Plymothian Transit: Ranting

04 November 2009

Isnt it really annoying

I am a bus enthusiast. By definition that means I like buses. I like watching them, photographing them, and even riding on them. I could walk to work and save a lot of money in the process, but a combination of being a bus enthusiast and having a slight tendency towards fat lazy slobbism, I will always prefer to catch the bus. That enjoyment of bus catching doesn't stop me from suffering the same problems that many passengers moan about...

I am a quite patient bus passenger. I accept the fact that in Plymouth buses are going to be late occasionally. The buses I catch go through Derriford Hospital so late running buses are inevitable. As long as I am in a shelter if its raining, I don't mind waiting a while for a bus. However...

Isn't it really annoying when you see lots of buses going the other way while you are waiting? It really seems to rub it in! Tonight I was waiting for a bus at Leigham to make the short journey home to Keswick Crescent. I could have walked it in 10 minutes, but it was dark, damp and my son was tired so I was happy to wait 10 minutes or so for the 50 which was due at 18:00. In the end it turned up at 18:12.

Plymouth Citybus 118 L118YOD (by didbygraham)

This was our steed home tonight.

Like I said, I don't mind that, it has to come from the City Centre at peak time so late running is almost inevitable. What was really annoying was that in the twenty minutes we were waiting we saw a Target Travel 52A, a Citybus 46, and no less than THREE Citybus 50's going the other way! The 50s all came within 10 minutes which just made it worse.

This isn't a complaint at Citybus. (On the way home from Derriford there were two Ugobus 15's following each other out of Asda so it happens the them too.) If you run a bus service which goes anywhere near Derriford Hospital it must be almost impossible to run to time. Last month First claim to have managed to run 88.4% of services on time. To be honest I find that quite impressive if its a true reflection. How anyone manages that in Plymouth amazes me. We are just about to get extended road works along the main road through Crownhill for a few months so it is going to get even worse then! (Hopefully the improvements they are making will help once they are completed next year).

I have just been reading the latest Omnibuses post ‘Mystery Shopping’ and noticed a comment from Big G: ”Passenger Focus are currently conducting similar monitoring and research in the South West. I am aware that they started this in Plymouth on the 2nd November.” It will be interesting to see the results of that!

Of course there is technology to help bus passengers… However I couldn't see a code to send a text to get the next bus time, and it would have been even better if there was a real time display at the bus stop, which leads me to a final question for you all to have a go at...