Bus woes

I've avoided it as long as I can but I'm going to have to start laying into the Wellington buses. This will serve two purposes -- to gather a weight of evidence with which to construct a platform from which I can launch a series of more formal remonstrances; and possibly more importantly, to make me feel better.

Hopefully any others feeling similarly aggrieved will feel comfortable adding their own experiences to my journal of woe.

SEP 03, 2007
1810 #09 to Aro Valley
Left terminal at least 2 minutes early, by his own time.
Crashed red-light by Kirkcaldies stop, nearly colliding with a car turning out of Brandon St onto Lambton Quay; braked heavily sending passengers sprawling, and banging into seat-rails in front.
Hard accelerating and speeding in Victoria St, dislodging trolley-pole at Dixon St intersection and braking heavily at "Lexus Nexus" stop causing further passenger discomfort as per above.

SEP 04, 2007
0955 #01 from Dixon St to Railway Terminal
Started moving just after I boarded with an armload of parcels, causing me to lose footing.
Accelerated hard away from stop before I sat down -- causing me to lose footing again, parcels to go flying all over the floor, and me to tumble into the lap of a fellow passenger -- than braked very hard to avoid crashing through red light at Dixon/Victoria intersection.

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Okay, so this all seems quite petty, doesn't it, except in addition to almost broadsiding a family car at considerable speed, on the 1610 #09 I saw an old guy smack his head on and almost fall under the seat in front; this morning, if I'd been carrying something valuable or fragile it would have been broken -- and if I'd been carrying a child, as people sometimes do, god knows what would have happened. Leaving the terminal before the proscribed departure time is fucking lame and annoying -- so what the fuck are timetables for? And all this speeding and heavy braking is just unnecessary.

UPDATE

A couple of points re. leaving comments about bus experiences:

• Historical stories are fun, but an ongoing record of crappiness will be much more useful.
• With that in mind, please try to record the date, time, route number and stops travelled from/to with your remarks.
• I'm not particularly interested in singling out particular drivers for attention or discipline -- I don't want people to lose their jobs, just for the service to get better -- but I am aware that by recording such details (above), the bus company will probably be able to take action against drivers as they see fit.

Some oldies but goodies.

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On a slightly lighter note, in writing this post I've discovered that two synonymic expressions for diarrhoea are "the Aztec two-step" and "Montezuma's revenge". Lol.