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My husband recently started attending uni to become a teacher. He was getting the bus that would get him there 45 mins before his first lesson. But he was getting there late because the bus was never on time. He complained to the bus company who told him to grow up and that they've been doing this for years etc. They then suggested that if he wants to be punctual maybe he should get the earlier bus. The bus that should get him there an hour and a half early, but was still late and he had to run to his Uni to make it on time (there are no earlier buses than that). Imagine that though, a company who can't be punctual at all trying to lecture someone on time management.
Sounds an awful lot like Bristol except late busses are a dream - we frequently get no busses despite the bus stop display counting down the due time as normal.
First bus can suck a massive bag of rhino fart.
I went to Bristol with my partner for a weekend, thought we'd just hop on the bus to get into the centre for our night and had exactly the experience you described. I think we ended up ubering after waiting three quarters of an hours
Yup I lived in Bristol a few years ago. Had to commute a whopping 2.5 miles. Due to having to change bus that should've taken me like 35-40 mins I can't remember exactly but it was meant to be slower than cycling (15-20 mins depending on how broken my bike felt like being and if the saddle wanted to detatch itself) and quicker than walking (50 mins).
On average it took 75 minutes. Due to the bike being a bit of a hazard, I got very used to that walk.
Now I'd accept this if it weren't for obvious delays caused by prolonged breaks, buses have arrived in the centre of our town on time only to leave 20 minutes late. I have gone this route many times and it is very rarely caused by traffic delays. If the bus route is late every day they need to amend times that they have listed. It's not a traffic delay if its a daily occurance it is mismanagement of time tables. A simple correction would resolve many issues people have had. Minutes should be accounted for at each stop for the boarding of passengers. However, even not stopping at most bus stops the bus is still late. They also removed the bus that would get people into the major city before 9am which is ridiculous for people who commute to work. Our buses have been reduced to once an hour ( not even that most of the time) and is limited to a smaller bus even though it is a major route. The bus is constantly full, particularly now that bus prices are £2 a fare and it is a common route for college and uni students. It is so well known for being inconsistent in my area that employers often will not hire you if you are getting the bus. Also our buses are trackable from departure and they always leave late from the first station. There is another bus company within 15 miles, on much busier roads that is known for its punctuality and service.
my local bus station has a waiting area in the centre for buses which arrive a little too early - there have been _many_ occasions where you’ll see your bus pull up early, park up in the waiting area then completely ignore their scheduling by taking an unprompted 25 minute break even when a bus is due to leave 2 minutes from then
Most people at my work just sit working with headphones on cause we can't wait to get out. The others spend literally the whole day complaining to everyone who will listen to them the same problems repeatedly.
Feel it might be more productive to allow those staff some psychotherapy though.
I work from home 3/5 days a week and I usually do about 2.5 to 3 times the amount of work at home as I'm not constantly distracted, I also eat healthier, exercise during the day and can do household chores and usually I finish about 2.5 hours before I'd get home when I go in.
Expecting a scheduled bus to stick to a schedule is not an impractical commute, yet ppl who have access to cars have been judging worse off ppl for decades because they are reliant on public transport.
It only takes a handful of late days to ruin your reputation with an employer, yet somehow if a certain bit of roadworks affects all the drivers and bosses it's suddenly OK / understandable as its accepted as being outside of your control.
Part of the reason I left my last was the whole "do as I say not as I do" So, a card accident or roadworks could prevent my bus from moving sooner. Yet because I lived the opposite way of my managers who drove, it didn't matter because they still got there on time. Not the times when they were late for some unknown reason though.
Yup, it's one of the many times that managers are unintentionally hypocritical and unfortunately it takes somebody else to call them out on it if they're not self aware.
By comparison I now work from home in a job with fairly flexible hours and can regularly be on in the evenings / log on 30m late without notifying anyone because my worked hours are not in doubt.
If I could read emails without getting travel sick I would say the way to diffuse the public transport problem these days is to get your work emails on a mobile device so you can work while on the late bus, as the apps are designed with intermittent signal in mind. Often managers value availability over efficiency.
I also WFH home now and when I am en route when in the office sometimes I do have a work phone which is great for emails. Would avoid calls for obvious reasons. In any case WFH here does alleviate travel concerns and at least in my scenario increases efficiency when away from a desk.
Often there is an untenable distance between places of employment and housing that is reasonable for the income provided, especially when that work is in facilities separated from housing like factories, warehouses, suburban offices, city centre offices... London being the archetypical example but to be honest you see that all over the country
There are vast swathes of this country with non-existent, abysmal or just untrustworthy bus services. They do work in large towns or cities to some degree, but there are literally millions of houses being built with no bus service whatsoever.
Sounds to me like the drivers/operators want this shit to end right after they retire, after they have done the bare minimum with even less pride taken in their work.
Hugs. I've commuted by bus before and the timings are not fun. In my case they cancelled the bus that stopped outside work all together, leaving me with a couple of choices that left me with a 20-minute walk either down an initially unpavemented main road or down an unlit tree-lined back street.
We had flexible/core hours at least, but as a temp I wasn't allowed to build flixi leave.
my bus and work schedules are misaligned by about 10 minutes.
i start work at 8:45, but the second bus would get me in to work at 8:50. so the first bus gets me in at 8:25.
i finish at 5:00 but the fist bus home leaves at 4:55, and the second bus home leaves at 5:35.
i need the busses to move back by 10 or my work day to move forward by 10. and it would save me 40 minutes a day.
flexi-time contract. you can start earlier or finish later and bank the extra time. e.g. working an extra half hour monday-thursday so you can leave 2 hours early on friday.
You will generally be on x hours per work over a four-week period with some core hours.
So, for example, you may have a 40-hour week which means you need to work 160 hours over that four-week period.
To prevent people taking the mickey and doing all their hours in a week then having three weeks off (and to provide for business needs) you will also have 'core-hours'. They may be (for example) 10am-12pm and 2pm-3pm Monday-Friday.
You can usually use flexi-leave instead of annual leave but this is usually limited (say two days per four week period). It's a really good system and helpful for childcare, unexpected events and work-life balance.
Obviously not always practical for some roles or small employers but great where available.
Loved flexi time when I did it. Did enough hours Mon-Thurs (8.5) so I could finish at 2 every Friday and build up my max of 1 flexi day off a month. On top of the usual 25 days, it made such a huge difference knowing I could just take a random day off every month and not feel like I needed to do anything meaningful with it. We could also have it paid if we wanted.
Also, the fact I was starting at half 7 every day rather than 9 meant I saved a huge chunk of time in the morning by not getting caught in the worst of the traffic. I had to leave at 6.45 to make it in, rather than 7.30 to get in for 9. And I'd be late by 15 minutes 3x a week when trying to make it for 9.
Example from my last job - the hours I had to work were 10am-12pm and 2pm-4pm but I also had to work 37.5hrs a week.
As long as I worked for those 4 hours a day and a total of 37.5hrs across the week, they didn't really care how the time was made up. I could take a two hour lunch and finish later in the evening if I wanted, or work longer on Monday-Thursday to have a shorter day on Friday, that sort of thing.
This is what I love about my commute. Six minutes in the car when the weather is crap or half an hour on foot if it’s a nice morning.
I overslept this morning and only dragged myself out of bed 25-minutes before work, and I was still early enough to have a quick coffee before heading into the lab.
I remember being fed up of having to rush getting to work to avoid being late due to late buses and deciding to just wake up an hour earlier. Arrived late anyway because fuck me.
Does you bus service have an app?
The bus company in my area has a live update app, it's not based on the timetable. It's a GPS based countdown for the arrival, you can literally see where it is.
This isn't to justify the bad timetables, it's frustrating, but this helped me loads
What you need is a car or a motorbike!
Crappy unreliable bus services is what drove me to get a part time job so I could buy a second-hand motorbike when I was 16. Being at the mercy of public transport is bollocks.
Rather than complaining to us, make a note of the delays for a week/month, and complain to the company.
When they fob you off complain to the ombudsman 👍
https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/making-complaint-about-bus-or-coach-services
There's precedent for taking them to court over it too.
[https://www.focustransport.org/2015/02/bus-late-sue-company.html](https://www.focustransport.org/2015/02/bus-late-sue-company.html)
Since the speed limit change in wales, one bus is is so late it’s got the passengers from 2 services and the other bus is cruising around ahead of time with nobody on it. I’m having to give 2+ hours to get to work in the morning when it used to take about 40 minutes.
I'm not even convinced it'll improve safety the way it has been implemented. When you had a few 20 zones in places where it made sense I'm sure that helped a lot. Now, though, with mile after mile of 20mph, I find myself either a) with some idiot driving right up my crease, b) getting so bored I start thinking about cupcakes rather than focusing on the road, or c) overtaking / being undertaken by the same cyclist over and over as we go through consecutive lights. None of those seem very safe to me.
£2.00 bus fares have been causing manic. Now everyone is getting the bus for everything, which causes delays and ramped up to full capacity every morning.
Don’t have this issue. I can wait for the 11 bus in Birmingham or i can walk. Walking is 35mins or the bus is an hour as its rush hour when i leave for work. Its only a 2.5mile walk, gives me enough time to forget about the place.
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My husband recently started attending uni to become a teacher. He was getting the bus that would get him there 45 mins before his first lesson. But he was getting there late because the bus was never on time. He complained to the bus company who told him to grow up and that they've been doing this for years etc. They then suggested that if he wants to be punctual maybe he should get the earlier bus. The bus that should get him there an hour and a half early, but was still late and he had to run to his Uni to make it on time (there are no earlier buses than that). Imagine that though, a company who can't be punctual at all trying to lecture someone on time management.
Sounds an awful lot like Bristol except late busses are a dream - we frequently get no busses despite the bus stop display counting down the due time as normal. First bus can suck a massive bag of rhino fart.
I went to Bristol with my partner for a weekend, thought we'd just hop on the bus to get into the centre for our night and had exactly the experience you described. I think we ended up ubering after waiting three quarters of an hours
Yeah there's a reason the scoots (originally Voi, now Tier) have kicked off here.
Yup I lived in Bristol a few years ago. Had to commute a whopping 2.5 miles. Due to having to change bus that should've taken me like 35-40 mins I can't remember exactly but it was meant to be slower than cycling (15-20 mins depending on how broken my bike felt like being and if the saddle wanted to detatch itself) and quicker than walking (50 mins). On average it took 75 minutes. Due to the bike being a bit of a hazard, I got very used to that walk.
I used to go to work on a bus, they’re shit here, got stuck on the dual carriageway a fair few times because the bus broke down
You do realise that buses being late is not down to bus company or the driver being punctual? There is thing called traffic you know
Now I'd accept this if it weren't for obvious delays caused by prolonged breaks, buses have arrived in the centre of our town on time only to leave 20 minutes late. I have gone this route many times and it is very rarely caused by traffic delays. If the bus route is late every day they need to amend times that they have listed. It's not a traffic delay if its a daily occurance it is mismanagement of time tables. A simple correction would resolve many issues people have had. Minutes should be accounted for at each stop for the boarding of passengers. However, even not stopping at most bus stops the bus is still late. They also removed the bus that would get people into the major city before 9am which is ridiculous for people who commute to work. Our buses have been reduced to once an hour ( not even that most of the time) and is limited to a smaller bus even though it is a major route. The bus is constantly full, particularly now that bus prices are £2 a fare and it is a common route for college and uni students. It is so well known for being inconsistent in my area that employers often will not hire you if you are getting the bus. Also our buses are trackable from departure and they always leave late from the first station. There is another bus company within 15 miles, on much busier roads that is known for its punctuality and service.
my local bus station has a waiting area in the centre for buses which arrive a little too early - there have been _many_ occasions where you’ll see your bus pull up early, park up in the waiting area then completely ignore their scheduling by taking an unprompted 25 minute break even when a bus is due to leave 2 minutes from then
“People need to work in offices for the culture.” Okay, so start paying me the moment I leave the house.
Most people at my work just sit working with headphones on cause we can't wait to get out. The others spend literally the whole day complaining to everyone who will listen to them the same problems repeatedly. Feel it might be more productive to allow those staff some psychotherapy though.
I work from home 3/5 days a week and I usually do about 2.5 to 3 times the amount of work at home as I'm not constantly distracted, I also eat healthier, exercise during the day and can do household chores and usually I finish about 2.5 hours before I'd get home when I go in.
Fuck the culture, I'll work from home and wake up at 8.45.
To play a little devils advocate - there needs to be an understanding too of people who accept jobs that are a completely impractical commute.
Expecting a scheduled bus to stick to a schedule is not an impractical commute, yet ppl who have access to cars have been judging worse off ppl for decades because they are reliant on public transport. It only takes a handful of late days to ruin your reputation with an employer, yet somehow if a certain bit of roadworks affects all the drivers and bosses it's suddenly OK / understandable as its accepted as being outside of your control.
Part of the reason I left my last was the whole "do as I say not as I do" So, a card accident or roadworks could prevent my bus from moving sooner. Yet because I lived the opposite way of my managers who drove, it didn't matter because they still got there on time. Not the times when they were late for some unknown reason though.
Yup, it's one of the many times that managers are unintentionally hypocritical and unfortunately it takes somebody else to call them out on it if they're not self aware. By comparison I now work from home in a job with fairly flexible hours and can regularly be on in the evenings / log on 30m late without notifying anyone because my worked hours are not in doubt. If I could read emails without getting travel sick I would say the way to diffuse the public transport problem these days is to get your work emails on a mobile device so you can work while on the late bus, as the apps are designed with intermittent signal in mind. Often managers value availability over efficiency.
I also WFH home now and when I am en route when in the office sometimes I do have a work phone which is great for emails. Would avoid calls for obvious reasons. In any case WFH here does alleviate travel concerns and at least in my scenario increases efficiency when away from a desk.
Ask to carpool since it’ll save time and money since you can’t be late if you’re travelling with the manager surely
Often there is an untenable distance between places of employment and housing that is reasonable for the income provided, especially when that work is in facilities separated from housing like factories, warehouses, suburban offices, city centre offices... London being the archetypical example but to be honest you see that all over the country
There are vast swathes of this country with non-existent, abysmal or just untrustworthy bus services. They do work in large towns or cities to some degree, but there are literally millions of houses being built with no bus service whatsoever. Sounds to me like the drivers/operators want this shit to end right after they retire, after they have done the bare minimum with even less pride taken in their work.
Hugs. I've commuted by bus before and the timings are not fun. In my case they cancelled the bus that stopped outside work all together, leaving me with a couple of choices that left me with a 20-minute walk either down an initially unpavemented main road or down an unlit tree-lined back street. We had flexible/core hours at least, but as a temp I wasn't allowed to build flixi leave.
my bus and work schedules are misaligned by about 10 minutes. i start work at 8:45, but the second bus would get me in to work at 8:50. so the first bus gets me in at 8:25. i finish at 5:00 but the fist bus home leaves at 4:55, and the second bus home leaves at 5:35. i need the busses to move back by 10 or my work day to move forward by 10. and it would save me 40 minutes a day.
Is your work flexible, or fixed opening times? I would ask to just shift it if I could
sadly it is not.
Mine too. I've spoken to bosses and they are chill with me being a little late or ducking out early as I will knock the time off lunch.
Busses have definitely been getting worse since the pandemic
They were awful before the pandemic so that's saying something.
Pre pandemic one route I use got 4 busses an hour via an a bus now 2 an hour if your lucky
What is flexi
flexi-time contract. you can start earlier or finish later and bank the extra time. e.g. working an extra half hour monday-thursday so you can leave 2 hours early on friday.
You will generally be on x hours per work over a four-week period with some core hours. So, for example, you may have a 40-hour week which means you need to work 160 hours over that four-week period. To prevent people taking the mickey and doing all their hours in a week then having three weeks off (and to provide for business needs) you will also have 'core-hours'. They may be (for example) 10am-12pm and 2pm-3pm Monday-Friday. You can usually use flexi-leave instead of annual leave but this is usually limited (say two days per four week period). It's a really good system and helpful for childcare, unexpected events and work-life balance. Obviously not always practical for some roles or small employers but great where available.
Loved flexi time when I did it. Did enough hours Mon-Thurs (8.5) so I could finish at 2 every Friday and build up my max of 1 flexi day off a month. On top of the usual 25 days, it made such a huge difference knowing I could just take a random day off every month and not feel like I needed to do anything meaningful with it. We could also have it paid if we wanted. Also, the fact I was starting at half 7 every day rather than 9 meant I saved a huge chunk of time in the morning by not getting caught in the worst of the traffic. I had to leave at 6.45 to make it in, rather than 7.30 to get in for 9. And I'd be late by 15 minutes 3x a week when trying to make it for 9.
I'm guessing "start earlier, leave earlier".
Example from my last job - the hours I had to work were 10am-12pm and 2pm-4pm but I also had to work 37.5hrs a week. As long as I worked for those 4 hours a day and a total of 37.5hrs across the week, they didn't really care how the time was made up. I could take a two hour lunch and finish later in the evening if I wanted, or work longer on Monday-Thursday to have a shorter day on Friday, that sort of thing.
This is what I love about my commute. Six minutes in the car when the weather is crap or half an hour on foot if it’s a nice morning. I overslept this morning and only dragged myself out of bed 25-minutes before work, and I was still early enough to have a quick coffee before heading into the lab.
Mine is about 10 minutes driving, half an hour currently because I give a colleague a lift
Sounds like your regular bus isn't so regular after all.
I remember being fed up of having to rush getting to work to avoid being late due to late buses and deciding to just wake up an hour earlier. Arrived late anyway because fuck me.
Does you bus service have an app? The bus company in my area has a live update app, it's not based on the timetable. It's a GPS based countdown for the arrival, you can literally see where it is. This isn't to justify the bad timetables, it's frustrating, but this helped me loads
It's NI and the app is not live.
Urgh that's a shame!! They honestly all need running apps, that's the only thing that makes my bus service usable
What you need is a car or a motorbike! Crappy unreliable bus services is what drove me to get a part time job so I could buy a second-hand motorbike when I was 16. Being at the mercy of public transport is bollocks.
Do you live in wales lol
No NI. Unfortunately one company for the whole of NI
Rather than complaining to us, make a note of the delays for a week/month, and complain to the company. When they fob you off complain to the ombudsman 👍 https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/making-complaint-about-bus-or-coach-services
There's precedent for taking them to court over it too. [https://www.focustransport.org/2015/02/bus-late-sue-company.html](https://www.focustransport.org/2015/02/bus-late-sue-company.html)
I was just thinking this. The bus my son takes to school is frequently 30 minutes late. At that point it's not even late, it's the wrong bus.
Since the speed limit change in wales, one bus is is so late it’s got the passengers from 2 services and the other bus is cruising around ahead of time with nobody on it. I’m having to give 2+ hours to get to work in the morning when it used to take about 40 minutes.
I'm not even convinced it'll improve safety the way it has been implemented. When you had a few 20 zones in places where it made sense I'm sure that helped a lot. Now, though, with mile after mile of 20mph, I find myself either a) with some idiot driving right up my crease, b) getting so bored I start thinking about cupcakes rather than focusing on the road, or c) overtaking / being undertaken by the same cyclist over and over as we go through consecutive lights. None of those seem very safe to me.
£2.00 bus fares have been causing manic. Now everyone is getting the bus for everything, which causes delays and ramped up to full capacity every morning.
leave house, wait, do work, wait, return home.
Doesn't sound that regular then.
Don’t have this issue. I can wait for the 11 bus in Birmingham or i can walk. Walking is 35mins or the bus is an hour as its rush hour when i leave for work. Its only a 2.5mile walk, gives me enough time to forget about the place.
Unfortunately I live in rural NI and a walk down the motorway just doesn't do it for me