This Blog Now Pre-Pay Only

We've recently moved from an area of Sydney serviced by trains, to a neighbourhood that isn't. This has forced us onto the buses, coinciding with buses in the CBD going prepay only. As usually in NSW, cashless bus services are a great idea in theory, but on the ground it doesn't actually work. (When things get desperate, Troy McLure would call all his suprise witnesses again; the NSW government simply announces a new metro that will never be built).

Anyway, you're usually at the bus stop before you remember you can't buy a ticket on the bus anymore, so you check the list of nearby ticket vendors and set off to obtain one. The first shop you visit is out of the tickets you need. The second is inexplicably closed at 1pm on a weekday. The third seller don't sell no bus tickets and they never did. By now you're 2km away from the bus route, fractious and willing to buy an overpriced ticket valid for a much longer distance than you require, just because it's the only kind the "convenince store" you're fetched up at has left and you're too tired to search anymore.

It's not like prepay actually saves any time. Maybe for commuter services at peak hour, but during the day in Sydney there's at least one set of tourists on every bus who ask the driver questions, holding things up. Tourists I actually don't mind much; what really annoys me is locals who get off the bus through the front doors, holding up the boarding passengers, and who really should know better.

In fact you can probably gather I don't like the bus much, comapred to the train. Trains have been my primary mode of transport for the past two years, which has pleased me greatly; at any rate, I've not whinged about them much here, which is a good way to tell.