You may have recently seen around Brighton wonderful bright yellow buses. These buses are from the new community interest company “The Big Lemon Buses“. (Disclosure: Big Lemon founder, Tom Druitt, is a member of the local Green Party). These buses exemplify Green values… they run on used vegetable oil resulting in low emissions and reuse of what would otherwise be considered waste. They also are operated for the community interest, not for the profit of the owners.
Even better, the buses are cheap and have simple prices. £1 for a single and £2 for an all day ticket. This is how it should be. I recently was trying to explain how the Brighton & Hove bus prices work to someone new to the city. In doing so you have to somehow define the difference between city centre and not along with the implications for prices that has.
If we’re going to reduce the number of short car journeys within the city (and we need to!) then making buses regular, reliable and affordable is absolutely critical. So while Brighton & Hove Buses have recently increased their prices, Big Lemon Buses have stuck to their simple £1/£2 pricing formula. Perhaps not being dependent on spiralling oil prices helps.
If you can make use of a yellow bus (they currently run between Brighton station and the univerisites at Falmer) then please support a community company which respects the environment and helps improve the air quality of our city.
Jason Kitcat 