Train fatality: elderly victim ruins rail commute

My suggestion is that in five hundred years time, when Auckland finally gets an electrified rail system that there be no level crossings whatsoever. Level crossings are hazardous, unsafe and an inconvenience for foot and vehicle traffic. The Auckland rail system is a (barely) running joke. We had electric trams from 1902-1957, Wellington has had electric trains since the 1930s at least, but modern Auckland is in the stone ages when it comes to public transport. Central and local government pour millions upon millions into subsidising a system that doesn't even have single ticketing FFS.

There are so many problems in so many areas. It is unspeakably frustrating. You see swanky bus shelters with no timetables, but big illuminated advertising billboards. You see train platforms built only a few years ago that cannot take more than four carriages and so are doomed to be inefficient and loss-making.

I feel like fucking screaming at those cock-sucking fucking arseholes who are shitting billions away on fuck all and sacking every last mother fucking one of them.

The cunts can't even put clocks at the railway stations. Not one clock exists on the Western line. Not one. Not a single fucking clock. None. Why? They don't want us to know that they are running late - that is the only possible answer. Because they fork out for kilometres of yellow dots for blind people but not a single clock. Major bus stops all over the city have scrolling displays updating bus waiting times - nothing at the train stations. Pathetic does not come anywhere near describing the situation.

We need an Auckland Transit Agency to plan and build and operate a comprehensive electrified commuter rail system. No level crossings, stations that aren't glorified shacks and ticketing done at the gate like any normal system. We need it to have it's own mandating legislation, and own revenue stream, so local government cock-heads can't fuck with it, and we need it now - we should have had it in the 1930s, but I'll settle for sometime within the first 100 days of the Mactional government.

This fatal incident affected me personally, very deeply. So here's my story about how her death touched my life:

I'm out West, in Henderson and I have to get back, so I briefly think that catching the train is the way to go. Avondale station is close to home. But I'd sworn off the train because of the repeated bullshit delays and cancellations and have vowed never again. As I walk past I see a train at the station waiting, but no - I know better, I walk on. To the bus stop at the other end of town. The bus is there and I ask the driver if they go direct or is there a tiki tour. For Africa apparently, so I decline. The scrolling sign says 26 minutes to the next bus. Is this Bayswater on a Sunday at 10pm? Because I'm in fucking Henderson at 3 o'clock in the fucking afternoon on a weekday and they can't organise a bus to go down Great North fucking Road for 26 fucking minutes!? Un-fucking-believable.

So, fuck it - let's catch the bloody train then. It could not possibly be any later than the bus.

Power walk past one grossly overweight ugly person after another, through the centre of Henderson to the over-blown Bob Harvey Memorial Municipal Euro-Wank Headquarters of the Waitakere City Council where the station is attached... without a single clock. The train is - miraculously - still there. I figure it will pull out as soon as my feet hit the platform, but before I could get there someone sees my haste as I'm marching along the overpass and informs me there's been an "incident at New Lynn" and the trains are cancelled. I stop. I look down. The train is empty and isn't actually aligned to the platform. Helpful - typically helpful - commentary from some grossly overweight and ugly woman about "at least you got the exercise" greet me as I turn back to go down the escalator. I should of said what I thought. But I was constrained by social conventions. I should have pushed the bitch down the fucking escalator and walked right over the top of her pausing only momentarily to say "How's that exercise workin' for ya." Social conventions yet again prevented me from doing what would have been right and just and educational. I know. I know! I'm weak that way.

So some poor bus driver displaying "Rail Bus" is telling every bewildered and frantic train patron at the adjoining bus stop that he's going on to Ranui or something and if we're heading to Britomart to go over the other side. He has to tell everyone that individually as they come up and try to get on the bus. After a five minute wait - mercifully - a bus arrives and we do this tiki tour through the suburban back blocks to meet up with every train station in the bush. We get to New Lynn and a train is there but no-one is getting on and I can't see any ambulance or police so the "incident" did not occur at the station. The train conductor on the bus gets off and the driver makes the call to continue to Avondale where the train journey can resume. Good. Just get me the fuck home. And we swing around the bus station that is so poorly designed that buses have to stop to give way to other traffic to get out. I mean what the fuck is the point. And the route the buses take in and out is as ill considered and pointlessly inefficient as anything that Auckland planners could have designed: a complete double-back through a heavy foot traffic area with endless streams of people using the pedestrian crossing to go to and from the very busy Lynn Mall. Idiotic. Utterly idiotic when there is approaches either side and behind. But that's Auckland. What a fucking mess.

So we get to Avondale and there is maybe a hundred people or more on the platform. The schools are out now and there's kids everywhere. Anarchy.

This is why I don't catch the train. Every attempt to use the "service" is risky and often painful. It just makes me angry, when it should be pleasant.


I'm not in a compassionate mood because of this latest drama, I don't want to be fucked around a second longer than is absolutely necessary. So fuck that dumb bitch. Fuck any dumb cunt that tries to take on a bloody train. The eighty-nine different agencies that attempt to operate the rail system in Auckland should each claim against that incomprehensibly stupid woman's estate for losses. If that report is correct, then fuck her hard.

... harsh? Darwinianly harsh.

Given my mood I say turn the windscreen squirters around so that they can spay away the blood and keep on rollin'. There will be no delays. Attach a video camera at the front of the engine to record it all for prosperity. Burn it to disc and courier a copy to the coroner. Screen it on loops at Britomart as a warning. Put the still images on the back of tickets and at foot crossings like they do with other health consequences on ciggy packets.

There isn't a single type of person that gets hit by a train - all sorts of people do, on foot or in bikes or in cars or trucks. Inattentiveness, arrogance, misjudgements - whatever, I don't care - I don't. There shouldn't be any level crossings at all in the system. This type of incident ought to be impossible. At the moment dogs often stray across and are hit, anyone can wander on to any part of the track in Auckland - any part. Large sections are unfenced - in fact the rail people do not fence any of it. This pisses me off because if one child - a person who cannot be expected to be as aware and conscientious as an adult - gets run over by a train then their blood will be on the hands of every planner and every person who was in a position to fence or remove those level crossings and failed to do so.