Once a week, a 50-seater coach makes a lonely journey from Ealing Broadway station to Wandsworth Road and back again. According to the Surrey Comet, 'No one ever gets on and it departs, empty, on a 70-minute trip to Wandsworth where it waits for two hours before returning, again carrying no passengers'.
The 'Ghost Bus' functions as a rail replacement for the twice daily Birmingham to Brighton via Ealing service axed last month. But according to a local passenger user group, the phantom coach goes unmentioned in any timetable and its departure elicits only the silence of the grave from station announcers. They claim that the Department for Transport are exploiting a loophole to dodge a 'lengthy and expensive public consultation procedure' needed to formally nix the little-used rail service. The Times followed up with a spot of investigative journalism, discovering that rail staff were unaware of the service, and the bus driver expected very few passengers.
If you want to find out more, a local party will surprise the ticket inspectre by actually using the ghost bus tomorrow at 9.45.
What would the atheist bus make of all this?
