CHEERS TO…NSW GOVERNMENT
With news last week that there are about 17 million Opal cards with positive cash balances that have not been touched for five years I strongly support the NSW government's plan to use the unspent money to re-invest in other public transport facilities.
As a Sydney gal who didn't get her drivers license until she left the city at 25 (don't @ me) I've done my time on the Sydney public transport network.
It's cheap, reliable (for the most part), and reveals the people and the parts of the city you don't normally see.
I was catching the 310 bus to primary school (a half hour trip, plus an extra 20 minute walk) from about Year 5. Before you all crash out, I'll remind you that this was so normal in the mid-nineties, and I'm grateful for it. It gave me enormous independence, developed my problem-solving skills, taught me how to interact with adults, navigate strangers, and how to read a room (or a bus).
And it will forever boggle my mind that catching a ferry across the world's greatest harbour is a normal and very affordable part of the system 🤯
Honestly, Public Transport gets such a bad wrap but you don't know what you've got until it's gone.
This piece first appeared in Excessive Consumption - a weekly dispatch on culture, branding, politics and whatever other modern internet brain rot the algorithm has emotionally assigned me that week.
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