Tag Archives: public transport

Hitchin’ a ride

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I showed up to the bus stop at 6.30 this morning and there was a lady there frantically trying to hitch a ride with any vehicle that went past, including a police car.

A couple of taxis drove past and she attempted to hail them, but they drove on by. Then a cab pulled up and she let out a huge sigh of relief and walked towards it. But she was soon stopped in her tracks when a passenger got out of the taxi and dashed over to the ATM while the taxi waited for him.

The woman turned to me and said in a cranky, rude voice, “You know, there are no buses today. They are all on strike,” with a silent “you stupid girl” added by her sneer.

“Oh,” I said. “I guess I’ll have to walk.”

“Hmph. Lucky for some,” she muttered, before returning to her mission of attempt to bum a ride to wherever it was she so urgently had to be.

Public transport

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The bus drivers were on strike today, which hugely inconvenienced me because there were all these other people clogging up the footpaths and all these cars running red lights as they tried getting to work along the congested roads.

Actually, the chaos caused by the lack of public transport made me realise how many people actually use the buses. I only take buses when I start early or finish late. Otherwise I walk, because it’s just not pleasant being crammed in a bus with a bunch of other miserable people on their way to work.

There’s something horrible about a full bus. I’ve been on the packed 96 tram doing the 50-minute rush-hour journey all the way from downtown Melbourne to St Kilda, and that was more tolerable than even a lightly-packed bus.

Instead the Auckland bus system gives me the pleasures of such fellow passengers as The Smelly Guy. I encounter The Smelly Guy on my 7am-start weeks. He gets on a few stops after I do and the last thing he does before boarding the bus is to put out the cigarette he’s smoking. This means that he comes on the bus reeking of smoke. But it’s not just that.

He appears to be a painter and probably wears the same painting clothes every day, so as well as the fresh cigarette smoke, his clothes are impregnated with the odours of stale smoke, paint and, yes, body odour. One morning the bus was full and he ended up sitting next to me. I felt ill from his malodorousness.

But this morning I had the sweet smells of autumnal Auckland to keep me company as I made my way to work.

Tourism

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I was walking home along the Symonds Street motorway overbridge. It started to rain, first little droplets, then big, fast, heavy rainfall. It was interesting seeing the number of people who stopped and crossed over to the other side of Symonds Street and caught a bus. That’s what I did too.

Earlier I noticed some very cool police action at the K Road/Pitt Street/Mercury Lane intersection. There was one cop standing up the top. Whenever a car would violate the intersection blocking rule, he’d walk over and give the driver the branding words, or take down license plate numbers if the car got away. Also, whenever a vehicle travelling from Pitt Street to Mercury Lane tried to speed through an orange light, but ended up running a red, the cop would radio through to another cop parked down Mercury Lane a bit, and he’d get the offending vehicle to pull over. I was crossing over Mercury Lane on a green man when a red van shot through. It was pleasing seeing the cop make him stop.

Even earlier I met up with Chris Foggynotion. It was very cool meeting him. I still have this idea that everyone on the internet is a huge loser geek with bad hygiene and no social skills, so whenever I meet someone of the net who turns out to be the complete opposite of that, it’s a pleasant surprise.

Ok, here’s something fun. Remember when I posted the pic of me in Paris? And Yesmum commented that “‘Robyn in Paris’ is the new ‘Man standing on top of the World Trade Centre with a Plane in the Background’.” Well, one of my interweb friends also picked up on that and got busy with Photoshop.

 

The WTC guy.

The WTC guy’s plane.

The “Independence Day” attack.

A mysterious UFO.

Excuse me, sir

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The bus was pretty full and the aisles were full of people standing. A seated person got off, leaving their seat empty. The guy standing right next to that seat didn’t sit in it. Instead he offered it to the girl standing in front of him. She refused it, saying she was getting off soon. So he next offered it to the next girl standing ahead of her friend. She also refused it. The man insisted, saying “ladies first”. She said, “mate, those rules don’t exist anymore.” He replied, “they do for me.” The seat ended up being taken by a man standing behind the guy.

This reminded me of the lifts in the building where I used to work. They were really small, and there was only really enough room for one person to exit at a time. So when a large number of people were leaving a lift, it was really only comfortable to do it in single file. Most of the time this worked out well. But there was this one man who’d stand to the side of the door, holding it open with his hand (like he thought the doors sensors were perpetually broken) and say “ladies first” meaning that I or any other lady in the lift would have to brush past him as we left. I got sick of it and ended up telling him it was “not safe” and insisting on him going first.

There’s a difference between being courteous to a stranger, like holding a door open that would otherwise slam in their face, and doing extreme things for “the ladies”. I can understand offering a bus seat to an elderly, disabled, or pregnant person, but to have a seat offered to me just because I’m female is like suggesting that I’m weaker or less able to stand up on a bus. I’d rather see the empty seat to go the nearest person.

Bing bong

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I checked out the brand new underground train station. Having recently travelled on the Paris Metro and London Underground, I now consider myself to be a 100% expert on underground train stations and have made the following observations.

  • It’s cold. This could possibly be due to the fact that the Britomart centre thing is still under construction, so it’s likely that there are great big holes where cold wind can come gushing in. Either that or it’s just a really chilly building. 
  • Automated announcements. Every couple of minutes a pre-recorded announcement would be made. They were voiced by one of those voiceover guys who does television ads and sounds like the sort of person who’d rarely – if ever – travel by train. One message started with a cheery, but very white sounding “Kia ora!”
  • One of the announcements advised passengers that when a train is pulling into the station, that waiting passengers must step back one metre from the edge of the platform. Why don’t they just do what other train stations do and paint a line along the platform and write “STAND BACK” on the platform. Interestingly, that message was nowhere to be heard when the next train pulled in.
  • There were also live announcements from someone in the station. He was suffering from the same affliction that Air New Zealand pilots have, that is, the tendency to waffle on and on when all that’s required is a short and simple message. While repeating the destinations of a train for maybe the third time, one of the automated announcements came on, so there was a cacophony of polite yet unintelligible information echoing around the station.
  • The station’s decor looks like an old warehouse that’s been converted into a gay nightclub. I don’t mean that as an insult. I think it’s the most accurate way to describe it. There’s lots of bare concrete but also concrete surfaces that have been covered by a stainless steel mesh. There are a bunch of cone-shaped skylights along the middle. At the top of every cone is a silver ball, which resembles a disco mirror ball, just smoother. But the gayest thing of all is the lighting along the side walls. The bare concrete is lit up in the colours of the gay rainbow. It looks fabulous.
  • The station is missing advertising. It looks like there are spaces for ads. I think when the ads come in it’ll stop looking less gay discoesque. There are also no vending machines. These are essential for a good train station. But I suspect that there may be small shops opening that will sell drinks ‘n’ junk food.
  • There’s no “bing bong” noise before the announcements are made. They really need to get their act together and get a “bing bong” noise.

I suppose the next step for me is to attempt to catch a train.

Mew

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I saw “The Good Girl” at the movies. Right in the row in front of me was what I think was a grandmother and some of her grandchildren. Ok, so looking after the grandkids during the school holidays is cool, but when you take a bunch of little kids to see a movie (and these were little kids – I reckon the youngest would have been about 4, the oldest 8), pick a kids movie. Pick one with a G rating. Pick a fun cartoon or a sassy kids adventure movie. Don’t take your grandkids to a dark, adult comedy. Maybe the gran was thinking that a movie called “The Good Girl” would be about a well-behaved female child. Ha!

The kids spent most of the movie twisting in their seats, bored. The dark adult humour of the film didn’t get anywhere near them. The grandmother spent most of the movie with her neck turned towards the kids, getting them to sit down, handing them popcorn and generally not watching the movie.

But the best bit came during the scene in the movie when Tim Blake Nelson’s character comes out of his house with just a quilt wrapped around him. His dog bites the quilt and pulls it away and there’s a brief glimpse of his donger. As soon as the penis appeared, the grandmother quickly reached over and put her hand over the eyes of the kid in the seat next to her. She loudly whispered to the others “don’t look! Don’t look!”, but by then the next scene had come and the penis was but a funny memory.

John C. Riley was in it. Dylzno has a theory that all movies John C. Riley is in are good. (Ditto for Edward Norton.) I’d go for a lower hit rate, but this was one was good. This, along with “Chicago” and “The Hours” rounds out his lousy-husband trilogy. In this one he was a goofy, pot-smoking husband.

I should also mention Jake Gyllenhaal. I was totally in love with him after seeing “Donny Darko”, but I’m out of love with him after “The Good Girl”. His character is excellent. He’s what a cinematic troubled, rebellious loner teen would be like in real life. i.e. a pretentious dickhead. He’s endlessly cute on the outside, but once Jennifer Aniston’s character (and the audience) get to know him, the crazy, mixed-up ugliness is becomes apparent. And we welcome the real world, where the heroine picks the pot-smoking husband over the cute badboy.

Oh, I just gave away the ending. Or did I?

Because a film isn’t about plot, it’s about how the plot is executed.

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Oh yes, on the bus there’s now a magazine for people to read on the bus. It is called “Ticket”. I felt alienated soon after I opened it and read the the magazine was “to read as you get yourself to work”. Not school, not the shops, not uni, not the movies, not a sports even, no, just work. “Ticket” is really boring. It’s filled with boring articles on boring subjects. Boring reviews of things that describe it, but barely express an opinion on it. An unfunny humour column (but isn’t describing something as being funny almost a guarantee that it won’t be?), and that old, old trick of having an article about a subject that is later advertised in the magazine. The editorial urges readers to “stop staring out the window” and read the magazine, but quite frankly, looking out the window is way more interesting than reading boring articles.

Yeah, because if you want something to read on the bus, it’s ok for it to be light and disposable, but make it interesting. I mean, you wouldn’t want to fall asleep and miss your stop.

Pash

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I’m vaguely considering doing Round The Bays this year. I did it in ’00 and ’01, but I forgot last year.

It was fun the first time, but the second time I got really sick of seeing all the stupid company t-shirts printed up for the occasion. Fictitious example “J J Bowman Printing (1987) Ltd says “Go for it team!” Round the Bays 2003. Printing excellence”.

I’m thinking that it might be better to just pick a nice afternoon and walk there. I walked to Mission Bay once, but I got the bus back because it was getting late.

Speaking of public transport, here’s another Big Day Out story:

I decided to get the train to BDO because I live within walking distance of the Mt Eden train station. I’d never used Auckland’s passenger train system before. I arrived at Mt Eden train station and was faced with a bleak, urban landscape. No, really.

Half the platform had been covered in asphalt, the rest was in rubblely concrete. There was a sign that I assume had once had “MOUNT EDEN” painted on it, but had since been painted completely black. There was one shelter with a decent amount of seats, but it looked like it had been graffitied and set on fire, painted, and repainted many time. I saw about five different colours of flaked paint on the seat. The bleakness was briefly broken by some interesting graffiti on the walls of the neighbouring buildings.

Me and my fellow passengers waited, and soon a train came along. It was really full, but I managed to find a carriage. I noticed that some stations had signs, others didn’t. Eventually the train arrived at the bleak, desolate Penrose station.

Is it too much to expect a train system like the ones in Sydney and Melbourne? Is it an extravagant luxury to have timetables, a few signs showing the station names, non-vandalised shelters and stations that feel safe and inviting?