Yesterday I drove the 07:10 Winchester to London service before doing a London Brighton return. Driving up Pimplico Road in the morning I was surprised to see Christmas trees being put up in the street! Seeing Christmas trees in October is a record for me but when I mentioned this to several other drivers in the Coach Station they were not surprised at all. A Welsh driver told me his whole town had been decorated, but not switched on yet.
Isn’t it funny how you can see something so many times and not notice that it’s different from others? I’m referring to Brighton and Hove buses :-) I’ve done the Brighton trip many 10s of times and always thought the B + H buses looked smart but didn’t think anymore about it. Then, yesterday, realisation ……… they don’t have any advertising on them! None of those horrid makeovers which make the windows disappear when viewed from outside etc. No tacky adverts on the rear. Talking of which here’s one of our local Stagecoach buses which got taken off the road pretty quickly to have the advert removed
People weren’t sure if it was the bus exhaust or something hanging out of the copper’s trousers :-)
Anyway, back to Brighton and Hove buses. Well done for not prostituting your buses!
When I was loading for the return from Brighton a guy cycled up to the bus and asked if I’d take the bike. I told him that we didn’t take bikes and explained the reason, he wasn’t very happy but since I refused to take it he went off and chained it to some railings. He then returned and showed me his booking reference number ….. a National Express reference number! I told him he may have more luck with National Express but later overheard their driver saying “no bikes unless they’re boxed”. So we all sing off the same song sheet.
Yeah but most of the best impressions livery have those type of comments on the back these days.
I suppose another alternative would have been to stop the advertising a bit higher above the officer’s exhaust but that is only useful before the vinyls are applied
B&H buses’ livery is fantastic IMHO, their branding is faultless and it is a very confident move of them not to have advertising. Most of the bus backs have witty self vanity style ads on them such as “Go Away” with some blurb about their coach holidays or “Go Up the Downs” to advertise their Coaster service that goes across the South Downs.
I heard the exhaust pipe was painted black, not the advert was removed. Much more sensible.
Anyway you can only not advertise if your really profitable