“The ambience on board behind the driver bends to his whim”
Chief Reporter for Bristol Live/Bristol Post
South Bristol-based, also with a particular interest in the city’s housing crisis.
On board the new electric buses in Bristol(Image: Bristol Post)
The two older gentlemen turned to me with grins and eyes wide with child-like wonder. “Blimey,” said one. “Are we supposed to be having a disco?” “Nah,” the other one said, “I reckon we’re on a spaceship. When we go up the hill at Bedminster Down, we’ll take off,” he laughed. “Yes!” the first exclaimed. “It’s a rocket, not a bus.”
All of us were, remarkably, on one of the new double decker buses after dark heading into South Bristol for the first time. We’d all been on the new buses before, but never after dark, and if you’ve not done that either, do it – it’s quite the experience.
We’d got on as strangers at The Centre and settled down. As we approached Bedminster Bridge and headed south of the river, things started to change. The bus’s regular, boring, internal lights went dark, apart from the now bright neon strips of fluorescent light all around the ceiling. As the new passengers got on opposite Asda and settled down, the lights changed – from bright, deep, soul-piercing blue, to red. Then changed again to green. It was like going home in one of those sensory rooms for special needs children.
For a community that’s been used to rattling, noisy, dirty and smelly buses for a generation, this was palpably exciting for the people of South Bristol on this late night excursion. It doesn’t take much for a conversation involving pretty much the entire bus to start as you roll down the Malago Road, but the changing lights were guaranteed to be the talk of the bus.
When the man who runs the buses, the metro mayor and a junior transport minister went to Hengrove bus depot in South Bristol back in early June to make a big announcement about electric buses, it didn’t quite create the wave of enthusiasm and joy across Bedminster, Hartcliffe, Knowle and Bishopsworth that they perhaps hoped for. That was probably because the buses weren’t yet on the roads.
(Image: PAUL GILLIS / Reach PLC)
Now they are. And, blimey, are they something to behold. The fleet of new electric buses was launched gradually. First, a few arrived, and now it’s pretty much all of them. But because they were launched in the height of summer, only a few people have seen them in their full glory – after about 10pm when it’s properly dark outside.
I got on one the other night and the lights were bright green. I don’t know if it’s randomly generated, or set at the start, or the driver can change the lighting while he’s driving – the ambience on board behind him bending to his whim. Maybe I am easily pleased with a childlike sense of awe and wonder. Maybe my tongue is in my cheek, but it is now a pleasure to ride on a bus in South Bristol, whereas before the best you could hope for was that it was a chore.
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I’ve been on some where one or more of the regular white lights stays on, but the buses of South Bristol – and north of course too, these buses go off into Horfield and Filton – are best experienced when the driver goes full George Lucas, dims the lights and just relies on neon colour to show the way.
It is, people may say, a remarkable turnaround for me to write a love letter to Bristol’s buses. Even though I am on them a lot, and a passionate advocate of more and better public transport, anyone who follows me on social media will know I rant a lot about how rubbish Bristol’s buses are. Or have been.
On board the new electric buses in Bristol(Image: Bristol Post)
Obviously, it’s no good having great buses if they don’t actually turn up – and that is still happening – but here we are, with me telling you how much I love the new buses. Let me count the ways.
It’s not just the lights, oh no. The design of them is great, outside and in. The surprised eye headlights and front make them look like joyful, cartoon buses, especially as the entire headlight winks orange when they indicate.
Inside, they are quiet and clean and new and shiny and feel a lot more spacious. Having buggy or disabled bays on both sides makes them feel wider.
They run smooth. Don’t underestimate how big a deal this is for people in South Bristol, who have been thrown around and jolted back and forth for years on buses where sometimes the engine underneath you was clanking around and making worrying noises.
We’ve had buses here that have literally caught fire just rattling up Bishopsworth Road on an average Thursday. It sometimes felt like a bit of a risk sitting on the back seat on the bottom deck, directly over a noisy, overheating engine. Now it’s a dream.
On the bottom deck at the back of these new spaceships, you literally have to climb a flight of stairs to get the plum back seat sofa, and feel like royalty gliding around above everyone else.
On board the new electric buses in Bristol(Image: Bristol Post)
There’s phone charging points – a revelation. There’s screens which clearly tell you where you’re going, what the next stop is. We’ve had Fran’s audio announcements before, but not on every bus, like now. And even her voice seems happier and more enthusiastic on these new buses.
There’s air conditioning. OK, it’s not like stepping into a walk-in fridge, and there don’t appear to be any windows that open anymore, which is a bit of a nightmare when it’s really hot. But it’s swings and roundabouts – not sitting on that overheating engine means the bus is automatically ten degrees C cooler.
There are ‘please stop’ buttons on the backs of seats, meaning you no longer have to reach across a random stranger to tell the driver you want to get off.
I once went to Mozambique to find out more about water and sanitation in new shanty towns. There, they talked about a concept called ‘leapfrog technology’. Faced with installing amenities for brand new communities springing up on the edge of Maputo, they took a step back. Rather than installing a phone line network or a power line network to 1,000 homes, they installed solar panels and batteries, and a high-power internet phone mast. They were leapfrogging to new technology without bothering with the existing technology.
It’s something I remembered as the conversation continued on the 75. “It’s like the 21st century is finally here,” one woman a few seats down joked, only half ironically. “We’ve gone from the worst buses to the best in one go.”