Should Charles Dickens, the masterful English complainer and general god of highlighting the bleakness and filth of his everyday surroundings, ever time travel to the present day, he would surely be lost. For all the technological advancement of the Victorian era, the ways of life and the nature of modern society have indisputably evolved at an inconceivable rate since the 19th Century. Poor Charles would be completely disoriented in an England unrecognizable to his Victorian perspective.
Caught in the unfamiliar fog of modern times, Dickens' temporal dysphoria might only be eased by turning to modern-day remnants of the Victorian age, like the experience of using Norwich's antiquated bus service.
Groan, slighty gratuitious introduction I know, but hear me out.
The Past
We all know how the Victorians took Britain into the modern age. The last 66 years of the 19th Century saw massive economic growth in the country. This came at the hands of significant industrial and technological advancements, not to mention the zenith of Britain's empire career. Between King William IV and King Edward VII, the global position and the nature of life within Britain accelerated tremendously. It is, of course, no secret, however, that alongside the advancements, Victorians left a lot to be desired in certain areas of society. In fact, the Victorians took urban living to new and exciting lows. Places like London were violently polluted, couldn't house their booming populations, and laid out red carpets for diseases such as typhoid and cholera thanks to poor hygiene and unsanitary plumbing. In "Bleak House" (1853), Charles Dickens reviewed London with such affection as
"As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill."
and
"London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained."
For all of its contributions to modern technology and geopolitics, let us not forget that Dickens' society was one that executed its criminals in the middle of public squares, deemed four-year-olds were perfect for cleaning toxic soot from the walls of chimneys, and didn't think women deserved rights.
But the Victorians did introduce Britain to the idea of public transport; they laid train tracks linking England's industrial centers and introduced the first 'buses' to British cities. London had an omnibus service, a fleet of large carriages drawn by multiple horses which would ferry Londoners around and to/from the inner city. The public could hail it like a taxi and ride in the communal carriage until they wanted to get off. The system was essentially the precursor to the modern bus service, with a less regimented route-map and little to no timetabling.
You would have thought that the Victorians were grateful for such an advancement in urban mobility, but true to their Englishness, they loved to complain about them. Charles Dickens did so copiously, (proving that the activity of grumbling about buses is one with cultural heritage and historical precedent). In his 1853 novel "Bleak House," a scene describes one of the characters boarding an omnibus and having a rather unpleasant time. The carriage is cramped and sways and bumps its way to London. Passengers get on each other's nerves and are offered little comfort by the rattling and stop-start nature of the transport.
In an earlier essay for "The Daily Chronicle," Dickens describes the general annoyances one might face when using the service.
"The native coolness of its cad (the drivers). This young gentleman is a singular instance of self-devotion; his somewhat intemperate zeal on behalf of his employers is constantly getting him into trouble, and occasionally into the house of correction."
"After the first twelve hours or so, people get cross and sleepy, and when you have seen a man in his nightcap, you lose all respect for him; at least, that is the case with us."
"Conversation is now entirely dropped; each person gazes vacantly through the window in front of him, and everybody thinks that his opposite neighbor is staring at him. If one man gets out at Shoe-lane, and another at the corner of Farringdon-street, the little old gentleman grumbles, and suggests to the latter that if he had got out at Shoe-lane too, he would have saved them the delay of another stoppage."
"We are not aware that it has ever been precisely ascertained how many passengers our omnibus will contain. The impression on the cad's mind evidently is that it is amply sufficient for the accommodation of any number of persons that can be enticed into it. 'Any room?' cries a hot pedestrian. 'Plenty o' room, sir,' replies the conductor, gradually opening the door, and not disclosing the real state of the case until the wretched man is on the steps. 'Where?' inquires the entrapped individual, with an attempt to back out again."
He more or less complains about: rude drivers, long travel times, delays, and overcrowding. Thus, should he ever time travel to modern times and find himself in Norwich, he would surely be delivered a slice of nostalgia by taking a ride on our woeful buses. Nearly 200 years on from the origin of the bus as a concept, the experience of using them in our fine city is keeping the early history and initial teething problems alive, even adding its brand of already antiquated and impractical characteristics to innovate upon the already impressive lack of innovation. For a major city, the experience of using the bus in Norwich is impressively bad.
The Present
The operator, FirstBus Eastern Counties has 2,218 1.2-star Trustpilot reviews. I asked members of the public myself, and they mostly backed this consensus up.
Short and sweet, according to Emily from Bowthorpe,
"First bus is awful, always has been, always will be."
Similarly, Becca in NR3 told me,
"I always have to get a bus way earlier than I need because when I was getting them originally to commute, they were almost always late, therefore making me late to work. In the last 2 weeks, I've been on a bus that has broken down 3 separate times too."
Moreover
"Always late or canceled buses"
is how Andrew, a top contributor to a local Bowthorpe community noticeboard sums up his experience. This paragraph could go on; many complained to me that the buses were dirty, consistently prone to cancellations, and took a long time to get from A to B.
There were some who gave me somewhat positive feedback, like local resident Tony, who said that his regular bus, the 21,
"is a very good service ok sometimes odd bus gets missed but other than that, I think it's good."
Similarly, NR2 commuter Becky had some good things to say,
"The 21/21a/22 orange line used to be great, but every time I try to catch it now, many of them get canceled at the last minute. Even using the First Bus app, they only update it 10 minutes before the bus is due, often to say it's canceled."
There is indeed an official app for the buses in Norwich, which has received mixed reviews. Some passengers swear by it, while others like Becky above don't put much stock in it. Whatever the quality of the app, I won't put a medal around First Bus's neck for it. Having some kind of app or online tool to assist in using public transport is the bare minimum nowadays. Norwich is an older city, and smart technology is helpful, though it can be alienating for older customers who might not own or know how to use a smartphone.
The Paralells
I am not going to pretend to be an expert in city planning or, as Dickens puts it, a human conveyance specialist. Coordinating a regional bus service - simultaneously dealing with inner-city and isolated rural routes is something that will forever be above my intellectual capacity. I also recognize the uselessness of any complaint delivered without remedial suggestion. However, it is natural for me, as it would be for anyone, to compare the Norwich experience to my hometown's (London). As expected, Norwich's buses are doing an impressive job of supporting the jeer that everywhere outside of London is living in the Stone Age. There are depressing similarities, parallels, and crossovers between the bus experience of Norwich today and Dickens' age of soot and sewage.
Upon boarding a bus in Norwich, you need to state where you are going and what kind of ticket you want. The driver will then print a physical ticket for you to keep; it will need to be scanned on the return journey if you indeed purchase a round trip. The whole process is slow and old-fashioned. Other bus systems in England left physical tickets behind years ago. Transport for London started phasing the design out twenty years ago with the introduction of the Oyster card in 2003 and by 2014 had completely abandoned the use of physical tickets on its services.
Nine years on from this, and Norwich bus stops still see long queues for buses, as instead of tapping on and off, onboarding passengers are required to state their destination and method of payment, then wait until their ticket has been printed off before boarding. These queues are exacerbated by the fact that no buses in the First Bus fleet have doors in the middle of the bus to allow passengers to depart without obstructing boarders. As you can imagine, this is a significant contributor to delays. It is not uncommon for a bus to be stationary for up to ten minutes at a busy stop during rush hour. There is something enraging as a passenger about sitting on the top deck of an already busy bus, waiting for a lengthy queue of new passengers to file onto your vehicle, knowing you are losing time and personal space, watching the latter drip away slowly as the slow increase of passengers continues.
In Dickens' day, you simply hailed the bus, paid the fare, and told the driver when you wanted to get off. This did not include a lengthy wait for the 15 passengers in front of you to tell the driver exactly their travel plans and wait for his machine to print each ticket individually. Of course, this comparison is hardly fair, and I am not suggesting that the Victorian system might be practical today, but I am trying to point out that the system of boarding a Norwich bus is antiquated and would confuse the patrons of even the earliest bus services.
Maybe I'm just entitled, a privileged Londoner, ignorant to the ins and outs of public services; what it takes to operate even the most simple local bus service. Maybe I expect to be treated to impossibly punctual service year-round with unlimited seating space and a plane-style entertainment tablet with games and films to be attached to the back of every seat. I won't challenge any claims of that nature.
But I know for a fact that Norwich's bus service could be a lot better than it currently is. As the colder months draw nearer, long delays and queues to board buses are going to leave more and more passengers stranded in the cold, commuters are regularly late for work, and the increased reliance on mobile updates continues to alienate older passengers.
Don't get me wrong; I don't see London buses as the pinnacle of bus services; I avoid riding them when I can too. London buses aren't reliable; they're prone to overcrowding, and they're not massively comfortable either. Nonetheless, compared to Norwich, they're futuristic, innovative, and efficient fleets of electric limousines. On the subject, one bright piece of news is that FirstBus Eastern Counties is set to receive nearly 100 new electric buses by mid-November this year. This is a step in the right direction, not only pledging to make Norwich's buses greener but also hopefully driving down delays and cancellations thanks to the increased reliability of these newer vehicles.
All in all, using buses in Norwich is not as unenjoyable as Dickens makes horse-drawn omnibuses sound in his writing. Nonetheless, many age-old gripes between the two prevail, and the present-day service has a lot of room for improvement. FirstBus is on a recruitment drive for drivers currently, so another source of delays is seemingly on the treatment table. Will the near future see an improvement in the service of Norwich's sometimes antiquated bus service? Those of us who rely on it to move around the city sure do hope so.
