10 Questions We All Want To Ask The University of Warwick Coventry Transportation/Bus System/Parking Situation
1. Why has stagecoach only just got bus passes?
If you didn’t know, stagecoach is the name of the company that most students use to get to and from campus. Until this year, the buses still used paper tickets. Yes, I said paper tickets. In 2018 and the bus company has only just invested in bus passes which you can top up online. Why has it taken so long for Stagecoach to catch on? Sigh.
2. Why don’t all buses give cash back?
There is nothing more annoying than forgetting your bus pass and having to then fork out some cash for a ticket. Oh wait, there is. Even worse than having to rummage through your purse to find money to pay for a ticket, is when you only have a note to pay with. Some buses are okay, tickets are £2.20 and so for a fiver you should get back £2.80. However, there are all-too-often instances in which students are not being given any change. I was on a bus when an international student had to pay almost double the price or get off the bus. Definitely doesn’t seem right to me. Students, carry coins or you will literally pay the price.
3. Why do you not have an automatic timetable?
This is another question I want an answer to. You have a timetable literally telling us to refer to an online timetable. How about, hmm I don’t know… having a timetable that actually says when the bus is going to come instead of unhelpfully telling us to refer to outdated timetables? Just a thought.
4. Why do you not come when you say you will?
Following from this point, why bother at all with having an online timetable if the buses pick and choose when they want to show up. “Up to every seven minutes” says the Stagecoach…yeah right. More like every 20 if you’re lucky, and if it’s a Sunday you may as well get an Uber.
5. Why so many at once?
Another thing I cannot help but wonder is why you can wait seemingly forever for a bus to come…and then three do. No bus has gone by for a good half and hour and then boom. All of them. At once. Why Stagecoach? Why? And its always the case that on the other side of the road, there are empty buses frequently driving past. Why are there always so many buses returning from campus empty, as opposed to getting us there?
6. Why do you randomly stop for ages?
There is nothing weirder than when a bus driver decides to stop at an empty bus stop for around five minutes. No explanation. No warning. The first time it happened I remember looking around and seeing some confused faces, and others with completely defeated ones. Having lived in Leamington for two years, this is something I still do not understand.
7. Why do you bother sending single-deckers?
Another thing. There is always a sea of students wanting to get onto campus via the university bus. So someone tell me why they send single-decker buses which couldn’t fit half the students that need to get to campus. It makes absolutely no sense. Buses that people never get on always seem to be double-decker.
8. Why do you wait at the campus bus stand and then take off without anyone?
I will never ever get my head around why buses will be empty, wait at the bus stop full of students and then take off without warning. Do you think this is funny Stagecoach? Because i’m telling you on behalf of every Warwick student ever, it isn’t.
9. Why don’t you wait?
Dear bus drivers, we know you see us running as fast as we can with our backpacks and arms filled with books. We know you know we have classes to get to and wouldn’t be running if we didn’t have places to be. So why oh why don’t you wait when you see us run for your bus?
10. Why don’t you stop at the bus stop?
Finally, Stagecoach why don’t your buses stop at the bus stop? I’m sick and tired of having to do the quickstep each time I see a bus approaching, in an attempt to guesstimate where exactly it’s going to stop. An idea, why not just stop at the bus stop? Not in front of it, not miles behind it, not in the middle of the road but at the stop. It really would make our lives a hell of a lot easier.
With all that being said, Stagecoach in all of its tiresome and downright odd routines, is a Warwick students best friend. We may get to class late, or end up waiting for a bus that seems to never come, but you do come. And for that we are grateful.
