I went for years, decades actually, using our local bus service with increasing infrequency. Slow, crowded, expensive, I found it better to walk, cycle or get the train. Then came the Metrobus and I found bus services to be punctual, comfortable and inexpensive. Or at least that’s what I was thinking until yesterday.
We decided to let the trains take the strain and travel from Bristol Parkway to Clifton, a relatively simple trip involving a change of train at Temple Meads. So simple, that is, until our train rumbled in half an hour later (excuse: the train was late coming from the depot) and we missed our connection. Worse than that, the subsequent train had been cancelled. This meant taking the bus.
The bus was inevitably late and, once we got on it, very crowded. We stopped everywhere for ages, the driver in no hurry to go anywhere, allowing the bus engine to cut out from time to time, taking an age to process fares. Where was this brave new world? “This is normal, mate,” said a fellow passenger, as I mumbled disapprovingly about the abysmal service.
It was like being transported back to a different era, except that, from what I was beginning to understand, this was the same era as before. Grim, overcrowded, expensive buses were still the norm.
Two hours after we left home, we finally arrived at our destination on Whiteladies Road courtesy of the worst public transport systems you could ever imagine. There was nothing enjoyable about missing connections, cancelled trains, painfully slow buses that spent more time stopped than moving. And you were reminded, as if you needed reminding, why so many people preferred to sit in traffic in their cars rather than suffer the misery of using Bristol’s woeful public transport system.
The Metrobus is terrific but it appears to be a rare exception. Doubtless, the people who run the service will soon downgrade it so it fits in more neatly with the shambles the people of Bristol have to endure on a daily basis.
