Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2011-05-25 12:01:36 - Graham Ellis
We're currently in the USA - the land of the automobile - but we don't have a car, and we're making uses of buses - "shuttles" to get around between the various places we're visiting. Illustration - Lisa (my wife, for anyone who's new to this blog) and Zyliana (our Amercan grandaughter) await the bus to Downtown yesterday evening. As ever, I look at the public transport transit system when I'm away and ask "what can I learn from it?".
• Buses run every 20 minutes on most routes - and with timing like that, you just turn up and ride at the bus stops. That's probably a good target frequency for a "turn up and go" service around a neighbourhood such as Melksham, and it encourages people to use the service. People with cars use the buses too - perhaps the per day parking charges at places that the buses serve encourages that, as does the fact that the bus stations are close in to the destinations, 'inside' the car parks if I can describe it in that way.
• Information of buses - route maps, timetables, etc, is sadly lacking. It works very well if you're doing the standard tourist "thing", but if you need to be at an evening venue for a 09:30 a.m. meeting before heading on for a day at a daytime venue, it's hard to find out the best way to do it, services are limited at that 'early' hour, and we spent an AWFUL lot of time on the bus. Hindsight tells me that it was like taking the Circle line from Paddington to Edgware Road .... via Victoria and Aldgate.
• Routes can also be slow in "mopping up" people from stops in an area, and there's often the feeling that "I could have walked that quicker". But then all buses are easy access, and the wheelchair access is superb. Pushchairs strollers need to be folder, but adult powered chairs are commonplace (frighteningly so if you wonder about the physical condition of the human race as a whole) and every bus has loading capabilities, with slopes and ramps all over the place. Being a "new" country, this part of the USA doesn' have the historic UK heritage fabric to preserve which makes access hard in the UK at times.
• Health and safety seems to have gone very strong here too. You see the driver walking around his bus and checking the tyres tires after each journey. You see the ferry captains tying up front and back to the landing stage dock before they open the passenger gates, and speedwalking around in an almost comical manner to get the job done with one foot always on the ground. My more brusque approach says "oh goodness - why not just let people step on and off themselves" but perhaps the typical visitor to these parts is not transport savvy. I certainly wouldn't want to see people only being allowed onto the platform at Trowbridge when the train has actually arrived, and then the train not being able to leave until the last arriving passenger is cleared off there.
We're currently in the USA - the land of the automobile - but we don't have a car, and we're making uses of buses - "shuttles" to get around between the various places we're visiting. Illustration - Lisa (my wife, for anyone who's new to this blog) and Zyliana (our Amercan grandaughter) await the bus to Downtown yesterday evening. As ever, I look at the