Government releases action plan to fix weekend bus services

It’s a mystery to me

Recruit more drivers specifically for weekends & evenings on penalty rates separate from the current cadre of drivers

This article about ACTION plans to fix the buses reads like an episode of the Chaser’s “Utopia”.

When the consultants who ran the policy analyses, the steering committees, the task forces, the implementation teams, painted the buses a different colour and set the KPIs have left, you then move on to the next step.

The next step is to make the !&$#@! mess work. When you realise that it is a monumental stuff up, you move onto the next step.

The next step is to develop an ACTION plan (or plans). Such ACTION plans, of course will be written by consultants, probably the ones who caused the mess. But it delays anyone taking responsibility for the stuff up.

(The solution is obvious but, with a solution, the consultants would not make as much money. As any person with any knowledge of running a 7 day a week service will tell you, you have to roster staff to run the service 7 days a week. Even the new tram service has drivers on 7 day rosters. But, for the bus drivers, weekend work is optional and overtime. Wtf 😳.
Of course the TWU has enormous power in the ACT ALP. Ministers etc would lose preselection if they upset the TWU.
Any bets on how many years (decades?) it will be before Canberra gets a reliable weekend bus service?)

In March, I wrote to the minister for disabilities about people with disabilities having difficulty accessing particular services and facilities in Canberra and how will the government address this etc. Public transport, frequent changes, cut services and closed bus stops were issues I raised. The minister for disabilities did not bother to respond. Chris Steel responded instead (just 2 weeks ago – that’s right…it took 6 months) and only talked about more frequent services and cctv cameras. It was a standard response that did not even attempt to address any difficulties for people with disabilities. This government is either full of complete morons who have no idea what they are doing OR they just don’t care. Take your pick which one you think it is when you vote in next years election 😡

Pretty simple. You need a new EBA with gives the drivers penalty rates on weekends and nights.

But in saying that, then the weekday drivers who are cruising through on higher rates of pay will never sign off or agree to such a change. So that EBA change will never get through.

Just admit it , whoever came up with a flat rate idea for all hours worked never themselves worked after hours or weekends in their life and they just didn’t understand

Times up! ACT Election next year

How serious and well researched is this Action Plan when it has spelling and grammatical errors. No surprise that it’s yet another bus problem avoidance document (hey Canberra we’ll definitely fix things later, but we are going to take away the extra services we promised before fixing things). We have had all these promises about better bus services over the last year or so, but the lived experience is that the buses have not lived up to the Governments continuous promises. We were promised faster routes, but many trips have proved to be more winding and slower. We were promised more buses, but many people have less buses. We were promised faster travel times, but many people have slower travel times…..

Ministers to start driving busses on weekends would be a good start.