Bus drivers

From today's SMH:

Just the ticket, please

Linton Besser's analysis of the reasons buses cannot keep to timetables ignores the time bus drivers spend answering inquiries ("System showing if buses are late has been held up in traffic", January 19).

If the Roads and Traffic Authority stationed an employee at each of the busy pick-up places in the CBD, such as Circular Quay and Town Hall, buses might be able to depart once the passengers were on.

Instead, drivers are required to sit there providing all sorts of information. One question I heard last week was whether the George Street bus headed for Leichhardt would go via Epping or Hornsby. Who would have the patience to be a bus driver?

James Prior, Sylvania Waters

Public transport

At the moment they work out fares for planes, trains, buses and taxis roughly on the basis of distance travelled, ie

Fare = z + Fd

Where d is 'distance travelled', z is 'base cost' (things like 'flag fall' in a taxi) and 'F' is fudge factor.

But if they worked it out in a multifactorial way, on the basis of weight of passenger and distance travelled, such that lighter passengers travelling the same distance as heavier passengers paid less, this would be more accurately reflective of actual costs. The formula would be

Fare = z + Fdw

where w is 'weight'.

Not at all complicated; you would be weighed when you stepped onto the bus, or whatever, and the ticket seller would automatically offer the relevant fare scale for your weight. Except in the case of anorexics, there would be clear health benefits to the society that would no doubt offset the initial cost of weighing equipment over time.

Think about it folks, this idea has legs!

PS And that's this blog's 1000th post.

The great commuter race

From Ryde to the city, as reported in the SMH. The guy on foot nearly won!

In the same race, the bus passenger gets some advice:

At 8.40 it takes on the Anzac Bridge and we get to Druitt Street by 8.47. Here, the woman in front advises us to hop off and walk up to the QVB. We don't arrive until 8.54; she was right.

Yes! I've only been beaten up that hill twice, when I've walked (OK Dave, jaywalked!).

Yesterday evening I got off the bus at Lyons Rd Drummoyne and jogged back with an 8 kg pack on my back (I weighed it when I got home, out of curiosity). It was slow but, for the first time, not sluggish.

But cycling is what I'd be doing if Fifi let me.

Public transport booming

As this report says. Here in NSW we're already at the levels that had been projected for 2016.

A bit of investment in the infrastructure is long overdue.

Let's lose the cars from the CBD

Should have happened years ago. Glad to see the push continuing.

The arguments are aesthetic, environmental, safety related, economic... [the dreaded ellipsis!]

Speaking of aesthetics, quite a good question in the SMH today

I want to know why I am obliged to have wheelie bins with lids in colours which my local council forbids me to use on my house.

Bob Liddelow, Avalon

Bicycle time

Bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle

I want to ride my bike
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride it where I like

-Queen, 1978.

Hey, what about this for an idea? From today's SMH. You hire a bike from a bike station, you ride it wherever you want to in the city, you drop it in to one of many other bike stations. They're already doing it in Paris. And if they can do it there we can do it here, since the car drivers are no less crazy.

Anyway, do you think Fifi will take the hint I've been dropping and get me an electric bicycle for Christmas?

Public transport 'round Sydney

It could work, you know, it really could.

As this article in today's SMH points out. We have a number of suburban centres that mean you don't have to travel far in Sydney to get stuff you need, despite the overall geographical sprawl.

Neither State Labor nor State Liberal governments in recent decades have served us well on this. But State Labor of recent times has dropped the bundle, multiple times.