For starters, respect to anyone customer facing or driving buses in Bath yesterday, the city was packed with a lot of mostly puzzlingly upbeat people with no room on the pavements at all and randoms crossing the road all over the shop.
The bus station: the good news, it was so full that the activity had displaced all the pigeons and they'd taken themselves off elsewhere. Less good, way more people than the services could support and the layout of the place meant that circulation inside the building had locked up completely. It was very difficult to see where the entrances/exits were.
Also, respect to the driver of the 16:45 Stagecoach 620 who was handling the result of Stagecoach has recently deployed smaller buses to the route - the previous single decker could be a bit capacity constrained.
Employees of ... another bus company passed this melee and remarked 'Ooooh, that's a small bus'.
(Also, this bus's paper ticket machine had an issue and was constantly jamming).
I didn't board it as the space was better used for people with fewer options. Everyone in that queue did manage to board the bus at the bus station - not sure about the later stops - and of course this becomes transport for the young and fit. I'll drop Stagecoach a line, with the photo.
Bath has a small number of council-supported minibuses serving strange destinations, one of those leaves the station at 5, last night with me on it, plus someone returning from work in London who said that there was a large amount of crowd marshalling going on at the station but that that had been the most complicated part of the journey - their train back had been full but not full and standing.
Mark
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