but it was also empty.
I noted this yesterday as I was waiting for it to pass. The driver in the vehicle behind it let me across the stream of traffic (for which I was most grateful) and I caught up with the bus a few moments later. (No, I am not that fast. I can do a detour the bus couldn't do.)
It stopped and picked up one passenger on the main road into the city.
This was 9:15am.
Yes, most people who catch a bus to work would be at work by then...but the bus was still empty when it first passed me.Those buses are huge great things, especially the articulated sort. They must take a lot of fuel. There is also the driver to pay and all the usual costs of putting anything like that on the road.
In this morning's paper there was an article about the lack of public transport in the outer suburbs and I thought about the bus again. We live about 5km from the CBD. Even here public transport is not that frequent.
People don't use it. The love affair with the car is so strong that some people don't even think about using public transport. I was talking to someone recently and he admitted that he had not been on a bus since he left school. He hasn't been on a train either. He left school at least forty years ago. He has no idea how the ticketing system works, where the buses and trains go or when they go. It is his belief that he doesn't need to know these things because he has a car. If he can't drive then he expects that someone else will take him. The thought of having to use public transport appalls him. He looked shocked when I suggested it. In his view public transport is only there for students who haven't got their own cars, the aged and infirm - and perhaps for some people trying to get to the "footy" because "parking is damn difficult in the city".
I suspect there are a good many other people who hold the same attitude - even if they have occasionally used public transport. It is little wonder that our public transport system is underused.
Perhaps it is time to start trying to change that attitude?
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3 comments:
And then we have areas like us - there is a bus, on Wednesdays, which is market day in the nearest town. It goes at ten, and comes back at about two thirty. I have my pensioners free bus pass, but it woud be nice to have a bus to use it on!
Public transport will never be a lot of use until they can get enough people to use it, and plan it to run so that it can be of use to those people.
If you live 5 km from the CBD and that is indeed your destination and you have the means for a private vehicle, it's a no brainer. Why take an uncomfortable 25 minute bus ride when you can drive there in 5-10 minutes? In the fast paced world where people are time poor and under increasing pressures; e.g., to work longer hours etc. private car travel wins every time.
PS our current State government has policies of moving and removing existing bus stops so there is greater distance between them in order to improve the flow of traffic (mostly private cars) by not having buses impeding it by stopping frequently. In my neighbourhood, the relocation of bus stops has made life harder for a number of older people that I know who cannot reach the bus stop easily and have been forced to change their travel arrangements - not catching buses.
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