| Every year when temperatures rise, Bus Users UK gets complaints from all over the country about sweltering conditions on buses with heaters left on.
With temperatures (at last!) forecast to rise, Bus Users UK has written to bus operators asking them to make sure heaters are turned off in hot weather.
Passengers find bus travel intolerably uncomfortable on hot days when heaters are left on, and often don’t believe it when drivers say there’s nothing they can do about it and tell them it’s up to engineers to turn them off.
‘Local and national media love any opportunity to brand local services as incompetent, and buses running around with heaters on in hot weather is grist to their mill’, Bus Users UK external affairs officer Stephen Morris reminds operators. ‘We are also incredulous that so few buses seem to have heater controls that drivers can use, but every year we are told this is the case.
He implores bus operators to save their customers, themselves, their drivers and Bus Users UK stress by ensuring that buses with heaters can only be turned off by engineers have them turned off. ‘There is uproar if someone leaves a dog in the car in the summer and it dies of heat exhaustion’, he says. He tells operators to think of the impact on your business if that were to happen to a passenger, especially as the age profile rises with free concessionary travel.
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