First Fecking Buses. Come rant with me

[onetiredmummy]

First Buses are shite!

I live about 20 miles away from a large city, & our childrens shoe shop recently closed so there is nowhere in the town to get childrens feet measured or buy them shoes. I needed a pair of school shoes as ds starts reception next week & thought it would be easy to nip into large city & get them. Recently sold my car as it failed MOT badly & couldnt afford to get it back on road with new baby as well.

For some reason my town is not considered important enough to frequently get new shiny buses with a pram/pushchair space & those nifty hydraulic doors that lower. Oh no instead we get ancient tattered old buses that fart fumes, that I would still be happy with if I could get a pram on there. With these ancient things there is a pillar thing bang in the middle of the door that means you can't get a pram inside without having to fold it up.

Now bear in mind that these buses come every 30 mins only. On Friday I tried to catch one, only to find it was one of the old ones. The driver said to me the only way I could get on was to fold the pram. What the fuck do this shit bus company expect you to do with a toddler & a 3 month old baby while you are folding the pram. Do they seriously expect me to take off the pushchair attachment & leave my baby in it with the toddler ON THE STREET or IN THE FUCKING BUS while I'm outside folding the chassis!

Obviously I'm not going to do this so I wait another 30 mins for the next bus, in the rain only to find its another ancient one & I still can't get on it!!

I'm so angry. & still have no school shoes. Is it really too much to expect a bus company to consider the needs of those with a wheelchair or pram & to provide services we can actually fucking use.

Rant over. Trying to get calm now.

I live in a city and we do have the shiney newish pushchair/wheelchair friendly First buses but they are still shite.

Nice drivers, but a completely haphazard approach to the concept of the bus timetable. Why doesn't the timetable allow for the peak times? Why don't they have more buses between 8 and 9, or 5 and 6? Why do they think they can stick to the standard day schedule at those times? Of course they bloody can't.

Ah yes, first buses

the reason i took lessons, passed my test, and bought my own car and insurance etc. im still better off than their fares

(though i had to abandon my one car per household principle and i do feel sad about that)

I no longer catch the First buses in our dear little city, because they turn up when they please, they're frequently filthy and I haven't got on one yet without being either ignored or in some part verbally abused by the driver.
Oh, and the fares are exorbitant.

That is crap. But it is poss if you get a fold up buggy, maclaren or similar. I used to get to the bus stop, take baby out, fold buggy, shove toddler on bus and get on with buggy and baby. Generally someone will help you with something.

TBH in a bind I used to hand the baby to the driver sit the toddler down, stow the buggy then retrieve the baby.

Oh yeah, I remember those buses all right! Three month old and me going to Alder Hey CHILDREN'S hospital. And the ONLY bus that went there did not have buggy/ wheelchair access. So ended up giving DD to driver, folded up pram (with assorted bottles etc falling out and rolling all over), heaved pram into luggage space, retrieved baby, and sat down. Then went through the same rigmarole when we got off at the CHILDREN'S hospital.

Yup, happy days, shite buses!

yeah cani join in , we have crappy service to no wheelchair friendly ones and is no way can lift ds and hold him while folding his wheelchair and lift them both on board and ds cant be left sat on bus seat either think 4 year old butmore 18 months old and bad balance so likely to hit the deck .London other day was such abreezewith buses

Whole reason I am learning to drive ,

Hmmmm agree 'tis hard but is also very do-able.

All our buses are as you describe and are my only form of transport, also with toddler and baby and often a lot of shopping, (including food shopping) I also think generations before us have managed and also people with a lot more children.

So I feel your pain but YABU.

Oh god that just brought back memories of the buses in Cornwall. I was pregnant at the time, and watching people with prams stuggle so much was one of my reasons for moving!
That said, you can do it with a pram that folds easily, but it sounds like your pushchair does not fall into that 'easy to fold' catagory. Do you have a sling or another pushchair you could use so you can get the shoes?

At least you can get on a bus - they are on strike in Aberdeen as I write this!

First are crap and I hate 'em. As someone said I above I do feel your pain but I do think you need to plan for shitty old buses if there are any on your route.

I used to live on a route which was usually one shitty bus in three and you could guarantee it was when I was waiting with baby, toddler and pushchair laden with stuff. I learned to always have the baby in a sling and to have all the crap in one bag I could remove quickly if I needed to fold the pushchair. Don't get me wrong, though, I'm very happy to go out pushchairless these days. Life is much easier!

I feel your pain. I moved city to get away from First bus. It was that bad. At least your buses actually fucking came. Mine was a half hourly service and I once waited 1 hour 40 mins for a bus.

Have you considered passing baby/ toddler to the least psychotic-looking person on the bus and asking them to hold him/ her while you wrestle with the pram? That is what I do. People were always happy to oblige. In fact, grannies are always very chuffed.

I feel your pain but you were lucky that the f*cking thing turned up in the first place. I live in a village and they seem to miss out our bus all the time. And the schedule means that the two buses an hour that run to our village both leave within ten minutes of each other, so if you miss the second, then you have fifty minutes to wait till the next. Stupid.

I feel your pain. I live in a rural area and used public transport for school run for the past year. I've ditched the double buggy and now cart a dt in each hand (2.8), ds3 on my back (1.5) and ds1/dd1 (6/5) look out for themselves.

Ironically the bus company here advertise that most buses on my route are wheelchair friendly but in reality of the 4 trips a day I take I'm lucky if one of those has a lowered floor.

at least it didn't drive through a red light while you and your children were crossing with 'the green man' and aim at you instead of slowing down/stopping so you had to grab your kids and run for your life. at a crossing where funnily enough someone had been knocked down and killed by another fecking bus only a few weeks before.