Public Transport Network Wokified in Australia’s Capital

Canberra, Australia’s capital, is considered to be one of the most progressive regions in the country, where apparently, it’s pretty easy to scale Parliament House to hold your protest, unless of course you were against particular pandemic-related mandates, then the SWAT team was sent in, obviously. But I’m not here to talk about any of that, I’m here to talk about the wokification of public transport. Now you’d think it would be fairly hard to wokify public transport. It’s already a fairly progressive thing. Public transport is obviously used around the world to reduce traffic congestion, reduce pollution, and of course, as a convenience for commuters. It’s not particularly woke as such, but don’t think the ACT government aren’t trying.

Of course, you can outwardly decorate your trams in pride colours. You can wrap your buses in rainbow colours so people can’t see out the windows. I mean, you can pretty much put rainbow colours anywhere you like. On the railway platform. On roundabouts. Who cares about cost of living when you can go around painting stuff? But all of this is just kind of superficial. It’s just outwardly woke. Of course, you can electrify your transport network. Don’t forget to write “I’m electric” on the bus in the largest font possible, otherwise people won’t know how woke you are. But electrification of transport networks has kind of been done. I mean, Brisbane electrified its train network more than 40 years ago! You can’t exactly call yourself progressive by introducing electric public transport in modern times, even if you do paint the platforms in the brightest shade of rainbow.

But I didn’t give up on Canberra. They’ve gone one step further in their wokification of public transport with their brand new MyWay+ system. It was literally just launched today, I believe.

On the Transport Canberra website, they have a journey planner. Just say I’m a tourist who’s flown from Brisbane to Canberra, which takes approximately 1 hour 45 minutes. I arrive at the lovely Canberra Airport, and am met with an equally lovely welcoming message, “Welcome to Ngunnawal Country”. I’m a bit confused where I am, but I press on. I really want to visit Parliament House, so I can climb up on the roof and hold a protest about the evils of air travel. So I open up the ACT Government’s journey planner, type in my starting point and destination, and am presented with a number of options. I can’t believe it! The first option is free, and uses no CO2. And this form of public transport only takes as long as the plane trip I just took from Brisbane to Canberra, 1 hour 44 minutes. Yes, they want me to walk the 7km into Parliament House. By the way, this is the default setting, sorted by healthiest. I didn’t set this up, or anything. That’s what I want with all my luggage and kids in tow, to walk for almost two hours!

Scrolling down, let’s see what their second option is. Wow, they want me to ride my bicycle! You know, the four bicycles that I would have had to had brought on the plane so that my family can ride into the city with me. On the plus side, it only uses 0.1 kg of CO2. The next two options are to bus and bicycle, but this time they want some money, $2.55. Bastards! But again, I didn’t bring my bicycle on the plane, so I can’t use this option. The fifth and sixth options are finally something I can use. Catch a couple of buses which will take 30 or 40 minutes. The seventh option, finally, a recommended option, is to ride a motorcycle, the one that I didn’t bring with me on the plane. Perhaps they hire them at the airport? And the last option, the worst option in their opinion, is to catch a taxi which apparently causes the most pollution and is the most expensive. I’m glad I took that rainbow-powered plane to Canberra, otherwise, my carbon emissions might have gone through the roof!

But just one more scenario. Just say I wanted to go farther. Just say I wanted to go to Lanyon Marketplace in southern Canberra. So I head over to the journey planner, Canberra Airport to Lanyon Marketplace, and yep, as expected, they want me to walk the 6 hours and 21 minutes, because that’s the cheapest, healthiest and carbon-free option, although I reckon I’d be pumping out a fair bit of carbon dioxide after that trek!

So what’s my point here? Well there’s more to public transport wokery than just painting all your vehicles in rainbow colours. There’s more to it than just electrifying everything, including emergency vehicles such as fire trucks. It’s about changing people’s behaviour. When people use the public transport app to search for the best transport option, convince them that walking is the best mode of public transport, even if it takes almost nine hours, or convince them that riding their own bicycle is somehow a form of public transport, and then you will truly have created a woke paradise.

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Allégro by Emmit Fenn