I follow Action buses on Twitter, not so I can be riveted by exciting bus news, but so i can find out if my bus has been cancelled or is late for some reason. I get the bus two days a week.
Over the past few days my family has been affected by some cancellations, and I noticed that the daily summation of the morning commute by Action has been in the region of 715 out of 726 services delivered in the peak hour. This is down from an almost perfect service for much of January and February – at least for the peak hour.
Today’s summation was as follows:
“@ACTIONbuses: The ACTION team delivered 715/726 services in the 7.30-9am peak. Covering school services is always a priority & may impacts regular runs.”
Whilst 10 buses is not that many, 10 buses in the peak hour could carry at least 400 people, possibly more.
I perfectly understand that kids need to get to school safely and on-time but obviously full fare paying passengers are being dumped in favour of subsidized school trips.
Is it possible that Action could perhaps employ more drivers before committing to timetables? Or do they indeed also need extra buses to actually move said commuters? Is this the way it’s going to be for the foreseeable future?
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Why can’t mummies and daddies be responsible for getting their leeches to school – you know, like mummies and daddies did in the olden days?
Mr Evil said :
I think mummies and daddies have a right to expect the local bus service (which they pay for) will get their leeches to school and not leave them on the side of the road, so their leeches can grow up big and strong and support you when you’re even older and grumpier.
Decent troll effort, but a bit too obvious. 6/10
Canberroid said :
It’s nice to know that mummies and daddies are paying the full cost of providing the school bus service and that it isn’t actually being supported by other taxpayers then……..
So screw everyone else whom ACTION and the ACT Govt don’t consider to be important enough if there are driver shortages (or whatever other excuse they are using this week) – should they always expect to get left at the side of the road so parents aren’t ever inconvenienced or put out at all?
Mr Evil said :
Which olden days are those, I wonder? In my olden days kids were responsible for getting themselves to school from a very young age. And as they usually didn’t have the skills or license to drive a car, public transport was often a popular choice.
But clearly parents driving their kids to school is much less of a burden on everyone else. As we all experienced last week when traffic congestion got a whole lot worse with the start of the school year. Not to mention the illegal parking near schools.
Why are school buses a priority? No-one loses money when students are late to school but being late for work can have a lot of unpleasant repercussions for all involved. I’m not agreeing with Mr.Evil, because I’m not trolling here, I just think that maybe the regular routes should be a priority and not the school buses.
When I was at UC I couldn’t believe how many Radford parents taxied their children to and from school. It causes half of College st to be blocked off by traffic and the worst part of it is that every single 300 series bus will passes (and stops) right out the front of the school.
When I was still getting the bus I used to check the ACTIOn feed to see if my service was running late. I also used to note the tweet about the number of services delivered each day. 11 short is a pretty bad effort.
I don’t think they employ enough full time staff and have a substantial casual back-up plan that doesn’t always come through with the goods. The government/ACTION seems more concerned with getting more buses (apparently) than they do with making sure there are enough people to drive them.
I understand that if a child goes missing from the side of the road at a bus stop, all hell breaks loose- that could be ACTIONs main concern with the prioritisation.
Many years ago I also had a very chatty and lovely bus driver who was retiring shortly who was happy to tell me about the state of the system- reportedly ACTION was currently (could still be the policy) only employing drivers casually, due to their experience with paying for full bus driver training and then immediately having the Employee move on to better paying Bus driving jobs and other cities etc. He said that they were trying to balance between costs of training and staff retention and thus had created an issue employing people due to most needing a full-time job.
My trip ended before I had the chance to ask what the cost difference of casual vs full-time training was…
So that’s my understanding of the issue, and happy to be corrected.
It’s pretty bloody obvious why the school services are prioritised, if you think about it for a moment.
The school services are almost all one-offs – a single bus out in the morning, and a single bus back in the afternoon. If it’s cancelled, the next one isn’t coming until tomorrow.
On the other hand, the regular routes are… regular. If one’s cancelled in the morning peak, the next one will be coming within at most half an hour, probably a lot less.
PantsMan said :
Fixed it for you.
caf said :
Couldn’t have said it better.
The people saying that it would be okay to leave the kids at the bus stop are probably the same that would be calling for heads when a child was taken from the bus stop when the bus didnt show.
School services are only subsidised more to the extent that student fares are cheaper than adults. It makes no difference to the cost of running the service given it’s 80% govt funded.
From my knowledge, ACTION has almost double the number of drivers compared to buses/routes on any given day to make up for driver sickness and leave. The number of buses would be the issue, but having a large number of empty buses on hand would just make the service more inefficient.
Something that you will just have to deal with no matter what.
caf said :
Except for the fact that the next busnisnso full that you need to wait for the next one. The Gov doesn’t appreciate me getting in to work an hour later than I should, and neither do I. To make matters worse, the bloody thing is full of school children.
When I was at school, in Sydney, school children caught school buses and normal service buses during those times had a little asterix on the timetable stating that they didn’t pick up school children.
How many parents send their kids half way/ all the way across the ACT so their kid can attend private school?
Watson said :
must have been before motorised transport was invented.
when I went to school (in Adelaide) in the 80s, I caught two buses to school. mum and dad were well off, but I suspect they felt it was more important for their kids to start being independent. in fact for most of school life, mum didn’t work, but she still didn’t pick us up after school. I had no issue with that, it was just the way it was back then.
Welcome to using public transport. If you want greater surety, drive.
bd84 said :
What a stupid assumption. Do you think the people arguing that loss-making school buses should not be prioritised care about the kids on those buses? I don’t. It’s the parents responsibility to get their kids to school, not the tax payers. If the bus system can provide a service, then great – but I just don’t agree that it should be at my expense. If my bus in the morning is cancelled (and it didn’t arrive one morning last week) it makes me over an hour late for work.
Surely it’s more important to get me on a bus because a) I actually pay fares, and b) I need to work so I can pay taxes to fund this schemozzle.
Another example of tax payers with kids apparently being more important than the tax payers without kids
gungsuperstar said :
And when you’re sitting alone at the bus stop because your bus never arrived, do you worry when a blue corolla pulls up and the driver tries to strike up a conversation.
It’s nice to see the childless me, me, me, I, I, I, segment of the population given a voice in this thread.
gungsuperstar said :
Perhaps if you spent more time at school, then you would have read my entire post before writing this rubbish.
The entire operations of ACTION are subsidised. There is little point of differentiating between between types of passengers. Although you could to start use the same argument for disabled people too if you want to look like a bigger dick? Whether you or a child catches a bus does not make it any cheaper to run the bus.
If you think about it carefully, if they did not provide bus services for school children, it would cost more to run the bus and there would be less taxes to pay for it when all the parents that need to drop off and collect their children start late and finish late each day. Then add in the extra traffic congestion making longer travel time for all, and it will result in higher bus fares for you to make up the shortfall. Your bus will still break down and you might be late to work every once in a while. But you are an adult and have a better chance of defending yourself against others compared to a child. You could even explain to your boss that you were late because your bus didn’t come and you can work an extra hour to make up for it.
*Parents start late and finish early
gooterz said :
Because freedom of choice is bad…
My daughter is driven both ways because there is no school bus service that comes near us, and there is no way she is changing buses in Civic. So we are a burden on the climate, not on the buses.
poetix said :
Why is there no way she’s changing buses in Civic? It’s the best place to be to have to change buses and in the mornings and afternoons it’s full of students and public servants. Unless she’s younger than 10 years old I don’t understand why you’d be worried.
DrKoresh said :
Firstly, a trip that takes us 15 minutes would take her well over an hour, possibly a lot more. She has quite a lot of homework, as well as having a life and playing computer games.
Secondly, practical things aren’t always her forte.
Thirdly, I would be too worried about her missing a bus or being abducted, and would sit around feeling sick, unable to do any work myself. I know these fears are exaggerated, but that’s how my brain works.
Fourthly (and possibly the main reason) I like picking her up! I get there early to find a park, and write. It is quite productive.
Her school is on the way to Mr P’s work, so he drops her in the morning.
So the car wins.
Clearly the bus is not for everyone – especially for those who need to do the school dropoff/pickup for whatever reason.
Eleven or so services not running out of 726 is a very small number. Surely it’s a driver shortage rather than a bus shortage – there seems to be a heap of buses at the old Woden Depot that never seem to move?
After raising their prices this past week, I promptly had my bus break down and was left stranded outside of the ANU for over 20 minutes. To me, that’s a very long wait considering it’s on the 300 route and it was a peak period.
And for such a supposedly small number of cancellations etc, I regularly seem to be left waiting at the bus stop with an ever-growing crowd for buses that just don’t show up.
I really hope they can get their act together in terms of reliability. It should be much easier with extra cash coming in but it’s not as if it’s the first time.
gungsuperstar said :
Hang on. I’m a taxpayer. I don’t have kids on those buses and my job negates using those buses. Why is it not my responsibility to get a group of people who aren’t old enough to drive, aren’t street smart enough to use on road cycle lanes and may be vulnerable while walking, yet it somehow is my responsibility to get your sorry a$$ to work on time every day?
I already built YOU a bunch of cycle lanes on MY roads, available for your use 24 hrs a day with no timetable required. I’ll use MY buses the way I see fit.
Nobody seems to have mentioned the fact that with MyWay, we have pre-paid our fare.
One is surely entitled for their pre-paid service to actually show up?
gungsuperstar said :
And its your responsibility to get yourself to work. If the bus doesnt turn up, I guess you can avail yourself of the many other methods of travel available to those of working age. Its not my responsibility to get you to work.
Today’s summary….719 out of 726, which is better although a number of those that ended up running after initially being cancelled did run late so passengers are still being left to wonder what’s going on. It’s ok if you near the city or a town centre as there will likely be a bus along not too soon after your scheduled service, however if you are in the ‘burbs then options may be limited to waiting for the next scheduled bus on the on,y bus route available to you, which may or may not turn up and will more than likely be packed. So you may not even get on the next one.
Action is always asking for feedback, so he is some they could take note of.
Isn’t it great to see adults trying to save the environment, but complaining when the children try to do the same by catching a bus. So, if you catch a bus to work and see it’s full of doctors, lawyers, car salespoeple or tradespersons, will you start telling them to drive to work? The more we see people trying to be enviro-friendly [which is what everyone is pushing us to do], the more we will see our public transport system struggle to cope. It is an unpleasant situation to which there is only one remedy – go back to the old ways and drive your car. Don’t blame the kids, they probably don’t have another option. Don’t blame the government, they are just doing the best to please you by saving the planet. If it is such an inconvenience, just go on the earlier bus in case yours has been delayed. What’s wrong with getting to work ahead of schedule?
As for blaming kids for being “subsidized”, why don’t you go out and complain about every other “subsidized” citizen in Australia for getting before you in life, such as the disabled, indigenous, unemployed, married with children, not married with children, senior and politician [just to name a few]. Pick on someone your own size.
I too am a little concerned by the amount of services cancelled over the last few days. But what I don’t understand is why they can’t cancel the 300 series buses that run roughly every 8 mins instead of a suburban bus.
I had a route disruption last week from a cancelled service. But unlike most routes the next bus wasn’t scheduled for another 45 mins.
Luckily I checked twitter and ran out the door JUST catching the earlier service. This bus was extremely overcrowded and didn’t arrive into the City until approximately 25mins after its ETA. Got me thinking if either
a) people are actually checking twitter
or b) this route needs additional services. About half the bus are school kids. So only this particular day with the 8am service being cancelled. A lot of school kiddies would have been left at the stop
Genie said :
Most of the 300 series buses are suburban buses though. They normally have a suburban component to start and finish the intertown section, so you’re still may be cancelling a service that leads to a half hour wait for someone.