..men jag tyckte det var så klockrent!~¤~
Hello, and merry Christmas.
I am normally a very patient man, perhaps even more so this time of year, but the time has come for me to vent. You see, I reside close to Rathmines, and commute to my office at CityWest by bus. Normally I have no objections to public transportation, as it allows for reading and/or getting some work done both on route to and from the office. However; after relying on a bus carrier who shall remain nameless - henceforth noted as DB - to transport me there and back, this advantage seems less obvious...
I am unaware if my findings as a prisoner/passenger of DB is unique for the route I travel, or if it is similar to the experiences passengers on other routes make. In any event, one can safely put my route in the "batteries not included" segment. The root of my argument is, of course, the wait at the bus stop. In the morning, the wait is endurable. I have seen mornings where the wait was as little(?) as 10-15 minutes. It may easily be twice or even three times as long. In the afternoon, going home, things are much worse. I have a suspicion that the timetable they sport both on the Internet and at the bus stops are part of an elaborate evil scheme, one that hopes to rob ordinary people of their sanity. To add insult to injury, I can pretty much recite Metro page by page by heart, BEFORE I commence on my journey. The idea was to read it DURING the journey. Heck, I am usually plotting in the final numbers of the daily Hard Sudoku as I pay the bus fare.
Today was a quite typical example. According to DB, the route I travel has the following departures fitting my schedule; 17:05, 17:45, 18:15 and 18:35. I was at the bus stop at 17:30, as it is possible, although much less likely, that a bus passes its stop prematurely. In other words, I had planned my journey so I would have ample time for a cigarette while waiting for the 17:45 bus. In light of my experience with this particular route over the last few weeks, I do not go to the bus stop with less than half a pack of cigarettes in my pocket... To skip ahead a bit, I found myself entering the bus at 18:42. I might add that I was not alone waiting at the bus stop, and the faces around me showed just as little Christmas spirit as mine did this December evening. If we add the ambient temperature to the equation, I find it likely that the lot of us would save the make-up department at the neighbourhood horror movie a lot of work if they cast us as extras.
I have at a few occasions called DB to ask what the...heck is going on, but I have since surrendered such endeavours. This solely because the explanation given is traffic jam here, technical problem there, accident somewhere, and any variation over the aforementioned themes. I am OK with a bus being delayed due to unforeseeable circumstances, but in the name of all that is holy... You cannot chalk it up to "unforeseeable circumstances" when it happens Every Day. Then, by some logic or other, it passes into the "foreseeable circumstance" element. Which means it can be planned for. If one knows that between 16:00 and 19:00 it takes 50% longer to drive a particular route, one might imagine that the person, persons or committee responsible for planning the routes would take that into account. But alas, no.
Ah, yes - the Committee Responsible for All Planning. You see what their acronym would be? Well, I was hoping to avoid reminding myself of them. Their biggest professional achievement must be proving Charles Darwin wrong. Good old Charles would be spinning in his grave, shameful over the empirical evidence that nullifies his theory. I firmly believe he is spinning at such an incredible speed that if we spun him in copper we would produce enough electricity to fully power Dublin 1 through 12. At the very least that would mean that all the bus delays have a positive effect on the environment. To summarise, pretty much every day I spend the better part of an hour, very often more, waiting for the "big yellow taxi". This has made me play with the thought of asking DB to send someone to my house two or three times a week to do my dishes. And my laundry. And other things I might have done instead of mimicking some elaborate Fred Astaire tap dance routine at the bus stop in order to keep warm. I would not for a second believe that they would comply, but could we settle for the next best thing;
How about planning the bus routes so that the bus is on time, or reasonably close to being on time, at a minimum half the time? This would save me around four hours a week, hours I could spend finding something else to write a Letter Of Grievance about.
//MrBeaton
~¤~
Och där, kära vänner, har vi anledningen att jag så snabbt som möjligt såg till att jag hade en cykel. Trots att jag är livrädd varje dag så fort jag måste bestiga den och ge mig ut i vänstertrafiken bland alla dårar...