Poor Man About Town

Today was a rainy soggy day. The buses were running like cattle trucks. I was in Sutton, I attempted to avoid the school crush and got to my bus stop at 2.45, the bus was running and the bus that I wanted zoomed by packed with passengers - it zoomed by 10 minutes later than what it said on the time table. The next bus came at 10 minutes later than what the time table stated - it was packed but the driver allowed us on. We reached Carlshalton; there was a mass of school girls who came on the bus like a flock of mad geese and sounding similar. Some girls tried to board the bus through the middle doors, but a West Indian man denied them entrance "get in the queue, respect", phew that was a relief. He then shut the door via the emergency control, well it was an emergency. The driver seemed panicked, he turned off the engine, but did not tell any of the girls to get off the bus nor did he shut the doors on his part of the bus. Eventually the bus moved off. Some of the girls sounded quite political commenting that the school should invest its money in buses rather than in laptops. Although they were quite loud and got on my nerves, they were quite well-behaved. Got off at Croydon to catch my connecting bus - it came, it was packed to the degree that faces of school kids were squashed up against the door windows - they looked in a complete state of resigned despair. Something told me, this is not right - Transport for London is crap, it does not care about its passengers, it could not manage a kiddies merry go round let alone a bus network.

Labels: buses, public transport, schoolkids, tfl, transport, transport for london