COUNTY NEWS: Woman forced to walk home alone in '˜pitch black' after being '˜kicked off'

Hospital worker Sian Hayward, 25, was travelling home last Thursday, January 26 - a journey she had made many times - when the driver of the Metrobus Route 84 told her she was ‘in void’ of her ticket.

“It’s literally the only bus that can get me home,” said Sian, who travels to from her home in Turners Hill to Three Bridges by bus before commuting by train to her job at Guy’s and St Thomas hospitals.

“I was kicked off the bus by the driver at Tulleys Farm as he claimed that was as far as he would take me.

“So I just had to get off,” she said. “It was pitch black, freezing cold.

“There is no path, there is not even a verge wide enough to walk on.

“If anything had happened nobody would have been able to hear me scream.”

Sian, who grew up in Wakehams Green and now works as a prostheitics technician, buys the the adult single metro rider ticket from the Metrobus mobile app.

“It states that it allows unlimited travel in Crawley and Horley. so I would like to know how this ten minute journey between Three Bridges Station and Turners Hill is in void of this 60 minute metro rider ticket.

“It was only one more stop. I could understand if he [the driver] gave me a warning.”

She added that she was ‘really quite shocked‘ that neither of the other two passengers on the bus stood up for her.

Instead Sian was forced to walk 25 minutes in the dark using her phone to light her way, having to trudge through fields as the unlit national speed limit road was too dangerous to walk on.

“I had no idea where I was going,” she said.

Sian is now calling for there to be a policy that if someone does not have the right ticket they are kept on the bus until they reach a safe and well lit area.

“I think you should be made to feel safe taking public transport.”

A spokesperson for Metrobus said: “There appears to have been some misunderstanding between our driver and passenger, although the driver was correct that Tulleys Farm was the ticket boundary.

“We do have a policy for this situation and agree that the passenger should not have left the bus.

“We are taking measures to ensure that all our drivers have an understanding of this policy.”

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