Monday, April 6, 2009

Hippys on trains

Despite the accusations of my inner city urban friends, I try not to be a hippy. I mean I have to drive a thousand Km a week for work, but I turn that to my advantage, I can usually find a supplier of something or another, whether it's chooks or bee hive parts that I drive past on my travels. Saves postage.

If I did work a to and from job, I'd try and catch a train. Lucky I don't then because if I had to rely on QLD rail, I'd soon be out of a job and I'd have to sell Lantanaland.

The Wife tried catching the train to work for a while. She works at the biggest hospital in QLD and we are ten minutes from a station that runs an express train to the city. Yet she had to sit on the floor on the six AM train and it took longer and was more expensive than driving her little Toyota through Brisbane peak hour and walking.

That's if the train comes of course. I follow the local radio station on twitter and the first few hours of the day are clogged with announcements on late, delayed or cancelled trains. I mean it's nice that all the gutters on the Gateway Motorway are gold plated, but perhaps the starving transport dog could have been thrown a bone. More trains? A few circle routes here and there? Trains that actually run?

The inner, buried hippy in me rejoices when I hear mates in Europe tell me they haven't been in a car in six months, but Brisbane, that just wouldn't happen.

If I had to catch a train to work, my inner hippy would soon be headbutted by my inner bogan, keen to get into a car and get to work on time.



Lantanaland from the iPhone

5 comments:

  1. Good heavens man!

    All this money the "Damn the torpedoes and screw Standard & Poor's" Qld government is spending on infrastructure and you still can't get a seat on a train??!! What the hell is going on up there?

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  2. It's hell getting a train on the Beenleigh line in peak hour. Last time I did that I ended up arguing with high school kids that wouldn't get up for the adults. (damn school teacher in me still)

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  3. Same in Sydney. Public transport on the whole in Sydney is appalling. That's why I cycle.

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  4. So The Wife does the right thing today, as i am starting in the city, she hitches a lift with me and catches public transport home. Two busses go past at capacity, and the one she gets drops her off in time to watch the express to beenleigh slide out. Fucking marvelous. Twice as long as the worst peak hour travel time. There is a snowflakes chance that'll happen again.

    Nat-I love how schoolteachers have that in them, my mum is 10 years retired and can still drop a ten year old dead with a look at 20 paces.

    Abe - Call it the incompetence of all of them, our opposition leader, despite spending half his year in the city for the last 20 years, expressed surprise at how one of the major train lines were overcrowded.

    Kimmy - Lance Armstrong would struggle riding the Km i do, but I'd love to be able to ride to work

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  5. I think there's a little hippy in us all.

    Thanks for the visit to my blog:)

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