2019-05-03 14:36![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
grok_mctanys
grok_mctanysFuck First, fuck Stagecoach, and fuck SYPTE - you're all fucking shit and you should be ashamed of yourselves.
So I wanted to catch a bus earlier. I'd looked up the timetable and made sure to get to the stop I wanted a couple of minutes ahead of schedule. Only as I walked around a corner onto the road with the bus stop on it, the bus I wanted drives by and goes straight past the stop I was headed for, without stopping, 3 goddamn minutes ahead of schedule. 3 minutes. Ahead of schedule. For a bus that runs every 30 minutes.
So, uh, what the fuck am I supposed to do at that point, exactly? Wait for half a fucking hour for the next one? Are you fucking kidding me?
Or what about on Wednesday, where I was going to meet up with some friends in town. I had plenty of time, and thought it might be nice to have a drink with them while I was there, so I decided to take the bus instead of driving. Got to the bus stop 5 minutes ahead of schedule. Waited. And waited. And waited. For 20 minutes. So, 15 minutes after the bus was due, and running out of time to meet friends and have enough time to have a drink before we were due to go off and do something else, I was effectively forced to abandon the wait and get my car and drive into town. Having spent 20 fucking minutes standing around like a bloody lemon for nothing. And then having to pay for parking. And not being able to have a drink, because I was driving.
So yeah, fuck you.
And all of that is on top of years of shitty bus services. Of getting to a bus stop a bit early, and having the next bus be so late that if the bus before it had been as late as it was, I'd have been able to catch that. Except it wasn't, so I couldn't. Or of having to sometimes wait more than 20 minutes for a bus that's supposed to come every 10 minutes.
If buses not being able to keep to schedule wasn't bad enough, even the scheduling makes no goddamn sense half the time. Near me there's a road that runs into the town centre, and there are 4 or 5 different bus routes that run down it into town. 2 or 3 of these buses run somewhat regularly after 6pm - every 20 mins or so. So with anywhere between 6 and 10 buses per hour running, you'd expect the maximum wait to be fairly low. Except the buses seem to be scheduled so that buses on the different routes all arrive within 5 minutes of each other - on purpose - and then there are no buses at all for 15+ minutes. How do you even manage that?
Why don't you just admit defeat, and instead of timetables put up signs on the bus stops saying "Some buses will probably turn up eventually. Probably." That would, at least, lower expectations to be more in line with what reality appears to be, and therefore reduce the levels of stress and anger in the city by significant levels.
So if you're ever wondering why bus use is declining - that's why. You're fucking shit, and you make it impossible to rely on buses to actually get where you want to go at any particular time.
So I wanted to catch a bus earlier. I'd looked up the timetable and made sure to get to the stop I wanted a couple of minutes ahead of schedule. Only as I walked around a corner onto the road with the bus stop on it, the bus I wanted drives by and goes straight past the stop I was headed for, without stopping, 3 goddamn minutes ahead of schedule. 3 minutes. Ahead of schedule. For a bus that runs every 30 minutes.
So, uh, what the fuck am I supposed to do at that point, exactly? Wait for half a fucking hour for the next one? Are you fucking kidding me?
Or what about on Wednesday, where I was going to meet up with some friends in town. I had plenty of time, and thought it might be nice to have a drink with them while I was there, so I decided to take the bus instead of driving. Got to the bus stop 5 minutes ahead of schedule. Waited. And waited. And waited. For 20 minutes. So, 15 minutes after the bus was due, and running out of time to meet friends and have enough time to have a drink before we were due to go off and do something else, I was effectively forced to abandon the wait and get my car and drive into town. Having spent 20 fucking minutes standing around like a bloody lemon for nothing. And then having to pay for parking. And not being able to have a drink, because I was driving.
So yeah, fuck you.
And all of that is on top of years of shitty bus services. Of getting to a bus stop a bit early, and having the next bus be so late that if the bus before it had been as late as it was, I'd have been able to catch that. Except it wasn't, so I couldn't. Or of having to sometimes wait more than 20 minutes for a bus that's supposed to come every 10 minutes.
If buses not being able to keep to schedule wasn't bad enough, even the scheduling makes no goddamn sense half the time. Near me there's a road that runs into the town centre, and there are 4 or 5 different bus routes that run down it into town. 2 or 3 of these buses run somewhat regularly after 6pm - every 20 mins or so. So with anywhere between 6 and 10 buses per hour running, you'd expect the maximum wait to be fairly low. Except the buses seem to be scheduled so that buses on the different routes all arrive within 5 minutes of each other - on purpose - and then there are no buses at all for 15+ minutes. How do you even manage that?
Why don't you just admit defeat, and instead of timetables put up signs on the bus stops saying "Some buses will probably turn up eventually. Probably." That would, at least, lower expectations to be more in line with what reality appears to be, and therefore reduce the levels of stress and anger in the city by significant levels.
So if you're ever wondering why bus use is declining - that's why. You're fucking shit, and you make it impossible to rely on buses to actually get where you want to go at any particular time.
(no subject)
On Thursday I had to get buses to a medical appointment, because the Door 2 Door service for disabled people is run 10 times more incompetently than regular buses so is hardly ever available, and when it is available they think nothing of being an hour late or an hour early. I went on Journey Planner to check bus times, because since the attempt to re-organise (save money on) all our buses a couple of years ago, they've been switching around a lot, trying to make up for that epic incompetence. Only the information on Journey Planner wasn't up to date. My bus to my appointment was redirected over every speed bump in Waverley, getting me there 15 minutes late and in a lot of pain. Then after my very rushed appointment I got to the bus stop home, only to find a yellow sign on it announcing another redirection. After frantically talking on the phone to Travel South Yorkshire to get clarification on the redirected route, and us both agreeing which road it would be going down instead, I saw my bus totally bypass that route altogether and sail off down another, different road. This bus is once an hour, and I was not well enough to be dealing with any of this. I didn't have the option of just going and getting in a car. Of course, First buses don't answer the phone, so even though I should have been able to get them to arrange a taxi to get me home, in practice this is never actually possible, and they don't give a shit when you complain. I've had the same bus drive right past a _mandatory_ stop at the bus station, and had First just say hard shit they can't contact the driver.
Oh and the story above doesn't end there. I made my way to a different stop that the bus I wanted did seem to now be stopping at. A few minutes later another wheelchair user showed up at the stop. First will point blank refuse to take 2 wheelchairs on a bus, even when it's possible to fit them on.
I probably should have phoned for a taxi. Except it's not at all unusual to wait an hour for a wheelchair accessible taxi (and have several taxi drivers accept the job then drop it when they realise it involves a wheelchair during that time, meaning you never know when one is actually going to turn up).
In those circumstances I find it hard to care about whether someone else can have a drink. But I hope you're righting to the bus companies concerned, because not everyone is able to do that, especially people who have been having the same struggles for decades and just have to live with it.
(no subject)
When I started doing that, I did get angry at first at the complete incompetence of the buses, but that fairly quickly morphed into patience borne of resignation, apathy and contempt. That's probably for the best, as being angry for 3 hours every day that wasn't even to do with my actual job would probably have given me a number of long-term health issues.
So, yeah, this is a very long-standing complaint.
But since having a car and reducing my bus use to 2-3 times per week, usually with almost no worries about punctuality (yeah, I'll get to the pub when I get there, no problem) it seems that patience and apathy has had time to wither and die. The occasional time where I have wanted to catch a specific bus has made me angry, and I've thought about making a post like this for a couple of years now.
It's just this week where I was stopped from doing 2 specific things, that I'd decided I'd wanted to do and was really looking forward to, within a couple of days of each other, that I finally had the furious motivation to actually bother making a post about it.
Sorry the buses have been shit for you too.