We were able to call Zimbabwe this morning (there have been teephone problems) and got the latest Zanu PF propaganda. Zanu PF are saying that Mugabe wants to stand down but if he does the military, who are loyal to him, say they will take control. So he’s staying in order to help his people avoid military rule! What utter and complete non-sense, but at the same time how clever. He says he wants to abide by the peoples decision but is unable to do so because of the harm it may cause the very people who opposed him!
No answers yet
For the past week I’ve been expecting daily to announce two things – who’s won the Zimbabwe Presidential election, and what’s happening with our new Megabus route to Manchester! I don’t know if the Zimbabwe politburo learnt to keep things secret from Megabus management, or Megabus management learnt it from the Zimbabwean politburo.
A couple of days after the election I’d expected to hear that Mugabe had slipped off to South Africa to be with his mate Mbeki, and that a secret deal had been done in Harare wherby he wouldn’t be tried for genocide so long as he left the country. But as time drags on, and he is quite patently still in the Presidential Palace in Harare, the prognosis for the citizens of Zimbabwe worsens. I don’t wish to speculate on the detail, I just want to know where this is going.
Regarding the new Megabus South Coast to Manchester route the Megabus website is quite clear in that it will run from April 28th and is simply an extension to Manchester from Birminham. What isn’t clear is how it is to be manned – the driving hours to do a return journey exceed EU driving regulations. So the one driver who does the Birmingham return can’t do the Birmingham to Manchester leg and back. There was a new, different, ‘official’ answer given on each of the 5 weekdays last week! In the end I got so fed up with it that I made up my own ‘official’ answer and put that into the pot as well. Most of these ‘official’ answers involved Winchester drivers handing over the bus part way to Birmingham and then doing something else (it’s the something else which keeps changing). Whatever it is we will need training of one sort or another – type training on the B12 buses if anything involves driving them, digital tacho training possibly (we can only drive buses with analogue tachos currently), route learning etc. And all this must be completed within 3 weeks and alongside our regular duties.
Megabus luggage policy
This is something which causes both drivers and passengers equal aggravation. You’ll notice in the ‘Megabus mentions in other blogs’ above that this guy is unhappy with the luggage allowance interpretation. In this case the customer is in the US where the Megabus luggage policy, taken from the website, is “Passengers are advised that megabus.com will accept up to one piece of luggage per passenger. For guidance this should be no more than the size of a standard suitcase and should not weigh more than 50 pounds”. The problem is what is the size of a standard suitcase? And what is meant by size? A snowboard may be longish in one direction but it’s thin and narrow – the volume should be less than the ‘standard size’ suitcase limit. If one driver wants to interpret the vague luggage policy as saying the longest dimension of the item mustn’t exceed the longest dimension of a non-defined ‘standard suitcase’ then they’ll refuse the board. If another driver takes the view that it will take up no more space, by volume, than a suitcase then they’ll let it on! The UK luggage policy is the same apart from metrification of the weight limit to 20Kgs. It would be much easier for everyone if Megabus were to define this notional standard suitcase as ‘X’ x ‘Y’ x ‘Z’ inches/cm and allow its volumetric equivalent.
In the US the hand luggage policy is pretty clear “Passengers can also take on board one small piece of luggage that will fit in the overhead storage compartment”. If only it were that clear in the UK. The UK policy is “Passengers can also take on board one piece of hand luggage up to the size of a small to medium sized hold-all”. This is so vague as to be useless. Why say a ‘small to medium’ bag? If a medium one is allowed on there seems no point to saying a small one is allowed on! Personally, I adopt the American policy even though I drive in the UK! When passengers have larger rucksacks, holdalls etc. than I think reasonable I tell them that it’s fine if they can get it into the overhead locker, otherwise it goes into the hold. There are two reason for trying to control the amount of hand luggage – it’s often piled on the seat next next to the passenger as a method of trying to keep the seat empty and thus deprive other passengers of being able to sit where they wish. And secondly I don’t want lots of loose luggage flying around inside the bus in the case of an accident. Passengers are required by law to wear seat belts so they don’t fly around, luggage should be equally constrained in the overhead lockers.
New Megabus routes
It appears that there are quite a number of new routes about to start. The ‘Leaving from’ drop down on the Megabus bookings website has new locations. Here are some of them together with the ‘Travelling to’ possibilites:-
Bath – London
Cambridge – Oxford
Havant – London
Salisbury – London
Wembley – Barnsley
Derby – London
Honiton – London
Loughborough – London
Manchester – South Coast
Newquay – Exeter, Plymouth, London
Nottingham – London
Poole – London
Weymouth – London
These routes can’t be booked yet so how they will operate is not clear. For example leaving from Poole only offers London as a destination. Leaving from Bournemouth (it’s joined on to Poole) offers London, Birmingham, Manchester etc. so this latter route appears to be an extended journey for the existing South Coast to Birmingham bus. Similarly Havant (right alongside Portsmouth) only offers London and not all the other destinations possible from Portsmouth.
I guess there may be some errors on the website. From Wembley to only one destination, Barnsley, looks very odd. Ah, I’ve just noticed that it’s a special for the FA Cup semi-final so maybe the above list is accurate.
Birmingham buses
The Birmingham Megabus stop is in The Priory Queensway. Every time I arrive there I’m amazed at the number of buses which use this stretch of road. On Friday I arrived early so got myself a cup of coffee and then counted buses :-( But only for ten minutes which saw 35 buses pass me, this equates to 210 buses per hour. It was around 11:00am on a weekday morning, I wondered if there would more per hour during peak times?
The vast majority of buses were Travel West Midlands, followed by Diamond Bus and then Claribels. It has always been apparent to me that there is a fourth operator but I can’t identify them. The buses don’t have either a name or a livery style/colour! The common factor to the buses of this fourth operator are that they are old and look very tatty! Then, on Friday a bus appeared which met the criteria of belonging to this fourth operator, execpt it carried a name – Midland Rider. Is this a fifth operator? Or, is that the name of the fourth operator?
Duty from hell day again
Yes, 193!
A car park user got onto the P+R bus and I asked how many passengers they had. “Why do you want to know that”? “Because they need tickets printed for each of them so they don’t get charged on the return trip” I explained. “Is this something new”? “It’s been like that as long as I’ve driven the P+R service, which is two years”. “Oh, it was longer ago than that when I last used it”. God knows why she asked if this ticketing was something new if she’d not been on a P+R bus for years!
Several times the bell rang about 50 yards past a stop. Before the stop it didn’t ring, before the stop no one raised themselves off the seat, before the stop they didn’t collectively think hard enough for telepathy to work. So how was I to know?
Twice I was offered £20 notes for the 40p fare between stops in town. Few people use a P+R bus like this, to the extent that my takings in 4 hours were £1.60 so how the devil can I change £20 notes? If I’d been able to give change totaling £39.20 I’d have taken £2.40 in total!
Plus the usual hijackings of the bus by, most often, the wife. Stands just inside the door of the bus saying “My husbands just parking the car” leaving unspoken the thought “you can’t drive off with me stood by the door”. You don’t think so :-)