Having lived in the city and experienced decent transport, one of the things that really bugs me about living in Cornwall is the bus service. I try to use public transport to get around, but about 30% of my journeys are not smooth and the inconvenience + cost of going anywhere on the bus vs the time taken does not make it worth me trying, let alone justify families using public transport rather than cars.
Until recently there were 2 major bus companies down here, Truronian and First Bus. The former has just been bought by the latter, which means that First Bus pretty much have the monopoly down here - that’s bad as their service is pretty poor most of the time.
Where I live now, we get buses going East about 2 times per hour, up until about 6pm, in the evenings, it gets a bit silly - there is a 31/2 hour wait to get home if you go to St Ives on the 7:30 bus.
To travel into Truro, like I did this morning, takes 1 hour 20 minutes by bus - 20 miles by road, 30 minutes by car, 20 minutes by train. 2 buses an hour is okay, if they turn up, but like I said about 30% of my journeys do not go so well: 20% of the time, the buses don’t arrive, 10% of the time they are very late. The route here to Truro is one of the main routes in the county, but the time between buses gets even longer if you go off the beaten track. If your bus does not turn up in Mullion, you can have a wait of up to 2 hours ’til the next one - WTF!. In the city, it did not matter if a bus did not turn up - another would in about 10 minutes, but it’s impossible to get to work on time with things like this happening, a lot.
What comeback do we get? None, which is why having competing bus companies gave you a bit of a chance, (although, only some routes where covered by both), so you could take your pick. This will now change and the bus company don’t seem to have to answer to anyone, which is bad. I don’t believe having a monopoly on the buses in an area is bad - it used to work fine in Edinburgh with Lothian Buses, but where the service is pretty spartan already, it sucks big time, particularly when you consider that it costs £5.60 return to Truro as opposed to using about £5 in petrol for the trip. So even with one person travelling, it’s almost cheaper by car if you factor in other running costs (similar for trains too) and that should not be right in this day and age.
So what do we do? Well, it would be nice to see a lot more local people sharing lifts & using public transport down here, which would ease the burden on the roads in the summer, but that’s not going to happen without a big shift in ideologies, so until then we just have to keep trying to catch the bus, put up with the crap service and rubbish customer relations. For me, I may have to pass on the cost to clients in order to cover the lost time, because unless they choose to meet virtually, then travelling to see them takes too much time. Taking 3-4 hours out for a 1 hour meeting costs a bit more than £5.60 at my rate. Even though these may lead to more work, it eats too much out of my day for it to be cost-effective.
Grrr
