Bus hold-ups

They still persist in getting drivers to sell tickets at bus stops, causing long delays and frustration for passengers. Can they not grasp that we are now in the 21st century, not the early 20th?

Where else in Europe do bus or tram drivers hold up buses while they sell tickets, and only to those who have the correct money?

In every other European country with which I am familiar, it is an offence to speak to the driver. Drivers are there to drive buses, not sell tickets. In any case, elsewhere buses are obsolete, replaced long ago by modern trams or trolley buses, fast, silent and with far greater capacity.

Tickets are bought in advance and automatically validated by a machine as one gets on the vehicle.

I was saddened the other day to see, in a space of a few hundred yards, two parties of tourists turned away from the Edinburgh bus I was on (No 37) simply because they hadn’t the correct change. Of course, they didn’t: they were tourists.

Doesn’t Edinburgh want tourists?

Alastair Maxwell-Irving

Telford House

Blairlogie, Stirling