The day my faith died

By Kate Newman

Last week it finally happened. The event my father has been waiting for since I got my license two years ago. I got my first parking ticket for parking on a yellow line at Uni. Dad performed the relevant “I told you so” and preceded to give me a lecture on the advantages of public transport, and I stood there and bite my tongue. I knew I could never win an argument against a fearless HR manager.

The thing is, yes, I would love to rely on public transport if it would save me the $60 parking fine I would receive at Uni. And just on that note, why my parking fine was $60 and my boyfriend’s fine a month before for the same offence at the same place was $37.50 I will never know. The point is, yes I would take public transport if I could be assured day in day out that the relevant bus/train/city cat would arrive at its destination at the specified time.

Now, I’m human. I realise that time delays are a natural part of the transport process. But, when, in my first year of Uni I had an exam to attend and subsequently left for the bus two hours prior in order to arrive with plenty of time to spare, I expect to get to Uni before exam time. But no. Four absent buses and one hour later I arrived at that exam.

Despite this, I still continued to trust the transport system. It had had an off day. So of course, imagine my surprise when that very next week I showed up at Uni two hours late, soaked to the bone and very unhappy. Events which led to this demised state included a 30 minute postponed train, a lost dog, rainfall which I would have avoided had the city cat come on time rather than 20minutes later and a bus driver who did not appreciate wet passengers.

My faith in the transport system was being tried. The final straw came a month later, when I had to be at Uni for an oral presentation. I was already slightly anxious as to the result, so I left a specified two hours prior to my tutorial, plenty of time to relax when I got there. I walked to the train station and waited. And waited. Half and hour later I asked the station master when I could be expecting a train. He informed me the trains had ceased running for the next two hours due to a fault in the wires. Perfect! A marathon run to the bus stop followed and I am pleased to report I made the oral presentation with minutes to spare. However, that was the day my faith in public transport dimmed and died.

So as my Dad was lecturing me on the positives of the system, including reduced carbon emissions, I was not cursing that $60 parking fine that should have been $37.50, instead I was thinking about the next illegal parking spot I could find at Uni to park my faithful wheels that get me to a place on time.