Buses

I have never been on a bus in New Zealand and am never likely to. Judging by my recent observations I am not alone.

Since my move to the country my journey to the fields has increased in distance and consequently, depending upon the time of day, there has been a variable increase in duration. I can get home against the flow of traffic using the motorway in under twenty minutes. If I chose to come to work at peak rush hour and eschew the 'shortcuts' of the byways through several new housing estates I can fester on the motorway for about three quarters of an hour. Sometimes it amuses me to do this. I mean what's the hurry? With modern fuel injection systems your plugs don't oil up. Sitting in a very comfortable air conditioned car with Hauraki on the Harman Kardon for a while isn't all bad. So over the last couple of days I have voluntarily sat in Auckland's traffic jam from the North Shore into town.

You crawl along at somewhere between five and twenty kilometres an hour and repeatedly wonder who would build a 'motorway' that has only two lanes. No, hang on it's three. Oops it's back to two again. You don't build motorways like this. They have four lanes - minimum. Six are good. Then you look left and there are the two more lanes you need. Empty. Very, very empty.

It's the sodding busway. Why did we let the pratts build this white elephant. In the six kilometres that I was stuck on the ersatz motorway this morning I saw three buses; two going south into town and one travelling in the opposite direction. First bus South had two passengers on it and the second nine. The bus leaving town contained the driver and no one else. So we have two lanes of tarmac stretching, what, ten kilometres that have carried eleven people in half an hour. And those eleven paying punters needed three paid drivers and spent the trip looking at a traffic jam that could be alleviated by allowing the cars to spill over onto their private piece of real eastate. East Ham.

What the nutters who put this nonsense together really wanted of course was a train. We love trains here - we'll even pay twice what they are worth to buy a trainset. The places where people get on and off the buses (or not as it would appear) are called 'Stations'. Sunnynook Station even has signs to 'Platform 1'. Choo bleeding choo. Pathetic. I bet you can buy a platform ticket and they have a speak your weight machine. A copy of the Evening Standard available at W H Smith.

This is bollocks. If you are going to do public transport do it properly. Throw the General Motors bailout cash at it and if you want a train network build a proper one. Don't build a road and then put a bus an hour on it carrying three people.

In the meantime get the bloody buses off the Northern Busway and transform the tarmac into the Northern Motorway Extension. One lane to be reserved for cars over four litres.

Tweet