This morning Metro trains reached a new low in crapulent service. The 7:01 Sydenham train was a vibrating hellhole of slowness, teeth shaking and rattling slowitude. If the train was stationary (which it frequently was, but more on that later…) it would find its’ resonating frequency and vibrate at such a pitch that my teeth began to hurt. I had to lean forward in my seat to limit the amount of physical contact that I had with the train to prevent myself from being shaken of my seat. Every stop, every station was a teeth-shaking, brain-rattling excruciating nightmare. Evenually I decided to stand in an otherwise empty train carriage to stop myself from being shaken to death.
That however, was the least of my worries. The train pulled up to Sunshine station and then decided to sit there and continue to sit there. For around 5 minutes, with each second increasing the vibrating of the train, the train continued to sit motionless, apart obviously, from the shaking. Eventually the windows started making a high-pitched whine, and I could hear the screws in the train shaking loose. The train just sat there…shaking. No announcements from the driver as to why. Just as I was about to start screaming because the coffee in my stomach was about to become a milkshake, the train started to move. “Hooray”, I thought, “At last”. The driver was just playing a game with me, as it rolled forward about 50 metres and then stopped again briefly, then rolled ever so slowly, at about 2 km/h. The crawling pace did little to alleviate the vibrating I was experiencing.
Eventually the train rolled to a stop again and a V-Line train thundered past as though it was demonstrating what a real train was capable of. As the train moved forward again I thought that the slow pace and stopping was over. Sadly, I was mistaken. For the next two stops, the train dragged its heels and stopped for a few seconds here and there. I looked at my phone to check the time and realised that I was now around 10 minutes late, that I had less than 10 minutes to catch the connecting bus that runs every half hour in order to get to work on time. The wait to get to my station was torturous in that not only did I have to worry about getting to work on time; I had to consider whether or not I was going to throw up or die from the vibrations.
The train rolled into Keilor Downs station the same time that the bus was meant to arrive. I had to sprint to the stop to make sure I caught it as the bus pulled up to the stop just as I was getting off the train. Thankfully, the bus was late otherwise I would have been 40 minutes late for work. During the whole 20 minutes that it took to travel 4 stops, the driver made no announcements as to why it was sitting there. He never once “apologised for the inconvenience” that Connex managed to do with disturbing frequency.
Stupid platform announcements at Flinders Street station
One of my pet peeves is the freaky, scary “safety” announcements that they have at Flinders Street station. “Attention please, customers this is an important safety announcement” they begin. I at first thought he was about to say “run for your lives, there is a big fucking bomb about to go off” but no, he tells us not to “run on the platforms”. Most people wouldn’t need to run if the fucking trains ran on time, you dicks.
Recently they have invested money on putting bright yellow stickers on the handrails of the escalators on all the platforms. Important safety messages like “Hold onto the Handrail; Exit escalator promptly", and "Keep Left” are in bold, black letters that make the escalators look like they are covered in police crime-scene tape. I don’t know what makes me sadder, the fact that people are so unaware that they needed to be reminded to get off the escalator and to make room for other people to get by, or that it has become such a problem that they needed to spend thousands of dollars to try and reduce it.
Connex trains were so late, so often that “Connex apologises for the inconvenience” was often greeted with a sarcastic cheer from passengers. Metro doesn’t apologise for anything. They will tell you not to run, but they won’t tell you if a train is going to be a couple of hours late. Arseclowns,
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