Article: It's no wonder stranded bus users are driven to distraction

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It's no wonder stranded bus users are driven to distraction

It's no wonder stranded bus users are driven to distraction
June 18, 2011

TRAMS and the reassigned religious description ''iconic'' are two words often brought together describing one of the mascots of Melbourne. Trains are not so lucky. Rather than being a much-loved city symbol, they are more often targets of frustrated commuter wrath, as in a consumer satisfaction survey released this week that rated them Australia's worst. If a similar term is to be applied to Melbourne's suburban rail network, it would probably be ''stations of the cross''.

While that network might fan out from Melbourne's centre like the rays of the sun and the tram system tends to mainly reflect the travelling concerns of the inner and middle urban gentry, there is another network that often drops out of our consciousness, yet covers far more city territory.

When transport modes in Melbourne are listed, it is usually done unthinkingly in order of status: trains, trams and finally buses. Beyond the tram tracks and in the ever-widening void between the rays of rail, people without a car, or who chose not to use one, find public transport means one thing - a bus. It is a mode of movement so basic it is difficult to work into a holy metaphor.

To the city-centre-centric, buses are transport's poor relation, as are often the people using them. A camel might have a better chance of passing through the eye of a needle than a rich man going by bus.

Of all transport forms, buses are usually the only things that, infrequently and often irregularly, interconnect deepest suburbia where the houses are only outstripped in size by the mortgages that have paid for them. Cars are the vehicle of choice out here, leaving bus travel to the young, old and newly arrived; that is, schoolchildren, pensioners and migrants - in other words, those too young or too poor to drive.

Recent state government figures show the total annual trips taken by train and tram passengers was 395 million, while just 102 million went by bus. However, the annual distance covered by Melbourne's buses was more than double the two other modes combined: 101 million kilometres compared with 44 million.

About a year ago I became sick of being stuck in traffic, and turned to public transport. I live beyond the end of a train line, so I need to use a bus as part of my commute. I know its pitfalls. At the times I travel there is only one bus for every two trains, so missing a connection can mean a very long wait.

But unlike train or tram, bus travel is intimate. Firstly there is a relationship between passengers and driver, sometimes through buying a ticket, asking a question or listening to their choice of music over the PA system. There is also the polite protocol of thanking the driver when one gets off. On a trip I took last week a passenger converted his departure comment to abuse, alleging the driver suffered ''poor customer service skills''. These are pleasures you rarely share on a tram and never on a train.

Also, because buses are smaller and less frequent, there is recognition between the regulars. On my morning journey there is often a woman who dresses like a nurse and sits in the same seat each trip, eyes closed, apparently meditating.

Then there is Bryan, who joins at my stop. He is a semi-retired professor of theoretical physics who still produces papers. We began talking a few months ago and have covered topics from the beginning of the universe to quantum computing and particle physics. Once, when discussing the difference between French theoretical physicists and those from the rest of the world, a woman sitting beside us said she had never heard such a conversation on public transport.

This week I attempted to use bus only to visit my daughter in the deep south-east. From the bayside shopping centre where I began the trip, I needed four changes over nearly 2½ hours and went via Springvale and Dandenong. If I had used the Frankston line train for part of it, the time would been about an hour, while in a car it takes 40 minutes.

Buses are obviously for the time-rich, but they also offer a window into our society. At one point nearing Dandenong we were carrying a cavalcade of national costumes: a Vietnamese-looking woman in a straw conical hat, an Indian Hindu couple with red dots on their foreheads, a skyscraper-tall African man and a woman wearing a Muslim hijab who was possibly Indonesian.

From Dandenong, one of the newish Smart buses pointed me towards Frankston. With their own dedicated lanes at traffic bottlenecks, these things belt along main traffic arteries to a background of a computerised voice telling passengers the name of each stop as it approaches.

This route links the south with Melbourne airport, but at its Frankston terminal it pulls into a world that seems unlikely to be flying off to overseas holidays. Across the road from the stop, the first shop is a criminal lawyer, just along a tattoo and body piercing parlour, next a place offering cash loans adjacent to a shop selling bongs. If this represents too much concentrated sin, just around the corner is a bookshop devoted to Jesus.

As a regular bus user I think the network's biggest problem is the lack of reliable interconnection with other modes, particularly trains. Even though we now call the city's transport umbrella organisation MetLink, my experience is the network fails to fulfil the promise of this optimistic title - they don't link and they don't meet. It would be good if they did.

Geoff Strong is a senior writer.