Sydney does not deserve international visitors

With taxi fares in Sydney having recently appearing to have rocketed, The Mole thought that on returning  from Singapore last week, it would be a good idea to be public and environmentally minded to get the train to North Sydney, and that is where this saga began.

Of course, it was a weekend and there were trackworks between the airport and Sydney, so no trains. 

That’s OK they have to do that sometimes and they are probably catching up on twenty years of backlog, so it was what they called the rail bus.

Arriving at the bus section, dragging my case I asked for a bus to North Sydney and was told to wait at stand one, that seemed reasonable, except of the gruff Sydney Buses guy that told me!

In any case it was a weekend so relax Mole!

So, the bus arrived about 15 minutes later and in the absence of any other instructions or guidance, I asked another guy at the door of the bus if this was the bus to North Sydney, to which he replied, no it was not and I had to get a bus to Central Station, then a bus to Wynard and a train to North Sydney.

Not to be put off, I girded my loins as it were, board the bus along with a mass of others and off to Central Station!

Not so…….even though the bus was full and it was a service bus with no luggage space, we went to the Domestic Terminal and squeezed on several more passengers and  of course their luggage!

So at last we were off to Central Station!

About five minutes away from Central Station, the foreign lady squeezed next to me add her husband asked me how far was it was to the International Terminal and of course I was shocked to realise that they were on a bus to the city and believe me so were they.

I asked them who told them to get on this bus dad they said the man in the yellow jacket at the Domestic terminal i.e. a Sydney Buses man.

They were devastated, not least of all that it was 8:20am [I landed at 7:00am!] and they had flight out of international at 9:30am!

The only thing for it was to bundle them into taxi and get them to the International Terminal, which is what happened.   I don’t knwo if they made their flight!

I asked the Sydney Buses “Supervisor” hanging around not doing very much by the buses arriving at Central if he could call or radio his colleagues at the airport to make sure that they this debacle was not  repeated, you will be amazed, or perhaps you will not!

He simply said, “If you have a complaint call 1 300 something or other”

When I said that any complaint would probably not be dealt with until Monday and repeated my request for him to call or radio the airport, he simply repeated the same message.

“If you have a complaint call 1 300 something or other”!

When he had said that four times I realised my error.  He was a robot and not human at all and was only programmed to make that response.

I moved on!

In any case, expecting Sydney Buses to have the buses departing to Wynard going from near where the buses from the airport were coming, no such luck or do they call it planning…………I discovered that the Wynard buses were leaving from 100 meters away up Chalmers Street, so I off I trudged with my case again!

Not to worry nearly at Wynyard, but no such luck!

The bus could not stop at Wynard and had to stop over 100 meters away up George Street, near Martin Place because there was a crane on George Street.

While dragging my case down George Street to Wynard I asked a German and an American Tourist doing likewise what they thought of our public transport from the airport and one said “it stinks” and the other said, something indecipherable – guess which.

So, The Mole has a suggestion for the NSW Government.

Lets’ stop all Government spending on marketing Sydney and New South Wales for a couple of years, including closing the marketing side of TNSW and for that period spend all that money on getting the product right, because it is patently clear that Sydney is not ready for international visitors or at least those that want to use public transport as is available in all other “world class” cities which we claim to be!

We should encourage international visitors to all go to other places where public transport works, like Brisbane, Melbourne or even Singapore – in fact the Mole would be happy to take a team of Sydney bureaucrats to Singapore to see how it really should be done!

The Mole