Councils' praise for bus routes - do you agree?

“Whiteladies Road is now a death trap for cyclists. A road that suddenly changes width with little warning. On part of the inbound section the road width is little more than a double decker bus. If one of those comes hurtling through and doesnt see you - you are a gonner - no where for you or the bus to swerve. As for the traffic lights by Clifton Down - there is not space for
two buses to pass. As we all know you wait ages for one to come then they all come at once. So if a bus stop can accommodate one/two....when three plus come they block the road and cause an even bigger tailback. As for the build out by the TA centre you can end up waiting here for up to five minutes or risk a dangerous overtake manoeuvre.
So what's going to happen? Cyclists take the only sensible course of action and cycle down the middle of the road. Bingo everything slows down to 10mph result more congestion more pollution and slower buses. And the removing of the cycle lane going up Blackboy Hill - well I pedal up at about walking pace. So the bus will have to wait.
And I thought Bristol was supposed to be cycle-friendly. More like "let's make it so dangerous everyone gives up and goes back to four wheels"
And until someone else takes over the running of the abysmal bus service and runs it for the benefit of travellers rather than lining the pockets of First's shareholders I'm afraid to say Tim Kent's vision of the future is looking as about as popular as the Occupy camp on College green.

What about running affordable buses that actually go where people want?
Where you don't have to change three times to do a mile-long journey -
That run early morning late night regularly?
Where drivers smile and actually have change in their till
Where the buses don't smell of wee
Where drivers help the disabled and parents with small children rather than sitting there behind their screen saying 'it's not my problem love'
etc etc etc”

“@Fuzzhead - "Not sure why I'm suddenly getting lots of red arrows for stating obvious, impartial facts? Obviously some fan of Mr Kent here, or a raging Tory who thinks privitisation is the answer to everything."


Hi Fuzzhead, I don't think that it's a Tory . . .


I think that the rating system could be improved by having two totals, one showing "Total Plus" and the other showing "Total Minus". Then we could see how many 'votes' we get, good or bad.”

“PS. That was tram, or tube”

“Went to Prague a couple of years ago. You bought a 80 cent or 1 Euro ticket in the local shops. This entitled you to travel any where for 1 hour, or 1½ hours. Drivers stopped at every stop almost. No money paid on bus at all. Warning about penalties if ticket inspector caught you without one. Tickets were time stamped when boarding. By he way the seat under the bus shelter was electrically heated.”

“What First are after is a prepay scheme for First alone, rather than one that will inculde Wessex and Abus.

Hence the joke - "London has only one Oystercard, but we'll have two!"”

“Kate_F touches on an important point - one of the major contributors to slow bus services in Bristol is the amount of time spent boarding. The cash system in use really is archaic. I regularly get on the 8/9 and spend more time stopped at the bus stop than actually travelling.
First have recently introduced "smart" ticket machines to most of their buses - however, these are only used for season tickets, 7 day passes etc., whereas the majority of people using the buses are paying a single/return fare.

Since they have already made a large part of the investment (installing the readers on buses) it seems ridiculous that there doesn't seem to be any plan to introduce a pre-pay smart card scheme (i.e. oyster) that would speed up boarding to probably less than a quarter of the time it takes now. Everyone walks past the reader, swipes their card, "beep", done.”

“Not sure why I'm suddenly getting lots of red arrows for stating obvious, impartial facts?

Obviously some fan of Mr Kent here, or a raging Tory who thinks privitisation is the answer to everything.”

“You can always tell a fanatic. They either want to privatise public transport, or nationalise Tesco.”

“Exactly, Spigett - that's why we have an expensive, poor service like First able to call the shots with little fear of challenge from BCC. It has to make a profit for its shareholders - they are it's priority by the nature of the animal, not the public. Same goes for privatised industries such as water, electricity etc.”

“"And now they are even trying to blame Mrs Thatcher"
-Privatisation of Public Transport was a complete disaster...”