25 June 2024

Canberra's buses should have Business Class

| John Coleman
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bus interior, Canberra bus

Would you use Transport Canberra’s buses if they were cleaner and cushier? Photo: Jonathan Borba, Daniel Morton.

It’s hilarious when people suggest Canberra’s public transport should be free. If they used the bus, they’d know that it already is.

Of course, it’s roulette: there’s a chance you’ll get a warrior bus driver who will ask, “Mate, why don’t you get a free Uber instead?” but they generally save those battles for the liars. The riders who get on and are immediately breathless: “So I DID have a MyWay card but I was waylaid by bandits and in the chase I must have dropped it … oh, and there was a Demogorgon at Tuggeranong Interchange in front of the ticket machine and – ”

“Just get on. Stop lying to me and wasting everyone’s time.”

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Why bring this up? Because there is a cluster of Canberrans who are still paying for their ride. And I think they deserve something more.

Transport Canberra Business Class.

Here’s how I envision it: you enter at the front door (everyone else enters through the back). You tap on. The driver says g’day. You say top o’ the morning to you too, driver. Your seat is actually clean. Maybe there’s Parisian cafe music piping throughout the cabin. Armrests. A partition, obviously, in the middle of the bus.

Canberra bus interior at night

Interior lighting could, theoretically, be adjusted to have more of a speakeasy theme. Photo: Amelia Vu.

Meanwhile, anyone who doesn’t wish to pay can enter through the back. They were going to sit in the back anyway, where it’s harder for the prickly driver to smell the vape fumes.

I once made the mistake of sitting in the back of the 182. A group of eshays disliked me immediately because I wouldn’t let them hotspot off my phone. One apparently clocked me as looking at him dreamily.

“You staring at me, bruv? I will kill you. I’ll f**king find where you live, c***!”

I laughed. But at the same time, I would really have rather not been lurched around in a stuffy bus with Mars bar crumbs on the windowsill and some prick threatening to put a brick through the lounge room.

Oh, that’s another idea – Business Class lounges at the non-Civic interchanges, accessed with your MyWay card. There could be coffee facilities, and charging ports. In Canberra, where non-rapid buses are sparse and cold winds blow dead leaves through the interchanges, it would be good if you could settle in and get comfortable.

bus interchange

The next 77 may be hours off, but this is no place to chill. Photo: Region.

Of course, I sense your resentment immediately: “That’s classist!”. I have two answers.

The first is that those passengers who can’t pay are spared the humiliation of making up an excuse and being mocked for it. Canberra gets its free public transport after all. Those who simply don’t want to pay, or aren’t able to wait a week for their MyWay balance to show a top-up, have a real choice. And those who can very well shell out for their ride are encouraged to do so, because for once it might be somewhat competitive with taking the car.

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Seniors and mobility-impaired persons obviously get free access to Business Class, so that’s not an issue. They are literally first-class citizens.

My second point is that we obviously wouldn’t call it Business Class on the bus door. Canberrans are elitist, but we don’t like the trappings. We’d call it Commuter Class. Maybe we’d be even subtler for the inner-north buses: it’d simply be called Commuter Cabin. I’d even be open to ‘‘APS6+ Cabin’’.

Over to you. Don’t lecture me in the comments on whether you think it morally or practically objectionable. Would you use it?

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GrumpyGrandpa3:44 pm 26 Jun 24

Margaret Thatcher once said “You know you’ve made it in life, when you don’t have to use public transport”.

Having “not made it in life”, I am a frequent user of public transport and yes, I wonder why I bother tapping on?
(I am in that older demographic where I am afforded free off-peak travel, for which I am grateful).

Being a frequent traveller, I have got to know many of the drivers quite well and it’s not just the prickly driver who gets annoyed; they all do.

The story is that during Covid, the government decided that cash should not be collected and it hasn’t been reintroduced. Every scammer in Canberra now knows that if they get on in the suburbs and say they have cash, the driver can’t accept it and they travel for free. Most now just get on and sit down without even talking to the driver. They know they can’t be kicked off.

The biggest problem the drivers face is that the government no longer polices the collection of fares; there are no ticket inspectors and the drivers have been told not to get into an argument with the scammers over non-payment.

If the government isn’t prepared to enforce collection, why should a driver risk getting their head punched in over it?

Yeah, I’d be happy to ride around in one of those Bendy Buses, enter through the front door, tag-on and let the sub-ferals without Myway cards, ride for free, in the rear section.

Surely we should get some sort of “Frequent Rider” point system going.
10,000kms on the streets of Canberra earns you a Seaplane flight from Lake Burley Griffin to the Penrith Regatta centre?

John Coleman3:41 pm 25 Jun 24

This is a great idea and I wish I had thought of it first

Here’s a novel idea. How about the ACT Government improve the bus service instead of making journeys much slower and making people have to walk so much farther to their nearest bus stop.

You’d feel safer with more fellow travellers. The ACT governments network redesign delivered a huge drop in use across Tuggeranong, Woden and Belconnen, that’s the real issue with Canberra’s bus network.

So who would police the “eshays” (learnt a new urban slang term from this article) and prevent them from turning left into “Commuter Class”, when they board through the rear door?

Martin Silsby11:11 am 25 Jun 24

The eshay’s already have their own class – it’s called hanging off the back of the bus!

John Coleman11:26 am 25 Jun 24

It’s a strong partition. Technically it could be broken but for their part they may enjoy the lack of surveillance

@John Coleman
What goes on behind the partition stays behind the partition, JC 🙂

Leilah Matehya9:52 am 25 Jun 24

That is very funny. What Business executive is going to want to catch a bus in Canberra when it takes an hour and a half to get from Belconnen to Tuggeranong? And if that Business executive does not put out their hand…. that bus won’t even stop!

I just don’t use public transport due to its clientele.

Heywood Smith10:23 am 25 Jun 24

Plus the fact you earn $600k plus a year, why leave your Lambo parked in the garage gathering dust eh?

It’s actually an Aston Martin, but yes, the core of your jealous rage is correct. 🙂

Heywood Smith1:18 pm 25 Jun 24

Of course it is Ken, camouflaged as a Mazda 2.

Those green eyes are so bright, heywood. 🙂

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