Opinion: Driven away from public transport

A few weeks ago I decided to tear myself away from my much-loved motor vehicle and catch public transport to the City News office.

A lot of my friends are international expats who don’t have cars and they get around okay, so I figured, can it be that bad? So I decided I’d give being an environmentally conscious model citizen a try.

Due to Sydney’s poor rail infrastructure, especially in the Eastern Suburbs, my best option was a bus and the trip into the city, despite taking twice as long as the drive, was actually quite painless. The stop is near enough to my home. I got on, found a seat, put my earphones in and off I went.

It was when I was ready to go home that the bother began. At first I got excited when I arrived at Railway Square and saw my bus already sitting there. “Great!” I thought. “This bus thing isn’t half bad!”

Then I got on and asked for my ticket. “Charing Cross please,” I asked cheerfully. “Prepaid,” came the driver’s mumbled answer. “Excuse me?” I asked, as I hadn’t actually been able to decipher the mumble yet at that point.

The driver looked at me, the sole person on the steps of his bus, over his perfectly functioning ticket machine and money tray full of change, and told me that I had to have a prepaid ticket to get on at that stop and he would not sell me one.

When I asked where to buy a ticket he mumbled “downstairs”, adding that he wouldn’t wait for me to return.

So I wandered into the dungeon of Railway Square while my 378 left without me, only to discover I had to go back to street level where there was an office that would sell me a ticket. In this office I waited in a queue while a single staff member handled everyone’s ticket purchases, including time-consuming EFTPOS transactions.

As I waited I thought about the sign I’d seen telling me that pre-pay was faster, cheaper and easier.

Faster? Here I was waiting in a queue that wasn’t moving and had missed the earlier bus.

Cheaper? If I buy 10 trips maybe, but my single ticket cost me exactly the same as it would have on the bus.

Easier? I missed my bus, walked around for five minutes trying to find where I could buy a ticket, then had to wait in a line when there hadn’t been one for the bus itself.

I wouldn’t have been as annoyed if there was decent signage telling me where to purchase my ticket, or if there had been an automated ticket machine at the bus stop. I wouldn’t have been annoyed if Sydney Buses acknowledged that a change such as this one takes some adjustment, and provided a window of time for people to get used to it.

But what annoyed me most is that for a “global” city, Sydney still can’t get it right. This personal experience follows a long line of mishaps for our transport infrastructure.

In other global cities you can buy one ticket in the morning and you’re good for the day, for all modes of public transport. In other cities you can have one ticket that you keep topping up. In other cities the public transport is clean and reliable.

The State Government bumbled their way through the costly T-Card fiasco. They failed to complete the Chatswood to Parramatta rail link. They failed to build heavy rail in the North-West where it’s needed. Not to mention the mess they’ve made surrounding the CBD Metro.

Government at both local and state level talks at length about discouraging car use in the city. What it really comes down to however, is that in other cities public transport is actually a more attractive option than driving.

If you want people out of cars, the way to do it is not to make driving more difficult but to make public transport easier. And until that happens in Sydney, the love affair we have with our cars is set to continue.

You can make our roads narrower. You can funnel us onto tollways. You can make us pay exorbitant fees to park on the street and then fine us when we overstay our welcome by a mere few minutes. We will complain about it but we won’t get out of our cars until the alternative is viable.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to Circular Quay and I need to leave a little earlier so I can fill up on the way.