All my fellow Uni students with no cars, where are we at? Oh, I’m the only one? Damn, I guess I lost that bet then. Well, what about the ones who take the affordable bus? Ahh, that’s much better.
It’s cheaper than fuel, you don’t have to fight for parking, and there’s no chance of someone breaking in and stealing your vehicle. For these three reasons, I know lots of fellow students who also take the bus, and we all love it. Except we all hate it.
I hate taking the bus. They’re slow, inconvenient, and there’s always some stoned guy talking too loud to the driver, or a gaggle of high school girls chatting about some pointless crap that you can’t help but eavesdrop on because there’s not really anything better to do. I hate the buses around here. I am currently a frequent flier on the Eastern 22 Connector that shoots out to Morrinsville, Matamata, Waharoa and Te Aroha, and it’s safe to say that… what the fuck.
My classes this semester mostly start at 11:00am, give or take. Coming from Morrinsville, I then have to catch the 10:30am bus, landing at roughly 10:50am, and that’s almost perfect. But what if I had a 10am class? Well, I’d need to catch the 7:30am bus, arrive at roughly 8am, and twiddle my thumbs for two hours. Who in their right mind wants to do that? Not me, I want to sleep in.
And what if my classes don’t finish until 6pm? Well, the last bus is at 5:30pm, so I’d better hope I have a friend on or around campus who either doesn’t mind taking me home, or has an extra mattress handy for me to sleep in. And it’s like this on every route out of town; and even the Meteors and Orbiters have their issues.
I spent six months in England, and their buses were decent. There was always a bus going somewhere you needed to be at almost the right time; so why can’t Hamilton do that? The bus fares are pretty similar, and these buses don’t have to travel to the other side of the country. They stay in the Waikato region. Again, what the fuck?
Old mate Chris Hipkins says that we could cap our bus fares at $10 a week because our public transport service has over $60 Million sitting around doing nothing, but I say we should hire more drivers. Imagine how much better life would be if there was a bus going exactly where you needed to go every half hour between 7am and 9pm? $60 Million sounds like it could make this dream happen, and I think that would be nothing short of epic.
Inconvenient, understaffed, and just plain irritating. This bus-shit is making me want to spend a fortune driving every week, and I don’t even have a car. Hopefully, Hipkins does more than just capping the prices.
