10:05am Friday 19th June 2009
AS I am currently not allowed to drive because I have been banned for speeding, I am trying to minimise the inconvenience to my family and friends, who are all otherwise very generously suffering for my misdeeds.
Whenever there is public transport available, I am using it.
I am as a result experiencing what many suffer on a regular basis.
This week’s joy came when I timed my business in Wycombe so that it finished in time to catch the 3.45pm Carousel bus that would take me half a mile or so from my home, as opposed to other more regular buses that deposit me a mile or more away.
There is only one of these buses in the afternoon.
I waited at the designated door and bay, having checked the display board first and seeing that it confirmed the information in the timetable.
I waited in vain. Three forty-five came and went.
I was then informed by two ladies who had also been waiting for that bus that they had been told that it had already gone – from a different bay at the other end of the bus station.
I found a Carousel employee, who explained that the bus had ‘probably not been able to get onto the allotted stand because the bus station was very busy at that time of day’. Why, I asked, had the illuminated display board not been changed to reflect that?
Believe it or not, the departures board is pre-programmed and cannot be changed to reflect actuality, rather begging the question why, given this patent absurdity in a new state-of-the-art bus station, there couldn’t be a large notice somewhere explaining that the display board might be telling porkies.
I then asked why an announcement couldn’t be made of the change of stand for the bus.
He said there was no public address system available to them.
So given that there are several bus companies operating within the bus station, there must be many occasions where the first-time user of a service is completely stranded by an unannounced changed departure point.
They even have notices telling us not to go outside, but to wait inside until the bus arrives – thereby ensuring we can’t see the bus pull into a bay 50 yards away, if we happen to know what it looks like and our view isn’t obscured.
Everything of course is done in the interests of the passengers – for our safety and convenience.
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