I understand some of the comments being made about buses not being full at certain times. Most as usual made by people who rarely use them or even come to Brum if they can help it.
Most of the buses in Birmingham are operated by West midlands Travel/Stagecoach. There are a great deal of other buses on quite a few routes that are run by independants. These operators are all in direct opposition with each other and therefore do not communicate with each other.
Another major factor which no-one has bothered to mention is passengers do not give prior notice as to when they are going to need a bus, ie when the weather turns nasty which has been known to happen in this country an awfull lot of people stay at home.
When the weather is very nice loads more people are out and about. Unfortunately bus drivers work schedules are not arranged by the Met office. I worked in a busy pub for many years and the weather certainly affected our trade. If anyone wants to use our bus network whist in town, come aboard you are very welcome. Just take note of the local situation. There are also the odd spare drivers around to cover for absentees etc. when these are not required for such a duty they can be sent out on an extra duty, the average fare paying passenger very much welcomes this situation. We do not want to be crammed onto every bus that we catch just to make some out of town car drivers happy who by the way use more fuel and takes up more space than our buses. Sheldonboy
