Getting my license can't come soon enough! I'm so incredibly frustrated with the inefficiency and shocked by the recklessness of Brisbane's public transport service!
Within just the last five days:
- I've had a bus driver reluctantly let me on at a stop, and then tell me that, "This bus is no longer meant to stop here"... Well how about either updating the bus stop/timetables or getting your facts straight! This same driver then proceeded to take the wrong route! People were having to give the driver directions on where to go! Clearly this driver thought he was driving a different bus. But the bus has zoomed past on several other occasions, so it very well *might* not meant to stop there. But the sign hasn't been updated.
- The Roma Street train station has about 6 or 8 gates for people to enter and exit the station through… Do you know how many gates they had working yesterday? One! Big queue of people were waiting on one side to get out, and another big queue on the other side to get in! Through one gate!
- And their train times keep changing, as well as the platforms! No longer can you rely on the Beenleigh train to come at 8:30 on Platform 4. Today, it might come at 9 on Platform 8, and at 9:10 on Platform 2 tomorrow!
- I saw a guy in a suit literally jump into a moving bus the other day! The door was open while the bus was moving, so this guy took a run up and leapt in from the side of the road!
- A friend of mine yesterday was almost run over by a bus because the driver wasn't stopping at red lights! Probably because he was so busy speeding past all the stops and not letting people on!
"Bus L5901 just ran a red light at Creek/Adelaide St while pedestrians were crossing. Then blocked them from crossing Adelaide St. Then nudged forward as people walked in front of him when the pedestrian crossing he was blocking went green. So, yeah. I was just hit by a bus (not badly)".
- And today, I wanted to get off the bus via the back door, so I swiped my card ready to go. And he didn't open the back door! So I had to come running to the front, saying, "Excuse me! Excuse me!" as he started driving on! He had to open the front door again to let me out! He'd already let people on, but wasn't letting anyone out!
"Out of Service. No Host" sign was on the rear Go Card machines, so nobody could swipe their cards at the back. People had to exit via the front.
Brisbane public transport has been terrible for years, but I never thought it was possible for it to get any worse! Reckless driving, broken doors, broken gates, broken Go Card machines, mixed up schedules, platform changes, confused drivers who don't know where to go! All within 5 days!
Unbelievable!
Not to mention the fact that the buses and trains are so few and far between that they're always PACKED beyond capacity! And the air conditioning rarely works. And we're right in the middle of a very hot Summer. And we don't have the same kind of train tracks as Sydney does, so we can't have trains with three levels of seating like they have. We have these single-level, over packed, hotbox sardine cans plodding along rusty tracks at snails pace! And on our roads, we have outdated, over packed sardine cans on wheels zooming through red lights and not stopping to let people on or off! And when they do stop, the Go cards don't work! Or the doors! And it doesn't take much for them to break down!
Ok ok... Rant coming to an end... Soon enough I hope to be adding to the pollution by driving around in a car where I want, when I want, in air conditioning, while sitting in a seat (not having to stand up). Because quite frankly, "Take it easy, take a train" and "Leave the car at home and take a bus" are not the kinds of slogans that work here in Brisbane.
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