It is laughable that some friends of mine who wish to attend football matches and any other function at the brilliant Adelaide Oval find it almost impossible to get home on public transport, despite the fact the oval is in the City.
Persons who live in Craigmore, Blakeview, Paralowie, Gulfview Heights and many places down south have bus services that simply go missing in the evenings. Some night events, especially the football do not finish until at least 10.30pm, so if you live anywhere that is serviced by Route 443 for example you are stuffed as you should have been on the 8.50pm train from Adelaide.
Furthermore, none of the AOX services help you either!
Now, forget the AFL for a minute. What about if you are a student attending a night lecture at TAFE, they conclude at about 9pm or 9.30pm. What about going out to dinner or catching a movie or other special show? residing in the above mentioned area's you MUST use your car (if you have one) or just miss out.
We are endeavouring to minimise the number of people who take the risk of drink driving, yet the Government in their ultimate wisdom have removed the alternative. This is quite simply bizarre.
Of course they will use the money factor and the fact that they have none. Well let me let you and them in on an observation and a way of redirecting some resources to provide adequate night services to areas in need. There are a number of individual services in Adelaide that are designated as GO ZONES and operate to a basic 15/30 minute frequency. This is overkill. A 20/40 frequency would be more than adequate on these routes at least: 506 541 W90 235 502 just to mention a few. Then there is the duplication of services such as Golden Grove Road which has C1 C2 G40 548 all running on the same section. Then there is Route 560 which is burnt off by the more frequent 500 & 502.
Our system is very very slow to adapt to changing community requirements and it is now beyond a joke and a shame. Gulfview Heights has been populated for over 15 years and still to this day has no bus service operating through it. There are other large parts of suburbia that are poorly serviced and not all are in the outer suburbs.
I agree that cost is important and the key, but public transport is just that, PUBLIC. It is an essential service just like postal services etc etc. Unfortunately our system is sadly lacking any vision for the future.
As I have mentioned in previous posts the entire system is controlled by a number of empire builders who are hell bent on re-inventing the wheel from ridiculous route numbering, bizarre timetabling and poor stop numbering standards. Yes, even something relatively simple as stop numbering (a unique invention by the former MTT over 60 years ago) has been made diabolical because of the unfounded use of letters and thus making some service skip numbers. Above all, it makes the system difficult to understand and use for customers.
An injection of funding and the removal of some misguided individuals who quite simply have no idea about simple public transport services is urgently required. Public transport is not rocket science and it does not need to be as complicated as it is.
That's my view.
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