Buses a poor cousin * Australia - Putting the bus back into the bustle of commuting
Melbourne,Australia -The Age -October 20, 2007: -- It is peak hour and cars are at a standstill, neatly aligned along the Eastern Freeway all the way from the Chandler Highway to Hoddle Street. Motorists flick between radio stations for traffic updates... Every minute a bus zips down the emergency lane, bypassing the jam. Passengers inside are relaxed, perhaps reading the paper or applying their make-up. Half-an-hour later, the bus is empty, having dropped the last of the city workers in Queen Street.. To many of those who have embraced them, buses are a convenient — often only — means of getting to work or getting around. But in a city where trains are packed and trams adored, buses remain the poor cousin... The commuters who bypass the peak-hour freeway gridlock are certainly happy, but for many others it's a different story. Before the bus upgrades began this year, a study by the chair of transport at Monash University, Graham Currie, found a dramatic lack of services, and frequencies in many places of just 40 minutes. Most routes, the study found, finish by 7pm and fewer than 20 per cent run on Sundays... Buses are cheap because the infrastructure — roads — already exists and the lead time from concept to roll-out can take less than a year. That's why the bus is a major part of the Government's 10-year transport plan... (Photo by Craig Abraham - Beating the rush: with an emergency lane to itself, a bus avoids the Eastern Freeway's early morning traffic)Labels: public transport system
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