Despite saving hundreds of dollars and even making new friends, none of the people who agreed to ditch their car for this Brisbane experiment wanted to go car-free permanently. This is why.
Article about an experiment from Brisbane, Australia.
The Brisbane public transport is pretty bad, but there are more reasons: the bus network is owned by the council while the train network is owned by the state government. As a result both tend to compete with each other. This is especially bad when the busses don’t even cover some areas.
Partner went for a course there recently and their best option to reach the place on public transport was to just walk 40 minutes from the train station! I can’t think of a single area in Sydney that wouldn’t get a bus service at least once a day on a work day. (You know things are bad if you’re comparing to Sydney busses because these things are terrible)
Absolutely, although as a Sydneysider, I generally have pretty good bus services where I live. The only thing that makes my blood boil is how awful the bus drivers can be to children. There was one day I had to catch the bus to the library after school, and it was storming a fuck ton. This group of highschoolers get on, and some of them don’t tap on and go and sit down.
The bus driver, an old grey haired lady yells her head off at the back of the bus, but since they had already sat down, she couldn’t find them. So she decides the only thing left for her to do, is to stand by the Opal card reader, and force every single person to tap on. You might be thinking “well fine she’s pissed, but those guys should’ve just tapped on right?”
Well this little kid jumps on, and he looks no older than 12 years old. He asks, in a voice I can barely make out over the raging storm outside “can I come on? My family just moved here and I don’t have a card yet” - to which the decrepit bus driver yells “Not on my watch, get out of here! No one is allowed on this bus unless everyone taps on!”, she then proceeds to shove him to the middle of the entrance before shoving him outside.
I remember kicking myself the rest of the trip to the library - I was furious at myself for not having recorded what she had done, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it for the rest of the week. No one, especially not a child, deserves to be forced out of a bus in the middle of a thunderstorm.
So every time someone praises public transport here, I’m grateful for the comfortable experience I get to enjoy. But each and every time someone praises the buses, the first thing I can think of is that little boy, and how despite confessing to the bus driver he was new to the area, was pushed into the middle of a raging thunderstorm.
The Brisbane public transport is pretty bad, but there are more reasons: the bus network is owned by the council while the train network is owned by the state government. As a result both tend to compete with each other. This is especially bad when the busses don’t even cover some areas. Partner went for a course there recently and their best option to reach the place on public transport was to just walk 40 minutes from the train station! I can’t think of a single area in Sydney that wouldn’t get a bus service at least once a day on a work day. (You know things are bad if you’re comparing to Sydney busses because these things are terrible)
Absolutely, although as a Sydneysider, I generally have pretty good bus services where I live. The only thing that makes my blood boil is how awful the bus drivers can be to children. There was one day I had to catch the bus to the library after school, and it was storming a fuck ton. This group of highschoolers get on, and some of them don’t tap on and go and sit down. The bus driver, an old grey haired lady yells her head off at the back of the bus, but since they had already sat down, she couldn’t find them. So she decides the only thing left for her to do, is to stand by the Opal card reader, and force every single person to tap on. You might be thinking “well fine she’s pissed, but those guys should’ve just tapped on right?”
Well this little kid jumps on, and he looks no older than 12 years old. He asks, in a voice I can barely make out over the raging storm outside “can I come on? My family just moved here and I don’t have a card yet” - to which the decrepit bus driver yells “Not on my watch, get out of here! No one is allowed on this bus unless everyone taps on!”, she then proceeds to shove him to the middle of the entrance before shoving him outside.
I remember kicking myself the rest of the trip to the library - I was furious at myself for not having recorded what she had done, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it for the rest of the week. No one, especially not a child, deserves to be forced out of a bus in the middle of a thunderstorm.
So every time someone praises public transport here, I’m grateful for the comfortable experience I get to enjoy. But each and every time someone praises the buses, the first thing I can think of is that little boy, and how despite confessing to the bus driver he was new to the area, was pushed into the middle of a raging thunderstorm.