If you’ve ever wondered why your bus simply never rocks up, the NSW Government has confirmed bus companies in Sydney are incentivised to cancel services under their contracts.
In other words, while you’re standing in the pouring rain (thanks, La Niña!) waiting for the bus, your socks sodden with Mother Nature’s tears, some big boss is counting his pennies and twirling his moustache like Mr. Monopoly.
The state’s new Transport Minister Jo Haylen spilled the tea at a presser on Wednesday. We thank her for her services.
The long and short of it is that the former Coalition government signed loads of privatisation deals with bus companies so they could whiz around Sydney doing their double-decker thing.
Bus companies have “on time” targets, which means they cop incentives if their services are running on schedule.
But if services are cancelled, they aren’t counted as being “late”. Bastards.
Haylen said there are penalties for cancellations, but only up to a certain number. This means that once the cancellation threshold is reached, companies make more dollarydoos by cancelling a tardy bus.
“Many passengers have been left on the side of the road waiting for a bus that never turns up and yet the private operator is not penalised for cancelling that bus,” Haylen said, per the ABC.
“If you look at the chart of bus performance over the last couple of years, on time running has broadly stayed fairly consistent but there has been a dramatic increase in the cancellation of buses.”
Halen said 28,000 bus services were cancelled last August, which is a truly ludicrous figure.
“Assuming each cancelled bus would have been only half full, that is more than a million people abandoned at bus stops in a single month,” she said.
Biiiiigggg yikes.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the shonky contracts will be torn up anytime soon ‘cos they run for several years — in many cases, up to 10 years, Haylen said.
Might be time to invest in a unicycle or a swanky pair of rollerblades.
