Passengers

So, fewer people are traveling on buses, according to the Audit Commission. I wish I could say this was a surprise, but it’s really not.

Outside London and the major cities, bus services are notoriously crap at the best of times. When I was in Manchester I used the bus services a lot, and while they were fairly comprehensive, it was still a pain in the arse most of the time. (And particularly so when the company doing them was First Bus, who should be first against the wall when the revolution comes) But since moving to Bracknell, I don’t think I’ve used a bus once. There’s a lot of reasons for that, but just a couple are :

• The service is crap
• The buses themselves are crap
• They’re bloody expensive
• and it’s nigh on impossible to find out what’s running when

So overall it’s not hard to see why I don’t use them.

A perfect case in point comes when you realise that First Bus run the services in Bracknell and Wokingham, but if you look on that site, you’ll find no mention at all of that fact.

When you’ve finally found the route information and timetable, it turns out that Wokingham to Bracknell takes at least twenty minutes by bus, as opposed to five on the train. And what happens when you try to find out how much it’ll cost? You get this. Fucking hell, that’s helpful. Not.

So is it really any surprise that less and less people are travelling by bus? No, not really.