The ‘Night’ Bus

After years and years and years and years of complaints and pleadings and the giving of examples and sound argument, our bus service still stops at 9pm. Finally, last August, the announcement was made that a trial ‘Night Bus’ was being launched. Hallelujah the crowds all sang but it was short lived. Cleverly using modern text speak parlance the two new routes were name N8A and N8B, standing for N-eight, which, if you say it out loud is supposed to sound like ‘night’ when in fact it sounds light Neight, which is okay of you are a Northerner but has baffled the rest of us. These 2 new routes should have been called L8A and L8B, therefore standing for ‘Late Bus’ as opposed ‘Night Bus’ (or Neight Bus). As indeed this is what this new bus is. It’s technically not a night bus as in a London night bus because it stops at 1.30, it is more like a Late Bus, which arguably everyone else in the modern world has been travelling around on for decades. I suppose that the term ‘Late Bus’ was undesirable as it may imply that our bus service runs late, as in, not on time…

The new Neight Bus is only operational during Fair Week and on Fridays and Saturdays. What about the Sunday before a bank holiday Monday? New Years Eve? Christmas Eve? Three Kings? National Day? There are many occasions in our calendar over and above Fair Week when merry revellers would welcome the opportunity of leaving their cars behind and getting home on a bus. Also, what about the rest of the week? Life does not stop at 9pm does it? People go out, not everyone can drive, not everyone lives in the lower central part of town. People want to play sport, go to the cinema, visit friends, some finish work late. How should these people get home after 9pm?

Rather than having the overkill of a daily bus that runs until 1.30am, our buses should function during the week until 11pm. It is quite normal for a town our size to have a regular public transport system. We don’t have the luxury of trains or tubes or trams, we only have buses, they are our only mode of public transport so they have to cover all areas and a sensible timetable.

Gibraltar really needs to have a fluid and usable bus service, something that serves the whole of our community and covers all reaches where possible. Gibraltar boasts a vast array of leisure activities and events but then gives us no way to return home from them.