Get the buses right before you even think about trams – Kevin Buckle

Journeys from hell like his own will do nothing to persuade drivers to make the switch to public transport, writes Kevin Buckle

Kevin Buckle had a bad experience on the buses (Picture: Andrew O'Brien)

I clearly jinxed myself mentioning the buses last week when I had a disastrous day both getting in and out of Edinburgh on Monday. I was aware there would be roadworks on the West Approach Road so left a little later than normal – after 10am – hoping to avoid the worst of the delays.

My X28 bus was on time and all was well until we reached the roadworks. Traffic was at a standstill and a 35-minute journey ended up taking two hours. I later found out from another passenger who had left three hours earlier that he had faced the same travel time so my plan of leaving later had been based on false hope.

The diversion that was in place once we reached the closed road just created further congestion and problems for those who didn’t expect to be affected by the works.

However this was nothing to what happened on my attempted return. There were no works leaving Edinburgh so I stupidly hadn’t expected any issues beyond the buses obviously being out of sync.

At 6pm the app showed what turned out to be an unlucky 13 minutes until my next bus, which made it only a couple of minutes late. However this number didn’t change and I started to hear rumblings from others at the Waverley Steps bus stop about the number of Not In Service buses passing by.

Standing around is one thing but those waiting at the bus stop were being hit by an icy wind and sleet. A mixture of people trying to get home from work, confused groups of tourists checking their apps along with a few older folk and families were all left standing as some buses appeared regularly but others not at all.

Soon a hardcore of people were at the stop wondering if their bus would ever arrive, with more arriving all the time. After an hour I considered going for the only train for the next couple of hours but the app started to show a bus heading my way so I decided to stay. It was a mistake.

By now we had a possible explanation from an ex-Lothian Buses employee. We could see our buses heading towards the St Andrew’s House terminus on the other side of the road but none were returning. The answer it would appear was that the drivers were so over their time that they were having to return with their buses not in service. I’m still waiting for Lothian Buses to confirm this.

Finally at 8.30pm a young lad arrived driving an X28. We were so glad to see him we certainly weren’t going to complain but he did offer that he had volunteered to do the run. All this time there were no updates online or via the app from Lothian Buses.

The cause of all this had been the massive miscalculation of the delay the roadworks would cause. I was told it had been thought to be 15 to 20 minutes but that was wrong by over an hour.

What followed was an inability to deal with the ensuing situation many hours later and the response they gave me – which they said was a media response – rather disingenuously also blamed the weather.

While these were unusual circumstances it did highlight that much needs to be done to convince folk that public transport will ever be of a standard to make people leave behind their cars.

On Monday getting the buses right rather than so much talk about trams was mentioned more than once.