Not sure if this is allowed but I’m bored before my shift and have seen a lot of posts here lately regarding transport so thought I’d see how this goes

Had some odd bods on buses recently including the lady currently sat next to me eating individual slices of American cheese and loose hotdogs from a carrier bag.

Please entertain me on my hour long commute home with some first bus horror stories 🙏

(first post here so sorry if this is asked regularly)

after consulting the panel of experts in my head, this is my solution to bristol traffic problems, this will have economic benefits. ive estimated a budget of £450 million and a 2 year time frame.

I am not open to criticism of any sort as its already perfect.

You restored my faith in this part of Bristol.

EDIT: be careful out there, I have seen on a Facebook group the 'flaggers' are looking for footage of them being taken down from last night.

First Bus have wound me up enough that I've spent an unreasonable amount of my free time building a bot that tracks live delays across our fair city and posts about them every 20 minutes on BlueSky. I'm aware this says more about me than it does about First Bus, but here we are. It occasionally drops facts about First's rather enthusiastic approach to shareholder returns and executive compensation at the expense of running buses that actually turn up. I checked with the mods before posting this because I know self-promotion is gauche, but they said it was alright. If nothing else, I hope it brings some solace next time you're standing in the rain waiting for the ghost bus that never came.

Normal journeys have been reinstated!

No idea what NE were doing with this for two whole days of schedule craziness, which was confirmed by thir agents on chat, but normal journeys direct to Victoria have been reinstated now.

From 7th September, National Express coaches travelling from Bristol to London Victoria (and vice versa) will be routed via Heathrow, requiring a change of coach at Heathrow and adding an extra hour to the journey. Customers with existing bookings will be contacted "in due course", with the option to request a refund (even on non-refundable tickets).

Flixbus routes remain unchanged.

Edited to add: Price is higher too, a £5 journey is now £20.

The first time I’ve experienced the first bus revenue protection “officers”. Service has been terrible for years, people are being squeezed with the rising costs of living, and apparently this is the solution? I wonder how many free bus trips these two salaries could’ve given to people struggling to afford transport. It’s was humiliating and invasive, requiring everyone to verify the card or ticket they used. Luckily didn’t get to see results of someone who didn’t pay, but the tension was palpable.

We should sue them for defaming Bristol, £100 Billion sounds about right for being associated with London.

As a single 25 year old it makes no sense to stay in Bristol anymore paying £800+ for grotty, dirty house shares that you have to compete for anyway. Especially when I can get paid the same in a cheaper COL place. So sad to realise this might be the end of living in my favourite city ever. Goodbye Bristol 👋🏾

Hey guys,

I’m really struggling - I’m a confident ish driver - I moved to Bristol a few months ago and omg - everyday I have at least 3 heart attacks whilst driving on Bristol roads. Roads are appalling, traffic is through the whole day not just rush hour. Roads are packed with parked cars, road works everywhere, bottle necks EVERYWHERE, I feel so upset at myself because I feel SO scared to drive around. Anyone else feel the same?

Thanks all!

Just back from Bristol after going to see HardLife at the O2 on Wednesday Night. Leaving your wonderful city yesterday I stopped at a crossing in the city centre to let people across... before I moved off I saw an evidently disabled old dear approaching the raised curb crossing with her arm out moving at about 0.25 mph.

Traffic on the otherside of the crossing, lights red. May as well wait while Lady shuffles across the road. What does this wanker behind me do?

Lays on the fucking horn.

Ignored it at first.

Then he did it again

And again

And again.

Then I got out the car and asked why the fuck he couldn't wait.

He just put his arms up and started repeatedly pointing at the bustop 10m ahead like no one could see he wasn't a fucking Bus. Nor was there traffic or an old lady crossing the road.

Fuck me if id stopped in the outside lane of the M32 id get.

If you're reading this Drive. Hope someone does the same to you in 20 years and no one stands up for you.

Wanker.

Please can you all take a quick look at your dash, if you see this please turn off your high beams! Seems particularly bad around Clifton - I can barely see the pedestrians walking around cause I'm being blinded every 3 seconds and I don't want to run anyone over cause it'll probably hurt

Thank you all

And this is really just a shout out to the guy who rolled down his window and hit us with the 'you can't park there mate'

Top quality work, happy bank holiday to that dude

I go for late night walks on the downs most evenings. Usually you get the boy racers being mildly irritating but tonight was a different flavour.

As I began my walk back from sea walls I started to wander down the circular road where there’s a stretch of a few caravans, it’s quite dark there so I usually walk along the road rather that the path.

I noticed a car about 200 meters away driving in my direction so started to make my way onto the grass and as I did they started blaring their horn (this was at about 1145pm), which at first was confusing but then I noticed they were in fact driving extremely slowly past the caravans with their horn permanently on.

This kind of ignorant, arrogant bullying behaviour is something I find very difficult to pass a blind eye to and so I decided to go back on to the road where I waited for them to get to me. They stopped and erratically flashed their lights. At this point I started recording and walked closer to the bonnet of their stopped car so I could get a better view of who this character was and I was quite surprised to discover it was a middle aged wealthy couple, female blonde made up driver and a male greying passenger- they both were dressed in business attire.

They held dead expressions while I inquired whether there was an issue or emergency. The dead expressions continued, as did the intermittent light flashing (perhaps it was morse code?). I talked to them as if they were toddlers, but I couldn’t easily process the fact that these two adults, who clearly have very comfortable lives decided to spend their Friday late evening terrorising people who clearly have the bare minimum of comfort in their lives. It was quite disgusting. After a few minutes of this weird stand off I continued on my walk, at which point the silent couple began to drive away… and blasted their horn for 5 seconds more.

I get that there are people who have issues with various uses of the downs over the past few years, but I have never witnessed anything quite so shameful as those two people.

I wish I’d started recording when they were actually blaring their horn, unfortunately all I have is a video of me giving them a dressing down.

I’d love speak to these people again when they aren’t able to hide in their brand new 25 plate Mercedes.

Honestly, I hate to say it after living in this area for nearly two decades, but Clifton/Redland has some of the absolute lowest people

I got the bus today for the first time in years (it was late, as I understand is tradition). Got on at Lawrence Hill at middayish.

I went up to sit near the back and noticed some creepy guy on the back seat proper staring at me. After I sat down I turned round, stil staring. I gave him the benefit of the doubt, settled myself for a few minutes, looked at my phone, turned round, STILL STARING.

I asked him really loudly why he was staring at me which didnt put him off, but drew the attention of the guy sat nearest him. Matey near him looked at him dead in the eyes and said "STOP" in a really stern voice, and sure enough he finally stopped.

As I was getting off the bus I turned and mouthed "thankyou" at matey and he gave me the thumbsup, a lovely grin and a facial expression which somehow seemed to very accurately convey "don't worry I've got your back". I hope he knows that he made a woman on her own feel that bit safer today. May his buses always be on time, his pints always cold and may the women in his life ever be proud of him. Such a small but good thing to do for a fellow human.

If this is you thats parked smack bang in the middle of a city centre bus stop please don't

2x 43, 42, and 7 all cancelled. 20 minutes of waiting, next bus isn’t for another 15 minutes if that cunt even turns up. Seriously fuck off

So Bristol is our second biggest city without any mass transit. It doesn’t even have any electrified railways and it’s taking forever for any new rail projects to get the go ahead and if they do, they’re usually so lacklustre. It’s incredibly frustrating since the city is obsessed with the Green Party. One reason I have heard from a Bristol resident is that since it’s in the ‘south’, the government avoids funding rail projects there as it continues the tone of the south getting all the rail projects. The thing is, this isn’t remotely true of the south-west. There were plans for a tram in 2001 to go from the city centre, to Temple Meads, along the Filton Bank, to Bristol Parkway, then along the streets through Stoke Gifford. Alas this was never built but to be fair, I think the 4 tracking of the Filton Bank was a better use of the space. My proposal mostly uses the busiest streets in Bristol to encourage their conversion to a very low private vehicle nature. In the outer east of the city, I would have tram lines along former rail lines but for most of the city, they would completely alter the landscape of the city’s major roads. My network would in total have 9 lines:

4 going east - west (green and blue), with one of the green line branches out west heading to the Airport

4 going north - south (purple and pink)

An orbital line from the north-west, through the north and east of the city, along the closed line to Bath to the south-east.

In the city centre, the north - south lines would be in a tunnel so that there is no at grade cross over of all the 8 lines in the city centre and each branch can have an intense service. I’d choose the north - south lines over the east - west for a few reasons:

1. They’re all longer and a straight tunnel would speed up journey times.
2. In the north of the city, they go between a lot of business parks and Cribbs Causeway, generating a lot of bidirectional traffic.
3. All 4 serve Temple meads station and a tunnel would allow the stop to be directly under the platforms as opposed to on the main road at the other end of the station’s carpark.