Waiting for the bus ... and some general thoughs on silly planning

in #news5 years ago

Bus passengers from Lødingen, Northern Norway are whining a bit those days. They used to have a heated waiting room with toilets and the bus stopping right outside. In order to save money now they have to visit a bus stop along the main road. At least they have a wind shelter while waiting ...

... unfortunately, with gaps both between the ceiling and the wall, and between the wall and the floor, the shed isn't quite water tight, so whenever the wind is blowing a bit in the wrong direction (the weather wasn't particularly bad when the video was taken) people inside the shed will get wet due to breaking waves. Details, details ...

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This is an extreme example, but I think it's a general problem, I'm seeing similar (though less extreme things) every day - infrastructure is often planned and decided on only by consulting maps and without consulting the actual users. Stupidities are everywhere to be found. In this case locals were trying to protest as they knew the location was stupid, but I suppose it was already decided on and difficult to reverse the decision. I do believe things like this could be solved through some sort of "liquid democracy" where ordinary people could participate in deciding all details on public spending, either by delegating votes to someone else or by direct voting.

Some would of course say that this would be better solved by not spending public money at all. Of course, if a profit-driven bus company was in charge of the waiting facilities, they would most likely come up with something better than this.

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They had one job..

lol.

Some would of course say that this would be better solved by not spending public money at all. Of course, if a profit-driven bus company was in charge of the waiting facilities, they would most likely come up with something better than this.

I was born and raised in the mountains of Austria. There, a bus company would not even go to the small villages if it was purely profit-driven, and I guess it's similar in nothern Norway.

its happening here aswell and other parts of the globe, cutting of access to farmland and rural areas where people live sadly but its part of agenda 21

Correct - but then again, is public transport really a human right?

My mother built a cabin on an island, and some years ago I was visiting it during a regular working day (my intention was to visit my mother there in the weekend, but I had no engine and it wasn't any wind, so I came there too late. At least they left beer in the fridge for me). I left my vessel behind and took public transport back to town. First a short trip by ferry. I was the only person on the ferry, and it's going only twice a day. I think the ticket costed me something like 3 EUR, while the ferry operator gets like 150 EUR for each trip. Since I was the only person on the ferry, I guess it means the ferry is going empty on most of its trips (that's also a stupidity). At the other side I continued by bus - a big bus with 50 seats, and me being the only passenger on the bus for more than half an hour until it stopped at some bus terminal, with lots of passengers on the next bus.

In urban areas I'm all for more public transport and less cars in the streets, and I do think we need some solutions for people who cannot or don't want to own or drive a car even at the country side - but it should be possible to come up with some smarter solutions than running around with empty or nearly-empty buses and ferries in the rural areas.

Imagine the poor workers having to install it whilst getting soaked😆

The tram stop shelters at Busterminalen stop in oslo are hilerous design, when its raining theres a 5 inch gap that lets water in so all the benches are wet and the people all try to squeeze under the roof avoiding the waterfall

"But dont forget to buy your ticket" ask the posters hahah!

Reminds me of a joke: Whats blue and fucks old granny's?

Hyperthermia!

I was just thinking, it must have been a totally still day when they installed it or the workers would have stopped and complained, but maybe I undrestimate the lack of caring on their part, lol.

Yes it's crazy what they come up with. About 20 year's ago I watched a new housing estate starting to get built. I said to a friend they should not build there as it floods after lot's of heavy rain. And a couple of years later it got flooded and I always thought they should talk to local people before doing these things as we all new it floods.

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Thats insane! Sounds like a huge insurance fraud or something😂

It's a bit of the same in Norway, today houses have been built on places where nobody would dare building houses a century ago. Perhaps the availability of insurance is part of the reason, people can afford taking bigger risks as long as it's not reflected in the insurance premium.

Then again, I have a feeling the pendulum is going the other way nowadays, we're much more concerned about natural disasters today than some few decade ago.

Nah, a profit-driven bus company would have built no shelter at all because those cost money. ;)
Bus stops here often suck, but "nearby body of water splashing it all the time" must win an award for a terrible stop!

Depends a bit ... if the bus is an offer only for those that have no alternatives and have to take the bus, then yes ... there is no point for a commercial operator to spend money on shelters. If the bus is one out of several alternatives (which we increasingly see in Norway - car-owners take the bus to avoid traffic jams, to avoid parking problems, to spend time on the telephone instead of driving, to avoid road tolls, etc), then comfort may be important and it may be profitable to build a proper shelter.

There is of course a complicating factor here, several bus operators may use the same bus stop. Even here in Oslo, where almost all public transport is organized by the county we see that - same bus stops are used by the expensive commercial airport express buses, long-distance and even international buses, free buses going to IKEA and other shopping centers, etc.

Dang, we need a free IKEA bus, lol. We have one here but I've never been because it is waaaaaaaaay on the edge of the metro area. It's in a shopping center full of big outlet stores and such, they should chip in and do a shuttle. :)

In a society where "everyone" is having and using a car, setting up free buses to attract potential shoppers probably doesn't make economic sense. Here in Oslo quite many "ordinary people" realize they don't need a car, hence the potential users of the free bus ofer represent quite some purchasing power.

At the other hand ... while the single fare tickets for the transport here is reasonably expensive, monthly unlimited passes are comparably cheap, so almost all public transport uses have "free transport" anyway.

But the issue here is that people who have cars won't give them up because the public transport sucks, the sidewalks suck, the bike lanes are few, far between, and dangerous. It needs to be improved in order for people to give up their cars, among those who have a choice.
Here, the regular fares AND the monthly passes are absurdly expensive - for terrible service. This is another reason why people keep their cars!

It's terrible. I've grown up biking around, my mother got her first car when I was in school age, and she rarely would work as my private taxi driver, if I wanted to go somewhere I had to do it myself. I really got aware of the non-spoken policy of "car drivers first" as a child, and I still see quite some examples of that. Just a tiny pot hole in the car road, and someone may put up warning signs blocking the biking road or sidewalk - while the biking road can just stop without any warning, if some biker would keep 30 km/h and accidentally die due to the missing warning ... well, bad for him. Companies are paid for keeping the road clean for snow - and they don't mind dumping the snow in such a way that it blocks shortcuts for pedestrians, etc. And this is Norway - probably one of the better countries for non-drivers, things are generally much worse abroad. Of course this causes quite some bad feedback loops. One of the worst here in Norway is when people are driving their kids to school, because it's considered "too dangerous" to allow them to walk to school. My children walks to school, it's a quite nice way to walk, the most dangerous part is the last 100 meters to the school where lots of car-driving parents are trying to park and turn around their vehicles.

Things are gradually changing here in Norway and particularly here in Oslo, I believe we have passed a tipping point here. The green party has had quite much power over the politics here in Oslo during the last four years and will have even more power here over the next four years, it helps a lot.

Quite some car drivers are protesting loudly against the high road tolls, even to the extent that they have created a new protest party and getting a significant amount of votes in the Norwegian local elections of 2019.

They may be loud, they may be getting a significant amount of votes, but the political forces wanting to reduce road tolls are still in a minority, both in Oslo and the rest of Norway. There is a broad consensus that in the urban areas car traffic should not grow, even if the population grows and even if the cars are getting "greener" and smarter. The most efficient means to get there is to have relatively high road tolls in urban areas, and spend the money on public transport, roads for pedestrians and bikers, etc - but I do believe a lot can be gained in the details. Often it can be possible to making life better and safer for non-drivers without spending a lot of money, like making it illegal to stop a car outside the school in the morning, or ... simply making sure to place the bus shed at some place where it's not continuously splashed by waves is a good example. :-)

Unfortunately one of the parties having power on the national level is also against road tolls and for spending tax and oil money on building new car roads.

The snowplows are THE WORST for pedestrians. They plow it up onto the sidewalk and in the bike lane such that some days I want snowshoes and poles to walk with - someone in a wheelchair or with a walker couldn't make it through at all. It's literally trapping them inside! When I have to climb a mountain of snow at the corner to be able to cross the street ...it's just ridiculous.
Here in Denver, we've already had 60something deaths of bicyclists this year - more than all last year already - and people are still complaining that they don't want a protected bike lane on their street WHERE SOMEONE JUST DIED because they think it will be "unsightly." People are so selfish and shallow and uncaring it makes me mad. A couple of weeks after that bicyclist died, someone caught video of a van tipping over and rolling a half a block away from where she was hit - so it's not a safe street for cars, either - and still people are like, "but mah aesthetics." RAWR

They can be pretty bad here in Norway too, but generally if there are side walks they are supposed to clean the side walks too.

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