Buses

Every morning, I catch the bus to the city. I live in Rozelle and work in St Leonards you see. This means that I have about a 10 minute bus ride followed by about a 10 minute train ride. I enjoy catching public transport to work, it gives me thinking time in the mornings.

One thing that I have spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about without reaching a satisfactory conclusion is; "Why do bus timetables exist?".

I can see no good reason for the existance of timetables for buses beyond a simple "oh, about every 20 minutes." The bus stop near my house proudly announces to anyone who'll listen that there is a bus at 6:32am and another at 6:46am. Later in the morning, between about ten past seven and eight o'clock, it opines that buses arrive every three or four minutes.

None of these times mean anything in the real world. I can arrive at the bus stop at 6:30am and wait ten minutes on most days. Traffic cannot be the problem at this time - there isn't any. So why on earth does the 6:32am bus arrive at a seemingly random time?

The later buses are even more bewildering. I can arrive at the bus stop at half past seven and wait fifteen minutes without seeing a bus. I then see three buses, all full as they whiz past me, carrying those passengers lucky enough to have gotten on board at an earlier bus stop. Was that the 7:28 bus running eighteen minutes late? Was it the 7:32 bus running fourteen minutes late? Between the time I arrived and now, five buses were due. Where are the other two?

A few minutes later, a fourth bus arrives, full to overflowing, but conceding to stop and allowing me to jam myself in amongst the commuters. As I wedge myself between a middle-aged business-man ceremoniously reading the paper and a teenage girl with access to far too much cheap perfume, I notice another bus, whizzing past us, almost empty. We are still at least two buses short.

Moments like this make me wonder if there are bus gods, much in the sense of the Roman or Norse gods. Gods responsible for specific but mundane aspects of human endeavour. Gods of supermarket shopping, gods of toothpaste, gods of not-realising-your-cursor-has-moved-to-another-line-and-messed-up-everything-you-are-typing, gods of buses.

It makes sense to believe in these gods and it makes sense to believe that they have a sense of humour. It explains a lot.