Australasian Bus & Coach – May 2019

(^4) ABCMay 2019 busnews.com.au
keepsthebusworldinteresting.
Atthetimeofprint,Scaniahadjust
announcedanorderforthreeofits
GenerationIIhybridcitybusesinright-
hand-driveconfiguration–thefirstoftheir
kindintheworld(othersLHD)–tobe
deliveredtolong-timecustomerMcHarry’s
inGeelong.BodiedbyExpressandwith
thefirsttobedeliveredlaterinOctober,
itwillbeinterestingtoseehowthis
interpretationofhybridtechnology–said
tobefasterandlonger-lastingthanothers

• willperforminreal-worldconditions.
  AlsocooltechisBridgestone’s‘gate’Tyre
  PressureMonitoringSystem(TPMS),which
  basicallypicksuptyretempsanddata
  viasensorsonthebuswhileitdrivespast
  and‘thru’them.Theideaisitgivesbus
  operatorsreal-timeanddailytyrehealth
  infoeverytimethebusleavesorentersthe
  depot,thereby–intheory–reducingany
  potentialdowntimeduetotyrewearor
  malfunctionissues.Interestingstuff.Check
  outournewssection(page8)formore.

THEELECTION

Well,thereitis!Scott‘ScoMo’Morrison’s

Liberal-Nationalscoalitiongovernmentgot

upinthe 2019 Federalelection,muchto

thesurpriseofmanywhostupidlylivetheir

livesbelievingwhatallthesepollssay.

WithLaborexpectedtocleanupright

untilthelastfewhours,therewasno

cleaningtobehadasthingsswungthe

otherway,givingMorrisonandhisteam

thebigwin.

Policyiswhatpeopleshouldvoteon

buthistoricallythere’salwaysthatbitof

personalitythatgetssomepolliesoverthe

linewhenreallyneeded.Andyoucan’teat

IGNITION FABIAN COTTER

HOTDOGS AND YARDIES

W

ith only two hours’ sleep I

was up on a Saturday

morning at 4am, packing

bags and showered by

5am and at the local train station by 5.15.

Luggage and camera gear in hand, the

station lift was out of order. Not ideal, but

not to worry. First World problems and all.

Schlepped it up the stairs not only to

discover the lift going down was also

stuffed, but that none of the train destos

had info on them. That and the big yellow

signs pointing to replacement buses down

on the street were the giveaway it was

train-replacement time. Dang! I must have

missed the memo.

Not to worry, plenty of time to catch my

8.40am flight to Adelaide from Sydney for

the 2019 Bus SA Conference. Too easy. I’m

never this early anyway. I’m usually only

coming back from the city two hours later

from now. Everything is under control.

Down at the kerbside bus stop there

stood one other tradie chap who’d just

arrived also to ask the clipboard-carrying

bus-replacement co-ordinator chap the

same question: When’s the next bus?

It was a high-vis face-off even in the

darkness of the early hours, so I slipped the

old polarised imitation-rockstar sunnies on

to correct the glare at hand.

“Should be here in five to six minutes,”

the bus marshal said, confident his

notepad information was good as

gold and with no two-way communication

device on offer. And who was I to

question it?

About 40 minutes later with now about

35 people, mostly forming a sea of high-vis,

waiting in the icy cold with us, I’m pretty

sure that bus wasn’t coming. And so too

was the marshal, shaking his head as he

paced up and down the middle of the

road between cars passing by. Not his fault.

A massive reassessment took place. My

thought process was as follows:

1. “Oh crap! I’ve lost a lot of travel time. It’s
   five train stops to where the trains are
   running then the usual journey of, say, 50
   minutes to the domestic airport stop –
   that’s without any further hiccups”;


2. “If that bus is coming from, say, 10

stations away that means some bean

counter has underestimated how

many buses were really needed along

the route”;

3. “And finally, if there’s so many people
   here waiting on a Saturday morning
   (granted, even I was surprised) and it’s
   the same at other stations, are we all
   even going to fit by the time it eventually
   
   
   • maybe, possibly – gets here?”
     Again, I put myself into the mindset
     of being a tourist in my own backyard
     and relying on public transport to get to
     where I needed to be with me having
     allowed plenty of time. And while, yes,
     rail trackwork represented a worst-case
     scenario, it was more about flawed
     planning behind trying to accommodate
     such an event from authorities. Or
     at least someone that looked after
     calculating how many buses would
     actually be needed.
     So where more buses running regularly
     would have saved the day and given
     people the right impression, an industry
     further gets shat on because some numpty
     couldn’t do the math properly. And if
     they’ve used rail Opal card tap-on/tap-off
     data for previous Saturday mornings then
   
   
   
   

there’s some glitch in that system because

there’s way more assumedly regular

high-vis-wearing workers rocking up at

this ungodly hour and on a weekend. So

perhaps send people out at such times

weeks prior to see for themselves and

factor that into the calculation?

NEW TECH

Some interesting new tech – or new and

refined enough – out this month that

“YOU CAN’T EAT A HOTDOG FROM

THE MIDDLE WHEN BEER IN A YARD

GLASS CAN BE SKILFULLY AND

SWIFTLY PUT AWAY LIKE A TROOPER

IN UNDER 12 SECONDS.”

It’s been a whirlwind month with everything on the cards from a

Federal election, state bus industry events, new bus technology and

even some butter chicken. But first ... a rail-replacement nightmare.