Putting on my Grumpy Old Woman Pants
Last week I headed to the Broadway bus stop as normal to catch a bus to work. I work in East Sydney, so ideally I catch a 461, 480, or 483, all of which turn at Park Street and drop me off 100m from my office. (You’ll recall that I was bummed when the route was initially cancelled and then overjoyed when it started up again.) The problem is that the Broadway bus stop gets really congested in the mornings, and sometimes you’ve got a good half a dozen full buses pulled up along the block while empty ones sail past. That’s fine with the ones going to Circular Quay; there’s another George Street bus practically every minute. But the Domain buses are few and far between. If you miss one, you can be waiting 15 minutes for the next to arrive. So yeah, there was an incident with a 480 driver that pushed me over the edge, and I sent in an official complaint:

I am absolutely fed up with drivers on the 461 and 480 routes not stopping for passengers at Broadway. I understand that it is a busy stop in the mornings, and it wouldn’t be a problem if I were just going down George Street. There are loads of George Street buses. However, there aren’t a lot if buses that go to the Domain, which is where I’m going. If I miss one, I have to wait some time for the next to come along.

This morning, I was waiting at the stop when a 480 pulled up in a crowd of other buses. It was 5 buses from the stop. I started (literally) running to it and could see a few people getting off. In the 10 seconds it took me to get to the bus, the driver SHUT THE DOORS and started to pull out. I waved my arms and yelled ‘Whoa! Whoa!” Yje driver looked directly at me and continued to pull into traffic and drive away. No one waiting at the Broadway stop had any chance of getting on. I understand that drivers don’t want to stop for a long time, but pulling up half a block from the actual stop for just 10 seconds – on a route that doesn’t run very often – is completely unacceptable. How is anyone at Broadway meant to get on?

Interestingly, the exact same thing happened 10 minutes later with a 461 bus. Luckily this time I was still halfway up the block where he stopped, so I managed to get on. But no one waiting at the actual stop would’ve made it.

Apologies for the typos; I was furiously tapping it out on the iPhone the whole way to work. I got an immediate canned response saying they’d look into it, and I wasn’t hopeful that anything would come of it. However, today I got an actual response back!

Kristine, I can only apologise for what happened to you at Broadway. Again notices will be posted telling drivers to head to the top of the bus stop. The driver on this occasion has been identified and will be spoken to.

It’s not much, but I’ll take it.