Article: Senior wins bus stop battle

[ozbob]

From the Queensland Times click here!

Senior wins bus stop battle

Senior wins bus stop battle

Joel Gould | 16th September 2011

WHEN Translink took Moira Chapman's bus stop away from near her home in Riverview without a word of warning she wasn't just going to take it lying down.

So for nine months the 77-year-old kept on their case until they put it back. Persistence was the winner for her.

"Why they did it in the first place, I do not know. I've been living here for 19 years and the bus stop on the corner of Riverview Rd and Maryanne St had always been there," she said.

"But I wasn't going to let them take it without a fight.

"I am a senior and it really got to me.

"I have bad varicose veins in my legs and around about the time they took the stop away I had ulcers on them.

"Walking that extra distance was no good for me, so I kept ringing them up.

"At the start all I got from them was, 'Thank you for your feedback.' But after that I made sure that I got a reference number for the call.

"I would have rung at least twice a week for nine months.

"Translink rang me at the start of September and said they would have it back in four weeks, weather permitting ... and they put it back yesterday."

Ms Chapman does voluntary work in Ipswich twice a week and was forced to walk an extra 500m to another bus stop in Ursula St and leave home "a good 10 minutes earlier" for nine months.

She uses the Riverlink 500 route bus that goes from Goodna to Ipswich for all of her other activities.

"I rely entirely on the bus," she said.

"But they took it away at the beginning of the year.

"I was coming home from Redbank one afternoon and I pressed the bell three times.

"I didn't know why the driver wouldn't stop. I said, 'I wanted to get off back there.' But he said, 'There is no stop there now'.

"They don't tell you anything. It is not the bus company's fault.

"They were under the instruction of Translink."

In many ways Ms Chapman is the model citizen.

Instead of whinging when bureaucracy made a dopey decision, she kept calling with her complaint until the bus stop was put back in its rightful spot.

"Yes, I kept hounding them. But it is back now and I am happy," she said.

[ozbob]

The QT blog comments on this article  are interesting --> here!

[SteelPan]

The QT blog comments on this article  are interesting --> here!

By her OWN words:
The Transport Minister "listened" (well, after she initially stopped listening, she finally, after some time, started to listen again) and she acted - probably slipped out at midnight one night with a pick, shovel, couple of bags of cement and got that bus stop back in!  Mind you, with the Minister's announcement of a - new bus stop for Townsville - they probably needed to pinch one from somewhere else!!!!!

It's all becoming clear now, watch bus stops in your local area, they still need one for Townsville! 

They got a new bus stop you know - Townsville....no doubt part of the govts "North Queensland Global Transit Strategy Within a Non Defined Framework, Embracing Green Intensive, Unified, Codified, Homogenised, Pasteurized, WORLD CLASS Transit Environment 2175"  Practical outcome - OK, you can have a new bus stop!

[Arnz]

I'm a tad surprised that the pollies and spin doctors didn't use the words "WORLD CLARSE bus stop" and "WORLD CLARSE bus service"..

[SteelPan]

I'm a tad surprised that the pollies and spin doctors didn't use the words "WORLD CLARSE bus stop" and "WORLD CLARSE bus service"..

   

[O_128]

so where does she go when she gets to the shops if she can't walk

[jouzocha]

so where does she go when she gets to the shops if she can't walk

Some shopping centres hire out those motorised scooters by the hour - you know, the ones old people use to run people over 

Seriously if shopping centres hire them out, they need to put a governor on them for a maximum speed of like 5km/h or something, I think they can do more like about 12-15km/h, way too fast for indoors.