I sold my car in August and embraced a car-free life. More cycling, more public transport and the occasional car hire. While I do not regret my decision, some recent experiences using public transport have reminded me of waiting at bus stops in Dublin during the 1980s. Frustration and annoyance at delays and no-shows. Ghost buses. Feeling stupid because you’ve waited so long but, having waited so long, you are afraid to leave. Buses were so infrequent and unreliable on my route growing up that I used to say decades of the rosary to pass the time. Complaining about it was utterly pointless – and at least we in Dublin had public transport.
Thankfully, public transport, starved of investment for so long, is much improved. There are more frequent buses and trains on intercity routes, new Local Link services everywhere and of course, plans for Bus Connects and Luas. There are also websites with FAQs and feedback options.
In my experience, the State-owned transport companies do an excellent job responding to customer feedback and are quick to apologise when things go wrong. When everything works as it should, there is nothing to complain about. But it doesn’t always happen like that.
Last Saturday I waited for nearly two hours for a bus run by a private operator from Waterford to Kilkenny. Left with no updates, real-time information that was confusing, we waited and waited. I chatted to American tourists from Atlanta who were so excited to be getting on a bus at all they didn’t mind the wait. But I did. I minded a lot. I ended up getting a taxi to Kilkenny at an eye-watering cost of €81 so I could make it to my work appointment on time. I was so angry I refused to use the return part of my ticket, and took the train home. How can we expect people to shift to public transport if it is unreliable?
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We think of ourselves as people who complain a lot. But we often take out our grievances on frontline staff such as waiters and bus drivers. We are not so good at speaking up to authority, which is quite a different thing from just whingeing. Whingeing is where we complain about the inconvenience, say, if my bus is late or if a car is parked on a footpath blocking my way. The true potential of complaining is realised when we scale up the inconvenience and see how it affects others. What if your neighbour uses a mobility aid? What if your teenage daughter wants to go into town on her own? What if the bus, full to capacity, is blocked in the bus lane by cars with just one person in them in front of the Garda station?
Complaining is not an act of entitled grievance: it is a gesture of solidarity with others who might need this service even more than you do. It is a chance to call out the unfairness of a world dominated in every way by ableism and cars.
For the recipient, if they care at all about their customer service, they will be glad to get feedback and to get the opportunity to correct the problem. At its best, complaining is an opportunity for dialogue about issues – including those the transport company cannot control. Very often transport disruptions are due to things like a lack of enforcement and traffic congestion (issues that require more complaining to other bodies). By taking the trouble to complain, we learn something about how the system really works and who is in control. This is citizenship in action.
Bus companies, for example, report that they have difficulties recruiting drivers. That’s why a critical element of good public transport is a degree of “slack” in terms of service frequency – in the form of available drivers or spare bus capacity – so that disruptions can be quickly mitigated. A business model that views any kind of “slack” as unproductive waste will likely not deliver a good quality service to its passengers.
We need to think of public transport as critical to a functioning society, one that enables people of all ages and abilities to avail of opportunities to travel, work and study on an equal footing. If anyone is let down by any aspect of the service – accessibility, punctuality or frequency – then it is not good enough. But it’s no use complaining about that unless we complain to those with the power to change things.
As for my complaint about my ghost bus and €81 taxi fare, I’m still waiting to hear back from the bus company.
Sadhbh O’Neill is a climate and environmental researcher
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