At last some changes, public transport improves

No sooner do I write on the problems of our public transport, it gets an actual nudge on the side of improvement. After all this time, a new schedule will be rolled out, from later this month toward the rest of the year introducing new and extra runs increasing services in real terms and also changing the route some of the services take when they get to the city, avoiding the loop and making the journey a bit quicker. Check the whole story.

These are real changes that will improve the situation, for many of our branches the train serves delivers people to.

It comes none too soon and it’s a big question as to why this was not done last year, or at least flagged the year before that but, there it is, it’s coming and it will help.

Well, it will help some, for me I catch a bus, and as we go into winter it seems my route is getting busier too. Today I counted 22 people standing after every seat had been taken, quite a full death trap had we managed to hit something, aside from those seated, the poor ones standing on the 40+ minute ride would not have been in good condition, but there you go, as late as we were, anybody that ran toward the bus got full attention and the driver piled more on without any due thought.

Funny thing with busses is that when they run late and get caught up a little they then are attending to more waiting passengers, so they get further behind still. More people wait at the stops and the bus has to pick all the extra people up too, slower and slower still it goes until the next bus can catch up to the earlier one. This is a picture of my bus, the 220 and the interesting thing being, that I am travelling on a 220. I waited for 40 minutes to get a bus, and once I got on, we were getting chased by another one, both quite full and busy, but none the less… late.

I don’t know what you can realistically do about that, you cant avoid picking up passengers, or dropping them off, you just have to roll with it. I think for us, we are delayed when people have to buy tickets on the bus. This really holds up the driver from moving on, if this could be done quicker it would be a big improvement. On our Trams we have ticket vending machines and the drivers do not do any of this with the passengers, I am not really sure why this wasn’t done on busses too, but no, each bus has one ‘validation’ machine, next to the driver, so it’s all “one person at a time please” and “oh, your buying a ticket with 5c pieces again, well done”…

So, because I have some more pics to put up here, I will also mention the road works out on Footscray(ry) Road. They are making the main road down near the dock go up and over a railway so they can move containers in from the docks without interrupting the traffic flow. This will be really good because I have been caught here many a time for ages waiting for a long train of containers to go trundling bye. Its quite impressive to see the work done to build the bridges, pinning concrete pylons into the ground, constructing large concrete towers and craning on spans to bridge the gaps.

Down at the ‘Docklands’ area they are also building new shopping complexes and a big Ferris wheel. They got the main structure up now and are just about to get the carriages on. It’s going to be a big 2008 for new stuff down there, lots of change and new things to watch. This looks really cool and I can’t wait to have a ride, might actually get me down there for a visit, even though it’s 15 minutes from my house, I don’t visit near enough.