I’ve already written about the fiasco so far with Arriva, which involved punched passengers, angry drivers and complete chaos. As I hadn’t expected any of this, I hadn’t videoed the physical assaults, but I did video this which gives an impression of the driver created confusion.
This was the fourth bus that we missed and two of the drivers launched into tirades about Arriva management in Ljubljana, so I think it’s fair to say that this mess was really the fault of Arriva drivers. There was a younger guy I was talking to who lives at Lake Bled and he said that there just aren’t enough buses at the weekends and although he hadn’t seen a physical assault before, the chaos was not an unusual one. He said that when there is a backlog he just goes home and gets a later bus, there’s no point in waiting. Another local added that the drivers had given up caring as there was just nothing that they could do.
So this sets the scene, the driver pulled way too far back and so the people who had been waiting for three hours missed another bus. In a later tirade, he blamed the passengers that were in his way so he couldn’t safely stop. I’m not sure that’s a very valid argument, but he did make that argument whilst shouting at a really upset passenger.
Bev and I decided that we weren’t going to wait for any more buses and we went back for food and drinks in the cafe we were earlier. We went back two buses later and only just boarded that one. There was still jostling and anger, with more passengers being left behind.
The poor passengers at the airport, which is en route, were all abandoned. There was another altercation there between the driver of the bus which we were on and a passenger, but the driver was really doing his best on that one and was calm, helpful and personable.
I’ve emailed this to Arriva, to see if this was completely exceptional. Because, I’d otherwise suggest that it would be unsafe for families to try and catch the bus to Lake Bled at the weekends, having seen the assaults that were committed by angry and stressed passengers. If Arriva don’t have any more buses or drivers, it feels as if they should, as most other bus companies would do, have a staff member on hand to have a queueing system so that passengers could board fairly and then only experience a maximum of a thirty minute wait. Arriva left some passengers stranded here for four hours, which is by any measure appalling.