Friday, March 16, 2007

I 'ate you Butler!

Yes, for the first time ever I'm trying the 216 bus service this morning. I've not been using the bike since Tuesday, when I discovered Albert Park, a publicly owned facility, is not actually accessible to the public for several days prior to the race action.

Yesterday both inbound and outbound services were delayed and consequently crowded - although Connex records will show them as on time©®™, of course. That confirmed my plan to run home after work today. And subsequently persuaded me to see what Blakey, Stan, Olive and the crew were on about all those years ago.

The bus is due at 07:03 and by 07:07 with no sign of it, I've still just got time to catch Connex' finest, the 07:13 (in reality I may've had plenty of time, but how would you know?)

So I head off and am nearly at the station when the 216 appears. It's clean and comfortable, not crowded and gets me into the city only slightly later than Connex. All in all a pretty positive first experience of a Melbourne commuter bus service in 25+ years

Looks like Connex may have some competition!

6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I find buses are reasonably good for being on time - its just that when their service frequency is hourly, its not all that useful. They are also subject to stop-start traffic conditions, but usually this reflected in their timetables.
Most of the time that I've had buses which are a few minutes late, its usually due to them departing railway stations late to wait for the passengers of late running Connex trains. Most of the time there is 5 or more minutes slack time between the scheduled train arrival time and bus departure time - but quite often this 5 minutes is manifestly inadequate.

17 March, 2007 09:25  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You often have to wonder how the bus time table reflects real time congestion and keeps to the timetable where as a train that doesnt compete with other road traffic and traffic lights and gets right of way cannot keep to a pre set timetable. Dear Lord please let Transperth Submit a tender and dear Cloth eared nuff nuff be wise enough to accept it on behalf of victorians.

18 March, 2007 02:28  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You (Connex Whinger) should set up a blog and appeal to Transperth to set a tender. (Pricisely the WA goverment/ PTA.) And make a link to it on this blog. Just post a few blogs and let people comment.

18 March, 2007 08:20  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Here Here.

18 March, 2007 16:49  
Blogger PTA All the way said...

http://transperthtorun.blogspot.com/

Lets apply the pressure to the Vic Government and I'll harrass the PTA from my side of Australia.

18 March, 2007 16:58  
Blogger Connex Whinger said...

I've just emailed Allanah MacTiernan to see if she's ineterested in taking it on.

19 March, 2007 06:50  

Post a Comment

<< Home