The fuel crisis has had a huge impact across the country.
But the consequences of the crisis haven’t just affected motorists but the buses, too, as I found out when I hopped on a bus from the city centre towards Arnold.
My bus journey began from Parliament Street.
When approaching the bus stop, the sign informed me that services 25, 54 and 58 were being diverted towards Arnold via Arnot Hill Road, Rolleston Drive, Coppice Road and Ravenswood Road to Front Street.
I boarded the bus and asked the bus driver for a ticket to Arnold's high street, where all the shops are, and asked for advice on the best stop to get off at.
The driver told me that there was a diversion due to long queues at a petrol station so he had to go around and divert to a new route.
The bus wasn’t too busy, everyone wore masks and passengers were quite spread apart from one other.
The beginning of the route had no diversions and clearly no impact from the surrounding petrol stations as I noticed they were closed en route.
When getting closer to Arnold I overheard other passengers talking about the fuel issues.
They were discussing how ridiculous it was and continued to say how they forgot their route had been diverted due to the petrol stations.
Now we were approaching Arnot Hill Road.
I noticed that the screen, showing the current stop and the next two stops after, went blank.
This is when I knew we were diverting.
The same passengers went to get off the bus but were hesitant due to the diversion and they stayed on and sat back down.
There was a lot of turning onto residential streets like Brookfield Road and Rolleston Drive.
Also, there were buses approaching us on the opposite side of the road.
Finally at my destination on Front street, it was very busy with many people walking about.
Again, I heard the other passengers say how they should have got off at the previous stop and walked as the diversion was long.
Personally, the diversion wasn’t too inconvenient for me, however I can understand how it can be for other passengers.
It seems that panic buying and long queues have had an impact on many things.
