13 January 2008

Public transport not safe

| Joe Canberran
Join the conversation
23

What is going on it this town?

Last week we had a taxi driver sexually assault a female fare (and I’m sure I read somewhere that her sig other was in the cab with her at the time).

Now it’s the cabbies who aren’t safe with a brawl starting in the City cab rank in the early hours of Saturday morning and the taxis now refusing to pick people up from in town (the CT indicates 50 cab drivers were involved in the City pick-up boycott for last night only but I had heard that it was all cabs and it was an indefinite thing).

And now (can’t find anything online to confirm yet) a mate (not the most reliable of sources, I know) tells me that in the deep south last night a bus had a beer bottle thrown through it’s front window al a what’s been happening in Sydney recently. Can we expect a bus driver’s strike too? or some areas of Canberra to be black listed or become no-go areas for public transport?

It boggles the mind.

[Ed – apologies Adza, who posted a similar story, this came in first.]

Join the conversation

23
All Comments
  • All Comments
  • Website Comments
LatestOldest

In response to the post by Devil_n_Disquiz stating that CabXpress might be to blame by not contributing to security, maybe these facts may assist:
Aerial removed their security from Alinga rank several months before CabXpress commenced operation.
Aerial attempted to oblige CabXpress to pay exactly half for the airport commissionaire, and when CabXpress declined on the grounds that CabXpress has only a fraction of the fleet with Aerial has, Aerial removed the commissionaire.

Security in public places is generally the job of the government, usually through the police force.

Someone was telling me the other day that desperate Australians drink Fosters in London because it’s the only beer that you can be certain will be served cold. So maybe that’s where they get the idea.

el ......VNBerlinaV810:19 pm 14 Jan 08

ctd – VB tastes like crap after the first SIP!

Ok so firstly the Govt maintain the cameras (well suppose to) and it is set up in the Police station so that it can be monitored and incidents responded too ASAP. Unfort the Govt finds the need to spend money on sports grounds and water signs rather than public safety.

Secondly there was a altercation between a male and female at the taxi rank. The cabbie stepped in and made it his own business, (prob swore a bit, which is wise when your on your own and your at a line of drunks) then the altercation moved to involved the cabbie. Then the other cabbies got involved and called for other cabs before even calling Police!

To be honest, yes the cabbies put up with a lot of crap on a friday and saturday night, but hey, if your going to try and be a hero and step in the middle of a rowdy crowd, then u deserve what you get. None of this would’ve happened if he had just called Police to deal with and carried on with his work! Oh and it didn’t help with ethic stuff either. Drunk ‘Aussie kids’ are appallingly racist.

An increase in antisocial behavior after 12 schooners?

I blame the brewers. in the old days, when you could only drink VB, getting that 9th one down was a struggle cos VB just starts tasting crap after the first 8. And so you never got to 12. Now we have tasty beers, you can drink all night. Coopers has a lot to answer for.

Stop misquoting the First Emperor of the Moon, Inventor of the Internet, author of “Earth in the Balance” (and the more successful “Harry Potter and the Balance of Earth”) like that.

He’ll give you a bag of moon sapphires if you stop.

neanderthalsis2:40 pm 14 Jan 08

Who’d have thunk it… An increase in antisocial behavior after 12 schooners? What is society coming to.

There’s definitely a proven link here (see Allens and Diville “Impact and consequences on the ociopathetic behavioural tendencies in the lower classes following post-ping trauma following consistent and unwearranted exposure to mindlessly placed speed cameras” ANU Press 2005$59.95).

According to the study there are an increasing number of cases of violent tendencies in people exposed to revenue-raising speed cameras, that manifests itself as anti-social behaviour following the ingestion of as little as 12 schooners or the equivalent.

So there you go, the ACT government has unwittingly contributed to the increasing violence in our community, all in the name of ‘safety’.

Slapp_monkey2:10 pm 14 Jan 08

Stuff the cabbies.

Sure it is a hard job and they work bad hours but so do many other professions and nobody hears them having a big old sook. So why don’t they dig into their pocket just like other people and companies do and get some security. I for one am sick of watching cab drivers speeding, parking where ever they damn well feel like, talking on their mobile phones whilst driving passengers, and then having the gall to say they should be allowed to because they are professional drivers.

To top it off when you get into a cab they have no idea where they are going, sorry but I would have thought that was a basic component of their job.

But wait this is not the Cab driver’s fault it is all someone else problems. If they don’t like it quit or get changes made instead they just have a big sook. I’m not going to go into the amount of times the Cab drivers have tapped that little button and then made the pricing rate jump just because I have a had a few drinks.

I say again take some hard up tablets or get some security it is not somebody else’s problem it is their’s.

I blame those revenue-raising speed cameras. (hey i can do it too)

One could also “quite easily” see it as petulance on the part of Aerial that is to blame.

How about: if you don’t like the security at a particular rank, either 1) pay for it to be improved or 2) don’t service it yourself. That’s also “simple”. If Cabxpress is happy to service a rank without security, why should they be forced to pay for it?

Devil_n_Disquiz11:35 am 14 Jan 08

The paper said something about the new Tax Office being built as being the reason for the cameras not working. The new tax office is no where near Alinga Rank.
Further comments to the rank marshalls elicit this response from me.
I am amused by the reports in the paper today that Cabxpress will not contribute to the costs of security on the Alinga Rank.
Because of the non contribution, Aerial removed security from Alinga Rank, so I guess one could quite easily blame Cabxpress for the brawl that occurred on Friday night and the subsequent strike on Sat night.
I read also that the commissionaire was removed from Canberra Airport also due to Cabxpress refusal to contribute to the cost to keep one there.
So Cabxpress does not want to provide customer service, does not want to provide security for its drivers and is quite happy to be responsible for the removal of security for all Canberra Taxi drivers.
If they won’t/can’t contribute to the costs of support for these ranks, then Cabxpress should be banned from servicing them. Simple.

hingo_VRCalaisV69:33 am 14 Jan 08

I was in the City early Saturday morning. It was nuts. People were all over Northbourne Ave. I caught a cab home and had a good ol’ chat with the cabbie. Great bloke.

ATM you can’t edit your comments once they are posted – unless you are an admin, in which case almost anything is possible 🙂

Man some of my spelling and grammar in that last post is a disgrace, how do you edit your own posts???

Believe me, the state of the cameras is VERY frustrating. Half the time they don’t work, the other half only some of them work. And then on top of that the controlling mechanisms of the cameras occasionally don’t work either!

I personally think it’s a disgrace and their upkeep is not a high priority in the AFP but someone in their infinite wisdom has decided that its acceptable for them to be done for days/weeks on end.

Yeah their often is cops right in the middle of the interchange just waiting for something to happen but they go for walk around the “Block” every now and then so they can’t be there all the time.

Oh and the whole “brawl” thing was completely overblown by the times as these things often are. It was no worse then the several “brawls” you get every Saturday night in Civic, this one just involved a cabbie. And for the record, Police attended in 3 minutes, not 30…..

But nobody worthwile is at the pub before 10pm anyway.

And after 11, it’s not so much getting pissed as staying pissed…

Close the pubs at 11:00, that’s what I say.

If you can’t get pissed by 11:00, there’s something wrong with you.

el ......VNBerlinaV85:58 pm 13 Jan 08

Fair enough Special G, thanks for the disappointing, if not entirely surprising info –

I certainly wasn’t having a go at the police for the lousy infrastructure they’ve been provided with, either.

CCTV in the city hasn’t been upgraded since it was first put in. It’s probably broken and simply needs fixing – half the cameras have been pulled out and not replaced with all the work around the city.

I’ve heard an upgrade can be installed almost immediately although the govt won’t sign it off. REad not the Police cameras they just get to look at them.

Deadmandrinking4:46 pm 13 Jan 08

15 people? How the hell did it get that big? Aren’t there usually sh-tloads of coppers hanging around just out the front of King-o’s nowadays?

el ......VNBerlinaV83:39 pm 13 Jan 08

But the event was not recorded by the closed-circuit cameras near the rank. Police said the CCTV was not working at the time of the brawl because of upgrade work.

*Upgrade work* on a Friday night? For f*ck’s sake.

Seems to me a head or two needs to roll since it’s emerged that the CCTV camera in the interchange weren’t working. Again. I’m no fan of the whole big-brother aspect, but after they failed to record the Clea Rose incident, and have now failed to record this you have to ask what the hell we spent the money on them for.

Daily Digest

Want the best Canberra news delivered daily? Every day we package the most popular Riotact stories and send them straight to your inbox. Sign-up now for trusted local news that will never be behind a paywall.

By submitting your email address you are agreeing to Region Group's terms and conditions and privacy policy.