Our local train service is going to hell in a handcart. Having to spend hours waiting on draughty platforms for trains that don’t arrive is making commuters stressed-out and fretful. No wonder that busy people are looking for alternative ways of getting to work. They can take the car out, of course, but the valley road is busy enough already. Add a few more hot-headed motorists and there’ll be total gridlock.

Cycling to work is a good idea, in theory. In practise, however, cycling reinforces the notion of life as a lottery, with an accident blackspot at every turn. Cars and cyclists have the same kind of relationship as bulls and china shops; the further apart they are, the better. No-one gives way to cyclists - or ‘organ donors’, as they’re known down at the A & E Department. Even when they take refuge in bus-lanes, they have to share them with taxis and buses: the cyclists’ natural predators. Sudden death is never more than a heartbeat away.

Then there’s the clobber to consider. If you wear something sensible, you’ll be shunned by other cyclists. If you wear what the cyclists wear (a helmet that looks like a pound of over-ripe bananas, figure-hugging Lycra in a variety of day-glo colours, embellished with a stripe of mud all the way up your back) you’ll be openly mocked by everybody else. If you weave in and out of traffic, you’ll make an enemy of every car driver you pass. Since drivers have long memories, short fuses and a pathalogical loathing of cyclists, you’ll be storing up trouble for yourself.

Anyway, why wobble into town on two wheels when you can catch a bus instead? If you just want to get to town, be assured that there’ll be a bus along every twenty minutes. So far so good, except that buses suffer from a major image problem that not even Bradford’s talking bus-stops will allay. Travelling by bus is a rather too accurate indicator of social standing, sorting out the ‘haves’ from the ‘have nots’. Motorists look at buses in the same way that our great-grandparents looked at the workhouse: in fear and trepidation that one day they too might be reduced to this. Petrol would have to be £100 a litre before drivers would consider giving up the sheer convenience of sitting in a traffic jam with hundreds of other stationary cars, drumming impatient fingers on leatherette dashboards. They’d rather push the damn car to work than be seen catching a bus. Sad, but true.

A bus is not a viable option for busy go-getters - with places to go, people to see and deadlines to meet. If a businessman with a briefcase were to get on a bus, he might just as well wear a badge on his lapel reading ‘I’ve been sacked, my company car’s been taken back and I’m on my way to the Job Club. Kill me now, please, it would be a kindness’. Your average businessman would rather stand naked in the company car-park, being flicked remorselessly with wet towels, than be forced to spend a single second sitting on a bus. It’s the ultimate humiliation.

Newcomers to bus travel need to be tutored in bus etiquette. Even choosing where to sit requires a little care. You might imagine you can sit wherever you like, but this is not quite true. The bus is, albeit invisibly, segregated into different sections. On top it's kids at the front, smirking teenagers at the back, with adults and hacking smokers in the middle. On the bottom it’s mostly old folk and the mad, with the oldest and most infirm towards the front. There is just enough space by the door for one boring arsehole - male, middle-aged, with a comb-over - to stand all the way into town and make small-talk to the driver.

It’s an uneasy mixture. The old folk look at the kids and reminisce about their own lost youth, so long ago, when they still had most of their marbles. Seeing these kids - so boistrous, so carefree, so full of vitality - just adds insult to old age. Why do the kids have to make such a damn racket all the time? And that so-called music they listen to... It’s not music, it’s just a noise. The kids barely notice the old folk at all. They might conclude "Oh my God, that’s what I’ll be like one day", but they are spared such gloomy thoughts by the happy conviction that they are immortal and that old age is something that happens to other people, and not to them at all.

There is, please note, no first class section on a bus: no convenient demarcation between the riff-raff and the chosen few. There’s nowhere for a man in a pin-striped suit to sit and work at his laptop. Nowhere to spread out a spreadsheet. Nowhere to get a cup of coffee and a sandwich. Nowhere to escape the overpowering smell of parma violets and piss. But the social niceties of bus travel don’t end there. For example, do you sit next to someone you’ve been chatting to in the bus queue? To do so might seem a little forward, while not to do so might be seen as stand-offish. Or maybe you’re sitting next to someone on a crowded bus which almost empties at one stop. Should you now move to a new seat - and risk offending your neighbour - or stay where you are, wedged so tightly together that you can’t even cross your legs? We need a manual of our own - Debrett’s Guide to Omnibus Etiquette, perhaps - to help us mind our manners.

With the valley road being dug up every few days, the Milltown run is viewed by the bus drivers as a punishment for poor time-keeping. If they want to get their regular routes back, they’ll have to follow the bus drivers’ manual to the letter. This requires them to accelerate as fast as possible from every bus-stop, then braking equally hard at the next one - thus making the journey as uncomfortable as possible for their passengers. With a glance in the mirror and a well-timed tap-dancing routine on the gas pedal and the brake, they can transfer an old biddy and her tartan shopping trolley from one end of the bus to the other in less time than it takes to say "Hold tight at the back". Moments like these make the bus driver’s life worthwhile.

It’s a pity that buses are so maligned. OK, they’re mundane and utilitarian, but they get the job done. They just don’t inspire obsessive devotion, in the way that bikes do. Otherwise these old biddies would be taking buses out to some scruffy café, in the middle of nowhere, with tables and chairs bolted to the lino floor, where’ll they’d congregate in noisy groups, drink strong tea from chipped mugs and talk about... well, buses mostly.

In truth it can be fun to bounce around the country lanes in a bus - at least for those blessed with strong constitutions and with few constraints upon their time. The rural routes are in decline ("What’s that big red thing, dad?" "It’s a bus, lad. Take a good long look; it may be the last you see round here") so go on, catch a country bus while you still can.

As soon as the bus-drivers venture off the main road and take to the hills, the normal rules of bus travel are suspended for the duration of the trip. Forget whatever you’ve read in the timetable, especially the length of time your journey might take. Don’t be lulled into any false sense of security by the idea that the bus is only going a few miles. The country lanes above Milltown are unmapped, labyrinthine, bereft of signs; even locals get lost. Roads can come to a sudden end at muddy farmyards, or deteriorate into cart-tracks. Some of the bus-drivers have such a poor sense of direction that they have to to stop periodically and ask the passengers which way they should go. It’s not unknown for the drivers to organise a whip-round to fill the tank up, when they’ve run out of petrol.

You’ll need provisions. Imagine you’re embarking on an African safari, and pack accordingly. At the very least, you should take some refreshments for the outward leg. If you’re attacked by crazed pensioners, suffering from hunger and acute tannin deprivation, you may be able to hold them off with some cheese & pickle sandwiches and a flask of milky tea. Wear a scarf or cravat over your face; it will help to keep out the dust and the flies and the smell of lavender water. By the time the bus rolls into Milltown once again, having covered half the county, most of the passengers will be delirious. No wonder the rural routes have been re-classified as white-knuckle rides. You have been warned...