Article: Sick passengers taken for a ride with bus move

[ozbob]

From the Courier Mail 17th February 2009 page 17

Sick passengers taken for a ride with bus move

Sick passengers taken for a ride with bus move

Ursula Heger TRANSPORT REPORTER

SICK and elderly Brisbane residents are being put at risk after a bus stop was moved away from the Fortitude Valley train station to avoid traffic congestion, angry locals have claimed. Passengers now have to walk an extra 275m up a hill to catch services to the nearby Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital.

The Brisbane City Council had agreed to move the bus stop in October last year after bus drivers complained that they were being forced to run red lights to get across the busy intersection of St Paul's Tce and Brunswick St.

But elderly locals have said they cannot walk the extra distance from the train station, and have safety concerns about the new stop.

Peggy Smith, 78, said she had been forced to catch a taxi for her hospital trips after the bus stop was moved. "It now costs me $24 or more to go to the hospital and back each day," she said. "You have to cross over St Paul's Tee and there is this park there with drunks there is no way I'd stand there on my own.

"I have to go to hospital six or seven times this month and I'm a pensioner so it is difficult for me to afford this." Central ward councillor David Hinchliffe said it was a "disaster".

"When we are trying to encourage people to access major area like the RBWH by public transport and then take away the bus stop outside the train station you cannot call that integrated transport," he said.

Rail, Tram and Bus Union secretary David Matters said he had lobbied the council to have a bus priority measure put on at the intersection, such as changing traffic light sequences or designating that section of Brunswick St buses only. "We couldn't get a redirection of the traffic and we could not keep going through the red light there," he said. "The drivers will be happy if they have got a solution that gives them priority access."

Public and active transport chairwoman Jane Prentice said the council was investigating bus priority and other solutions.

Editorial Courier Mail 17th February 2009

Taking us for a ride?

Taking us for a ride?

WHEN Translink and others with a say in the running of public transport consider the question of how to make southeast Queensland's transit network run better, the convenience of the passenger obviously figures somewhere in their thinking. But just where is hard to discern, particularly given the growing number of instances where people relying on the system are dreadfully inconvenienced. Brisbane Transport's shifting of a popular bus stop from its original location outside the Valley train station to a spot hundreds of metres up the road because bus drivers were sick of the congestion, is a case in point. Now, if only they could find a way of getting rid of passengers altogether ...

[stephenk]

Not only has this change added nearly 300m for people (many sick or elderly) to get to the bus stop, but it also requires 3 time consuming road crossings. Integrated public transport? I don't think so!