What was up with Action buses from Belconnen this morning?

basketcase said :

Went Charnwood to Belconnen to register the card. … Got to Civic and found that the MyWay place had moved to 112 Alinga St, so hoofed it over to there.

There I was told that COTA were doing the registrations, it will happen in the fullness of time.
They also informed me that seniors off peak fares were $0.55

Had you read the Register your card page on the MyWay website ( http://www.transport.act.gov.au/myway/register.html ) you would have found this out. A bit surprised that this information was not included in the letter sent out by COTA.

To answer the initial post, about five brand new buses were rushed into service ahead of schedule this week to help out with shortages.

MsCheeky said :

On a related note, I’m wondering why anyone has moved over to the Myway tickets yet..

Just seniors. Regular commuters can purchase and begin using a MyWay card from Monday. Plenty of info here: http://bit.ly/actionmyway

ML-585 said :

Is Action having trouble with a large driver shortage again

I’m fairly certain ACTION has an abundant supply of large drivers!

Once again ML-585 you are the font of knowledge for all things Action.

MsCheeky said :

On a related note, I’m wondering why anyone has moved over to the Myway tickets yet.

Well I used my Seniors MyWay card yesterday. Went Charnwood to Belconnen to register the card. MyWay shop shut due to mall works.

Caught another bus to town, and tried three times to use the card, the last console messages were;
Insufficient money/Less than $10 or something like that;
You have changed your mind <—mind boggling message.

Got to Civic and found that the MyWay place had moved to 112 Alinga St, so hoofed it over to there.

There I was told that COTA were doing the registrations, it will happen in the fullness of time.
They also informed me that seniors off peak fares were $0.55

Caught the 313 home, signed off and was told I had $9.45 left. Ah, so they were right. This free $10.00 ticket is going to go a long way!

Only complaint is that the messages presented by the ticketing machine are really flash messages. If you are not looking, and don't know what you are looking for, too bad.

The same issues were happening on the Woden – Civic run last week. I catch the bus into Civic at Albert Hall, where every bus from Woden and Tuggeranong passes so they are very frequent. Each morning last week, the bus stop ended up crowded as 15 minutes went by with no buses, then when one turned up, it was packed to the rafters and couldn’t take anymore passengers. Two or three buses in a row would be like that. It seems to be back to normal this week.

On a related note, I’m wondering why anyone has moved over to the Myway tickets yet. They’re selling and accepting the old tickets for some weeks yet and I’d guess I’m getting at least half if not more of my bus rides for free at the moment because the old machines are not being repaired. While I jump on and wave my ticket at the driver for a free ride, people with the new tickets are dutifully swiping and paying.

Is Action having trouble with a large driver shortage again

I’m fairly certain ACTION has an abundant supply of large drivers!

Rather than straight to twitter a feed that goes onto their site and also updates a Twitter feed would perhaps be prudent.

Keijidosha said :

JC said :

As for communication what exactly do you want ACTION to do to communicate problems better?

They could start by using Twitter to announce scheduled services that are unable to run, or when buses have broken down mid-route. Twitter is free, and would only take 30 seconds to type in the memo that is already verbally distributed to drivers via two-way.

I think that is a great idea, although have you called ACTION when a service hasn’t turned up?
The usual reply Ive gotten is ‘We are sorry, but we’re unable to contact any drivers while they’re on the road.’

I find that really hard to fathom, as, well for starters, safety comes to mind, and running a public transport service which is unable to make contact with drivers a little hard to believe.

Has anyone else been given that response?

JC said :

So were the problems just today as your title suggests or on going? As for communication what exactly do you want ACTION to do to communicate problems better?

The problems this morning seemed worse than other days, but there have been several occasions when the frequency of 300 buses of a weekday morning have not been as they should.

As for communication, maybe announcements could be made about cancelled or delayed services as they currently do in the Civic interchange and used to do at the old Belconnen interchange. It would be unreasonable to expect messages to every bus stop, but there should be information at interchanges.

There seem to be regular issues with not enough drivers to cover routes, most times when I sit up front I can hear pleas for drivers to fill gaps in the schedule.