More bus routes?

Nickamc said :

Canberra public transport blows donkeys.

I second that. It’s hard to forget being totally screwed by a snap strike, with no-one knowing when they were likely to start returning to service. I’ve not used an ACTION bus since I finally got my licence to drive.

Canberra public transport blows donkeys.

Sorry, that was poorly phrased. I meant to point out that the Expressos can and do run with old buses, and can probably continue to do so until those older buses fall apart, since people who work 9-5 are probably able bodied enough to climb the 2-3 stairs on entering the bus.

As more accessible buses get added to the fleet, chances are they will end up on normal routes where you’re not nearly as likely to have 100% able bodied passengers.

Sigh. No extra buses for me in the mornings in Gungahlin, even though the buses are packed to the brim. I have to catch two buses to get to work, and sometimes the first is so packed I can’t even get off to change buses. Not to mention this makes them run so late I never catch the connecting bus on time.

As far as expressos getting the old buses, try getting anywhere from Gungahlin. I catch the bus every workday and I’ve never been on an air conditioned one.

A shame that there’s still not enough drivers to ditch the ridiculous weekend services.

There’s a bit of an article about it on the ACT Bus website… http://www.actbus.net/blog

Most of these are not new services per se, thus there should be little or no additional cost (aside from printing different maps and timetables, which they’d eventually have needed to do anyway). They are simply existing services that are being split up to be a little less absurd. Route 4 is effectively three routes already (note the 4E and 4W in the timetable for the northside part of the route).

The expressos should cost nothing, since they are mostly run with near-life-expired buses that are normally only used for school services. This will become more apparent as even more new buses arrive in the coming years to work ordinary services, leaving heaps of surplus buses for spare parts for those that are sound enough to keep hauling able bodied school kids and able bodied expresso patrons. These expressos carry lots of full-fare passengers, and thus should easily earn enough revenue to cover the marginal cost of the extra few hours wages for the school run bus driver and the extra diesel.

It would be nice if they could fix the weekend absurdities when the new timetable comes in though. Take the bus route in Watson bus route. It’s bad enough that bus users in Watson have to detour through the back streets of Dickson and Braddon on a weekend, but the really absurd bit is the route around Watson itself. Buses in Watson do a big loop around the main roads circling the suburb. On weekdays the loop runs anticlockwise. On weekends the route runs clockwise. The stops are not in the same location in each direction, and are sometimes a hundred metres apart.

What possible reason could there be for trying to confuse occasional passengers like that, except perhaps if their goal is turning occasional bus users into permanent car drivers?