What's the BUZ?

One of the things I noticed on my recent trip to Brisbane was a number of buses and bus stops that featured BUZ on the sign. For example, the bus that I took from my hotel to the city was 199 West End BUZ.

I assumed this was something to do with making this inner city route (it serves inner city areas from West End through to Fortitude Valley) seem somehow 'hip' and attractive.

Then I saw other buses that went to non-interesting areas (sorry any locals offended) also labelled BUZ. The Brisbane Translink website didn't help very much, but a few more internet searches did come up with interesting results:

BUZ is a neat abbreviation of Bus Upgrade Zones (or perhaps there is back-formation at work here.

All BUZ services run at least every fifteen minutes in each direction from 6:00am to 11:00pm seven days a week. BUZ routes also run at least every ten minutes during peak hours from Monday to Friday.

Nearly all BUZ routes are express services, with stops sometimes separated by quite lengthy distances. Often, these BUZ services are duplicated by all-stops services (e.g. Route 200 closely parallels the route of the Route 204 all-stops service to Carindale). Route 199 is the only BUZ that is an all-stops service with bus stops within short walking distances of each other.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BUZ

In the case of the 199, there was an overlap with other routes that ran not-quite as frequently (e.g. 15 mins during the day, down to 45 mins at night), meaning that during the day I never had to wait more than 7 minutes (and usually less) for a bus, and even at 11 o'clock on a wet weeknight never more than 15 minutes. There was also an hourly overnight service (although I am not sure whether that was only weekends or every night).

In other words, this is one of the few true 'A' class public transport services run in Australia, and is certainly a positive step forward for Brisbane.

As for the other BUZ routes, they are better than the average 'B' service found elsewhere in Australia (in my classification, half hourly at night is enough to get a B classification) and they deserve to do well.

Also, like the 900 series buses in Perth these high-quality services are providing a backbone service above and beyond the local route network. Something perhaps for Melbourne to look at, where, as far as I know, they are still talking about joining up 'all stops' services to make them 'Smart'.

Computer Oops

Today I needed to get at an old file or two which had been backed up to floppy disk. I popped the disk into the slot in the front of my new computer and it dropped inside. And I mean dropped. It is now rattling around somewhere in the bottom of the case doing goodness knows what.

It seems that my new computer doesn't have a floppy drive - I have had it a month and only just noticed that fact, which shows how useful a floppy is these days. Still, I might have thought they would blank out the slot in the case!

Now I have to take the darn thing apart to get the disk out and probably destroy some important component with static electricity. Dayum :(