The Big Lemon

Poor services and dirty bus

Ask most students in Brighton and they can’t speak highly enough of this bus, or its owner Tom Druitt. Created as an ethical alternative to the monopoly of Brighton and Hove bus company; the Lemon bus has persevered through various struggles to deliver the friendliest bus service you will ever find.
The drivers are friendly (they even allow a cheeky kebab and chips on board). This might be because the buses are a little ‘rustic’, but this is all part of the charm. If that doesn’t charm you, the bright yellow paint job will.
Beyond that, the buses run entirely on cooking oil, and the tickets are nearly half the price of a saver ticket on the Brighton and Hove buses.

You can often still smell this bus long after it as gone past, but I personally like vehicles to have an lasting aroma of burgers and deep fat friars-​better than petrol.
If you don’t need a bus that often, then the Big Lemon is a perfect, and environmentally friendlier, alternative to the Brighton and Hove buses. It has started to run much more regularly, which is only a good thing, and is considerably cheaper.
A great addition to Brighton and the ever growing conscious residents.

I have to admit I actually like the smell of the Burnt off Vegetable Oil that the big Lemon produces, it is unique, and immediately hits my memory banks, and associational buttons, reminding me of Sussex University.
At £2 for a days tickets, which will take you from Churchill square via Lewes Road, to Campus is really amazing. If you are a student and know that you will need to take the bus most weeks, the £120 year long ticket, which allows for unlimited travel is another brilliant deal.
Last year when I was at Uni this bus used to run every hour, and it was still worth it for a large number of people, but now it’s every 20 minutes, I fail to see how this isn’t the best thing on earth. The competetion with the Brighton bus co. must be a hard one, as it is a very well run service, but the Big Lemon manage to do it well, in an environmentally friendly way, and importantly with humility and pleasantness. As an example, I was once 20p short for bus fare and they happily let me on, and i promised to give the same driver that 20p back, which i did about 3 weeks later, to his surprise. I’m pretty sure this wouldn’t have happened on a Brighton bus, firstly because they wouldn’t have allowed it, and secondly because I would not have cared because the whole service is so much less personable.
I really hope that the Big Lemon continues to do well, and maybe even become a blue print for other bus companies in the future.

If you’re a student with some flexibility when it comes to transport (i.e. you don’t require buses running more often than 20 minutes), then it’s well worth making the effort to catch the Big Lemon buses, and supporting this small Brighton-​based recent start up that offers cheaper prices and better eco-​credentials than the Brighton and Hove competitors. The prices went up this year but they’re still managing to put up strong competition, putting Brighton and Hove buses to shame considering the Big Lemon’s smaller size. At the moment a single is £1.50 and an all day is £2 (make that £3.60 if you travel with Brighton and Hove buses). Also check out the website as they do good rates for hiring. The buses are a groovy lemon-​yellow too, the only downer is the stench of the recycled cooking oil they use for fuel. But hey, you always know when one’s coming, and it’s all in the name of a cheaper, more environmentally friendly (minus the smell polution) service for the city.

The Big Lemon is an environmentally friendly, alternative form of bus travel in the city of Brighton. Through running all their buses on locally sourced cooking oil, the Big Lemon Bus Company inhibit their service’s contribution to global warming, whilst still maintaining a reliable and efficient service. Thus, if you are worried about the damage us humans are doing to our big wide world, then the Lemon is perfect for you! In terms of cost, their service also betters their rivals. A single is only £1.50 in comparison to the £1.80 of regular Brighton City buses, whilst a days travel costs just £2! Far cheaper than their rival’s price of £3.60. Unfortunately, whilst cheaper, the Lemon’s service is also less frequent, meaning that anyone in a hurry is still better off catching a City bus for now.