h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The best way to make the bus turn up is to jump into a taxi, you'll soon be overtaken by the bus you were waiting for!

the best thing to do is arrive at the bus stop late then you get the choice of 3

If your commute to work every day involves changing buses mid-journey, and both buses run approximately half-hourly, you can be very sure that you always arrive at the changeover point five minutes AFTER a connecting bus departs - it is never, ever, the case that you arrive five minutes BEFORE a connection is due!

This must be a fixed and immutable law of bus scheduling.

Perhaps this is taught at Bus Timetable Planning Courses -

"Module 101. Always make the buggers wait"

If one or more companies operate buses on the same route, and you have a weekly saver ticket issued by one of these companies (chosen because that company operates 75% of the services in your area, therefore most useful), then a bus of the correct route and number you want will turn up very, very quickly.

It just won't be operated by the company that issued your weekly ticket.

In fact, two or three of the right bus, wrong company, will turn up, before the one for which your ticket will be honoured makes its appearance.

So you have the choice of waiting, or paying an additional fare on the other company's bus....

(Immutable Law Of Bus travel number two?)

your weekly saver ticket. Buy it upfront on the bus on a Tuesday morning, and you have all your travel for the week paid for, so just flash the ticket, and all your worries about having the right cash, et c, are solved. Right?

Well....

in Manchester, Stagecoach operate 75 - 80% of services (but only in the South Manchester area). The ticket of choice has the naff name "Megarider", which for £7.80 pw undertakes to give you unlimited travel on (Stagecoach)buses in the Manchester area.

Fine in theory and works a treat for 80% of the time, but there are tricky little grey areas that you only discover when it's too late to make other arrangements.

For one thing, while the ticket promises you 24 hour access to buses, you might discover that it doesn't tell you that Stagecoach do not operate night buses on some routes. So if you want to get back home at half-past midnight, guess what, it's one of the other operators on the route, you pay their full fare. (better have some shrapnel left over after buying the beers)

On some routes, Stagecoach don't operate buses after seven at night, claiming it's not worth their while. So while your Megarider gets you there, you discover on the way home that it ain't going to get you back, unless you pay another bus company their full fare for the route.

If you have to travel north of Manchester city centre: Stagecoach run hardly any buses, as this is FirstBus country. Guess what, your £7.80 travel budget for the week has now added yet more extra hidden fares!

If your journey takes you outside Greater Manchester: well, a run to Macclesfield (as a for instance) means you're paying the fare for all stops outside the county line. (Can't really complain about this one, I suppose. at least they let you travel on the Megarider as far as Poynton)

I'm afraid the next bus logic never seems to work for me. The buses run every half-hour, until I realise I have missed the bus I wished to catch.
The timetable then reverts to one every hour! I suppose it gives me time to think about that referenced holiday?
Cheers
Les

...it's coming up to Christmas, which is when bus timetables REALLY go a**e-up for a fortnight.

It doesn't matter that the only two bank holidays during Christmas week are Thursday (Christmas Day) and Friday (Boxing Day).

It doesn't matter that for most of us, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are normal working days where you should expect the buses to be running according to their normal weekday timetable. After all, you still need to get to work on time on those days, nothing's any different for you, why should it be any different to the bus companies?

Dead wrong....

I can't speak for any other area, but getting to work in Manchester in the week containing Christmas Day is an utter complete shambolic nightmare.

It's as if they're going straight to a Sunday (ie, skeleton)timetable right from Monday 22nd December,and it doesn't get back to normal until (looks at calendar for January 2004)Monday January 5th.

And as for the days in between Christmas and New Year! Technically these are working days, I know my job requires me to work them, but travelling is going to be a total *********.

I have a theory here: bus timetables are constructed according to the Aztec / Inca calendar, which had a 360 day year. This calendar allowed for five "days of death" at the end of the old year, in which nothing moved, nothing stirred, and only the most essential acts of personal grooming, sanitation and maintainence were permissible. (Just like a Sunday in Wales, in fact).

I believe the emperor / High Priest Montezuma never died - the Spanish gave him a reprieve, and he ended up planning bus schedules?

Oh, that would explain so many things!

Though you really can't complain. At least you have buses on the weekend... over here everything's dead from friday afternoon to saturday night (and on some lines until sunday morning). And there aren't any buses after about 1am, too.
So basically, if you live in Israel and you don't drive a car (like me), you're pretty much screwed.

Manchester looking a bit better now?

Ah, I was wondering what analogy to put on the previous posting! Having (in my humble way) once acted as "shobbosgoy" and knowing a little of what happens, I considered using a Jewish Saturday as a picture, but thought "no, safer to stay within your own cultural and religious tradition".

As I'm Welsh by parentage, I used the picture of a religious Sunday in Wales to describe nothing happening and taking all day to do it. (no singing except in church, no dancing, no transport, no pubs open, in a REAL hardline sense the Biblical concept of permitting only "works of necessity and mercy" on the Sabbath.)

Well, it's my tribe, I've got the right to call them! Although I nuderstand licencing laws have been relaxed on a Sunday in the remoter parts of North and West Wales that used to adhere to the old strict Sabbatarian traditions.

So the days between Christmas and New Year are as "dead" as a strict Sabbath, in the hardline Christian sense. And, from what you say, I gather this is also the case in Israel after sundown on a Friday evening? I know there's a Biblical prohibition against using your car or any form of transport on the Sabbath. (Hardline Christian sabbatarians do this too, but the get-out clause is "except for works of necessity and mercy")

Having said this, a Reform Jew called Sarah, who cheerfully revs the motor up on the Sabbath, said to me you have to see the Bible in its context. Three thousand years ago, the only form of transport was animal-driven; the original Bible scripture came out of concern for your livestock, that they should get a day off too, and that for one day in seven it won't harm you to use your own feet and give your ass a rest. It's only a kind of unthinking custom and practice that's extended this down the years to motor vehicles, following the letter rather than the spirit and original intention of the law.

Therefore, as a car is not an animate living thing, she feels she can drive on the Sabbath anyway, but it would be a different thing if she depended on a horse and cart. She said, hitting the accelerator.

Then again, I suppose custom and practice in Israel follows the majority (Orthodox?) viewpoint and that explains why the streets are quiet during Sabbath?

Well, now it's getting complicated...

As far as I know, in the bible there isn't really any restriction about what you can do or mustn't do on Sabbath - it just tells you to rest and let your household rest. Some time later a list of forbidden types of work (39 types, to be exact) has been compiled, which includes almost anything, including things like writing and erasing, for instance. Besides the necessity thing there are all kinds of "bypasses" for Sabbath, but I don't know enough about them to start explaining.

Anyway, the streets aren't really dead on Saturdays in Israel, because a large part of the population is secular (or Conservative or Reform). But there's no public transportation and most shops are closed. And there *are* some areas in the ultra-orthodox neighbourhoods that are closed for traffic on Saturdays, but much of that has to do with political power and political pressure...

Again, it's pretty complicated.

Thank you, Yael!

AAAAARGH......

it gets worse.

I'm not going to go into the ins and outs of the situation, but now there's a strike looming - Stagecoach bus drivers in South Manchester are going on strike from Saturday 20th December unless there's movement in deadlocked pay talks.

ah well, the choices for me are therefore:-

i) take cabs

ii) suggest to my employers something along the lines of "look, it'll be near impossible to get into work, can we just call it annual leave?"

iii) cease being lazy and start cycling again...


I think (ii) is the best option, for me, anyway!