Should someone who's been waiting longer than you at the bus stop always get on first?

[Letthebodieshitthefloor]

The bus I take is essentially a coach, always plenty of seats even at busy hours.

This morning I approached the bus stop, a woman was already there, and I saw her glaring at me because I was standing in the bus stop rather than at the side.

She then let another woman on first who'd perhaps been there longer than she had, then got herself in front of me and looked at me making sure I wouldn't get on before she did.

It's all a bit petty really, the bus was almost empty, it's not going to go without you.

If there were a pregnant/vulnerable/elderly passenger getting on and I could see there weren't many seats left then I'd let them on first.

My experience of almost daily bus use in London is that it’s not an actual queue in the sense that it’s one person after another snaking down the road, it’s a virtual queue. So you might have 5 people standing around roughly where the bus will stop, you might have 4 people sitting on the bus shelter seat, you might have another 3 hanging around a bit further away ( as they have the bus stop app on their phone and know their bus is 5 mins away)
It’s more that everyone roughly knows the length of time that people have been waiting and roughly board the bus in that order assuming that it’s the bus they want. I might be the only person getting on a particular bus even though there are 10 people at the bus stop.
It was chaos during the bendy bus days as people use to get on via the middle doors. Absolute carnage

You always know the order even without paying much attention!
Sometimes people queuing in the bus shelter start to look a bit anxious if there’s random waiters outside the shelter but the queue still goes in the correct order!
Quite a few men will gesture for women to go first. I gesture for elderly people, though if it’s an elderly man they often gesture back in which case I just go for it otherwise we’d be gesturing back and forth all day

Why don’t you drive? You are really lazy not to have bothered to learn to drive? What if your kids needed picking up at 2am? Call yourself a mother? How dare you have kids if you don’t drive? If you could/would drive you wouldn’t need to worry about scowling women at the bus stop would you? Just drive goddam you!

Don’t violate the British rule of queuing!!

Now it's all written down like this, it's really funny. Though I do do this. I'm also wondering if I have passed this knowledge on to my kids or if they have no idea. (Though one of them gets a bus to school every day).

DS (14) says they all get on the school bus randomly. He laughed at the idea they might get on in the order in which they arrive and asked why they'd do that. "What you mean in a queue? It'd take 10 minutes."

This is absolute madness - surely it depends on context? You queue at more rural/suburban bus stops, and at busy city bus stops it's more of a free-for-all as there are too many "queues" to know who is waiting for which bus?

I'll fully admit to gaming the system sometimes when it is raining - there were certain busy city stops where the elderly were given precedence to sit under the shelter (quite rightly), but I would know that the bus would always stop a little way past the 'entrance' to the bus stop, so I would wait in the rain on the other side of the entrance next to the ad board, because that's where the bus doors would open. I've waited in the rain, I'm definitely getting on first. Maybe it's from growing up in the savagery of the bendy bus era

@Letthebodieshitthefloor

A savage.. 😂 If you arrive later and there are many people there it's hard to know who got there first etc. Unless you form an orderly queue based on arrival time

If you arrive late, you let everyone already there on first...it's not that hard to understand.

Rationally if there are enough seats for people then it shouldn't really matter what order you get on in. Obviously for busy buses where there is a risk that people at the back of the line might need to stand or not even get on the bus at all it does matter.

However... I will, regardless of the above, judge the fuck out of anyone who knowingly jumps a bus queue or at least doesn't engage in the "was I here before you?" dance when the bus arrives.

@HandScreen what about in London where the might be 6 bus routes leaving from that stop? And 20 plus people waiting at or nearby the stop. Most of which might not even be getting on.

I'm shocked people care about this so much.

If there's 4 of you at the bus stop, perhaps but not in the example above, surely?!

Here in Edinburgh if you have a busy bus stop with a lot of different buses stopping, it's still regarded as correct to ask the people in front of you before pushing in. "Are you getting the 26?" If the answer is yes you step back and follow them on, if the answer is no then you can step past them with impunity. Very civilised! Until the festival when it becomes mayhem. But the offenders then can't all be from South London...

@Letthebodieshitthefloor

A savage.. 😂 If you arrive later and there are many people there it's hard to know who got there first etc. Unless you form an orderly queue based on arrival time

Are you in the UK. Surely there is already a clearly defined queue of people that you simply join the back of.If only 1 or 2 people then let them on first. Very rude to do anything else.

@2022WIP yep, easy process for this. Your number 11 turns up. Lots of people waiting pause for a minute to see who gets up then if your still not sure ask 'are you getting the number 11' bu the time you've finished asking the first person it's clear who is and is it and everyone has them selves in an orderly line.

looooooooool. this comment. ur funny. its unsaid politics

@liveforsummer

Have you ever got the bus in central London rush hour? It's not quite a system where you're all sitting down together and can ask all the passengers who is getting on.

The stop I get on at Marble Arch has about 30-40 people waiting during peak time. I'm pretty sure there is no queue system.

If the bus stops right in front someone getting on, they get on. If not, they move aside. Due to multiple buses stopping at once, lots of buses stop before or after the bus stop, so people walk to their bus and get on.

If someone asked me which bus I was getting on before they got on it, I'd assume they were planning on stalking me and killing me

Yes 30-40 people waiting at our busy city centre bus stops is the norm too. Many more at certain times of year. It's like a well oiled machine 😆.

First come first served. No one likes a pusher inner.

[quote liveforsummer]@2022WIP yep, easy process for this. Your number 11 turns up. Lots of people waiting pause for a minute to see who gets up then if your still not sure ask 'are you getting the number 11' bu the time you've finished asking the first person it's clear who is and is it and everyone has them selves in an orderly line. [/quote]
And by the time you've finished asking everyone the bus is gone.

@user123974397375 except that never happens. And I clearly said by the time you've asked the first person, usually the one next to you, others have moved and it's clear what bus they are getting. Takes more than a few seconds for 20 people to board a bus anyway especially as ours still take cash

@liveforsummer It never happens because no one really does what you're suggesting. It's too impractical, and 2022WIP clearly explained why.

On London, at stops on busy routes with lots of buses there is often more than one bus (maybe several) at the same stop at a time. They stop, open their doors and you go to them. They don't wait their turn to stop at a assigned spot as that'd slow the service down

Wow, that’s really crap if you happen to be in a wheelchair/disabled/a wee bit doddery/blind etc. a public service shouldn’t exclude members of the public like that

In Edinburgh, buses have to pull in at the actual stop, even on a, busy route served by many different services/bus companies. The other buses wait until the first bus moves away, and then take their turn. Ina busy city traffic, it doesn’t actually make much difference - yiu catch up at the next set of traffic lights.

And we stand in a queue, then when a bus approaches, you ask the folk in front “are you getting this bus?” Those getting the bus move to the right of the queue, and get on the bus.

Works perfectly.

It really does happen. Honestly.

I’ve recently started using public transport and the unspoken rules and etiquette are very interesting! People who arrive after me are very keen to make sure I get on before them. I’m quite happy just to get on board whenever as they bus won’t go without me! Men and younger people offer to let me on first, even if I arrive last. I’m not bothered about chivalry/respect your elders etc like my mum made us do for adults when we were kids but it’s nice to see people with manners. I will always hang back if people were there before me. Ladies who are older than me seem to treat it like a sport to get on first at whatever cost. I’ve seen a few arguments which just make me giggle. I just want to get on the bus, I don’t care in what order, but I’ll leave the competitive ones to get on first.

Are you not British OP? You can’t be otherwise you’d know the “secret rules of British life.” This is one of them.

My American friend is hilarious about this sort of thing & is constantly putting his foot in it.

@TrashyPanda

On London, at stops on busy routes with lots of buses there is often more than one bus (maybe several) at the same stop at a time. They stop, open their doors and you go to them. They don't wait their turn to stop at a assigned spot as that'd slow the service down

Wow, that’s really crap if you happen to be in a wheelchair/disabled/a wee bit doddery/blind etc. a public service shouldn’t exclude members of the public like that

In Edinburgh, buses have to pull in at the actual stop, even on a, busy route served by many different services/bus companies. The other buses wait until the first bus moves away, and then take their turn. Ina busy city traffic, it doesn’t actually make much difference - yiu catch up at the next set of traffic lights.

And we stand in a queue, then when a bus approaches, you ask the folk in front “are you getting this bus?” Those getting the bus move to the right of the queue, and get on the bus.

Works perfectly.

London and Edinburgh are a totally different kettle of fish, though.

According to Wikipedia...

The London bus network has over 6,800 scheduled services every weekday carrying about six million passengers on over 700 different routes making it one of the most extensive bus systems in the world and by far the largest in Europe.

I've had a quick google and can't easily find numbers for Edinbugh bus passengers, but I can find there are 70 routes and 700 buses, so it's nothing like the scale of London.

Also it's worth remembering that London is having to deal with that scale of traffic on streets often built for horse and cart.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but I know the bus passengers already on the bus would get really pissed off if you the bus had to wait till it was at the stop. On one road that springs to mind is a major changing point, when the busses stop, all the traffic has to stop. So if it's busy you have to wait about 10 minutes in a traffic jam, every time, to reach the stop as it's a bottle neck, and that's with 3 buses loading and unloading at a time.

If you had to wait for one at a time, I can't imagine how much slower it'd be and how much angrier everyone would get when they can see their destination but the driver won't let them off!