🚌 Advanced English Listening Practice: The British Bus (English Like A Native Podcast)

Hello and welcome to English Like A Native, the podcast that's designed

for lovers and learners of English.

My name is Anna, and today I need you to buckle up 'cause

we are going on a bus ride.

Now it, I did say buckle up, which is what you'd normally say when you

want someone to fasten their seatbelt.

However, on buses in the UK, we don't have seatbelts.

Sometimes when you get on a coach or a mini bus, which is different

to our typical public bus, sometimes on these mini buses and

coaches, there will be lap belts.

So belts that just go across your lap, like when you're on an airplane,

but not on your standard public bus.

Now, first things first, if you are new here, welcome.

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Okay, so let's get on a bus.

It's actually been quite a long time since I last had a bus ride.

I think I did it with Jacob.

Oh no, I went into London actually with the boys for our dental

appointment about six months ago.

So we were due a, a, a checkup and I think we took a bus and

then a train and an underground.

So we had quite an, an exciting day of vehicles and transportation.

But normally I, I don't often take a bus.

However, when I was younger, I used to use the buses all the time, especially

for getting to college or university.

When I was, uh, working in Manchester, I would often take the bus into

work, so I'd use it to commute.

And what we do here is we...

well, now we can go on the internet and look up when the next bus is

going to arrive, so we know well in advance when the next bus is.

However, when I was younger, we would have to pick up a timetable, a bus timetable.

So a little sheet of paper that would normally fold up and slip

into your pocket, that would have all of the standard times of

all the buses that were running.

So you would head to what is called the bus stop.

You head to 'head to' means go to you, head to the bus stop

and you wait for your bus.

So you might be sitting at the bus stop looking at your watch thinking "I'm

sure the timetable said the bus would be here at five past three, but I can't

see any buses coming" and then finally you can see it coming over the hill.

"Woo-hoo.

Here's my bus" and so you get on the bus, and you ride on the bus.

So you get on, you physically enter the bus, and you, you ride on the bus.

Now notice I'm saying on the bus you get on you, you ride on the bus, because

although we are inside the bus, we use on whenever it is a vehicle that

you can stand up and walk around in.

So you get on a plane and you get on a bus.

You get on a ship, okay?

'cause you can stand up and walk around on these particular vehicles.

So you catch a bus.

You can also use, hop on and hop off.

So I might tell you I need to hop on a bus to Piccadilly Circus, and

then I'll hop off, as soon as I get to my bus stop, I'll hop off again.

So you hop on and you hop off.

And then later in the day, I'll need to take the bus to, I don't know.

Where can I say?

I can take the bus to Wimbledon.

I'm going to take the bus to Wimbledon.

That just simply means I'm going to ride on the bus until I get to Wimbledon.

So I'm going to take the bus to Wimbledon, and then I will hop off, see

my friend, have a bite to eat, and then hop back on the bus again, the same

bus, or at least the same number bus and, uh, go all the way to Kingston.

So you have a timetable and you go to the bus stop to catch your bus.

Now, of course, you can't just jump on a bus and, and sit down

and, and get a, a ride for free.

That doesn't happen.

You have to pay a fare, a fare, F-A-R-E.

In the old days, in the old days, actually in some places it probably

still is, that you have to pay with cash.

But in the old days, you always would pay with money.

There would be a little tray in the driver's door that you would

place your money in and your driver would give you your change, and then

print a ticket for you, a little paper ticket with his machine, and

you take that ticket and sit down.

That reminds me.

When I was younger, I used to collect bus tickets.

Isn't that strange?

I had a very strange set of collections and bus tickets was one of the

things that I used to collect.

Very odd.

Anyway, we won't, uh, we won't dwell on that particular weird fact,

but yes, you would pay in cash.

These days most buses, I think, especially since the pandemic, most

buses have contactless payment.

Contactless payments.

So you can use your card.

In London you can use an oyster card.

I think we still have oyster cards here.

I, I don't use one myself, but you can use either your, your, your debit card

or your credit card to just tap on the machine, or you can use your oyster card,

or if you have your cards dialed into your phone, then you can use your phone.

You can tap your phone against the machine.

It's all very clever, isn't it?

Technology is moving so fast.

We've come a long way in a very short space of time.

So you pay your fare.

I also don't think you get paper ticket anymore.

I think you just tap and it goes beep and you go and sit down.

The one thing that's a shame with all this progression is that there's

very little talking to the driver.

I still talk to the driver, but now because they are hiding behind these

big screens that are there to protect them, I think probably it was even

more so through the pandemic, but they have these big screens and they

don't need to interact with you.

You just tap your card and walk onto the bus.

But I still think it's nice to say "Hello".

And you tap your card, they nod their head and you say "Thank you", and you go

and sit down and then at the end of your ride if I'm passing the driver again I

like to say, "Thank you very much", or "Have a nice day" and jump off the bus.

Hop off the bus.

Get off the bus.

However, some buses in London I keep saying in London because every area,

every town in the UK has its own company.

Or local borough that provides the bus services.

So the buses are slightly different depending on where in the country you are.

But in London, some of the buses have a door halfway down the bus, and

this is to help the flow of people.

So when the bus stops at a bus stop, people get on at the front

of the bus, and then anyone on the bus gets off via the middle door.

It makes it easier for people to move around.

There's no waiting around for everyone to get off before you get on.

However, if you do see a bus arriving and it just has one door at the front,

you stand back and let everybody else get off before you get on.

And in this country, of course, we love to queue.

So you'll form an orderly line.

You'll queue and take turns to get on the bus rather than just push your way in.

It might cause it might cause a problem if you push forwards.

so you get on the bus and you, you use contactless and you, you pay your fare.

If you're buying a ticket in advance, or if you are in another area of

the country where they still do use cash, then you might ask for a

single ticket or a return ticket, depending on what your trip is about.

If you just need to go one way, you buy a single ticket.

If you're coming back, you might buy a return ticket.

And then I mentioned of course, the Oyster Card.

I mentioned it as if you all know what it is, but maybe you haven't been to London.

You have no idea what I'm talking about.

The Oyster Card is a...

like an easy travel system, the Oyster travel system in the...

in London.

So basically you buy a card and you put money on the card.

So let's say I buy a card and I put 30 pounds on my Oyster card, I then use

that card on all of the London transport.

So it could be on the tram, it could be on the underground, it could be on a

train if the train is within the London transport system, on the buses as well.

So it just makes sure that you pay the lowest fare for the journey that

you're making, even though you're using mixed transport or perhaps...

cause in London you might jump onto the tube a couple of times a day, I say a

couple, I actually mean more like 3, 4, 5 times in the day, to move around the city.

But you don't want to be paying a, a big fare every time, so you pay

like one fare in order to travel within a certain zone for the day.

So the Oyster Card is all about helping you to lower your travel costs.

So there's quite a lot of vocabulary that I just covered there.

We had to wait for a bus, catch a bus, get on and get off.

Ride on the bus, hop on and hop off.

To take the bus to a place.

We talked about the bus stop and the timetable, the bus

fare that you have to pay.

The driver.

Now, sometimes there's a bus conductor, although this is less common these days.

The conductor is someone who assists the passengers on the bus, maybe

checks that people have paid.

You would see a conductor also sometimes on the trains, they come around and

make sure everyone's paid for their, for their right to be there on the train.

We mentioned a, a single, we mentioned a single or return ticket,

and we mentioned the oyster card.

Now, I also mentioned a little bit of etiquette.

The proper etiquette of riding a bus if you are in the UK.

I mentioned queuing up, so I said, if you're waiting for a bus, and the

bus arrives and there's a number of people there, it's polite to form a

neat orderly line and wait for everyone to get off, and then one by one in

order of the line to get onto the bus.

Often if someone has been waiting at the bus stop longer than you have, it's only

fair to allow them to stand in front of you in the line, and people will

often step back and urge you to move in front of them if they can see that

you've been there longer than they have.

Another thing that we do is if you are already on the bus, or you are just

getting on the bus and you have found a nice comfy seat, or you've got bags

on the seat next to you, and then you can see that someone needs the seat

because it's quite busy, well, if you have your bag on a seat, obviously

it's, it's polite to take your bag and put it on your lap or put it on the

floor to allow the person to sit down.

But if you are sitting in a seat and you see someone who's elderly, so an

older person or heavily pregnant, they might even be wearing a badge, we tend

to have a badge that we wear when we're pregnant that says "baby on board"

or something like that and pregnant ladies tend to wear this to show you

that they might need to sit down.

And so if you see someone who's pregnant, wearing a badge, if you

see an elderly person or a disabled person, someone who needs, uh, a

stick to walk, then it, it's polite to stand up and offer them your seat.

So that they don't have to struggle with standing up on a moving bus.

I'm sure it's the same in, in your country too.

The other thing is speaking on your phone too loud or being too loud in general.

So if you are on there with your friend, keeping your conversation at a reasonable

level, not being too loud in, in a way that would disturb other people.

And then finally, I think if it's a busy bus and people are trying to

get on at the front of the bus, it's helpful if you move back down the bus

to make room for more people to get on.

Sometimes the driver may shout to you, "Move down, move

down the bus", or "Move back.

Move back!", telling you, please move down the bus so more people can get on.

Now talking about moving along in the bus, you might actually be able

to move upstairs because we don't just have single leveled buses.

We have double deckers, a double decker bus, a double decker bus in London.

These are typically red, the red double decker buses.

They're iconic for London.

And it's quite typical for the, the young kids, the young kids.

They might be like 20 or, or something, but the, the cool kids and the

young people tend to go upstair.

You can see much more.

You get a better view and yeah, it's, it's cool to go upstairs or the backseat.

The backseat is reserved for the cool people.

If I get onto a bus and there's a rowdy crowd of teenagers all hanging out

upstairs or hanging around the backseat, I tend to just stay right at the front.

It just makes me a little bit nervous.

I think rowdy crowds generally, um, make people nervous.

Anyway, were you the kind of person who sat at the back on a bus?

Were you a cool kid?

So now I'm going to give you some general kind of facts about buses.

The London bus service, the first London bus service began in 1829,

and it was a horse-drawn omnibus.

Horse-drawn, if something is horse-drawn, then it means it is moved by a horse.

So we talk about a horse-drawn carriage.

This was a horse-drawn omnibus.

The first bus service in London, began in 1829 pulled

by a horse, it was horse-drawn.

Now the iconic double decker bus was introduced in London in 1956, so that's

quite a lot later than when the first bus service arrived, and this double decker

bus replaced the previous trolley buses.

Now the London bus network is one of the largest and most extensive in the world.

With over 8,000 buses, can you imagine 8,000 buses and 700 routes.

And of course, as I mentioned, outside of London, bus services are operated

by a variety of private companies and local authorities with some areas, even

today, some areas still have a limited bus service or no bus service at all.

So there are still some very remote areas within the UK.

Now, even if you don't ride on a bus very often, if you drive in this

country, then you will definitely have experience of being stuck behind the bus.

Ah, there's nothing worse is there.

You're trying to get somewhere quickly.

You're trying to be efficient, and it's always when you are running late

or you really need to get somewhere and then suddenly there's a bus and

you're stuck behind that bus and it stops at every bus stop, and it has

lots of people to get on and get off.

Oh, it takes ages.

And if this is the case, it is not uncommon for you to overtake that bus.

So you overtake the bus when you have an opportunity.

Of course, you have to be careful when overtaking a bus because

pedestrians do have a habit of stepping out from in front of the bus.

So as you are overtaking, you think, "woo-hoo, the road is mine.

I can speed up."

Then . suddenly someone steps out from in front of the bus and you

weren't expecting to see them.

Ooh, that could be, a bit of a disaster.

So always being careful waiting to see where the pedestrians are, if overtaking.

If you're a cyclist, then you are also warned to be very careful

if you are undertaking a bus.

So to overtake is, um, when you pass a vehicle, passing

them on the right hand side.

But if you undertake them, it's where you cut, um, in front

of them from the left side.

So we tend to expect anyone to pass us, to pass us on the right, it's

usually not allowed to undercut.

However, cyclists, of course, do all the time, they just move where they can, and

cyclists and buses are not well-matched.

So if a cyclist is undertaking a bus, then they have to be extra careful because you

know, every vehicle has a blind spot and bigger vehicles have bigger blind spots.

A blind spot is an area at the side of you that you can't really see very easily.

Your mirrors don't quite cover, so you have to be super careful.

Be very careful around buses in general.

Okay, I can't finish this episode.

Okay, I can't finish this episode without mentioning one of our culturally

very famous songs, and it's the Nursery Rhyme, the Wheels on the Bus.

Do you know this song?

The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round.

The wheels on the bus go round and round all day long.

And of course it goes on, it repeats.

Um, the wipers on the bus go swish, swish, swish, swish, swish, swish.

And what else do we have?

We have the horn on the bus goes beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.

We have the mummies are on the bus.

The mummies on the bus go sh, sh, sh, sh, sh, sh.

And the children on the bus.

The children on the bus can either go up and down or they can go wriggle,

jiggle, jiggle, wriggle, jiggle, jiggle.

The, um, driver on the bus says, move on back.

Move on back.

Oh, here's a good one.

The doors . All the children like the doors.

The doors on the bus go open and shut.

Open and shut.

Open and shut.

And is there...?

Oh, the babies?

Yes, the babies.

The baby's on the bus go wah wah wah.

Crying.

Wah wah wah, wah wah wah.

It's a great song.

It's a great song.

Sometimes they have the, the ladies on the bus go natter, natter natter natter

natter natter natter natter natter.

I always love to add my own little verse, to these nursery rhymes.

So if you think of any great additions to this very, very famous nursery

rhyme, then please drop me a message.

Let me know, and uh, yeah, I look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you so much for joining me today.

I hope that you found this episode enjoyable, and if you are interested

in becoming a Plus member, don't forget that the link to the

membership is in the show notes.

Thank you so much for joining me.

Until next time, take care and goodbye.