Features / Transport
All aboard the new Metrobus route
As the gathered dignitaries and First staff walked off two Metrobus buses to watch them be driven across the Ashton Avenue bridge, a woman talking to a cyclist near the Create Centre broke off her conversation to shout in the direction of the (mostly) men in suits.
“It’s an abomination!” she yelled. “You should be ashamed! Who got the measurements wrong? What a bunch of twits!”
This wasn’t on the official schedule of the event, which had started earlier on Wednesday morning at the SS Great Britain with a few speeches.
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“It’s quite amazing, it’s quite astonishing and you will be quite impressed,” First West of England managing director James Freeman said as guests got a preview of the M2 route that officially opens to paying passengers at 6am on Monday, September 3.
SS Great Britain Trust chief executive Matthew Tanner called it a “very auspicious day” while Destination Bristol head of tourism Kathryn Davis said that she was “thrilled that (the M2) will further enhance the visitor experience in the city”.
Guests gather before riding the M2 route for the first time. It is the second route of the £230m Metrobus system
After the speeches were over and the invited guests had been given their branded Metrobus notebooks and pens, the two buses drove onto the M2 route along Cumberland Road, doing a loop of the city centre before heading back along Cumberland Road and then onto the guided busway across Ashton Avenue bridge.
It’s here that is the start of the guided busway section of the M2 route and where it was discovered in April that some vehicles did not fit the guideway rails, further delaying the project that was originally due to finish in 2016.
Everything was working now, however, with Freeman keen to show the guests watching the two buses cross the bridge how two small wheels on the side of the vehicles are used to grip on to concrete strips, with guided busway sections also used as the route heads towards Ashton Gate, Ashton Vale and the Long Ashton park & ride.
A Metrobus bus heads along a guided busway part of the M2 route towards the Ashton Avenue bridge
The buses drove over the graffiti-strewn new skew bridge next to Winterstoke Road and also passed by several bus stops which were missing every single one of their windows.
Talking to passengers via an earpiece on one of the buses, Freeman said: “It has been a long ride and it has taken a lot of energy. On Monday, all of that effort will have been proved worthwhile.”
As he got off the bus back at the SS Great Britain, one of the passengers was asked if he had enjoyed the ride. After thinking about it for a few seconds, he shrugged and said: “At the end of the day, it’s just a bus.”
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