Council Saves Island From Terrifying Menace Of Free Buses
The free-bus pilot is withdrawn after capacity concerns, sparing the island from buses that might become dangerously available.
GUERNSEY, A proposed one-year trial of free bus travel has been withdrawn after the operator warned that its routes might struggle with extra passengers. By Linda Sources. The island’s filing cabinets have since offered their own account of events.
The newly activated Office of Fare-Based Public Safety described the withdrawal as a clean act of fiscal self-defence. Chair Mabel Quill said the council had spared residents the alarming experience of boarding a bus, sitting down, and reaching a destination without first paying. “We have bravely protected the public from a bus with no price tag,” Quill said, speaking through a brass tube recently made deputy chair.
The buses objected. They held an emergency union meeting under a timetable and said free travel would expose them to popularity, an emotion for which no vehicle had been properly trained. Their representative, a retired single-decker named Mildred, asked for two annual holidays, a quiet carriage for thinking, and names less reminiscent of serial numbers. “We are machines, but we still know when we are being overbooked,” she said.
“We have bravely protected the public from a bus with no price tag.”
Then the budget woke up. During a late-night balancing exercise, it unfolded several extra pages, grew a small paper hand and crossed out expenses it judged “recklessly cheerful”, including a replacement kettle and one proposed smile. A red APPROVED stamp speaking for the document said public transport remained acceptable if the public stayed at home and travelled mentally. “I am not cruel,” it said. “I am simply a square with responsibilities.”
That settled the transport question, at least on paper. The emergency plan would replace bus stops with contemplation zones, where passengers stand beside signs reading PLEASE IMAGINE A VEHICLE. They may proceed once a bureaucrat confirms their imagined trip has reached the correct emotional destination. Anyone pleased with the service receives a form, another form explaining the first, and an apology from a stapler.
Sheep have now joined the discussion. The Guernsey Association of Sheep Against Unexpected Bus Users was formed in a meadow after three ewes encountered a timetable, and it wants each route replaced with a circular patch of grass. Its secretary, Oatmeal, said the flock did not oppose movement in principle. It opposed humans moving about without becoming confused at a junction. “A free bus is just a paid bus wearing a disguise,” Oatmeal said.
And one man nearby said a dream had promised him a fare-free journey. He would accept a bench with a dependable sense of direction. The bench declined to comment because of negotiations with its left armrest. The Office later issued a certificate declaring Guernsey safe from uncontrolled convenience, printed on a bus ticket that developed stage fright and hid beneath a receipt. Mildred remains by the depot with her union card in the windscreen, while a typewriter continues to insist that it is the mayor.