I am nuts

Observation from taking public transport

I've been taking quite a bit of public transport these days after years of driving, and I'm still not used to the whole EZ link system. After all those years of using the farecard, where admittingly, I'm often guilty of selecting the lowest fare regardless of my distance :P Nowadays however, I'm making payback as I often forget to tap my card on the way off so I'm paying the max price even if I'm taking just one single stop. As they always say, karma's a bitch.

One interesting observation I made recently, is that when some people board the bus, or train for that matter, they like to put their ENTIRE bag to the scanner instead of just the card. I don't get it. Is it so difficult to take a card out from the bag to tap on the scanner? In general though, I noticed that ladies tend to do it more than men as women tend to be the one carrying bags most of the time(duh).

Earlier today, I noticed this mother with a kid in tow boarding a bus, and as you know when you go out with kids, you tend to pack alot of stuff so you normally have a bigger bag then normal, and she was carrying a small handbag in her hand as well. As she board the bus, she scanned the small bag at the scanner, and when it failed to register, she tried turning the bag around, vertically, 45 degrees etc, and when all that failed, she tried to scan the big bag she had with her, and when that failed, naturally, she tries to turn the bag around at various degrees again. All this while, the queue behind here is stuck, and as a result, the entire bus is effectively waiting for this lady. After a while, she finally stepped to one side and started rumbling through all her bags, in the end, she discovered that she doesn't have her card with her and proceeds to pay cash. What a waste of time.... If she had (attempt to) taken out the card before boarding, she would have realised that she didn't bring it along, and thus saving everybody some time. Imagine that at every bus stop, there is just one person like that which effectively delays the bus for a couple of unneccessary minutes, the entire journey could easily take up at least an extra half an hour or so.

Does these things happen often?? Maybe its one of the reasons why buses are always late, and this is really something that you can't blame on the bus company. (but it still doesn't justify any potential fare hikes)

posted by Nutcracker @ 9:57 pm