Adelaide's free 99A, C 98A, C free collector buses: the printed timetable!

[johnnigh]

I'm in Adelaide, carless, and proud of it! But I hadn't reckoned on their PTpeculiarities.
Researched the 'free collector buses' that loop the city square mile before arriving in that fair city. My first adventure was waiting long minutes at a stop that had a laminated sign held up by cable ties advertising the service, but with no timetable. After 10 minutes asked a regular bus driver about it, 'oh, that changed a couple of weeks after they started the service on 27 January', it doesn't pass here now.' Eventually found the bus information centre on King William St and was given a timetable. Sat down to work it out. After 10 minutes, gave up and queued again to ask how to interpret the timetable. It turns out that the timetabling geniuses had worked out a way to abbreviate the information so that to work it out took sudoku skills. The only clear thing were the terms Anti-Clockwise and Clockwise. Even the map was confusing. It advertised 15 min frequency, but that turned out to be adding together all four routes passing a shared stop.  Standing in the rain with a timetable, trying to work out whether 10.15 at Grote St meant 10.20 at Morphett St, and would it be the North Adelaide loop bus or not??? Naturally, as buses everywhere, they don't run to timetable. And a day later, I've not managed yet to catch any type of bus, despite spending a cumulated 20 minutes waiting.

At least, seniors are free between 9am and 3pm on any PT.

I've also been impressed by the number of Out of Service buses at 5pm in the CBD: about 1 to 1 with in service buses of all types. Does this mean Brisbane Transport does something reasonably well as I've never seen such a sight in the Brisbane CBD?