Wellington bus bugbears

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#2176714 11-Feb-2019 19:10

allan:
I'm still waiting on an actual response to a complaint logged on 14 Dec regarding their Journey Planner having incorrect information to get from Wellington CBD to Truscott Ave in Johnsonville. The Journey Planner indicates that any route 1 Island Bay to Johnsonville West/Churton Park/Grenada Village bus will get you to Truscott Ave. Probably blindly obvious if you live in Johnsonville, that that is not actually correct, but then you probably wouldn't be using the Journey Planner in the first place. I only discovered when some distance along the Grenada Village route, that actually only route 1JW goes there.

I logged a verbal complaint on 14 Dec (struck a sympathetic call centre operator who lived in Johnsonville) followed it up with an email the following day. Heard nothing for a month, so logged a complaint via their web form and got a response saying "delay due to holidays/limited staff/blah blah". Another month has now gone by.

Fairly symptomatic of lack of action on stuff from Metlink. They are certainly NOT customer focused and simply don't care.

I would raise this by email with your local GWRC ward member, also cc:ing the Chair of the GWRC Sustainable Transport Commitee

allan

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#2176719 11-Feb-2019 19:19

PolicyGuy:
allan:
I'm still waiting on an actual response to a complaint logged on 14 Dec regarding their Journey Planner having incorrect information to get from Wellington CBD to Truscott Ave in Johnsonville. The Journey Planner indicates that any route 1 Island Bay to Johnsonville West/Churton Park/Grenada Village bus will get you to Truscott Ave. Probably blindly obvious if you live in Johnsonville, that that is not actually correct, but then you probably wouldn't be using the Journey Planner in the first place. I only discovered when some distance along the Grenada Village route, that actually only route 1JW goes there.

I logged a verbal complaint on 14 Dec (struck a sympathetic call centre operator who lived in Johnsonville) followed it up with an email the following day. Heard nothing for a month, so logged a complaint via their web form and got a response saying "delay due to holidays/limited staff/blah blah". Another month has now gone by.

Fairly symptomatic of lack of action on stuff from Metlink. They are certainly NOT customer focused and simply don't care.

I would raise this by email with your local GWRC ward member, also cc:ing the Chair of the GWRC Sustainable Transport Commitee

They were all copied on my original email in December.

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#2176828 12-Feb-2019 04:35

KiwiSurfer:

davidcole: Just get the fleet admn to follow the https://twitter.com/ThebusfactorG ..... but I suspect by the end of the week they wont have any drivers left.

I note many (if not all) the instances has the bus going through the orange lights, which turns red as the bus is going through the intersection. I've always wondered what the law says in this case. Is it the entry red light or the exit red light that determines whether one has run a red light?

Entry at the red, otherwise they're failing to comply with a yellow traffic signal which may or may not be defensible depending on how long the signal was yellow before they crossed the limit line.

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#2176829 12-Feb-2019 04:38

allan:

PolicyGuy:

allan: I'm still waiting on an actual response to a complaint logged on 14 Dec regarding their Journey Planner having incorrect information to get from Wellington CBD to Truscott Ave in Johnsonville. The Journey Planner indicates that any route 1 Island Bay to Johnsonville West/Churton Park/Grenada Village bus will get you to Truscott Ave. Probably blindly obvious if you live in Johnsonville, that that is not actually correct, but then you probably wouldn't be using the Journey Planner in the first place. I only discovered when some distance along the Grenada Village route, that actually only route 1JW goes there.

I logged a verbal complaint on 14 Dec (struck a sympathetic call centre operator who lived in Johnsonville) followed it up with an email the following day. Heard nothing for a month, so logged a complaint via their web form and got a response saying "delay due to holidays/limited staff/blah blah". Another month has now gone by.

Fairly symptomatic of lack of action on stuff from Metlink. They are certainly NOT customer focused and simply don't care.

I would raise this by email with your local GWRC ward member, also cc:ing the Chair of the GWRC Sustainable Transport Commitee

They were all copied on my original email in December.

Send copies of everything to Daran Ponter. He seems to be all over this.

elpenguino

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#2176972 12-Feb-2019 10:39

Drivers will pay their own traffic infringements - all it takes is to get a couple of cops down there - maybe start with warning letters and follow up with fines if there's no improvement.

Most of the posters in this thread are just like chimpanzees on MDMA, full of feelings of bonhomie, joy, and optimism. Fred99 8/4/21

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#2177402 12-Feb-2019 23:02

Just another annoyance. Not sure it's the buses (route 24) or the drivers, but they seem to step on the brake suddenly all the time. Bad enough for sitting passengers but for standing ones, you have to hang on for dear life or else you go tumbling down the aisle :-( Never seemed to happy on the other buses/drivers.

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#2177435 13-Feb-2019 08:15

KiwiSurfer:

davidcole:

Just get the fleet admn to follow the https://twitter.com/ThebusfactorG ..... but I suspect by the end of the week they wont have any drivers left.

I note many (if not all) the instances has the bus going through the orange lights, which turns red as the bus is going through the intersection. I've always wondered what the law says in this case. Is it the entry red light or the exit red light that determines whether one has run a red light?

Running an orange light is not illegal - you should however not proceed if it is safe to stop. You're only breaking the law if the light is red when you enter.

Braking heavily when seeing an orange light would in many situations be very dangerous in a bus full of passengers. In a significant number of those videos I see no fault of the bus - they've approached the lights which have turned orange and stopping simply would not be safe.

I have some sympathy for some of the drivers here - there are plenty of traffic lights around Wellington where the green and orange cycles are very short. At the intersection of Tory and Courtenay Place it's a 30km/h area, and if you're waiting at the lights on a red as the first vehicle you can proceed when it turns green and the lights will be red before you get to the other side of the intersection.

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Dratsab

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#2177436 13-Feb-2019 08:18

sbiddle: Running an orange light is not illegal - you should however not proceed if it is safe to stop. You're only breaking the law if the light is red when you enter.

And yet there's a $150 fine for it...see my previous post for the charge wording.

EDIT

Land Transport (Road User) Rule 2004

Part 3
Traffic signs and signals

3.2
(4) While a steady yellow signal in the form of a disc is displayed,—
(a) a driver facing the signal must not enter the controlled area while the signal is displayed unless the driver’s vehicle is, when the signal first appears, so close to the controlled area that it cannot safely be stopped before entering the area:

sbiddle

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#2177438 13-Feb-2019 08:38

Dratsab:

sbiddle: Running an orange light is not illegal - you should however not proceed if it is safe to stop. You're only breaking the law if the light is red when you enter.

And yet there's a $150 fine for it...see my previous post for the charge wording.

Sure there is a fine - but there is also a legal defense. The road code says you should stop if it is safe to do so.

Heavy breaking at lights in a car is very different to a fully laden 13 tonne bus full of unsecured passengers.

I'm not saying there aren't drivers who ignore lights - there are plenty and I see them a lot. Many of the videos on that site and some posted by media lately don't show the full context, and in particular where the bus was when the light changed from green.

Dratsab

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#2177461 13-Feb-2019 08:55

I think you'll find everyone already understands about heavy braking and are talking about the drivers who run the yellow lights fractions of a second before they turn red, meaning they've probably already been yellow for a good 4 seconds and heavy braking (even with a laden, heavy vehicle) wouldn't have been necessary.

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#2177524 13-Feb-2019 11:05

Dratsab:

I think you'll find everyone already understands about heavy braking and are talking about the drivers who run the yellow lights fractions of a second before they turn red, meaning they've probably already been yellow for a good 4 seconds and heavy braking (even with a laden, heavy vehicle) wouldn't have been necessary.

Average reaction time for an average driver is around 1.5s - 2s when they see a light change.

I'm pretty sure in Wellington in 30km/h areas the duration of the yellow/orange is only 3s meaning you only have 1s to stop a bus before it changes to red.

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#2177545 13-Feb-2019 11:51

Dratsab:

I think you'll find everyone already understands about heavy braking and are talking about the drivers who run the yellow lights fractions of a second before they turn red, meaning they've probably already been yellow for a good 4 seconds and heavy braking (even with a laden, heavy vehicle) wouldn't have been necessary.

I assume you haven't spent 10+ years as a bus passenger as I have been. I prefer drivers to just drive through a yellow light—and my observation over 10+ years is that most experienced drivers do so safely. I've been a passenger on buses driven by trainee/new drivers who brake so harshly to ensure they stop at yellow lights (I assume in an effort to ensure their supervisor/tester passes them) and I've absolutely hated those trips. I've seen more close calls (e.g. people falling, being shunted forward due to no seat belts, etc) from newbie drivers breaking to stop at yellow lights than I have seen close calls related to experienced drivers simply passing through yellow lights to avoid unnecessary braking.

At the end of the day drivers are responsible to weight up all the risks at the time and make the right decision taking into account as many risk factors as they can. I suspect 99%+ of bus drivers weight up the risk of passengers injury to be more likely than other risks and making the appropriate judgement that it is overall less risk to go through yellow lights.

As a driver/pedestrian I never blindly go through an intersection with a green light. I always wait for opposing pedestrians/vehicles to finish their crossings before I enter any intersections. Following those common sense means that vehicles going through a yellow light can never cause an accident as any accidents would imply the other party did not check that it was safe to enter the intersection (which is compulsory regardless of whether one has right of way or not).

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#2177591 13-Feb-2019 12:46

sbiddle: Average reaction time for an average driver is around 1.5s - 2s when they see a light change.

I'm pretty sure in Wellington in 30km/h areas the duration of the yellow/orange is only 3s meaning you only have 1s to stop a bus before it changes to red.

At 30kmh 3 seconds is only 25m. I'm "pretty sure" the boffins at WCC wouldn't be so dumb as to have such a small distance for the yellow phase. Actually scratch that, maybe they would...

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#2177647 13-Feb-2019 13:32

Dratsab:

sbiddle: Average reaction time for an average driver is around 1.5s - 2s when they see a light change.

I'm pretty sure in Wellington in 30km/h areas the duration of the yellow/orange is only 3s meaning you only have 1s to stop a bus before it changes to red.

At 30kmh 3 seconds is only 25m. I'm "pretty sure" the boffins at WCC wouldn't be so dumb as to have such a small distance for the yellow phase. Actually scratch that, maybe they would...

As I mentioned the Tory / Courtenay lights have a light cycle where they go from green to red before you can actually get through the intersection if you're slow to put your foot down when the light goes green.

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#2178360 14-Feb-2019 17:25

Caught the 14 home for a change.

Arrg won't do that again.
Very slow trip due in part to slow cyclist on road riding in front of bus in Oriental Bay directly opposite the new cycle lane.

No wonder buses can't keep to a timetable.

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