*
There is a bus route which is a bit out of the way from near where I work, which has a dedicated bus stop; which almost seems like case of overkill as it only has two scheduled services per day. The 246 bus which is labelled "Balmoral Heights" has one service which leaves this stop at 1746 and then 40 minutes later at 1826.
How come I had never seen or heard of this bus? The first and most obvious reason is that it leaves well after I have already left the office but even so, I am well aware of many buses that I will never catch. I will confess that this is the sort of thing which belongs in a Dull Men's Club and the kind of thing which Gunzels' cousins Bunzels get really excited about. To be honest, I care a bit about buses because as a public transport user in a city which has always been behind the times in making improvements right across every model network, needing to know what is and is not available is useful if I want to get home when the system can and does break.
**
After I found this, I decided to do some investigating and what I found got really strange really quickly. The first really weird thing that I found was that the 246 bus is conspicuous by its abscence. I have subsequently found the 246 bus listed on exactly zero other bus stop signs around the suburb and believe me, I have been looking; even along the suggested route by the Transport Info website:
https://transportnsw.info/documents/timetables/29-246-Balmoral-Heights-to-City-Wynyard-20240130.pdf
The 246 bus is listed as having a route from Balmoral Heights to the City but all links for the bus route from the City to Balmoral Heights are broken. Immediately we run into the same enigma at the other end that we have at this end. Not only is the 246 bus conspicuous by its absence at this end of the route but it is also conspicuous by its absence at the other end where there supposedly exists a return journey. Again, there are exactly zero other bus stop signs which list the 246 bus' existence, including from the bus stops where it allegedly departs from in the City to come back to Balmoral Heights.
***
After discovering that the 246 bus allegedly runs from Balmoral Heights to the City and back again, we have to immediately address a new enigma. The question of "What is City?" is relatively easy to answer as this comes from a pricing zone which has to do with Sydney Trains. "City" includes Redfern, Central/Sydney Terminal, Town Hall, Wynyard, Circular Quay, St. James, and Museum, and all of the intermodal connecting services which attach to those stations therein. In the days when Return tickets were a thing, it was allowable to take a train, bus, ferry, or tram, to any of those stations and then make the Return journey from any of the other stations. "City" is like the blob. "What is Balmoral Heights?" is a harder thing to explain.
Balmoral Heights is not a suburb but rather, a locality. The Insanic Republic of Mosman is a one suburb local council. Places like Balmoral Heights, The Spit, Clifton Gardens, Balmoral Beach, et cetera, exist only in the minds of the people as vague ideas and have no legal standing. I make mention of this because unlike other buses which describe Spit Junction, or QVB as a destination, which are very obvious fixed places, Balmoral Heights as a vague idea which has no legal standing, is purely that. Listing a bus that has Balmoral Heights as a destination on the headboard, is like saying that "Yeah, Er, Yah, Kinda, Sorta, Dunno", is a a destination.
****
If you delve deeper into what is increasingly looking like Bunzel goblin magic, you find that there are such things known as Statutory Bus Routes. Under the regulations, sub-regulations, sub-sub-regulations, sub-sub-sub-regulations, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, we learn that the NSW State Government Transport Authority (whatever they call themselves this week), is required to gazette various bus lines. There are some minimum consequences of a gazetted bus route, including that it must be sign posted. The thing is, I could not find anything in the morass of regulations and sub-regulations that actually required a bus operator to do its basic telos and operate a bus. Again, as I have never actually observed the 246 bus, there is a distinct possibility that it might not actually run any services whatsoever.
*****
Peering further in to the regulations and sub-regulation Bunzel goblin magic, you find that the operator of the 246 bus (if in fact they do actually operate the bus route on behalf of the NSW State Government) should be Keolis Downer. Now I have already established a pretty dim view of these knavish eejits because they have successfully degraded the 100 bus from a 10 minute service to maybe a 20 minute service, and the B1 bus from a 7 minute service to maybe a 15 minute service, or effectively less if you happen to be standing at Spit Junction bus stop and those big yellow B1 buses become Schrodinger's Buses with "Sorry Bus Full" displayed on their headboard.
Here's where fun really happens. Apart from this single, solitary, lonely sign, in the middle of a transport desert island where nobody is ever likely to check, the 246 bus allegedly runs two services from a place that is only an idea to a vague place which exists as a pricing zone and run by a private operator who could very easily cancel a service which might not even be necessarily legally operated to run. I assume that the 246 bus is in fact a gazetted Statutory Bus Route because this sign exists but the deliciously hilarious thing is that because this single, solitary, lonely sign, in the middle of a transport desert island where nobody is ever likely to check, then who would ever know if Keolis Downer never actually operate any buses on this route? If they chose not to because it was unprofitable to do so, but liked the idea of collecting revenue because of the idea of a Statutory Bus Route, then who is actually going to check up on them?
Remember, allegedly there are two services at 1746 and then 40 minutes later at 1826 but unless the NSW State Government sends someone out to verify that they exist, do they really?
***** Those aren't stars they're asterisks each one referring to a fault in logic.
No comments:
Post a Comment