Phased implementation of the new ACTION buses

On the plus side, I’ve seen two bicycle racks in use this week.

that makes two sitings since…ah… since… they installed them 😉

Civic Interchange yesterday evening:
Two bikes on each of the two Intertown buses (heading to Belconnen) picking up passengers and four other cyclists waiting at the stop.
Had I waited all of five or ten minutes more I would have seen the bike racks being utilised eight times in the space of about fifteen minutes, all on the one bus route!

Your comment is like saying “I’ve never seen a kangaroo get hit by a car before, so it mustn’t happen. So why not pull down the fences in Lawson and let all the Death Row roos run free?!”.
I guess all of those dead kangaroos on the side of the road must have been run over by all of the cyclists NOT using the bus!

bring in a light rail network – up the guts of northbourne ave. get rid of the gum trees in the middle strip, they only produce oxygen / killer falling branches / attack magpies etc, and allow people in the city to go to dickson every day to a multistorey carpark built on the lyneham playing fields to get in their cars and drive to gungahlin. Then I can get a park in the city after driving from tuggeranong and the environment is saved. – no large amounts of traffic per day…..

I sit on a bus and watch some people who were waiting at the bus-stop, then decide to fumble around for their money or ticket once they board the bus and block the other organised passengers behind them. People present maps to the drivers and want a detailed explaination to their mysterious destination along with timetable information. People hand drivers $20 & $50 notes and think it’s okay for the rest of the passengers to wait whilst the driver counts out their change. People fail to show their concession cards when they ask for a concession fare and the rest of the passengers have to wait while that person finds their concession card or debate with the driver why they shouldn’t have to show their concession card. I watch cars pass my bus which is already traveling at the speed limit and then that car merges in front of the bus only to slow down or take the next left turn. I watch as passengers “have a chat” with the driver as they board or disembark, thinking it’s being polite and neighbourly. & people wonder why there’s continuous cries for a new Network or it takes a bus 3-4 times longer to get somewhere than a car?

As a passenger, some of my ilk contributes to the Network’s sluggishness.

As for ACTION’s public consultation, they did hold a Public Forum from which I listened to the participant’s comments on ABC-666 AM with interest. ACTION seems blissfully ignorant of what the public and drivers do want to see. Canberra is a challenging city in which to provide public transportation in an affordable and efficient manner. We are quite spread out and the vast majority of Canberrans don’t use the buses once the sun goes down. I see many empty or sparsely populated buses running around at night. Each Canberran household pays an average of $500 a year in taxes to subsidise ACTION.

I wonder if we’re getting bang for our buck by ACTION strategists who may never have been drivers or seldom been passengers themselves?

would someone please explain to me how it takes only 10 minutes by car, but now 30 minutes to get from calwell to tuggeranong?

i am so driving to tuggeranong to get my dru..i mean, go to school, yes, thats right.. 😀

The new timetables are so disappointing. They reckon they’re reinstating the 729 which goes direct from Weston to the City without having to pass through Woden. This is great, but there’s only 2 buses in the morning and 2 at night. The first one going home leaves at 445. Tell me, who on earth who works in the city leaves work that early.

I want to catch the bus so I dont have to spend so much on petrol and reduce my carbon footprint, but this doesnt help me at all.

So disappointed.

They are also removing services from the Inner North and Inner South and putting new services into Gungahlin.

These changes look mostly like they are putting in services they’ve taken out previously. “New and improved” seems to equal “restored”. I suspect a lot of their driver recruiting will end up being rehiring ones they gave redundancies too last time they cut back … great planning and more money pissed down the drain.

I heard about the recruitment drive just before the Federal Budget and was hoping that I could take a PS redundancy and go drive a bus for a couple of decades… alas, the swingeing was inadequate…

I was under the impression that they only re did the timetables when they wanted to cut services/make things cheaper (could be wrong). Which basically means making it worse.

Melbourne public transport is good, trams are really good. I think it gets less good (to bad) in the far out laying suburbs, but you get that.

I know, I know … there’s the legitimate stories Stray, but it just seems to go on and on and on and on and on. How many “new” timetables have there been over the past decade? Seems like there’s been several.

Tell me … have the public ever been involved or consulted in the process leading up to the implementation of new timetables? Public meetings. Call for submissions, that kind of thing?

I apologise if I’ve offended …

DMD; is that right? Funny how Canberra can’t get many things right hey …

Actually the public transport in Melbourne is a hell of alot better than it is here, Canberra Resident.

I’m also sick of my comments being moderated! wtf? I used the star thingie

Once again Canberran Resident,you miss the point.

When was the last time you experienced a bus ride like the one bd84 described?
in peak hour, to avoid the bunfight for parks each day (in woden esp! gah!) (not to mention the tickets if you get caught out short in the short hour parks that are the only ones left! and before i get lynched, i know i know!! – thats why i started getting the damn bus) and hopefully do your small bit for the enviroment and to put support behind public transport in Canberra at the same time? 5-35 mins each way is enough to drive anyone mad…but instead of whinging here at the risk of being labelled by you, i’ll be doing something about it…

but, what would i know, im only heading out to get my drugs…. 😉

They’re getting rid of the 33? Motherf*ckers! Don’t they look at the amount of people who get on at dickson/o’connor etc. and get off at the Museum? There’s like, no-one pretty much. I’d walk, but the 33 is a lot quicker when I’m late.

Egh. Someone will always complain. That’s why they keep changing it every couple of years. They cave in to all the whingers. Canberrans have it too good, but dikeheads will still whinge when the bus takes 5 minutes too long to get ’em to Civic to buy their drugs …

poo. the 33 is the best ever….now have to have to rely on the crappy 34 that takes a bazillion years to get to the city?? bler, better buy a bike and join the other inner northerians on the roads – good on ya action….

Do the snazzy new bustops actually have bins?

Or are they just putting them at the more deserted busstops so they’ll remain nice and clean.

The shelters are provided and paid for by a private company, the advertising helps pay for their building etc. But agreed with the point that they’ve built a whole heap of them where I’ve never seen one bus stop or places where a couple of buses pass a day while well frequented bus stops remain in the open.

MrMagoo said :

I want to know how they propose to get the new timetable right when they struggle with the old one already?

exactly, they don’t have enough buses or drivers.. though they are getting more of both. in the very near future But I hardly expect these changes to make one bit of difference in getting people to use buses as the changes replace the services they removed some 2 years ago, nothing more. They still haven’t listened to people who want buses that run conveniently i.e. reliable not jam packed and don’t take an hour to get somewhere that would take 15 minutes to drive. Until they do that there will be little impact.

Maybe some of the $$ from the advertising on the (snazzy) new shelters could pay for these new drivers? If we’re going to sully the city with its first billboard ads, we might at least be getting something good out of them.

Yes! The 729 is coming back!

I want to know how they propose to get the new timetable right when they struggle with the old one already?

BTW, they might want to ensure they don’t; repeat last nights events by having the Belconnen Bus Interchange in darkness when I arrive dthere on a cennecting bus at about 5.35. Its not the best place to be at night anyway, without sitting there in the dark.

It does seem like an odd thing to do.

I doubt the advertisers care about the timetable changes though – the ads seem to be more directed at passing traffic than waiting bus users.