Fange den Busse

It always takes me a moment to adjust to a real public transport system.

As I approached a bus stop in Brisbane, I had the privilege of watching the bus I wanted to catch leave without me.

Because I come from Townsville, it didn't even occur to me that I could continue approaching the bus stop and wait there for another bus. In Brisbane, one can safely assume that a bus route that goes from the city centre to one of the biggest universities in the area will probably have buses running every ten or fifteen minutes.

In Townsville, this doesn't happen. If you miss the 8.05 bus, the next bus to pass on that route is the 9.05 one. If you are exceptionally lucky, and you are in an area that is kind of central, there may be another bus on a different route that also happens to stop at your bus stop and goes to where you want to go, but chances are it will be half an hour before that one turns up. Either that, or the time table will have changed and it actually came ten minutes ago.

In Townsville, if you miss the bus, you think of a plan B. So, that's what I did in Brisbane. My plan B involved going back to Central Station and taking the train to Toowong in order to catch a bus from there. It was only as I was sitting in the train that it occured to me that the bus I would be catching in Toowong was on the exact same route as the bus I missed. I did the maths and worked out it wasn't the same bus, so there had to be fairly regular buses running that route.

Which makes sense, really. There's not much point in running a public transport system if being two minutes late to catch one bus means your whole day is thrown out the window.

I worked in Brisbane for a month in a locum position, and by the time I was there for a week I had the public transport system running in my veins. I just "got it". I knew what I could and couldn't do. I was happy enough to give myself a generous window of time and "let it be". I always got to where I was going, and I was never more than ten minutes late.

Yet, live in a place like Townsville and you just lose the knack for it. It's like what happens to your piano skills when you stop playing for a couple of years.

A sad point: As I watched the bus drive off and started formulating a Plan B, I noticed Brisbane's shiny new bike rental things and my first thought was "Yes! I shall ride a bike!" which was rapidly followed by "I don't have a helmet and do not wish to break the law or die!" and "how do you ride to UQ from the city centre anyway? Is there a place to log these things once I get there?"

Not being able to see a ready answer to any of these objections, I headed back to the train station. I think, if they actually expect this whole "hiring a bike" thing to take off, they need to think about the helmet situation. No one is going to carry a helmet around with them all day - especially if they weren't planning on riding a bike but might think of taking one if they saw it (like me). Sure, rented helmets have a little bit of an "ick" factor, but people might be more likely to carry a cycling cap or bandana to wear under a rented helmet than lug their own helmet about the place.

Alternatively, they could adjust the laws so that people riding on certain paths below a given speed are exempt from the helmet laws.

Not that it really matters, I've just been looking at the service online, and it doesn't look like the kind of thing a visitor to Brisbane can just use on the spot. You have to subscribe, and the website isn't clear if you can do this from the terminals.

Hey, Brisbane City Council? One word of advice: if you want people to use things, you have to make it easy and hassle free.