Re: L1 Replacement Buses - not good enough.
  TP

CAF has managed to undo 24 years of good work building up patronage, which
has now dissipated across the wide range of alternative bus and train
services that cross or parallel the line at many points (or to driving).
This is a common pattern with many longer-duration rail replacements. The
patronage drifts off elsewhere, some never to return. That's how
bustitution buses often apparently manage to do the "same" job as bigger
trains and trams - there are far less people to carry. There seems to be no
timetable for the replacement 498/499 buses, they apparently run on demand
and if demand is low then they will be infrequent.

The buses are sourced from whoever has more spare buses at the time. This
is STA (Ryde, Waverley, Port Botany and Randwick depots) during the week
and TSA in the weekends. Transdev Sydney has little to do in the western
sphere of its operations now.

Tony P

On Sunday, 21 November 2021 at 15:21:23 UTC+11a...@... wrote:

> Today I did my usual Sunday morning trip to Marrickville growers market at

> the Addison Rd Community Centre.

>

> Leaving home at 10:30 I walked the 50m or so to the bus stop, then waited

> a half hour for the bus, now provided in part by Transit Systems (ex State

> Transit) to replace the tourist coaches previously used.

>

> When I got to Dulwich Hill I changed to the 428 bus to and from the

> markets, and the trip back to Lewisham (Taverners Hill stop) involved

> another long wait - 20 minutes - for the L1 replacement bus.

>

> On the outbound trip I was the only passenger, inbound there were between

> 3 and 5 apart from me, with 3still aboard when I got off.

>

> As the state government expects fares to be paid - even half fares - for

> this shitshow they need to pick up their game. Yesterday the buses were

> getting stuck in gridlock, today less traffic but inadequate buses and poor

> dispatching with bunching a problem, this half hour service gap and

> unpredictable frequency generally will impress no-one.

>

> If it hadn’t been raining I would have walked.

>

> Tony