‘Getting a cab and travelling on buses/Reading the graffiti about slashed seat affairs’ is entertainment in the same way a ‘kick in the balls’ is according to Paul Weller. The Modfather was onto something.
I recently did something I have not done in a very long time: use a bus up North. It was truly an awful experience. The journey took almost two hours despite it only being a distance of 20 miles. It was slow, smelly, and uncomfortably warm which meant that the windows became steamed up. I also learnt more about my fellow passengers as one elderly lady pretty much shouted the graphic details of her last trip to the doctor to the passenger next to her. I can only assume that she felt the need to shout in order to be heard over the cacophony of music coming from various phones. Somehow I could still hear all of this despite blasting out My Chemical Romance (directly into my own ears).
I grew up on a council estate near Huddersfield and so getting the bus was an everyday occurrence. I’m now in a position where I no longer live up North and generally rely on tubes, trains, and Uber to get me about the place. I think I’d forgotten just how grim getting the bus can be and how little has changed since I was a teenager (a considerable number of years ago).
I realise that this makes me sound quite out of touch, but that’s also my point. People like me (and probably you, Dear Reader) don’t use the bus because we can afford not to. I get the tube in London or an Uber anywhere else. I can’t drive myself but owning a car would be affordable. I’m also fortunate enough that I live in a nice and safe area so I don’t have to worry about becoming yet another crime statistic if I choose to walk.
This is not the case for many people. They have no choice but to use the bus, no matter how unpleasant or inconvenient it is. Given that many of these people work really hard they don’t have much time to campaign, badger their MP, or write blog posts. As such, things don’t get any better and often become even worse. It really is the plight of the working class which Paul Weller did such a fantastic job highlighting with The Jam.
This is not fair and undermines the government’s attempts to Level Up the North. As I’ve written before, if Levelling Up is to mean anything, it should not mean trying to turn areas like Huddersfield into London or Silicon Valley. Rather, it should see people living in these towns to be able to access employment opportunities in the surrounding towns and cities. We should also want to encourage people like you and me to ditch their car and take the bus instead.
The most obvious thing would be to increase funding. Local authorities should be encouraged to subsidise buses by levying more charges on motorists. This will no doubt be hugely unpopular and many will argue that it’s regressive, but it’s worth noting that motorists tend to be wealthier than people who rely on public transport.
Not only would this improve buses and allow more to be built, it will also help to reduce congestion. Bus journeys take far too long and it’s an incredibly stressful and frustrating experience being stuck in traffic for too long. Not only does it make commuters miserable, it also massively hampers productivity, costing our economy in a major way.
On a related note, we should also have far fewer bus stops. This might seem counterintuitive but as Tom Forth points out we have a lot of bus stops compared to many other nations. What we need instead are fewer stops but at much higher frequencies and average speeds. This is obviously true to experience as just when it seemed as though the bus is gathering speed due a break in the traffic it has to stop again to pick up more passengers.
All of this will not only massively improve the experience of those who have no choice but to use the bus, it will also encourage other people to use the bus as well. This will bring huge improvements to those on low wages, benefit our environment, boost productivity, and help to Level Up the country.
The government also obviously needs to look at investing in other forms of transport such as the railways and tram systems. However, investing in buses should be an absolute priority for the government.