The Velvet Bus blog was finally declared dead at 12:33 today. However, as they say when the reigning monarch dies ‘The King is dead, long live the King’ and so it is with Phil Stockley’s blog. The successor to the Velvet Bus Blog is the Purple Bus Blog. The first post explains the reason behind the shift to a new blog. At first the reason seemed logical, but then I began to wonder how a bus blog, openly written by someone who is the MD of a bus company with purple liveried buses, wont be seen as at least ‘endorsed’ by the Velvet Bus company if not ‘official’. Anyway, the good thing is that Phil is posting about buses again. I wish the Purple Bus Blog all the best.

Post number two, I bet he doesn’t keep up two posts a day for long :-), mentions that Velvet Bus tickets can now be purchased using a mobile ‘phone. There is also a link to mymobiletickets.com where it says ‘You can buy weekly and monthly passes using My Mobile Tickets as well on-demand daily tickets by text at lower costs than buying on the bus.’

During the time I drove for Megabus hardly a day went by without someone boarding and then saying that their mobile battery had gone flat so they couldn’t display their ticket reference, or that they’d inadvertently deleted the text. In each case a phone call had to be made to Megabus control and the ticket number obtained from the information provided by the intending passenger. Mostly it was genuine and they had paid for a seat but sometimes no record of a booking could be found! I wonder how bus companies like Velvet handle similar situations, it is totally impractical for a ‘regular’ bus driver to have to call control each time someone can’t show their electronic ticket for one reason or another.