packed out you can’t even breathe, and that’s one you’ve had to wait 40 minutes for, I could walk it quicker.
And £3 for a return trip? It’s a hateful bus.
Well, public transport may not be perfect, but lets consider the alternative: streets clogged up with ever increasing numbers of cars, more and more parking problems, more and more pollution, social exclusion (yes, those awful, smelly poor people need to travel too), streets that are too dangerous for our kids to play in, increased asthma, increased obesity, noise pollution… and I’ve not even mentioned climate change yet.