5 July 2010

Catching the bus to hospital

| johnboy
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Katy Gallagher has announced that with the new hospital building works taking up large chunks of car park, she’s got a cunning plan:

Following that consultation process, new temporary parking measures are set to come into effect from Saturday 10 July, when the large surface level car park on the southern end of the hospital campus closes and the main pubic parking is relocated to the Yamba Drive South car park.

“The Yamba Drive car park is flat, well lit and within easy walking distance of the hospital’s main buildings,” Ms Gallagher said.

“However, to further assist patients and visitors a new shuttle bus service has been established which will transport patients and visitors between the car park and the main hospital buildings. To ensure the safety and security of staff who will be required to park further away from the hospital, the shuttle service will also assist staff to their vehicles during the early hours of the morning and after dark.

Any other parts of town we’d like to see shuttle buses?

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Yeah, that ridiculous “Airliner” bus. Finishes at 7pm on weekdays and earlier on weekends???? There is not one flight I’ve caught into Canberra (other than for work) that has arrived sufficiently early for me to catch the bloody thing. I thought I was going to make it one weekend, until I found out the joy of the 6pm finish. It should run until flights finish for the night. And $16 return is a joke, considering the paltry distance.

Secondly, it’s a shitty bus – loaded up with luggage, and you have to climb up steep steps to get on. It should be roll on, roll off. I have no idea what the “ample” storage is like, but it should be the nice big tiered racks like you get on the usual airport buses you get in properly serviced cities.

But yes, shuttle buses are great too. You could have one from civic to parliament house and then old parliament and surrounds for all the touristy types as well as the barton workers – or do they do that already?

Why don’t they just divert the intertown bus so it goes past the hospital? It goes past Calvary, surely it wouldn’t add more than a couple of minutes to take it past Canberra H. too?

Sorry, I meant 7:30am – 7pm weekdays. 10:30am – 6pm weekends.

The Airliner is helpful if you’re travelling between the hours of 7:30am – 6pm. Many flights land after this – and then the Airliner becomes unhelpful.

It either needs to run as early and as late as there are flights, or it needs to meet each group of flights. Even in Hobart, there’s a shuttle guaranteed to meet every flight. Why is it that the capital can’t do the same?

you know what would be cute – a little open cart that could zip across northbourne. it is dysfunctional that pedestrians can’t cross that street in one green light. the little cart could fill with people during the wait for the lights, then zip acvross 0 Fun!

mark karlson It’s not the bus I caught, I caught a shuttle from the airport, apart from that what happens if you are taking someone into hospital to have a baby, where do you park, can’t expect the patient to walk all that way.

Problem with the Airport bus if your traveling into town it’s already bordering half the cost of a taxi one way. If there’s 2 of you why bother?

Woody Mann-Caruso6:07 pm 05 Jul 10

Its sad that you can fly into any city in Australia except for Canberra, and catch a bus from the airport into the city.

Yes, just tragic. We’re quite the hick backwater, ain’t we? If only Canberra had a bus that ran from the airport to the city and back every half hour from 6:30am to 7:00pm and every hour on weekends? They could call it something clever, like ‘The Airliner’.

Oh wait – it does.

Pubic? Who’s checking these media releases?

mark karlson5:49 pm 05 Jul 10

http://www.canberraairport.com.au/air_toAndFrom/bus.cfm

Airport bus in Canberra, just cause you haven’t tried don’t mean it don’t exist

dvaey said :

As emd suggested (and Im sure many others will too), definitly the airport. I was totally amazed the first time I flew overseas, that airports other than Canberra have bus services. Its sad that you can fly into any city in Australia except for Canberra, and catch a bus from the airport into the city.

There is one, It’s called the airliner and it runs every half an hour.
It’s a little on the expensive side and annoyingly you can’t put your suitcase under the bus which makes it a little inconvenient, but there is a bus service.

Given that staff are now to be expected to park in the streets of Garran wherever they can find parking I don’t think the shuttle bus is going to be much use.

As emd suggested (and Im sure many others will too), definitly the airport. I was totally amazed the first time I flew overseas, that airports other than Canberra have bus services. Its sad that you can fly into any city in Australia except for Canberra, and catch a bus from the airport into the city.

Back on-topic, I notice as part of the construction works, the disabled carparks have been moved away from emergency, to make space for police parking. While I can understand that on occasion police might have reason to park near emergency, I cant understand why disabled drivers should lose their parking facilities.

Before anyone raises the issue of police having to drop people off at emergency entrance, the disabled parking Im referring to are maybe 100m from the entrance, where the previous police parking was maybe 20m from the entrance. If members of the public are required to drop-off and go find a park, why should the police be any different? Why should disabled drivers have to walk significantly further, just so the police can have 3 designated carparks (considering theres only approx 10 spaces near emergency anyway).

I reckon a shuttle bus between the Russell Defence offices and Brand Depot/Airport would be good. Seeing as there’s free carparking at Brand Depot, and it’s the nearest supermarket to the Defence offices, I’m sure it would be very well used. And with the number of Defence staff travelling on any given day, it only makes sense to include the Airport on their shuttle route. Of course, this would be a Defence shuttle bus, I’m not suggesting that ACT Govt pay for it.

As far as ACT Govt shuttle buses are concerned, I think a similar service is needed for the Calvary hospital campus at Bruce. Car parking there can be pretty horrid. I guess the nearest free all-day carpark if Calvary is full would be at Canberra Stadium?

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