Chilly ride on freezing bus
I feel compelled to write this after a journey on a Citybus route No 962 bus.
I have lived in Hong Kong for more than eight years and have found that for some inexplicable reason, the bus companies seem incapable of controlling the temperature in their air-conditioned buses during the winter.
The whole thing is laughable and was brought to a head on Monday, when it was so cold, my teeth began to chatter.
It was obvious by looking around at the other passengers that it wasn't only me who was experiencing discomfort.
Of course, it took a foreigner with (shamefully) very little Cantonese to ask the driver to adjust the temperature. When asking my local colleagues at work what they thought, they said they always took extra clothing for their bus journeys. This also shows another point of ignorance towards our already over-polluted air. We have the arguments in summer about drivers sitting in their cars with idling engines in order to stay cool and in the winter it is the excessive use of air conditioning on public transport, which causes the same unnecessary burning of fuel.
Surely the bus captains could use some common sense in these situations. Or are they acting on instructions from bus company management? There seems to be no logical explanation for this wasteful habit.
I am sure that others feel the same and we would all like to hear explanations from the three bus companies concerned.
NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED
