The Stagecoach bus in front of my car belched out the kind of fumes that would have had the Green Party baying for blood.
My vehicle filled with toxins and oxygen masks fell from above, while a woman shouted: “Put your own mask on first; to hell with the kids.”
Under 21st century regulations, my guess is that the bus shouldn’t have been on the road and spewing out smoke as it turned into its terminus on Aberdeen’s Market Street, one of the country’s most polluted roads. It was the kind of bus that, despite its non-Green credentials, will no doubt be chugging along after January 31 next year to ferry all those under-22s who will then be eligible for free bus passes.
It’s another SNP vote-catcher – er, sorry, policy – that takes us into the unknown; and I’m not thinking of all those little Aberdeenshire villages Stagecoach collects passengers from and delivers them to.
Will rural buses run late enough for young people?
At this point, you should commit the transport secretary Graeme Dey’s statement to memory. He promised that fares would not rise as a result of such government kindness to the under-22s, a pledge that may return to haunt him.
He is, he said, “alive to the risk” of such unintended consequences (fares increasing) when developing the scheme. Alas, he did not tell us what those risks are, nor whether they keep him awake at night in his Angus home from where he probably doesn’t use the bus to collect his smokies from Arbroath.
It’s all part of a deal with Patrick Harvie, Lorna Slater and a smattering of other Green Party MSPs you’ve never heard of, who say the policy is “brilliant and transformational for young people, particularly in rural areas”.
It may well be. Nobody, not even Mr Dey, can tell, though I suspect the under-22s from the outskirts of Aberdeen may just be setting out to a city nightclub on Saturdays around the time the last bus from the town is heading to their area. However, when it may benefit younger people is on a weekend during the day, if only to count the number of shops that have closed in any given week.
Mr Dey claimed the freebie fares would be a “fantastic opportunity” for them, but left out the bit about boosting votes in the next independence referendum.
So, dear bus users, you may not be alone on the double-decker of your choice for long. Meanwhile, the Greens, keen to kill off the North Sea oil and gas business, will turn a blind eye to those ancient buses which continue to poison our air.