More Public Transport Frustrations

So Brisbane has this great idea, night buses! On a Saturday night, they run buses along key routes for standard bus fares, so you can get home for the cost of a bus ride instead of a cab ride.

So we were out at the regatta in Toowong tonight, till about 2ish, and decided to wander back to the RE in the more central part of Toowong as it was more likely to have a Cab line up.

Get the the RE, and we notice the bus sign, which is at the cab rank, is showing that a bus will be coming in 10 minutes!  Well buses are certainly cheaper than cabs, so why not wait to catch the bus a couple of stops?  It's a Night bus, 464.

After a while, the display updates.  Seems our bus is delays. but we can wait a bit longer.

So we wait and wait, a few cabs pull up to see if we want a ride, but move on when they realise we are not waiting for them.

After sitting here waiting for 20minutes, another bus appears on the display, this one is due at 2:44pm.  So even if this one doesn't show, it's nice to know there's another one half an hour away.  Hopefully we don't need it.

So at around 2:20, the display turns off for the now very late bus, and only the 2:44 is left up there. Not happy.

Suddenly, at about 2:25, we see a bus coming around the corner! yay!

We jump about and wave to hail the bus.... but it just keeps going.... all the lights on the bus are on, and we can see there are only 4 or 5 people on it.  But no stopping, it just keep going.

So now we are really furious and realise we need a cab.  But of course it's now 30 minutes after the pub has shut so no cabs are coming, they're all headed back to the city.  Finally after 8 minutes a cab takes pity and turns around to pick us up.

Furiouser and Furiouser now, we get back and get on the phone to complain to translink, who have  a 24 hour complain/contact line.

We get told that night buses only do pick ups in the city, then the rest of the route is only drop offs.  I can sort of see that makes sense, but then why do they have the timetable on at the bus stop?! They say, oh, that's so people know when the bus will be dropping people off.  Pah! That is so rubbish.  I occassionally catch buses from the Cultural center in the city, which is an end of line stop for a lot of buses.  These buses DO NOT show up on the display for arriving buses.  So thanks to their inconsistent logic, we wasted half an hour waiting at a stop.  Thanks brisbane transport.  thank you indeed.

Brisbane public transport is frustrating!

So needed to get from Toowong to the City on Saturday.  On a Saturday trains run every half hour and are pretty reliable, but had just missed one and was supposed to get to the city by 2pm.  Next train wasn't till 1:56pm and would take 15minutes, so a bus seemed a better option.

Buses run fairly frequently, and there are a number of different buses, but they all get you to the city on fairly standard routes.

Firstly, the display board was out, so weren't sure when an actual bus was going to arrive.  Looked at the schedule though and there were 2 due pretty soon.  So about 5 minutes later a 444 bus pulls up, which we jump on.

The bus then sits at that stop for a minute!  While we're sitting there, another bus overtakes us.  Gah!

We finally take off, and get to the stop near the wesley hospital.  I hate this area, because it seems like EVERY time I get a bus, it stops here and they change drivers, which seems to take anywhere from 1 - 5 minutes, but never with any indication.

Yup that's right, we stopped there. Sigh.  So waiting there, and another bus pulls up behind us, i was hopeful that this was the changeover bus.  Nope, it pulls away. damn i could have gotten on that bus instead!  So no indication about when we will be leaving, we just sit and wait on the packed bus.  It's 5 minutes before a driver arrives who gets on our bus, tinkers about as they do, before finally getting us going again.  In this time I count 3 other buses that pass us.

Would be so nice if they could just tell us which buses are the ones worth getting on, I would have happily waited for one that wasn't going to stop at a bus stop for 5 minutes where i'd forced to watch other buses I could be on pass me.