Arriving for a bus to Balmain behind the QVB this morning I found a mass of other people also waiting (as you can see from the photo, with even more behind me).
While it can be expected that many people want to catch a bus in the morning, waiting 30 minutes between them is rather mad.
You can just make out in this photo, sitting on the left in his fluro yellow vest, a man from the State Transit Authority (STA).
It seems STA has sent someone down to record bus check-in times after getting a lot of complaints. Looking at his list I could see there were a number of buses up to 20 minutes late. And the 442 due at 8:20 hadn’t been seen.
He recognised that there was a problem with buses going to Balmain in the morning. With the hour between 8 and 9 am being the worst.
A problem with congestion in York St. Buses trying to turn left into Park St. Other bus companies also wanting to use the space. Not to mention the problem of getting all the stakeholders to agree on what to do (including the RTA).
Now we can just hope that someone acts on the figures recorded.