I do love a good blog, a chance to get things from my chest. If I took it all on board I would be six feet under by now. Sometimes it’s just frustrating and there is nobody to tell, nobody that will listen and even rarer is anybody that can help.
Take for instance another wonderful bus trip last night. The weather here is turning colder and at last a bit wetter, it’s getting into winter and that makes public transport all the more uncomfortable.
I think they are making it up as they go along, I reported earlier that it is often seen that a busy and delayed bus will be caught up by the next one, particularly in peak times, and I can sort of understand how it can happen, however the other night, when I got to my stop after work there was already a bus there waiting to go. A bit unusual but this sometimes happens, they sometimes start their run from my stop, other ones come by from down the hill and fly by, but never ever running on time or to any schedule that I can find.
Today I saw a story that people in the US might be going to pay up to $4.00 per gallon for gas (or petrol as we know it). That seemed to be rather a lot but on further reading I found this was a future peak forecast, not unlikely but some time away in the near future. The full story is here.
For us in Australia, this price comparison between $US/Gallon and Our $AU/Litre is hard to judge. We are paying now upward (and over sometimes) $1.50/Litre for petrol (or Gas) and off-hand we have no comparative concept of what that equates to, so I did some calculations…
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 has been getting some press lately and it seems even the government are paying attention, but the reality is that NOTHING is being done. In all the years we have had to endure a straining and bulging system the actual system has not changed. No more trains, no significant changes in timetables, no extra services, no improvements to ticketing, loading, performance, nothing.
So if anybody wonders what it’s like, for those that are in a long queue on a major road (another symptom of the overall problem) then over the next few weeks I may take and post some photo’s here, showing the extent and reality of the situation. Like this one…
About 5.45pm I returned back to flinders street from Brighton to catch a train out toward Sydenham. This is what I was presented with, and it is NORMAL! The trains were not late (much) and this is what was waiting. It actually shows two problems, one that the situation for transport is bad and also the other, that Australians, and Melbournians are leaving work well after 5pm, if they havent left town after closing, why are they still waiting for trains at almost 6pm?
So yeah, unfortunately I didn’t take a picture on the train that I caught, so many faces staring at me from a standing position I felt I would have been beaten to death for even thinking of taking a photo. Really, in that next train that left from Flinders Street it was packed, and through the tunnel it got worse, more people loading on at every stop. Past Footscray we went with few people getting off there, it got no better. I didn’t see anybody that I could point to as a politician, I think they all had chauffeur driven cars getting them home earlier than the rush hour so it went without saying, the people responsible for this fiasco do not know what’s going on, they don’t have to pay for the tickets to ride on this cattle service, and speaking of cattle, they get treated better than the people do.
The UK has begun banning Australian wool because of mulesing, well they should stop using Australian products because of exactly the same reason, this country is treating it’s workforce like cattle and then smacking them with a red hot branding iron to make a point. So wake up, get more trains and busses and improve the situation because our states and cities are not coping with the flood of population increase and if you want more babies, then they better have somewhere to live, work and commute when they grow up. Stop talking about options, stop introducing new ticket schemes that never actually get started and operating, just DO SOMETHING. Oh and this great idea of removing seats so we can cram more people into a carriage is (dare I say it) reminding me of a German transport system of the 40’s…
So I will take more pictures, just camera photo’s to share and perhaps a new section of this site might soon appear to take your submissions also, or perhaps, like the one above, send them through to the newspapers and other places from your mobile to get the actual picture, the reality and the situation out there to the people that matter.
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