My nightmare bus and train journeys with the fellow passengers from hell – Alastair Dalton

Basic travel etiquette severely lacking among some travellers

We all need to learn to be better passengers.

That’s my conclusion from several eye-opening experiences travelling across Scotland and England by train and bus over the last month.

There’s always going to be a random nature to public transport, because it’s exactly that, open to anyone.

Alastair Dalton describes some passengers moving across station concourses as like "Brownian motion writ large". (Photo by Colin/Wikimedia Commons)

It perhaps should be like sitting at a table in a cafe, but on wheels – that’s how we should treat the experience. There’s certain social norms to be observed when eating and drinking in public, but some people don’t seem to think they apply when they’re on the move.

I’m sure everyone hopes that any empty seats around them remain unfilled for the duration of their journey, or at the very least are not occupied by the fellow passenger(s) from hell. But, of course, it’s a lottery.

Or is it? Does the more you travel increase the chances of an excruciating encounter with that anti-social oaf – or the person so lacking in self awareness you wonder how they’ve got so far in life without realising it.

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The odds must have stacked against me on one hour-long bus trip, memorable for all the wrong reasons. I’ve since tried to work out the chances the guy who boarded shortly after I did and sat in the seat behind me would not only turn out to be the sole obnoxious person aboard but also not alight until my stop – and be somewhat wanting in the pleasant body odour stakes to boot.

For almost the entire 12-mile journey, when he was not making a series of loud and lengthy calls on his phone, he was using it to play music or watch videos.

The single decker was pretty full so there was nowhere obvious to move, and as the bus emptied, I thought that might risk being seen as a provocative gesture. But another exasperated passenger voiced what we were all probably thinking when he told the plonker: “You are a noisy sod”.

Later the same week, the issue was children – or the adults travelling with them. As a parent who has made long journeys with youngsters, I know the challenges. But for accompanying adults, the key is striking the right balance – extremely tricky as it often is – between giving the kids with you a degree of leeway while being mindful of the limits of what’s tolerable for fellow passengers.

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If you’re travelling on a cross-Border train where people are making journeys of five hours plus, you need to be aware of noise levels, and certainly not resort to unplugged videos as a distraction mechanism when things get fraught. Rather than so-called “quiet carriages”, we need “noisy carriages” for such folk.

But what I found most frustrating was the behaviour of people in busy stations. Their erratic movements were like Brownian motion writ large, a nightmare to negotiate, especially if you’re trying to move across the concourse faster than them. If only they looked out before suddenly changing direction or cutting right across you. The trick, I realised, was to walk behind people to ensure a clear path – but not too close.

Happy travels this summer, and if you’re a considerate traveller, I hope the dice are loaded in your favour.