Wednesday
And in further Sydney public transport news, it’s been reported today we’ll soon have six free buses which will loop the city. Fantastic news, I thought, having had experience with the CAT buses in Perth which were excellent, I thought. In case you were unaware, in Perth, all public transport in the obviously-small CBD is free, encouraging people to hop on a bus instead of catching a cab or whatever.
Let’s hope the buses run regularly, and don’t end up in groups like many Sydney buses do. This is a problem on Cleveland Street, in particular, where the are often no buses for 20 minutes and then two versions of the same route turn up together, with one of them packed to the rafters, while the other is almost empty.
Nothing else to report.
Do you know if this free service is just for Christmas or is it going to be permanent?
Hmmm… sounds a bit like the bus version of the monorail – not especially useful for Sydneysiders, but good for tourists. Also it would increase my carbon footprint not reduce it as it would either replace walking or a train for me…
Whole doctorates have been written on bus theory and how to stop them bunching up. Unless they make the buses stop at every stop for a set time regardless of whether they need to, the one behind is always going to be faster and eventually catch up!
There is an interesting article/comment about this new service (No such thing as a free bus) in today’s Sydney Morning Herald.
Tom, I think it could be useful for locals, especially those who are less mobile. The other potential advantage I see is that it could save time on other bus routes (Victor: that’s something which the SMH op-ed piece overlooks). However, the Perth system uses buses which are specially modified for quick entrance and exit, and I see no sign of that in the present announcement.
I wonder if this isn’t the first step towards moving the termini for bus services to the edge of the city, in much the same way as is now being proposed for train routes to terminate at Central. If the intra-CBD services were frequent enough, this could have some benefit, because at present the problem is that there simply isn’t room for all the buses in the CBD and you spend an age trundling behind other buses, all taking on passengers and receiving fares and waiting for curb-space to drop off or pick up passengers, before you even get out of the city or, if you are coming in, get to the point where you want to get off. I have mixed feelings about this, because I don’t trust the intra-CBD service to be sufficient to outweigh the delay in changing services.
Victor – not sure if it’s permanent or not, but hopefully it is. I used to love the free bus services they had in Perth when I lived there.
Tom – when I was in Perth, I’d use the hop-on-hop-off buses in preference to a cab if I needed to go into the city for a meeting. As the route goes right near my work, I’m hoping I can do the same here. And don’t get me started about buses bunching up. It drives me insane, especially on those Cleveland Street routes!
Marcellous – let’s hope it works!