The government always tells us that we should lead more eco-friendly lives and that one of the ways of doing so is to use buses.
Apart from not having to worry about driving ourselves places, the other selling point about using bus services is that we will contribute less CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions into the atmosphere by leaving our cars at home.
Image via Flickr (credit: vitalyzator)
But, as crazy as this is going to sound, I am here today to tell you that ditching your car and riding on the bus is a stupid idea! Before you start a flame war with me, you need to check out these reasons why!
Bus services are unreliable
I don’t care how much you want to try and sell the idea of using buses to me, I can guarantee you that they are unreliable!
Obviously I know that sometimes buses can be subject to circumstances beyond their control, such as breaking down or becoming stuck in heavy traffic, but bus drivers can often “forget” to stop at a request stop because they are running late.
Such an action isn’t very helpful if you are relying on buses to be on time so that you’re not late for work or some important meeting.
They attract weirdos (and sometimes aren’t safe)
Buses, being a public transport service, will not discriminate against the people that use it; after all, it’s a public service open to everyone. But if you want a relaxing and uneventful journey, taking the bus isn’t for you.
All sorts of weirdos use buses, such as people that randomly want to start a fight with you (this happened to me once!), or gangs of youths that intimidate other passengers.
They aren’t environmentally friendly
I’ve seen buses on the road that are at least 15 years old and have bits falling off them! But that’s not the worst part; buses don’t help to reduce carbon emissions, even though our government wants us to believe otherwise.
Virtually all of the older buses don’t have diesel particulate filters installed, which means they emit more soot into the atmosphere in one round-trip journey than your car would probably do in a month!
Convenient? Not at all!
To give you an example of why bus services aren’t convenient, I have a bus stop about a minute’s walk from my house. In order to get to my local shopping centre (about a mile away), I would have to take two separate buses each way!
Aside from that, if you need to travel somewhere at an ungodly hour, perhaps you are a shift worker, and you’ve got the night shift this week, there probably won’t be any night bus services in your area.
One of my friends, Phil from Country Car, tries to limit his car usage where he can. And even he agrees with me that using the bus is not a viable alternative to driving your own car!
So, in short – ditch the bus and keep driving your car as before!