Atomised

There are several atomic clock exact time websites, that you can google in an instant. Surprisingly, why should I be surprised what a cynic, yes they do show the same minutes and seconds, the same time. They may not show the same hour depending on what time zone they are for, of course.

Useful if you are a scientist timing an experiment or a sporty competitor stressfully timing a race, and you have a spare computer screen handy or perhaps most folks bring them up on their web connected mobiles. But when else in your life would you think you might have any need to look up the atomic pinpointed time?

How about, when see that the digital clock at the Ferrytoll park and ride bus station north of the Forth Bridge is 2 minutes fast? You see, as I did this evening, that while the clock is displayed to passengers, it appears to be being used to time bus departures too. Several buses itemised as departing at what that clock showed as their correct times but were in fact significantly earlier.

It explained the mystery of an absent and missed connection that I had clearly got there in time to catch, onto one of the town routes into east Dunfermline. The atomic clock sites were the confirmation I needed that it was not my time that was wrong, to know for a fact there was a clock fault to itemise to Stagecoach along with the early departures. But arriving just after working hours had ended on a Friday evening we can guess this will go on all weekend at least. Anyway, if you travel through the Ferrytoll, check your watch by the atomic clock websites before you go, and you can check on whether the clock there is still wrong, and complain about the effect on passengers if they don't fix it for their timekeeping.

That is when we need atomic clocks. When we are trying to keep transport running properly instead of lying down and accepting having it run any old how. It is also when we need a blog based in Edinburgh to write about Fife on. You notice that 2 successive posts here have been about Fife, but the now defunct aspie group that used to exist in Fife and became too controlled never chose to go for enough of a free speaking culture to have a blog, did it, you will remember? Even when that group was still going it was still us who served Fife for this democratically necessary voicing side of what should be all local aspie groups' life.

Maurice Frank

tickety boo

Sailing Calmac's ferries in the Western Isles has become safer since I did an island hopping holiday back in 1992. Then, they collected your ticket only at the sailing's end. Anyone could get on but it committed you to still have this losable small object in your possession, not lost or stolen, at destination. Exactly what would happen to you carried fear through uncertainty. During that holiday I did indeed come across a case, an old lady in a disembarking queue in front of me had lost her ticket during the journey and was trying to cope by cracking jokes about going to jail. But this is a humanly sick situation against all practical common sense. What if she had been robbed, and she the victim had to talk of going to jail? I last saw her standing to 1 side with the ticket man, no idea what happened, I just wonder if the same would have happened to a teenager as to an old lady, both equally innocent.

I remember the system making me anxious all that holiday, and not being attracted to the Western Isles again for a long time. That old system is now gone, and that is some welcome progress, for Elas's recent visit to Mull and Iona. Now they do the tickets at boarding, less scary. But it would still seriously foul up your life to lose a ticket in those remote small port villages with scant buses or emergency facilities. It remains an example of how dangerous tickets are as a system, and have been for 200 years, and how the danger discriminates against anyone with a condition increasing their likelihood to lose small objects. Which is my case for banning tickets.

Duart castle, on Mull, is using a ticket system with echoes of Calmac's old one, for its private buses that meet the ferries at Craignure. If you get on without a prebooking, the driver gives you a ticket that you only pay for when you reach the castle entrance kiosk, along with your admission. The ticket's corner is cut off to validate it, then you need it in that condition for the bus back. As the castle is far up a track winding through empty farmland, a longer trek from the nearest village than it looks on the map, dear me you want the bus back. But that means not losing your ticket as you carry it around with you all the time you are at the castle. As a coastal promontory in a Hebridean firth, this is prone to be a windy spot, with quick change weather. We saw it go from sunny to misted up in a few minutes. Yet the entrance kiosk has no shelter attached to it for the customer standing on the outside. You have no shield from the wind, as the man comfortably inside the kiosk hands out to you your clipped ticket, and a little till receipt for your admission, and maybe a note in your change too as bus plus admission is £11. 3 bits of paper, none of which must you allow to blow away or else your day is wrecked big time. So pronto you have to find a spot to park yourself, back to the wind, to sort them all out. Sit on the step beside the kiosk, is what I did.

What are the castle folks going to do with anyone who can't do a long country walk and who is stuck there with a loss of ticket? When the castle wants to close at day's end, and the stranded person is missing their ship off the island too, let's wonder? It makes a disability question that should be pressed. As a practical matter of safety, your status in moving around should never be allowed to depend on the successful safekeeping of several small scraps of paper in a windy place.

What about your bigger bulkier travelling baggage? Does that carry anxieties? Procedurally or emotionally, do you cope better with keeping it with you at all times or with leaving it in a place of safety? There is an aspie coping question in there, and you want the answer to work for you. Consider this prize piece of ticketing logic, from Oban station's baggage lockers: "This contains the security code needed to recover your luggage and keep it safe." Keep it safe: can you find any practicality and logic in a system where retaining possession of a number code on a ticket and not losing it is critical to recovering possession of your safely stored possessions? I can't even look down that vortex, the anxiety this should logically give you. You need safe storage, so keep something else safe as you go around ... I mean ... This is all some of what tickets, and their acceptance as a concept, do to our lives.

Maurice Frank

Straight answer?

Consider whether you find the following at all constructive or committal as an answer. Whether you think it will change anything. Then consider election promises by parties, on public transport, that are always about promotinmg its use or making it cheaper: never about forcing bus companies to give straight answers to actually make passengers' lives more sensible.

Apr 2 email by me:

It has never made any sense that the 0915 service from Dalgety Bay is an X53. At that time of day it gains nothing from the omission of stops and that causes aggro which makes life harder for both drivers and passengers. Unnecessarily uncomfortable passengers, e.g. told they can't get off at the secondary West End stop (Drumsheugh Gardens) in Edinburgh, is uncomfortable for drivers too. It is a significant city destination stop. Being required to sweep past it when passengers want it, makes drivers' job more difficult. This is thinking of them too.

This is particularly so in the conditions now with the west end diversions, when folks are trying to find their way using common sense. There is no common sense, no practicality, no consideration, in an off-peak service like this one arbitrarily refusing to stop at the stop mentioned. Why is this journey being kept X?

Apr 20:
Thank you for your enquiry regarding service X53.

We endeavour to provide a mix of "all stops" and "limited stops" services along the corridor between Ferrytoll and Edinburgh. The vast majority of passengers prefer the quicker journeys offered by the X services, and we have tried to provide a suitable balance within the limited stopping pattern. However we appreciate that whilst this suits most of our passengers, there will always be a small number that find the stopping pattern of a particular service inconvenient.

I trust this helps to answer your query.
Regards
.. Commercial Manager
Stagecoach East Scotland