I work in the Insanic Republic Of Mosman; which I am sure would like to declare itself separate from the rest of NSW, if not Australia (one chap has even declared himself the Prince of Wy). This one suburb, one postcode, local government area, only really has a few choke points in and out of it, with one of them being an actual genuine real life drawbridge at the Spit; so as to let the Lords and Ladies of the Manor a-boating go.
I am pretty sure that the people of Mosman object to the fact that Spit Road and Military Road form the main arterial passage of way from the Northern Beaches of Sydney to the City and the other side of the harbour. I am also sure that the people of Mosman very rarely stray to the west of Sydney's so-called Red Rooster Line; much less have ever heard of the surburb of Marayong that I live in.
As Mosman is on that main arterial roadway from the Northern Beaches of Sydney to the City and beyond, it is rudely appointed with many many bus routes; though also given its proximity to the City, they often may as well not exist as it is common (especially on the B1 bus) to see the display "Sorry Bus Full"; which given that it has no punctuation may be read either as an apology of a comment on the state of the bus.
As I went wandering on my lunch break this week, I found two bus stops that:
- I had never seen before
- for a bus route which I had also never seen before.
Now given that I have worked in this part of the world since even before the announcement to send us to war with Iraq under false pretenses of Weapons Of Mass Destruction (we have still never found them), the sight of new bus stops and a new bus route filled me with the same kind of wonder that I'd get upon discovering new uplighters or light boxes at railway stations, or railway indicators with the wrong font.
I am also left with an sense of confusion. The infobox tells us that the only service which operates from these bus stops is the 246 bus. There's nothing particularly strange about 2XX bus in the Area-2 zone but having caught 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 238, 239, 243, 244, 245, I'd never even seen a 246 bus before. As I am a commuter who travels across this swirling metropolis twice a day, I think that I have a good working knowledge of the useful train routes and bus routes to me. The mere existence of 246 is an enigma, wrapped in a puzzle, wrapped in a riddle, wrapped in a flatbread, rolled, battered, deep fried, then put through the grinder and turned into a sausage of metaphor and hyperbole.
After putting on my Sherlock Holmes' Deerstalking Hat and collecting my spyglass and Captain Coco Monkey cardboard cut-out space gun, I decided to do some hunting for clues. Investigation, Ho!
I am somewhat unreliably informed that the 246 bus; which only has two services in the morning from Mosman to the City and then two services in the evening from the City to the locality of "Balmoral Heights" which isn't even the name of a suburb, exists for the sole purpose of fulfilling a parliamentary obligation.
Parliamentary Train services are not unheard of, though they are rare. There is one train per day which runs from Penrith to Hornsby via the Y-link to the west of Strathfield and then one train per day which runs in the other direction. There used to be one train per day which ran from Richmond to the City, thence around the City Circle via Town Hall and Wynyard before running back to Richmond; though I can not find evidence that this parliamentary train still exists.
Parliamentary Bus services on the other hand, are practically impossible to find. Buses unlike trains, run on common infrastructure to the rest of road traffic. They also do not need to be synchronised with freight traffic. As such, they don't really need to have parliamentary instruments which precipitate them. What is even more bonkers though is that since the buses are now privately operated, the decisions about timetables and frequency, aren't even handled by government any more. Admittedly I do not know what current procedure is for deciding a particular bus route's timetable but I suspect that they need not seek government approval to add or remove them.
This makes the existence of the 246 bus all the more baffling. We have a bus route which at absolute maximum is only transporting 134 people per day, into the city in the mornings and then back out again in the afternoons but given that this is the Insanic Republic Of Mosman where the citizens not only resent the existence of other people but also certainly would resent having to share a bus with them.
A second baffling aspect about this minor mystery is that there are two bus stops; one for pickup and the other for drop off. Why isn't there one stop? Why are they in a corner of Mosman where the average level of excitement is less than Rookwood Necropolis?
Theory 1:
This Parliamentary Bus service could very well be an Obligatory Parliamentary Bus service. The likely operator of Keolis Downer might very well be ordered to run a certain number of bus routes. This might be purely an act of providing a headline bus route during the peak hours, in order to fulfil a contact and extract funds from the state government.
Theory 2:
This Parliamentary Bus service could very well be an pork-barreled Parliamentary Bus service. There is a distinct possibility that the 246 bus might exist for the sole purpose of transporting one person either at the Department of Transport or from Keolis Downer. Providing private benefits on the public coin, while pointing and laughing as infrastructure in the outer areas goes begging, is keeping with the modus operandi of the current tory government.
Theory 3:
This Parliamentary Bus service might be a myth. The actual ridership of the bus might be nil as the bus itself might not actually exist. This would be a more advanced version of the Thirty Level Xanatos Chess Pileup that the bus company is running, where the signs exist and payments for the running of the bus exist but because nobody in this part of the world needs the bus, they have no reason to actually check to see if it exists.
This is where my detective skills have failed. Beyond searching timetables at 131500.com, I have very little idea of how to go about finding out why the 246 bus exists (if it does). Sherlock Holmes could retreat to his little upholstered chair and quietly turn the facts over in his mind while tobacco smouldered away but all I have is a hat, an unanswered question, and a half-eaten an enigma, wrapped in a puzzle, wrapped in a riddle, wrapped in a flatbread, rolled, battered, deep fried, then put through the grinder and turned into a sausage of metaphor and hyperbole.
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