Taking care of the pensioners

This rather well used bus stop is outside Concord Hospital.  Whenever I go past it, the only people waiting for a bus appear to be those too old to drive - pensioners.  And this is how we treat them - a filthy, vandalised bus shelter that I wouldn't use to house a dog.  

Would you want to wait here for a bus on a dark night?  I wouldn't.

I've reported this to Canada Bay Council, but I realised today that there are two bus stops at the hospital, and the other one is pristine.  I hope they get the right one.

My beef here as usual is with Sydney Buses.  They'll state that bus stops are not their problem - they belong to councils.  However, I didn't realise that until I started trying to get them cleaned up, and I've been catching buses on and off for years.  As far as I am concerned, if I am waiting at a bus stop to be collected by a bus, then that bus stop is the responsibility of the bus company.  It might not be in a legal sense, but if the bus company had an ounce of common sense, they'd realise that crap looking bus shelters give them a crap looking image.  All Sydney Buses has to do is what I have done - ring up the responsible council and let them know.  Given that dozens of buses, driven by dozens of drivers, pull up at this stop every day of the week, you'd think that one of them would have the gumption to get the ball rolling.

This next photo is of a spacker that I spotted walking barefoot down the middle of the road outside Concord Hospital.  The guy was clearly of his nut, and it was only a bit after 9am.  

As for his dress sense, with the baggy trousers, bandana and enormous pirate-like ear ring, let me just say that watching "The fast and the furious" too many times can do terrible things to a person's mind.

Concord Hospital security

The red box on the left denotes a bus shelter, which the hospital security vehicle on the right is driving past.  The security vehicle pulled out just in front of me as I was going past the hospital, and the driver went past the bus shelter without a sideways glance.

The bus shelter is of course covered in graffiti.  The elderly patients and visitors that rely on public transport have to sit and wait in a filthy, vandalised mess.

I imagine that the security guards, like most these days, are contracted in, and they perform only a limited and narrow set of functions.  Looking out for graffiti and reporting it does not appear to be one of those functions, even though graffiti is one of those things that increases the fear of crime.  I imagine it must be quite disconcerting for the elderly to have to sit in that bus shelter after dark, surrounded by graffiti and wondering if they are going to get mugged or not.

A mate of mine once worked in security at the Regent Hotel in the Rocks.  He was employed directly by the hotel, and he took a much broader view of his role.  The hotel had an image to maintain, and from what I can tell, all the staff at the hotel took an interest in ensuring that every aspect of the hotels functions were delivered to the best possible standard.  My mate was not just there to wrestle with the drunks and grab the thieves - his job was to help look after the image of the hotel, because if it suffered, he'd be out of a job.

I would have thought that the role of the security guards at Concord Hospital would be to create and maintain a safe environment for all staff, patients and visitors, and that includes taking care of anything that makes that environment feel less secure - like graffiti.