useful consumer site suddenly annoyingly closes

It is an emotional and consumer blow that an exceptionally sensible website with a simple empowering concept is closing down. The "Fix my transport" site www.fixmytransport.com.

It's all because of site hosting and maintaining. The way that shifts as projects diversify and their time commitments shift. The web still has this infuriating flaw, that to be good democratic and user-empowering does not bed a site in to the certainty of lasting.

Using that site helped me in motivating the council to take the supported bus route 63 (Gyle to South Queensferry) away from Horsburgh, whose shoddy standards included simply cancelling buses without rep-placement if they broke down. On an hourly service, and there was a case where they visibly used another bus to deliver staff from their depot to deal with the breakdown but not put the bus actually onto the service for the folks who had been waiting an hour.

When Lothian buses took over, they reinstated the Sunday service that Horsburgh had found unviable and dropped years before - and it seems that just by running it better they have found it viable enough now to increase the evening service, on all 7 days, as well as the day frequency during the week.

It shows the positive public empowerment at stake having a facility like "fix my transport", and now it's going. Credit also Queensferry Community Council, for its local response to the issue, but they did not make it publicly findable knowledge, it was Fix My Transport which served for that. We need to bother to organise a similar sort of consumer info, for spectrum folks, through ANS. An idea that has been raised before and has not yet taken off, as it needs starter contributions, like this 63 bus item could have been one, to get it going.

Maurice Frank

consumer action

ANS's projected writing on consumer issues is an opportunity to effect a lasting empowerment of us in consumer situations, through open record of the problems that can happen. We should build up some sharing with each other, through ANS, of consumer pitfalls. The resulting responsibility for autism workers to be on guard for them for the folks they work with, helps also the independently living aspies who don't have any workers, because the whole scene has to respond to what is seen can happen.

*If you should buy a bed, avoid any with joints held together by a part called a "dowel", which is a silly flimsy wooden pin a few centimetres long. They are a ridiculous design, because they are made to carry too much weight and they are not substantial enough to do it. they can snap easily, When they do, the whole structure is unusable because half the dowel is left stuck in flush the hole preventing reuse. So see what all the joints are held together by, make sure they are not dowels. Don't ignore any joints where you can't see what holds them together, dowels are likely to be hidden from view because both ends of them insert into a hole. The bed I bought not knowing about dowels I succeeded in getting returned and refunded. A dowel snapped when attaching an end part to the bed's main body, within 2 hours of receiving the bed! They were going to send a whole replacement end part, what an expense for them to have to do that because one small piece of wood snapped. I asked them how they could guarantee that what could snap would not snap again, how in that case the structure could be safe to use, and how expensive would it then be for them to have to keep sending large new parts repeatedly? Unanswerable. I did not have to use trading standards to actually chase them, the company knew I had made them aware of these questions, that was enough. Returned, at cost of an extra delivery outing for them: they had to take it back just to avoid admitting the rest of their stocks of it should not be sold, for it was surely physically worthless to them to take back the actual bed.

*Now, having ANS's consumer writing to cite in my flyers is helping me respond to a particularly bad bus issue. It concerned a council supported service, the 63 Queensferry to Hermiston. That they can leave you for an hour then change their mind about putting on any replacement bus, when one breaks down, it happened with the 0830 first morning bus from Queensferry on Mar 19, is a serious enough failed standard for a supported service they are paying them to run, that the council transport office is chasing them for an explanation. The community council's interest is secured, quite properly, in the prospect of not renewing the support contract for that route with the same company if it defends and does not show measures guaranteeing to eradicate, the practice of leaving passengers misinformed for an hour. But the issue should not be just left until the contract renewal comes up top save bothering. It affects passengers now. To make a significant number of potential passengers living along the route know that this happened and is what they can expect, both is what the bus company deserves and puts a proper pressure on the council for more immediate action. So how can you create some passenger awareness? By putting a flyer around!

Headed:

63 BUS WASTED AN HOUR OF PASSENGERS' TIME.

That is a strong consumer action. I wrote why the council needs to bother:

" This not an innocent consequence of technical problems. To mislead passengers for an hour, kept there awaiting a provision that is then not provided, is a chosen avoidable malpractice. Meanwhile, further down the route folks' morning bus never turned up. Not for the first time. This was why.

Queensferry community council indicates the council support for running the 63 route is due for recontracting in the autumn. For public health, against getting tension and raised blood pressure and strokes from risking this experience too often, the council must not wait until autumn to take Horsburgh off all its supported routes. "

Maurice Frank

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

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

no loo Inverness to Edinburgh

"Stagecoach trains its entire staff in the importance of customer care and does not tolerate incidents such as the one you have described in your letter." So they welcomely wrote on 25 May 2007, concerning a jobsworth driver who was stuck in a queue on a sliproad at the Forth bridge and refused to let passengers off before reaching the stop, even though some were desperate for a pee which they had to take behind a junction box as soon as they got off. By that time the situation on that bus had got aggressive. I should think so.

Now that Stagecoach and Citylink have become half-merged, can we rely on the same principle to be brought out again? Yesterday, they put an ordinary Stagecoach express bus such as you see around Fife, with no toilet, onto an Inverness to Edinburgh Citylink service lasting 3 1/2 hours. Its driver was very good about it, full marks to him, when I asserted the right to get off for a pee at Broxden, the coach stop site on the edge of Perth - which itself has no loo. But what position are Citylink going to take on the driver of the connecting Glasgow coach, who refused to allow me to use his onboard toilet? "Absolutely not, no way, as soon as I'm loaded up I'm away." Peeing in the bushes instead meant climbing over a fence and squeezing under some very thorny vegetation, obviously without time to waste. An older passenger with limited mobility might find this too hard to do, yet is even more likely to need the loo. There was no other way to get out of sight, at least not without taking a long walk away from the coaches who might then go without them. They will be entitled by the facts of biology to go right where they are, the indecency will be Citylink's fault not theirs, won't it? I challenge Citylink to find any way to say otherwise, and next time we write any diversity feedbacks for the police we should put this to them too. This point needs committally forcing, to make the bus companies work properly.

Clamber into the bushes I did, promptly, in front of this driver. He knew it meant no chance to wash my hands, I suppose Citylink expects its other passengers to be happy with that? If his ego seriously expected me to continue my journey without going, he was delusional, with a delusion of authority over biology. No it was not established at any sod's order that I would hold on. If y' gotta go y' gotta go, asserted.

Sometimes it is part of autism, its metabolic and digestive issues, to need the loo more frequently. The willingness now found, of the operator of the longest trunk coach service through the middle of Scotland, to do this, puts a barrier between the aspie communities of the Central Belt and the north.

Maurice Frank

Bus again already !

Bus 841 doing service 41, a part route bus ending at Waverley, Sep 30. Driver announced the end of service and forced folks to get off, a stop before Waverley, at Frederick Street corner, and openly told questioners it was because he wanted his dinner.

Waverley means Waverley, Bridge or Steps, east end of Princes Street. Absolutely not a point west of the Mound.

Bus complaints, with all the local companies, have a very bad track record of them hiding behind various European rules for workers to claim they can't reveal, whether drivers who bully passengers actually have suffered commensurate and deterrent retribution.

This case cuts right through that corrupt princple. If a service ends early and folks are charged a further fare on the next bus, that is extortion of false fares. When you have a free pass, if you have to bleep it again on the next bus after an incident like this, then the driver's offence extorts the company a false second fare at public expense.

Hence, the company can either be publicly pilloried as extorting extra fares by not operating as billed, or else it must tell us quite specifically and committally that as a fact it is recovering the extra fare from the driver, as retribution, not from the state.

Valuable information on the disability discrimination law has been shared by the mental health campaign Vox. It requires accommodations to be made for all disability groups' needs in using ordinary facilities which they can use, like a bus. Under this, an accommodation that autistic spectrumites are entitled to, is that all information is to be taken literally, including the destination on the front of a bus. We can't be expected to guess culturally that a bus is not really going to where it says but to somewhere short of there. Hence, disability discrimination law requires all buses saying "Waverley" to actually go as far as Waverley Bridge or Steps. See.

endemic bus malpractices

Here is an action towards a public office, citing disability discrimination on our behalf, that consequently they have a duty to act on, and they are not doing. Now, what is the point of having a disability discrimination law if we are not supplied with the means to pin down any public office to give answers according to it???!!

These 2 emails were to the "Bus Passenger's Platform", the complaints department of an entity called Passenger View which advises the Scottish government on what bus passengers need without at all having to ask bus passengers what we want it to say! When you complain to BPP about malpractices by bus drivers, usually it is on the bus companies' side and completely in their pocket. BPP will scrape the gutter for any excuse to find that the bus company couldn't have taken an absolute line on preventing the malpractice.

BPP is one of those bodies that exists to make it look like something is being done. In reality, even if you have been blatantly bullied by a bus driver and the advertised bus sevice blatantly not honoured at all, as long as BPP's decisions are discretionary it is utterly pointless to lodge a complaint to BPP. The only thing there is any point in doing, is to extract from each bus malpractice any aspect you can of distinct ill-treatment of a minority needs group, and lobby BPP about it, telling BPP it is acting illegally concerning discrimination unless it admits that its duty to make findings in favour of the minority need is automatic, not discretionary. You need to ask BPP to confirm this to you before you file an actual case to them. This is what I sought to do in the following emails:

Mar 5: I belong to [mentioned Elas and Sasn].

The vulnerablilities caused by Asperger Syndrome include a reliance on literal information, and lack of facility to make contextual guesses that information is not meant literally. This would include, that we more than other passengers can't be expected to guess, by cultural norm, that some information given in a bus timetable is less true than other parts of the timetable and may routinely not be honoured by the bus operator. It would be illegal disability discrimination to expect any such thing of us.

A consequence of this, is that it would be illegal disability discrimination against us, ever not to find against the operator, in a case where a particular service frequently jumps one of the stops it is advertised to observe, and the operator has ignored or evaded all efforts to pin them down committally to do anything about it. A case where there is always a 50-50 chance that the bus you want will sweep past the stop in the central dual carriageway lanes that block it from observing the stop, instead of taking the side lanes to observe the stop, and this is on a long distance service so that total wreckage of a day's travel plan is inflicted by it.

In any case of this nature, it needs only be established that the company is allowing the offence to happen, by its lack of committal answers, and that makes it a simple 100% certainty that the complaint would be upheld. Hence, it would be illegal disability discrimination to a recognised medical group who have public speaking outlets, for you not to agree that this is the case, to this enquiry in advance of an actual case being brought, or to be noncommittal about it.

It would be disability discrimination to insist that the actual case is brought before you take any position, because by so insisting, you would be keeping in existence a visibly provenly illegal margin of discretion against the position being an automatic certainty. You would be forcing the case to be a gamble instead of a routine upholding of a literal principle. You would be saying that in a case where the factual finding was that yes the events concerned have happened, it could ever be at all possible even in theory to find against a complaint of the nature described and to allow a bus operator to behave in this way.

Past experience proves the need to put the case's committal medical principle to you before being forced into taking any gambles on which way you might go if it is left to arbitrary discretion.

Mar 12 BPP's answer: [first an unnecessary para explaining what BPP is]

Unfortunately you have not indicated whether or not the bus company has had an opportunity to address your complaint. I would be grateful if you would advise this office accordingly. If the operator has responded to your complaint and you are unhappy with the response, you must sens a copy of all relevant correspondence to this office.

If the complaint has not been taken up with the bus operator in the first instance, I regret that BPP is unable to consider your complaint at this stage.

Mar 14: Yes, we are talking about a case here the bus company has had this problem repeatedly put to it over a year and a half, and has only gone from explaining each incident as an isolated driver error, to not answering at all.

I know the rules about sending correspondence with an actual complaint - I have experienced the process before. But I have not made any actual complaint to you yet. I was enquiring about BPP's attitude to a principle: the committally automatic wrongness in every case ever, of a bus service being allowed to persist in often jumping one of the stops it is advertised to observe, by passing it in the wrong traffic lane for stopping.

I pointed out the disability discrimination to a whole population group, that would be done if BPP refuses to take a position on this principle that would be known in advance to apply to any specific case of it that is brought to you. So that cases are not forced to be brought to you with the discretionary possibility of BPP choosing not to uphold the principle even if the facts are found to be as described.

Thank you,

- To which there has been no further answer. You can see that BPP is meticulously evading making any comment at all on the question asked of it. Does a complaint of this particular malpractice by buses have to be upheld automatically if it is established the malpractice happened? BPP is blatantly committing disability discrimination and acting corruptly to the oppression of bus users, by ignoring this question and seeking to hold onto a discretionary power to reject such a complaint.

Let me tell you where this bus malpractice has been happening - it is on an important trunk route. It is on Citylink's M91 stopping service from Edinburgh to Perth, some coaches continuing to Inverness. One of the advertised stops on the more frequently stopping coaches is at the south side of the Forth Bridge, the former tolls, which is still stubbornly being called "tolls" in bus timetables long after the tolls have been abolished. Quite often these coaches just charge past in the central lane of the dual carriageway and ignore this stop. It can happen in both directions, but mostly in the northward direction where the stop is located on an entry sliplane, so that if the coach fails to take an exit from the main carriageway it is then barricaded into the central lanes and can't access the stop.

For a year and a half I have had repeated cause to make complaints to Citylink about this, and the only answer they ever give is a one-off apology for the driver error in forgetting the stop. The first time they said they would remind drivers about it, but this changed nothing. They will never say anything committal specifying how they will force all their staff to observe the stop. Twice I have enquired on behalf of both Elas and our equivalent in Fife, telling them that aspies have no instincts to guess in some cultural way that their service's published details should not be taken literally! and formally asking which coaches they will guarantee for certain will observe the stop, if we should organise some group travel starting at that point. CITYLINK HAS IGNORED AND NEVER ANSWERED THOSE ENQUIRIES. THIS ITSELF IS DISABILITY DISCRIMINATION, THAT THE BPP's ASSISTANCE IS NEEDED TO STOP, YET WE LIVE IN A STATE WHERE THE BPP ITSELF CAN GET AWAY WITH BEING EQUALLY CORRUPT. If you are a visitor in the Year of Homecoming, this is the state of the state here. If you are an aspie as well, and if you are trying to head north of the Forth, you have cause to complain that you are left in unclarity how the hell you are supposed to plan travel in a state where nobody enforces the honouring of published transport services in reality. If you tell Year of Homecoming about this, do you find them committal or noncommittal about caring? - for that will tell you whether it's just a con.

Some other bus malpractices that BPP's attitude also encourages to happen, are these.
* A driver on Stagecoach who drives away from the present diversionary stops in central Edinburgh, with their long queues, before passengers who were well back in the queue can reach him, and visibly laughs about it.
* First refusing to give any committal answer that their buses can be hailed from the wrong side of the road, even when they know this evasion is an offence against road safety because it meant you had to run in front of a very late bus that suddenly appeared in Galashiels' one way system, and which still drove past you anyway,
* or even when you are walking from East Linton to Haddington in the evening because 3 successive of their buses have not turned up, ("mechanical failure!") and then one passes you on the road some way short of Haddington just when it's starting to rain.
* Drivers on First who refuse to believe that the fare you want exists, in First's preposterously muddled zonal system.
* Who insist that a day ticket is just an ordinary return, or
* who take a £20 note from you then refuse to give it back or to sell you anything but the fare they think you should want instead of the fare you do want. NB - I got signed for a free bus pass as a direct result of that experience, actually on grounds of the burden of coping with communication with bus drivers! and this establishes every aspie should get one. But that is no get-out from the need to enforce proper trading standards upon First too, is it? including sacking that driver?

The Green Party, which always insults our intelligence by saying please use public transport and save carbon, never takes any position on any specific transport malpractice. I asked their council candidate in 2007, for a position against First because of the Sunday morning trains that had repeatedly been leaving early from Dalmeny station, that I had twice in 6 weeks seen ruin the travel plan of a mother trying to take 2 small infants to Glasgow visiting family. I got, "If you will forgive me, I can only respond to your general query about public transport and accountability, rather than your ongoing problems with First." DON'T FORGIVE THEM - this is the worst offence that democracy's entire effectiveness is still abused by, it is NONCOMMITTALITY. If the Greens keep this up in the coming Euro election, they are committing a specific minority uncaringness upon the autistic spectrum, because we can't be expected to communicate successfully with corrupt bus or train staff or to observe corrupt unstated principles of how to get by despite them.

Maurice Frank