THE WHEELS ON THE BUS THAT DONT TURN ROUND (Arriva)

Member Name: paulc20001

Product:	Arriva
Date:	04/01/02 (217 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: get you from A to B

Disadvantages: A is not on the route

For those of you who have read me before you will have come to realise that I am not a nasty guy. I have a very good sense of humour, consider myself witty and very, very laid back.

UNTIL NOW!

Before you read on please note that I hope that I never have to write an opinion on Ciao (or anywhere else for that matter) in this frame of mind. What has put me in this state of cacophonia and mass hysterics?

PUBLIC TRANSPORT – and more importantly a bus company called ARRIVA.

Many of you out there, like myself, may have had to work over the Christmas and New Year holiday periods. Be it due to your own personal choice (as did I), or alternatively because you pulled the short straw and it was your turn on the rota (know that feeling!). As I am fortunate enough to be employed for a company that enjoy working for and pay me well for Bank Holidays, I decided to work Boxing Day and New Years Day.

Now like a lot of people these days I commute daily using public transport, 99% of the time by bus. My local bus company in Merseyside is called Arriva. I am fortunate enough also to live in an area with a normally very frequent bus route to and from work, taking approximately 30mins per one-way journey. I purchase a weekly ticket, costing £9.99, hich gives me unlimited usage for 7 days. The only snag being that I have to use Arriva buses only. This however is not too much of a snag.

After arranging my working hours over the festive period, I decided to check up on the bus timetables for running times – a little foresight came into play here. Just because I was working does not necessarily mean that public transport is running! Sorry, please excuse the overwhelming sarcasm, nasty trait of mine. Anyway, the quickest way to do this was, wait for it…the internet!!! Marvellous! Log on to the Arriva website and check out the times. Click, click,click……….SHIT!

NO BUSES RUNNING AFTER 4.30pm ( I wa
s finishing work at 9pm! )

After many more expletives and use of the vernacular, an overwhelming sense of calm took over me and rational thought materialised. Ring up the hotline on the website and find out was going on. So I did. No waiting, no queue, no annoying “select option 500/a to assist us with your enquiry”. Straight through to a lovely operator who advised me that the timetables had been revised and services would be as normal up to approximately midnight. Thank god for that I cried. Panic over.

So off I pop to work on Boxing Day about 12pm.

Now for some other strange reason, as I stepped on to the bus to venture into work another thought occurred to me – maybe the hotline operator had got it wrong. Call it paranoia, lack of faith in system, or sheer gut instinct. I call it common sense. As I get on this bus I feel this overwhelming urge to ask the driver the following question :

“What time does this route finish today?”

The driver, very helpfully, tells me that again normal services are up to midnight. Ok, that will do for me, end of paranoia. Now off to work.

After a rather pleasant day of doing basically bugger all and getting paid for it, 9.00pm arrives and it's time to go home. I make the usual 10 minute walk to the bus stop and await the bus due at 9.25pm. Home by 9.55pm. Great. Plenty of time to go for a drink with friends and unwind. So I wait at the bus stop. And I wait. And I wait. And I wait a bit longer. Eventually a rather nice passer by asks me what bus I’m waiting for. Then he tells me that that route had finished at 4.30pm. AAAARRRRGGGGGGHHH!!! Fortunately, there were still one or two buses running, albeit on routes totally out of my way. I therefore have to get 2 buses home, with a 30 minute wait in between. Total journey time 1hour 40 minutes, not 30 minutes. Needless to say when I did eventually arrive home well after 11.00pm the colourful lang
uage shattered the general ambience in the home.

To avoid repetition I will now add that the EXACT SAME THING happened on both Bank holidays.

One thing that did puzzle me rather was this - why were other lesser routes still running as normal from the same bus company (ARRIVA)? I asked a driver a few days later. His answer was straight forward enough.

The company was only running the subsidised routes.

Apparently some of the local routes are subsidised by local companies, therefore making them cheaper to run.

WHAT A LOAD OF TOREADOR FIGHTERS EXCREMENT! (work that one out, LOL)

I always thought that the whole point of public transport was to SERVE THE PUBLIC, not just certain parts of it. So Arriva get subsidies from companies, yet can’t obviously be bothered to serve the rest of the general public. What a warming, comforting thought that is. Tell you what Arriva, why don’t I pay a percentage of my annual wage to you in the vain attempt to have a service that I can rely upon. I don’t blame the hotline operator. I don’t blame the bus driver. They have jobs to do. Apparently Arriva pulled the plug on these Bank holiday routes at the last minute. Nice to know isn’t it.

And why does this happen? Simple. Deregulation and privatisation of the public transport system, that’s why. Long gone are days of a (fairly) reliable transport service. Basically it’s a case of hit and hope these days. Roll your dice and take your chances. I unfortunately find myself in a quandry. Like the proverbial man up a creek with no paddle (or even a boat) I have no choice but to use public transport.

Well done Arriva, you have now made it to the top of my (S)hitlist.

Paul

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