by Martin Hoscik, Editor
First Published: Saturday 19 April 2008, 13:58
After a year of making regular(ish) trips to Brighton I've come to the conclusion that London bus drivers are a much nicer breed than their seaside counterparts.
Ever since I was a kid you could always rely on London drivers to tell you when you'd arrived at your stop or destination. It's also pretty common for other passengers overhearing you ask to grill you about where you're going and helpfully shove you towards the exit door when you get there.
The first time I asked a driver in Brighton to tell me when I'd arrived at my destination I got a curt refusal.
On my most recent trip I asked the driver for a single ticket to my destination only to receive a barked instruction that I should just say how much I wanted to pay. That probably works if you're a local with any knowledge of the poor-value bus fares in operation but when you're a visitor it just seems rude.
By contrast I recently saw a bus driver in central London tell a fairly large party of tourists boarding his bus that they'd save money if they delayed their journey long enough to go buy some Pay as You Go Oyster cards from the tube station opposite.
The other thing I've noticed is that fewer people in Brighton seem to thank the driver as they disembark than is the case in London despite many (all?) of their buses requiring you to leave through the door at the front.
One nice thing about Brighton's bus fleet is that some are named after local VIPs with short biogs inside to explain what they contributed to the area. It'd be nice if we could find space between the warnings to turn down your MP3 player and adverts to follow suit.
2. at 15:04 on Saturday 19th April 2008, Martin Hoscik (Editor) wrote:
And just to prove my point
www.theargus.co.uk/news/generalnews/display.var.2196553.0.bus_passenger_11_refused_child_fare.php
3. at 21:09 on Saturday 19th April 2008, CountryBoi wrote:
Are the buses in Brighton run by Arriva by any chance?
I live in rural Nottinghamshire close to the leciestershire border (gobbledygook to you Londoners i'm sure) are rural services are run by a very good local company called Trent-Barton and have been for donkey's years, the drivers are extremely polite, always tell you where your stop is (even though there is gps) you can text to find out when your next bus will be and the fares for some of the more popular routes have not increased since 2003!
Compare that to Arriva who control the buses in Loughborough and Derby Towns, huge fare hikes, perspex protected drivers who gruffly demand the fare, always accelerate off before your seated and will rarely tell you where your stop is.
Needless to say things were very different before Maggie deregulated the buses
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1. at 14:26 on Saturday 19th April 2008, Sara wrote:
Aren't all our buses called Mayor of LondON?