On Wednesday 16th November, Sydney Alliance Community Organisers gathered to hear about the Sweltering Cities Busted Bus Stop Campaign and talk about how we can join together to win great public transport and less polluted suburbs. Our Western Sydney Community Campaigner Kim took the group through the campaign strategy, shared her own stories and introduced the group to out campaign tools. This is Kim’s report from the day:
We talked about how important public transport is to many members of our community. We discussed the different ways to become involved and how easy it is to help us gather data and map as many bus stops as we can over summer.
Many people said that their local bus stops are nothing more than poles and some don’t even have a sign on the pole, so often, buses go straight past them.
One Community Organiser spoke of arriving at the bus stop and there was a woman already waiting. There was no timetable, but using the app on her phone she was able to let this lady know that their bus was running 20 mins late so they still had a bit of a wait. The woman was obviously concerned about the extra 20 minutes and explained that she has a disability and has to time everything carefully so that she isn’t left standing and waiting too long which she is unable to physically do. This particular bus stop had a seat but no shelter and the woman was unable to use it as it had been raining earlier and it was very wet.
Simple infrastructure like great bus shelters can make our transport more accessible and inviting for everyone.
Together, we used a list of Western Sydney bus stops to map over 30 stops during the event. The group agreed that it was a valuable and beneficial meeting and a very worthwhile goal to work towards. We would like to thank the attendees for their time, the sharing of their ideas and thoughts, their stories, and experiences, and helping us to work towards creating better bus stops and shelters and reducing the inequity of lack of shade, shelter and seating whilst waiting for public transport in our hottest suburbs.
For more information about the campaign and to learn how to get involved, go to our campaign page here.
Thank you, Sydney Alliance!