Wesley Darlington
13 Ponsonby Avenue
Belfast BT15 2LS
(07788) 681260
wesley@yelsew.com
Mr Ted Hesketh
Translink
Chamber of Commerce House
22 Great Victoria Street
Belfast BT2 7LX
8th February, 2005
Dear Mr Hesketh,
I thought I would drop you a note to thank you for the recent changes you have made to the
citybus service. It looks like my health is going to improve dramatically over the coming months.
You see, for a number of years now I have been exceptionally well served1 by citybus: buses go
straight from just outside my house to just outside my office – and the trip only costs 70p! What
a bargain!!
And therein lies the problem: I really should walk everywhere but, because I am so lacking in
willpower2, I find myself taking the bus far more often than is good for me.
Historically, though, citybus’ drivers have always gone that extra inch to help me in my quest to
walk more: little touches like drivers who don’t stop; drivers who leave early; drivers who go
somewhere other than their destination would have you believe; rude, surly, angry, aggressive,
unpleasant drivers; and drivers who – and this is my personal favourite! – who wait until you’re
just feet from the door of the bus, and then close the doors and pull away.
I always greatly appreciate all these little touches, but they’re just too haphazard. They require
regular action on the part of the drivers to force me to walk, to remind me why I should walk, but
nobody can be nasty all time (not even a citybus driver!) – so I, and others like me, end up
slowly drifting back to the buses. Especially when it rains.
What’s long been needed is something systematic, something deep-rooted, something that will
relieve the drivers of the need to be creatively evil to encourage people to walk. And I’m pleased
to congratulate you on finally introducing this one thing: Metro!
If you had to design a system to encourage people to walk more, I don’t think you could come up
with something finer than Metro.
1
2
In theory, at least.
Not to mention deeply lazy.
Paint the buses pink? Smart, but people will quickly overcome their revulsion at the colour
scheme.
Change the stops all the buses leave from? Pretty clever, but not enough by itself. People will
still find their bus!
Change the numbers of all the buses? Ooooh, that’s pretty devious - for bonus points, make sure
to use numbers like “100” and “10D” to maximise confusion and mistrust. Also be sure to
squeeze as many of the old style numbers onto one number as you can. For example, every bus
that goes anywhere near the Antrim Road should be called “1” – no matter how little their routes
have in common.
Change the routes of all the buses at the same time? Wow, I can tell you’ve really thought this
one through. If you change the routes, numbers, and starting positions of all the buses in the city,
it could take months before people regain confidence in the bus system again. But, of course,
they’ll know about all this long before it actually happens, so they’ll have time to adjust to ….
Ah, but I can see that you’re already way ahead of me here! If you were really devious, you
could…
Not tell anybody about it until after the changes? It’ll be hard, word will seep out, but if you’re
careful, if you downplay the changes, orchestrate a campaign to keep the word in, make sure that
nobody knows anything and nobody tells anybody anything, you can probably maximise the
extent of the damage. Be careful not to send out any information on new routes, times, fees,
numbers, colours, or anything until after the change and, if you’re feeling really nasty, don’t
send them out at all!!
If you could attempt even a fraction of all the above, you’d have done more for exercise in the
city than the Belfast City Marathon.
But you, Sir, have achieved what I would have thought impossible – you have managed to do all
of the above at the same time. You have done more for the health, wellbeing, and exercise of the
denizens of Belfast than anybody or anything else. I salute you.
Yours sincerely,
Wesley Darlington.