Britain's Buses at their Best 

just wait till you feel the pain of working with Passengers (it's a love hate relationship lol) you end putting up with em 😅

Indeed. And this is why we need a wholistic approach to public transit! Trains for longer, inter-city commuting, trams and metro for high capacity within the urban area and busses linking all of these modes together.

That's the issue - too many people see buses as transport for the 'working class'. London is perhaps the exception. It will take a cultural change to shift attitudes

trains too

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Any idea why the '36' number is displayed on the right hand side of the bus followed by the destination on the left, instead of the number being displayed on the left hand side so any passengers from the roadside will be easier to identify the correct route, as used by most of the buses in the UK?

RIP Harry though.

​@@cllee8699 Standard arrangement on Transdev Blazefield vehicles. Re the commentary the 36 has had 2+1 seating upsides ever since the 2003 revamp by Blazefield.

@@b1998En there are 88 mineral springs. 36 were found in Bogs Field.

This is something you can't explain but you're right this is just like a C4 documentary

I'm glad it's also on RU-vid or I'd never get to enjoy Geoff's content.

@@leftbas65 I've also watched plenty of videos posted by the London, Ontario-born Amsterdam-based Not Just Bikes RU-vid man and quite a few RU-vidrs based in the contiguous US (among them the City Beautiful man). Buses, regardless of what stereotypes out there may exist about them, are so important to have to make a transport system work for more of the people that I'm sure such a system hopes to serve.

@@wainber1 I watch their content, too, and I completely agree. It's just disheartening to realize how far behind we are. Things are improving, just at a glacier's pace. It's not hopeless, but just barely.

Strongly disagree. ‘TV’ is no longer the gold standard; documentaries on TV are always, without exception, cringy, forced and patronising. This masterpiece isn’t any of that. Commercial TV = having to bend to the whim of the production company and dumbing down the content.

@@crossleydd42 I think the secrets of the different lines on Londonist were the best esp Bakerloo as that’s line I use most

​@@tremensdelirious They're also good, but this is a strong showing none the less!

Gosh, i didn't realise ... how sad, my condolences. It's lovely that they're using his voice, yes!

Disagree. Aylesbury is appalling. No bus to Chesham or Amersham. No bus between Aylesbury and Leighton/Buckingham/MK on a Sunday

Wow, high Wycombe is absolutely brilliant. Surprised about Aylesbury​@@tremensdelirious

I wish Carousel Served Aylesbury as there buses are much nicer than a majority of Redline buses

@@ChappersTravels provide an actual bus before worrying about whether it’s nice or not

@@ChappersTravels redline buses you see more in the layby broken down outside thame than in service

A mate of mine is a driver for the local private service around our college. He's been doing it for a long time, continuing to support the community, his family (and students like myself sometimes) with that job. It's really interesting.

Harrogate was built to be a rich person's retreat and it shows - as someone who likes their politics it's certainly worth noting that Harrogate is one if the few parts of Northern England where Labour don't exist!!

I wouldn't be able to find Harrogate on a map (yes, I am American..) but I definitely got her joke!

It wasn't a joke

@@Harmonikdiskorde Some places just sound posh, Harrogate is one of those places.

@@ziggarillo I stand corrected.

Worked with Roger to make this happen! [ he basically made this happen, hence the credit at the end ]

@@geofftech2 As a busfan living across the pond, Roger is my number one source for all the workings and ongoings in the British bus ecosystem (along with diamondgeezer)! Good to see someone who, fortunately now, has the time to critique and analyze what is going right and what is going wrong. Also interesting to see the parallels with the American ecosystem.

You need to try and surround yourself with more people who are realists rather than pessimists. Its an objective fact that we live at one of the most prosperous times in history, in one of the richest and most highly developed countries on earth. Yes, life is very hard for many people, but it is a matter of perspective; the people complaining about the UK have no idea what daily life is like in 95% of other countries on earth.

@@Borderman47 There's definitely still improvements to be made. The Aylestone Road corridor on Sundays is a shining example of a service that at least needs increased running hours, if not a bump in frequency.

This is true, but it's a shame how many rural services they axed completely in the name of making these changes/improvements within the centre

You think? I still find them to be late or non existent most of the time 😢😅

@@powernetworker6526 Mostly because Leicestershire County Council unfortunately aren't as interested in long term investment as the City Council is.

@@WooRSte Well, true. Unfortunately Leicester has some of the worst traffic outside of London at peak times. That isn't really the bus companies' fault though. As ever, improvements could be made

The X3 has recently been stocked with new vehicles to the same standard as the M1/2. The older buses have been cascaded down to local services, still X3 livery but X3 branding removed., so some luxury vehicles may turn up on less frequent routes.

@@doughunt9621 yeah most of the X3s I've been on have been pretty damn nice, lovely seats, nice like refreshed interior, and some have table seats upstairs with those lil puck lights above which is cool

Because for decades the auto industry's marketing departments have told us this, and conservative/austerity governments have made it true.

@@blorpblorpblorp And Margaret Thatcher actually said just that. But then, what else would you expect?

In many cities, bus service is so bad that you would never take it unless you had no other options 😞

​@@philroberts7238Actually though most people believe this it was never proven that she actually did say it, however you and I and the rest of the UK knows all too well it's exactly the type of thing she'd say especially given how badly she screwed up buses under bus privatisation

Such stigmas can also develop due to very poor service quality. Over here in South Wales, the services have been heavily cut down and underfunded over the years with constant building of car-centric housing, retail and industrial amenities. There are no routes to many important destinations, the buses come very infrequently - often every hour or 2 hours, or every half an hour if you're lucky, and finish at 5-6pm on some routes. First Cymru's fleet often consists of many buses that other First subsidiaries don't want, including a HUGE influx of the controversial Wright StreetLite buses from places like Bristol, Worcester and Leeds - and the vehicles can often be poorly maintained and unclean. They don't even try to join the buses up with trains - even when the council tried to put a bus-rail interchange in Port Talbot, barely anyone changes between the two because of the separate fares. Speaking of, the fares have recently had a huge increase, and Tap On Tap Off is barely cheaper than the old fares, with an eye-watering 25% increase on the day tickets which most of the remaining fare-paying passengers were buying. With the service quality in constant decline coupled with the sharp fare increases (paying £6 for a day ticket on a bus that you might wait an hour for only for it not to turn up) the service has lost almost all passengers that have another way of getting around, even the majority of lower-income customers have turned to car ownership because of the extortionate fares, which leaves persons with reduced mobility as the dominant passenger type, which is very unprofitable given most have a free concessionary travel card, which does not provide enough money to fund these services. Given the rollout of London-style bus franchising in Wales over the coming years, I hope this will finally result in a better network, with plans for integrated ticketing between operators and modes and a unified national identity (Transport for Wales). Hopefully there will be performance targets that each operator has to meet (a la Bee Network) and my area (Bridgend County Borough) will be of significant importance being in the Cardiff Capital Region therefore meaning my buses could probably become part of the South Wales Metro. It shows what can be done when you take a look at services like TrawsCymru and especially Cardiff Bus - the difference between the buses in Swansea and Cardiff is night and day!

This would be a Geoff Marshall / Noel Philips collab wouldn't it XD

Number 100 in Milton Keynes/Aylesbury should be on that list. I rode that for a bit and it was the most unreliable, noisy, overcrowded, chronically late, dilapidated service I've ever been on.

Lothian has been out in front for so long that it just shows what an amazing outfit it has consistently been. I love it that they have the city crest back on some of the new buses. I visited Edinburgh a number of times and contrasted it with the post deregulation shambles in my own town.

Public owned busses for Glasgow!

Will be interesting to see what is put on that route from January '25 as the route changes operator, becomes part of the Bee Network and gets different buses along with the rest of South Manchester

@@andrewholland1390 Stagecoach have retained the 192, along with the rest of the Stockport franchise, so I assume it’ll be the BZLs that are already on order for it (whenever they actually decide to turn up).

They were auditioning for a new announcer at the preview event they held the other month

@@mikep-1824 That's a shame, I like hearing Harry's dulcet tones