Mayor of London Boris Johnson announced in October and brought into force this week inflation busting fare increases. It will now cost you a whopping 12.7% more to travel on buses and nearly 4% on the tube. Bad as this is, in fact in my humble opinion given the recession its unforgiveable, what will this mean for our favourite bus route, the never-to-be-seen 266?In fairness to our Council they too routinely slam the service, but they don't seem to have anything to say about these latest rises on their website.
Having had to swerve to avoid one on the Askew Road just the other day (they seem to be driven by complete maniacs) I was less amazed at the apalling driving and more shocked that I'd actually seen one at all. Will the money that will now not be paying mortgages and keeping families afloat and instead flooding into TfL coffers be going anywhere near this disgrace of a service? I think we can guess.
I've used the 266 to go between Askew Road and Brent Cross and to be fair, it's just a bad route to drive through and really ought to be split in half. One going through the traffic hell that is Acton Central, and another going through the hell that is Harlesden...
ReplyDeleteGod you're right. We regularly monitor 266 madness although we only ever use it to get from Askew Road to Hammersmith when everyone is already grumpy and stuffed in too tight. But the drivers must be permanently scared of being late because they often fling the buses round the remainder of the route as if in a low comedy car chase...
ReplyDeleteVery fascinating article, something similar to this happened to me not too long ago and it pretty much played out in the same way to how you describe it.
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