Why don’t people queue in bus stop anymore?

Really nice to read that where I live isn't the only place where people queue and thank the driver when they get off!
I've had a few overseas visitors who are quite disconcerted when they hear the "Thank you!"s as people get off the bus!

I've never known school kids to queue up when the bus arrive. I'm in my 60's and can remember having to join the scrum to make sure I got a seat.

I agree with Beau, it happens mainly in London, as most are foreigners there, and dont have the British politeness and orderliness in queues.I live in another Country, and they dont know what queueing is, they just push on regardless of who was at the bus stop first, they never thank the driver and dont stand up for the elderly or people with children.

Where I live, parents drive their offspring (of varying ages) to a layby where coaches wait at 7am to take their pupils to school. Each coach for a different school and some have the school badge/logo on the side. As it's an infrequent bus service in these parts and they are privately educated kids, it's all part of the school fees ??
No children queuing at any bus stop here, not even in the holidays.
Everyone else is unfailingly polite and, when I've used the bus, everyone thanks the driver.

When I am "home" in the UK visiting the North West, I love waiting in bus queues, and get to know so many people before they orderly step onto the bus, then politely thank the driver, this happens in a big City also the rural area where we visit, I love coming home to politeness.

I met a lovely young woman in the bus queue yesterday.
We told each other a bit about our lives.
Her husband has depression, and it has been a hard time for her, and I told her about my troubles.
I saw her getting off the bus as I got on, today, and she gave me a little cuddle and asked if I was ok

The OP may think the worst offenders are schoolchildren and others think “pushing in” is fairly new but I’m sorry to say I dreaded catching the bus home from school in the 60s/70s if there were middle aged or older women behind me in the queue as I was pretty sure I would be elbowed aside.
I had 8-9 miles to travel and only one bus an hour. It was a bus stop just outside Manchester so was often nearly full when it arrived and invariably only took on a handful of people. As there were busses every few minutes going along the first four or five miles of the route, I knew some of these sharp elbowed adults weren’t needing to catch my “once an hour” bus - so it was all doubly frustrating.
It has even happened to me on two or more consecutive busses so that in the summer I would sometimes walk halfway then get a different bus for the rest of the journey - or even walk home.
None of us children could complain though - one who did was reported to the head teacher for lack of respect for elders!
I still feel cross about it now and am mindful of young people if they are “ahead” of me somewhere.

Don't get me started on this! There are two buses that I can use that serve the university (and are subsidised so cheap for me if it's before 9am). The students do not queue. They block the pavement. Some of the bus stops are used only by the uni buses, others are shared. At stops that the uni buses do not use there is always an orderly queue. At shared bus stops the students have little regard for queues. Often I have been first in the queue, the uni bus arrives and I can be last on. Students arrive and stand at the front of the queue or perhaps see a friend at the front of the queue and join him/her. Once on the bus they rarely offer me a seat (the uni bus is often heaving) or they sit on the aisle seat thus blocking a seat or taking up a seat with a large suitcase or I'm hit in the face by a rucksack (don't they realise that when taking off or putting on a rucksack it swings round, woe betide anyone in its flight path). The uni buses are more frequent than the other buses but I try to avoid them. Here, many of the students are Chinese but the English students are just as bad at queueing.

Please don’t blame foreigners and claim all Brits are the model of politeness when it comes to queuing, such sweeping generalisations are not my experience. Maybe it’s a city vs country cultural thing. Plus, guess what, most people who live in London are British, but a lot of people who travel in the centre on busses are tourists,

Well I live in London and the bus stop I use the most has about 7-8 different buses using it. People wait in the shelter or sit on the nearby benches and when a bus arrives the 3-4 people waiting for that bus move forward and get on in no particular order. Never any problem to be honest. Many people shout their thanks to the driver too as they exit the bus and if drivers see you hurrying to catch the bus they will wait for you!

Speaking as a Londoner myself.. you will find that most of central London is made up of tourists from abroad who just do not understand the concept of the British queue..hence nobody queues much in London these days.

Bus queues working ok in West Midlands!

The first time I came across the ‘who shoves hardest, gets on the bus’ was in Liverpool in the 1970s. I had recently moved there. The pushing and shoving wasn’t limited to any particular age group, and at that time, most people appeared to be British born. Most passengers were people heading into town to work or possibly for shopping. The first time it happened, I was near the front of the ‘queue’ which descended into a mob when the bus arrived. I missed the bus and was late for my appointment. Next time I joined in the pushing - the guilt only lasted until I was on the bus. Nowhere else I’ve lived seems to have a problem with queueing, but I’ve never tried in London.

most people who live in London are British
According to the 2011 census.
London population 8mil +
44.9% white British
37% born outside the uk.
24.5% born outside Europe.

I think I am glad I don't live in London. Does 1 constitute a queue? I am sometime on my own. If it's raining I am one of the late comers and nip across from my house as close to time as I can. We do have a pretty bus shelter - with hanging baskets in the Best Village season - but my home is warmer. If there are more of us we come into the "remembering who came first" category with "the old or frail get preference" caveat.

We do sometimes have more when U3A Bus Pass groups come to see our castle - some wait at the bus stop (in the pretty shelter if it's raining) and some walk down to the castle and back but they are all very chatty. And kind. I don't think I have ever heard race mentioned.

No ... not moving to London.

According to the statistics above you can’t be British if you’re not white.

Hmm, some of the posts on here have verged on the xenophobic .

No posts on here are remotely xenophobic, mentioning people are or are not British is not xenophobic, nor is speaking of cultural differences ie queueing or not queueing.

Good point Suzied. Where do black/Asian/Far Eastern people born in the U.K. fit in to those statistics?

Maddyone, I think you will find cultural differences throughout the UK. We used to be proud of that fact. We were all still British and we still are. I think Niobe was being kind when she said some of the posts "verged" on the xenophobic.

But some posts implied that queuing was "polite", "British", and preferable to not queuing. Those who don't queue , therefore are acting in a non-British, impolite fashion. I would challenge that assumption, also the fact that many Londoners who maybe, the 3rd , 4th or more generation to be born here but happen not to be white are "foreigners" and not British. There are many reasons for queueing and not queuing and not just about whether someone is British or not - age of passengers, how many buses there are, cost of said bus travel, urban vs rural location, whether seating is provided at said bus stop, could all contribute to queueing behaviour and not just their nationality or cultural origins.

Beau that is exactly so.

I'm not sure what the 2011 Census figures quoted by petra actually prove. If 37% were born outside the UK then 63% were British by birth, regardless of colour, and more than two-thirds of them were white, not bad going for a cosmopolitan city with a lot of descendants of Empire/Commonwealth immigrants.

As a Londoner whose father was a Welsh immigrant job-seeker I am happy to be living here, and my bus queuing experience is the same as Niobe's. The single bus queue just doesn't work where one stop serves several routes which have a number of stops in common.

What a timely thread!

Yesterday we were on a busy commuter train in a big city (yes, I know the thread is about buses but still relevant) and found it difficult to get past all the people standing near the doors. We stood in the aisle right by the seats with notices saying "please offer these seats to people with disability or the elderly. No one made eye contact, no one offered a seat. It wasn't a long journey so we just stood there until an announcement said there was a delay and DH wondered how long he could stand as he has had major back surgery. He asked me, in a normal tone, how old one had to be to be considered elderly and havoc broke out. A couple in the not disabled seats offered their seats and we accepted and thanked them and said it should be the people in the seats behind who should offer. The woman in one of those seats got out her season ticket and said "I've paid for this seat" and then proceeded to tell the whole compartment that she was about to have a panic attack and had never had such a bad experience. She shouted that she had been using this train for 4 years and didn't know the seats were for people who needed them. She got the attention she wanted and eventually calmed down when the attention stopped. Her next step was to loudly offer us £10 so we could buy ourselves a drink and start complaining again about how bad we had made her feel. Of course we refused the money and didn't tell her how that made us feel. When we got off the train we were behind her as she walked off as calm as could be straight to her car. If her 'panic' or 'distress' had been as bad as she made out there was no way she would have been able to drive. So glad we don't live where people normally behave like that.

Here everyone sits in the bus shelter chatting and in some cases continue chatting when the bus comes and then get on the bus in an orderly manner, often insisting that someone looking unsteady or with a pushchair or shopping trolley gets on first. Everyone thanks the driver when they get off, whatever age. I know I shouldn't judge by appearances but it does always make me happy when a gum-chewing scruffy 'oik' politely says thank you to the driver or offers their seat to someone they think needs it more than them.

MPs annoy me when they think that we all get the London Freedom Pass. They work in London and see it in use and assume that their own constituents have it too.

Gracesgran, I am fully aware that cultural differences exist throughout the world. What on earth do you mean by pointing out what I clearly already know. I said that it’s not xenophobic to mention that cultural differences exist, and it’s not.