Standing in the rain waiting for a bus to to take me to complete my Christams shopping I used the text message advertised on the bus stops which enables you to know when the bus is coming. True – I got a few odd looks from the rural bus queue in Oxfordshire as I typed in the numbers to text but I really do find it helpful and so far the bus has always arrived within 4 minutes of the stated time and usually within two minutes – not bad. I like new technology!
Happy holidays and New Year to all blog readers!!
Complements of the season to the noble Lord Soley, and many thanks for his good companionship in 2011.
I am lucky with the bus times since I can see it, about a mile and half away, I may have mentioned, so my bus shelter is my upstairs bedroom, but I know that quite a few people do use the “on time or not” system to check its arrival, and then suddenly appear from their homes, like magic, just as it arrives.
I am very lucky indeed with buses, drivers, passengers, times, the lot in this part of the country. They are very good to me. They have just installed the bus pass automation system on all these buses, commissioned a few weeks ago.
Enjoy the festivity. Mine is music, Radio 3 being such excellent fayre every year, without fail. Music,and singing, they say, is the best kind of prayer, and it certainly is so for me, but there are so many people who have other ways!
That’s good news, thank you
(from an octogenarian, near-lowest-permanent-income impairee, UK state-pensioner male and his older caree more-and-differently-impaired neighbour f;
neither having wheels except 2 each on shopping ‘jeeps/trolleys*’)
However,
we are in Plymouth Devonshire where some of the Bus-drivers, especially the dominant red Citybus (now-‘private’ company***), choose to ignore one’s held-up hand if their list-of-scheduled-stops does not include that particular stop and/or specific-time,
this latter being despite previous letters to both Company and MP, answers to which have said “all drivers are being NVQ-trained, and must stop at any and all busstops for someone holding up their hand”.
But some drivers still go on (not stopping; still arguing “not listed for this bus to stop at”)).
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* two-wheeled shopping trolleys, which really need securely tying** to a rail aside from the main aisle
** which I (we two) have been achieving (for over ten years, almost on a daily basis) by the simple means of two appropriate lengths (each trolley) soft-flexible clothesline rope one for the top handle and one for the bottom wheels to prevent them rolling when the bus corners, yaws, rolls, rocks, brakes hard, or when happens such trolley had to be lifted up into the main luggage place, and happens to be alongside someone else’s goods as half-a-dozen open-topped plastic shopping bags any one of which may contain half-a-dozen eggs and/or an iced Victoria sponge (for the children of course);
we have yet to see any other bus-traveller in the Plymouth area utilising the same or similar ‘trick’ of tying-up.
(I have seriously suggested (but not yet copywrighted) to Plymouth City Bus that any fit-for-purpose (more advanced NVQ) driver be allowed to make a personal-penny selling such short lengths of soft-rope to willing, anxios, or craving passengers
(so far only smiles from individually-lobbied drivers has resulted).
(((*** “private company” but probably continued from days of yore when Plymouth City Council sort-of-ran these red buses, the tickets have in blatant falsehood (and I personally claim, in outright malfeasance) stated that they are “Free”
(incidentally First National tickets did not make such false-claim, stating more correctly and truly-informatively “Concession Travel (to those with appropriate Passes or Cards) ).
Recently the Plymouth Citybus ticket has been re-designed, downsizing the font and positioning of that claim; but it is still there, printed on the ticket
(and alas! incidentally the new First National ticket now includes the same falsehood, similarly shows in small-font as “free travel”).
((*** and “private-“, it is strongly arguable that there is no such moral nor legitimate thing as a “private” company/car/person (the latter alone could be legitimately and morally ‘private’ only in a time of life-threatening and impairing Distress such as in the terminal-bed corner of the hospice, or local cold-winter-night Public Park or Gardens.
The rest are very Public Matters e.g. over-destroying/extincting Earth’s Lifesupports and non-renewable civilisation-supports.) ))
Note: For “private”-citizens
(in the own-your-own-private-car-tradition-and-personal-right; and to get-your-own-free-bus-pass-for-Park-‘n-Ride)
the truth about such Concession Cards or Passes is
that they have already been pre-paid by our various Taxes which, even in the case of the advanced-and-terminally-aged, we are daily paying in the form of VAT*****.
So they are “Prepaid Cards – for Concession Card holders;
they are not and never will be “Free”.
***** “Value Added” = another malfeasant falsehood (similar to up-for-business-as-PM, should-appointed-PM-Cameron-drop-dead (+) , Foreign S Hague’s blatant lie, to the whole World not just the UK, during his electioneering 2010, that
“Brown was never elected by The People but Cameron is being elected ‘Prime Minister’ by The People”)
when “Value” has not been added for the citizen, but “Profit” has been added for the already-obscenely-bloated-rich-at-the-Top-and-the-Helm).
(+) see Lord Norton’s recent post on If the PM dies.
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So me and my caring caree-neighbour ‘ll be trying-out your now publicly-uncovered great discovery, thank you Lord Soley, of as-often-as-publicly-possible cellphoning the Bus-Schedule InfoHQ.
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And we would each gladly ‘reciprocate’ your Christmas and New Year good wishes,
with
All the seasons presence
“we have yet to see any other bus-traveller in the Plymouth area utilising the same or similar ‘trick’ of tying-up.”
That was a good creative piece MJSD! highly amusing James Joyce style stream of consciousness in which even the hyphens and gryphens are effective!
The only time i have had to tie anything to the rail was when a French guard tried to throw me off his train because it did not take bikes, after I had waited two hours to get it.
Since he only wanted the bike off, I tied it to the rail with the padlock and squatted.
Meanwhile one kind gentleman who was keen on spreading the good word of Cycling to the heathens in the Uk, took up the cudgels on my behalf, and had the whole compartment jeering at the nazi swastika style guard, and cheering for my rights and me, “le pauvre Anglais”. When I told them I was Welsh and not English,(would that help?) the applause went through the roof!
I got to Paree in one piece, my trusty steed
still with me.
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Damory buses which serves most of Dorset, is so attentive to detail that they even send out a vintage bus which has done about 2 million miles in the course of its career.
A rare treat indeed.
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I had to get a car since they were going to cancel all services.
Then the transport secretary decided to maintain rural bus services a few months later.Round here they were improved . I sold the car immediately and ….. made a profit on the sale! I’ve used the buses ever since.
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National Express is looking good, instead of SWT, who exercised a thoroughly cheating and foul Corporate Theft upon me recently.
I complained; the customer relations asked me what I was “alleging” against the firm.
I gave up, but I did think of enquiring whether the terminology of “allegation” also assumed that such a corporation is capable of being charged with crime, which is surely the implication of the word?
The National Express winter time fares, with a coach card, are about half the Train fare, on any given journey.
The only problem with that service is they charge you an extra amount on top of your usual text message charge. If you have a smartphone (or web-compatible phone) you can use the Oxontime website for a live update at no extra cost. This is generally reliable, although some buses seem not to have the necessary equipment onboard, so simply don’t appear on the list.
My most convenient bus is a hail-and-ride bus which has no bus stops. So there is no timetable to consult, nor one to display the number to call. The problem with London’s dot matrix display screen at bus stops showing when the next bus is due is that the criterion for installing them is the amount of passengers using that stop, which usually ties in with locations that have frequent buses. It is actually the locations with infrequent buses that need them the most. The necessity of adhering to timetables is also greater for infrequent services than the frequent ones, yet we have all experienced that maddening phrase “This bus is being held to better regularise the service” announced a couple of stops short of the terminus where a tube connection awaits. Quite pointless as those relying on the timetabled service are usually not waiting two stops from the end of the route.
Alsa the Spanish bus group has gone quite international, and also its website can be translated.
The fares are so good and it takes so long to get there, it makes quite an enjoyable journey in itself,so I’ve been planning a trip to Sevilla, Spain , and Cadiz, and back, whilst the winter is upon us and the fares rock bottom.
I’ll get the first stage outside the door here.
The Daily Mail headline that there were more than twice as many people of a certain age registered with, and using facebook in the UK at the last election than there were people voting, of the same age, surely goes to show how rapidly US gadgetry is running away with democracy not just in the Arab and Persian world but in the UK too.
If all those people were registered to vote
from their mobiles or computers, in the same way as I can buy a bus ticket delivered to my mobile, then our voting democracy would be in much better shape.
The rapidity with which the summer riots spread from town to town in a hot August, is surely proof that messages received on gadgets are proof positive that something is going to happen?
Voting procedure only needs proof positive.
Yet Clive felt a bit odd standing at the bus queue finding out the time of the bus.
At a general election a voter might well be standing at a bus stop voting for his local council/parliament member using a text message, and a voting number.
Clive may have thought he got odd looks; he did not. It just goes to show, when a fairly well switched on former MP imagines thus, how out of touch with the digital technological world parliament is.
Being so, out of touch, and actually ignoring it completely, as a democratic voting procedure, may come to haunt it.
As someone who’s had an amateur radio licence for many years, I remember when we used to get odd looks when walking down the street talking to a handheld radio. With modern handsfree mobile phones, seeing someone walking down the street apparently talking to him (or her) self is now fairly commonplace.
People are surprised if you don’t DaveH. It’s not just commonplace!
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The problem with Lords Reform Bill is going to be how to get rid of all the hangers on who have crowded in to the chamber in the last 18months.
824 Hangers on; all but about 100 of them at most.
How to get rid of them discreetly without upsetting them, such is their obsession with prestige and fame!
OR even if the number goes up to 1000 or 1500
just not to worry about it; all good for parliamentary business?
It’s as bad as, or worse than, when the Hereditaries wandered in from the City, for ten minutes, when their business was slack in Throgmorton or Threadneedle street, to bolster their funds.
Every second person in Piccadilly shopping is a peer now. Where will it all end?!!!!(Larf)