7 July 2006

Bus driver strikes protesting roster changes

| Kerces
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I see on the ABC this morning that ACTION bus drivers are holding a stop work meeting today.

The drivers and their union are concerned about the budget cuts set out in the ACT Government’s budget last month. Apparently the plan is to cut 8 per cent from ACTION’s annual budget.

Looking for more information about what’s happening, I turned to that fount of all knowledge about buses in Canberra, Samuel Gordon-Stewart. He has a rather lengthy but informative piece explaining the proposed changes to the rostering system and what this is likely to mean in reality for bus users.

The ABC quotes Steve Connolly from the Transport Workers Union as saying they are not ruling out there being any further industrial action after today, which is a bit of a bummer for bus users.

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That’s why we need Simon’s superfast 450mph bus and bus-lane set-up as soon as possible.

To be fair, what do people in Canberra expect? There are only 340K people in Canberra, we don’t live in Manhattan, Sydney etc. It can’t be easy planning ways to move people around efficiently, especially, as Tempestas says, given the town is decentralised in such a stupid manner. People should be encouraged to urbanise and live closer to the centre of town, rather than creating new suburbs in stupid out of the way places like Gungahlin.

Ah the great dilemma, build a town based on everyone owning and using a car, spread it out, then try to find a public transport system that is both efficient and doesn’t have commute times 2 to 3 times longer than driving there.

I suspect Canberra really needs a unique approach, but that would cost a fortune, maybe the Comrade should get Indian and Chinese companies to set up research in this town to find out what such a unique solution would be. Perhaps even get the Segway fellow involved. It could be cost effective to provide cheap R&D facilities and Canberran’s as a research exercise if we let the companies that create such a system have the intellectual property rights to flog it to everyone else.
Still I imagine that the Bus Drivers might not be winners out of such a plan either.

Master that sounds an awful lot like the one – I never really thought about Mr Stanhope, but a lot of what he says makes sense…

Master_Bates2:04 pm 07 Jul 06

Thats why I drive.

Master_Bates2:03 pm 07 Jul 06

Busses – Who really gives a dam.

I never really thought about using public transport, but a lot of what hapens at ACTION makes sense.

I believe that ACTION are currently looking at adopting a new card system to replace the crappy Pommy system they have in use at the moment.

I hope they set up something along the lines of what I have seen in New Zealand, where they use a rechargable “smartcard” system for bus fares.

This would never be a ‘real’ issue if ACTION stops dithering and invests in new technology, especially in relation to collection of data garnered from electronic ticketing.

More effective the collection of data on just where passengers are travelling and at what times, would aid in efficiency gains and naturally the streamlining of timetables.

It’s not rocket science…

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