Sussing the buses

It took me several months to brave the Newcastle-area bus system. I would walk along Sandyford Road and watch the “Cobalt Clipper” rush by, exotic-sounding names of area villages painted on its side. They mixed with buses labelled Arriva and Stagecoach and Go North East. Most of the buses went straight but one route turned left onto Portland Road. How was I to find out which one(s) would take me where I wanted to go? How would I know how much to pay?

Finding out where they went was not easy. The bus companies put out timetables, but those do not include route maps and I found them terribly daunting. (I still find them somewhat cryptic, but now that I know the area a little better I’m less intimidated.) The website has a facility for showing bus stops and identifying which buses stop there, but it’s hard to use. And the route planner doesn’t work at all, mostly. Ugh.

It was finally a fellow choir member who got me started. This singer, whom I’ll call Jane, lives near me and told me that I wanted either the 1 or the 38 bus. So one evening after choir I went to where she said they stopped. I saw a 1 bus approaching a stop across the street, so I crossed the road and hailed the driver. He told me he was going the opposite way from where I wanted to go, but he didn’t have far to go in that direction and I could just stay on while he turned around, and then I’d be going in the right direction. So I did.

But then he didn’t go nearly as close to the flat as I had expected from what Jane had said. So I got off at the closest point (fortunately I knew where I was and most of Newcastle is fairly safe to walk at night) and walked home. I certainly didn’t save myself any time or walking that night!

Well. It turns out that there are TWO Route 1 buses. The one I had taken belongs to Go North East, and the one I wanted belongs to Stagecoach.

You’d think the city (or in this case, the county, as it’s the Tyne and Wear bus system) would require different routes to have different numbers. But noooo…

Anyhow, the following week I took the 38 home, and that broke the ice.

I took buses a lot over the spring, especially when it rained. (Which it did. A LOT.) And I learned. From my closest stop to the center of town they cost £1.30 (Arriva), £1.40 (Stagecoach), or £1.45 (Cobalt Clipper, Go North East). (Note to American friends: £1.30 is about $2.10.) Not cheap, but they cut my time in half (considering the wait) and cut my walking distance by 75% or more, depending on where I’m going. I soon developed a pattern: Arriva for the north end of the center, Cobalt Clipper only if I didn’t have time to wait for Arriva, and Stagecoach for points further south (such as the train station).

In the nice weather of the summer I greatly reduced my bus-riding frequency. Now I use the bus mostly for getting home from Grainger Market with my twice-weekly fruit&veg purchase (sometimes I also buy chicken, eggs, and/or milk) or for getting home from choir rehearsal if I am feeling too tired to walk the mile and a quarter. I suspect that my frequency might increase again, a little, but I don’t see it going back to what it was in the spring. I like how I feel when I walk.

And this week Arriva reduced its prices. Twice yesterday, I was charged only £1 to get home from the Haymarket Bus Station. They were two different drivers, and both said that when they punched in my destination it came up £1. One even said he thought they had in fact reduced the fare. So it has to be right. Who ever said companies never lower prices?

Oh — and it turns out you don’t have to know how much to pay. You just tell the driver where you want to get off and he (or she, but it’s usually a he) tells you the fare. You plunk down your money, and if it’s too much he gives you change. Easy peasy.

(It does help to know how much it should be, because sometimes they hear you wrong and try to charge you too much. Then you know you have to say your destination more clearly. But the same start and end points with the same bus company is always the same price. No rush-hour surcharge on the buses.)