Dear Translink,
Hey, how’re you doing? Your website says you are feeling normal, with minor disruptions on the Ipswich line – but when has that ever been indicative of your actual status? Are you ok? Because I’ve noticed some stuff has been going on with you for the last… 10 years or so and I just wanted to check you’re ok.
Firstly, I’m not alone in my concerns. I did a survey, which is to say that I posted a facebook status asking what other people loved/hated about you. I got more than 20 comments on it… and I’ve gotta tell you buddy – there wasn’t a lot of love there. I see that’s upset you. I’m sorry, I will start with the love shall I? Soften the blow for the rant I’ve got stored up for you. I’ve been catching public transport since my first week of grade 8 in 2001 – I’ve got some stuff to say.
THE GOOD
Busses
The Happy Bus Driver. Everyone loves this guy. Oh, you’ve never heard of him? This guy is the happiest guy in the world, and considering he drives a bus in Brisbane – this is quite an achievement. More on that later. Whatever you’re paying him, (is it drugs? Are you paying him in drugs?) you should double it. Unless it’s drugs, I think he’s good.
Trains
Train conductors who give you extra information about each stop as you pull in. “And this is Indooroopilly; this is your stop for the shopping centre or the cinema… there’s two cinemas here actually. Overkill.” “And this here is Chelmer…. I don’t know what’s in Chelmer. Looks like there’s a nice footy club – you could go there, if you wanted.” Considering these guys are train drivers in Brisbane…. Yeah – I think you see where I’m going with this.
Ferries/City Cats
My friend Samara loves it when everyone stands out in the rain on the back deck with their umbrellas and look like mushrooms. Good work Translink; keep that up.
(Also, there was a flood. I know that, I’m not a dickhead. The council and you have worked really hard to get the stops back up and running. As a Brisbanite and New Farm local, I am very grateful for that.)
THE BAD
Ok, here’s the big thing. YOUR WEBSITE IS ENTIRELY USELESS. I’m going to do a test right now. I’m going to put in two addresses into your journey planner. These are my address in New Farm, and my parent’s address in Sherwood. There we go. BAM. One option only. It tells me to catch a 199 and then a 105 and then walk for 960m. This will take me about an hour and a half. NO TRANSLINK. That is not the best way to get to Mum and Dad’s. But, because I’ve done my research, I know that the fault here is my own. I did not change the walking options (WALKING options? On a transport website? Are you serious?) Silly Lizzy. So, I change the walking options to “I’m happy (a loose term) to walk up to 1.5km, not 1km, as is the standard”. Aha. Here we go, it tells me to catch a 199 and then a train of which there are many more – going all night. This will take me just over 1 hour. The walking distance at the other end? 1300m. A meager 300m prevented me from getting an actually useful result from your website. Why are walking options even a thing, Translink? Never assume that I know what I’m doing. I’m a tech savvie, 20 something who uses public transport all the time – but I only worked out the walking options thing recently. Until that time, I just looked up 199 times and train times separately and worked it out myself. Imagine what Doris, a 70 something year old, who wants to get across town since they revoked her license after her stroke, has to go through. It’s in your best interest to help Doris out, or you’ll end up having to talk to her on the phone for an hour to explain….
Oh what’s that? Your phone service is no better? Of course… Listen up Translink, when I call you, I do not want to hear about your “functions and activities” unless your functions and activities involve telling me quickly and clearly when the next 333 leaves from King George Square – which apparently they do not.
I’ve got an idea, and this is deadly serious. You know how at each bus stop there is a list of every single bus service that leaves from that stop? Well, those must be documents on someone in your office’s computer right? PDFs that they spent ages doing up and getting right? Why aren’t they accessible on your website? Why can’t I, a regular user of your services, find out my stop number and search for it, bringing up the PDF relevant to my stop? I could print it out. I’d never have to use your website again! This is my dream.
Now I don’t want to start criticising the staff who run your social media, as I suspect they are unhappy cogs in your bureaucratic clock of insanity, but why is it that @612Brisbane can use information from twitter users to let other twitter users know about service disruptions, while your social media and website continue to say “services are running as normal”? No they’re not, Translink, 612 just told me that Steph from Alderley is stuck on a train a Bowen Hills that hasn’t moved for 10 minutes. I realise the drivers probably don’t have to time to call the office and have a chat about the signal fault, but it must get registered somewhere instantly right? Like at a station? Can’t that automatically send a message to the office and automatically update the website? Meanwhile, why must your twitter only function between 9 and 5 Monday to Friday? Sure, you can’t be paying staff 24/7 to update it, but can’t there be an automatic update when something changes on the website? Can’t there? Please?
Speaking of staff, aside from the happy bus driver, and a handful of train conductors who like to talk shit over the PA, your staff clearly HATE THEIR LIVES. And, in the case of bus drivers – seem to hate mine also. I have always said this, either bus driving attracts unhappy people, or it makes them unhappy. Either way, you need to do something for your staff before there is a suicide/multiple homicide on Corro Drive. Grumpy as hell bus drivers, taking corners at 70, screeching on the brakes at every intersection… honestly it’s a surprise there haven’t been some really serious accidents.
Some more questions for you TL…
Why do the regular services stop an hour and a half before the nightlink starts?
Why do long distance trips take longer than the maximum single trip time?
Why do you use the shitty trains during offpeak times? Surely if it’s offpeak, you could have your pick?
Why do go card machines break all the time? Like… ALL the time? I’m not complaining about the 30 or so free rides I’ve gotten, but you should be.
Why is it the busses with no air-conditioning that leak? What is this water? And why is it on my lap?
Why do all the brand new bus stop shelters have a big gap at the back so rain gets in?
Why do all the brand new bus stop shelters have only about 1 meter of roof so rain gets in?
How did you get the 598 and 599 to suck THAT badly?
What is the city glider’s purpose in life?
AND FINALLY, THE UGLY
1. ALL busses should be wheelchair and pram accessible, no exceptions.
2. This:
Special indeed, TL, very special.
Sincerely,
Lizzyish
Love it :). Nice open letter idea.
ReplyDeleteI think the differences in the buses we catch means that I get slightly happier bus drivers - fewer inner city routes and more suburbs. Still, the bad ones are really bad.
Oh, Translink.
Also the website has started doing this REALLY AWESOME thing where if you type in something like 354 Moggill Road, it just hears 'Moggill Road' WITHOUT THE NUMBER. DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG MOGGILL ROAD IS, TRANSLINK? I'm really sure you do. So what gives?
Nice work Lizzy, though my experiences differ in a couple of ways: generally I've found my bus drivers to be friendly/happy, and I find the CityGlider useful (though I guess it's just a glorified 199 to most of us).
ReplyDeleteI would like to add:
How hard is it to update the electronic timetable things (eg at the Cultural Centre) so they show the buses that are actually coming and they times they are actually coming at? The buses in front of me bear no resemblance to the buses that are meant to be in front of me, and even though the sign insists that my bus has been and gone, it is, in fact, 5min late. Which leads me on to my next point...
Why can't your services run on time when there is no traffic or other disruptions? Having regularly late buses is one incredibly annoying thing, but having EARLY buses is even fricking worse. I turn up a few minutes early to get my bus, only to find that it's already gone. Not ok!!
WHY ARE THERE NO DAILY, WEEKLY OR MONTHLY TICKETS????? I AM NOT A MILLIONAIRE!!
I think every Translink customer would be willing to pitch in $1 to pay for one of your staff members to go and study the many competent, efficient, reliable public transport systems around the country and the world. Other systems can get it right, why can't we?
From Bernie
While we're at it - if you've cancelled 3 trains going north past a southern station like toowong or milton - Don't run the 4th one past almost empty as an express, pick up the irritated passengers and take them to roma st (which is where that train had to go one way or another) so they can get on with their lives and not get home 1.5 hours late (seriously, why is it acceptable to so many people that it takes 1.5 hours - on avg, given the reliability - to travel 50km)
ReplyDeleteI got a happy Bus Driver the other day. She was great. You know TL should set up some service where you can report the happy bus drivers. Perhaps as part of the twitter service. eg 109 currently has a happy bus driver (and a broken gocard machine) 109 is winning.
ReplyDeleteAlso - there is a walking option!!! God damn.
I approve of Scarlett's reporting service idea. And while I'm sure that there are other and plenteous happy bus drivers, there is only one THE Happy Bus Driver. He is a god, a king among men, with vigour he greets all that board his bus "Good evening and welcome aboard the happy 385, that's a lovely smile, keep on smiling!" And a similar farewell he bids to all. No stroke of good fortune would go undeserved upon The Happy Bus Driver. I made a facebook fan page http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Happy-Bus-Driver/160676727284364?sk=wall
ReplyDeleteIn response to Anonymous's question, "How hard is it to update the electronic timetable things (eg at the Cultural Centre) so they show the buses that are actually coming and they times they are actually coming at?"
ReplyDeleteMy answer:
This depends on what technology is already in place on the buses and at the stations. There's basically 3 main ways to achieve this...
1. RFID tags on the buses, and sensors at each stop. When the RFID tag on the bus goes past the sensor they share some data with each other, which the sensor can then send back to homebase, where fancy calculations will need to be done by some purpose-built software (for example taking location of the sensor, time the tag went through, distance to next stop, speed limit on the route etc), to determine how early/late the bus is running, and then send out data again to update the screens at the bus stops.
2. Have GPS devices in all the buses so they can be tracked. Have purpose-built software to calculate how early/late the bus is running (as described in number 1) and then send data out to update the bus stop screens.
3. Have the bus drivers pick up their mobile and ring a call centre of people who manually update the data.
Clearly number 3 is impractical, haha! So that elaves us with numbers 1 and 2.
Both of these highly feasible and done in many places around the world. (Maybe even around the country?) But unfortunately they are big jobs, in terms of time, effort and money.
So, unless work has already commenced on one of them, I doubt we'll get a service like than any time soon. :(
but there are already gps systems on the busses for the go cards aren't there? it tells the machine what zone you are in so that it can charge you correctly - and is also the thing the drivers have to keep turning on again when it randomly turns off. That's what I thought anyway, so why can't that technology be used in conjunction with reporting technology?
ReplyDeleteIt's tricky because everyone's big gripe is always with how much tickets cost, but here I am demanding they spend money on stuff like this. It's actually why I didn't mention the cost in my rant. I guess ultimately, they need more money from somewhere but I can't help but wonder where the money they currently have goes. If it's the new busways, I have to say - I'd take better and more busses and happier staff over those.
L