Trains Needing Train-ing

I'm pretty sure I've blogged (read - whinged) about this before but really, Transperth have got to get off their collective arses and do something about the truly deplorable public transport system. Okay, I can only talk about trains as far as personal experience goes, but I have it on Mei's aythority that her bus to uni was over 30 minutes late today, rendering her very wet from the rain (yes, it has finally begun - winter has arrived!) and very late for class. So I suppose this covers busses as well as trains.

I have noticed that Transperth have a predilection for sending out what I call the short trains during rush hour. Now a short train has 2 carriages that are linked and a 'normal' train is double that. And that's it. As you can see, hellishly short when compared to the Singaporean MRT, London's Tube and I'm assuming also New York's Subway. So riddle me this - why on earth would any company have trains that obviously hold far fewer numbers, run during periods when there is a very obvious increase in customer usage? Pure stupidity? Perhaps.

The thing that annoys me is that its not exactly cheap travelling on public transport here. Yes, one could argue its a damn sight cheaper than in London, but in London, you get the tube coming every 5 minutes at the most. And they have looong trains. Okay, there are also a lot of people using them but relative to Perth, we're still under-trained; we have more passengers than we have train space. It grates having to pay the amount we do and having to wait 15 minutes for a train if we've just missed one. And then not being able to get on because its too full.

And don't even get me started on the ticket tag-off machines. Let's just say they don't always work, and if you don't tag-off, you automatically get a huge amount taken off your card. And yes, Transperth are aware of their shit machines, I actually called them last week after being monumentally pissed off from trying for 10 minutes to tag off.

I notice there is a bit of a pattern with the trains I take in the morning to work. I try leave the house by 7.45 a.m. and if I manage to catch what I term the 1st train, its a 4 carriage and I'd say 15% to 20% of the times I actually manage to get a seat. Now the next train miraculously arrives in under 5 minutes from then, but its a short train. Most of the time, that's pretty empty as most people would have got onto the 1st train and there woulnd't have been enough time for more to gather. But miss that 2nd train and you're well and truly effed because if you can even make it onto the 3rd train, you're lucky. And if its absolutely pissing it down like it was today, then everything just goes to shit.