Catch it, ride it, love it… #CarsVTrains. The Bus.

Buses are crap.

I’m sorry, but they just are. You never know when they are going to turn up, and when they do, three of them come at once – and all of them are late.

  1. They’re slow.
  2. They smell disgusting.
  3. The people on them smell disgusting.
  4. They’re dirty.
  5. You can’t relax.
  6. You can’t get a seat on them when they’re busy.
  7. They’re crowded.
  8. They’re expensive.
  9. They’re freezing in the winter and boiling in the summer.
  10. They’re unreliable and break down.
  11. They get stuck in traffic.
  12. They’re out of date.
  13. And even new ones feel run down after a few months in service.
  14. They’re covered in graffiti.
  15. They’re noisy.
  16. They’re uncomfortable.
  17. They’re not that environmentally friendly.
  18. And they’re dangerous.

The bus offers no incentive to use as a mode of transport. If you want to catch one, you need to call on a fortune teller to predict when it’s going to arrive. When it does, you have to pay a fortune to get on it, and when you do, you’re greeted by a load of other people who don’t want to be stuck on this miserable piece of transport. Then, just when you think it can’t get any worse, it gets stuck in traffic.

The constant stop-start of traffic jolts you backwards and forwards and then, when you do break free, the driver makes for the next stop like he’s chasing Loeb around the Welsh mountains. He’s bound by a timetable so he’ll try and make up the time spent in traffic by speeding to catch up. On one occasion, I have seen a driver slam to halt from speed so fast; an elderly lady was launched down the centre of the bus, grabbed hold of two of the hold-on bars to stop herself going through the windscreen, only to then get perfectly horizontal before landing on the floor on her back. The episode was utterly hilarious, but also fundamentally dangerous.

I’ve witnessed buses pulling away with people half on who have then fallen and cracked their heads open and needed hospital treatment. I’ve been on a bus which played chicken will an oil tanker and I’ve seen someone be run over by one too.

Buses are too big and slow to work in the modern world. They offer no positive to either the users or the people held up by them. They attract vandalism and don’t even give you protection from the elements.

And trams are even worse. They combine the problems and negatives of trains with the bus – they are far less comfortable, more noisy and more expensive than the train itself, and don’t follow their own path, saving time. They have to drive down the same roads as buses and cars, only they can’t get around problems that buses and cars can. And they still get stuck in bloody traffic.

Waiting for a bus though, you get just as cold and wet as you would walking home. Only, it takes you longer. Catching one in the summer is a guarantee to heat stroke, and in the winter, you’re frozen food will remain that way – which is a good thing, considering how slow the damn thing is. And if it should snow, then its game over – I’ve spent 5 hours on a bus for a twenty minute journey before now.

Thinking about it, that’s the best way to describe the bus, you know. You ‘catch’ it. Just like you ‘catch’ a cold or an S.T.D. Thinking about, that’s probably where most of these things are spread…

The Bus. You catch more than that getting on one…

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