It looks like ACTION are having an open day [1] this Saturday, with guided tours of Belconnen and Tuggeranong depots. Naturally this has the bus enthusiasts excited [2], although not as much as previous unguided tours.
I won’t be there, mainly because I am preoccupied on Saturdays with newsreading [3], and also because I just can’t see much point in the whole thing. ACTION’s website makes it sound like some kind of secretive tour where they have a bus covered in a massive white sheet, take the sheet off, show you the bus and send you on your way. Maybe I’m exagerating, but the ACTION website says nothing, it basically tells you that you get to have a look around the depot and see what happens 365 days per year (in other words, the depot is still functioning and you will pass people doing their job, which they apparently don’t do on leap year day, the 366th day of the year).
So why do ACTION bother? They obviously don’t care about this “event” much as they couldn’t even be bothered to give the page a title, instead just doing a quick copy and paste of another page and change a bit of content, and leaving the title as “ACTION Buses – ACT Celebrateinthepark”.
My theory is that this is just an opportunity to see a roundup of the local bus enthusiasts, that is the people who are likely to take lots of photos of buses and put them up on websites and comment on minor changes to buses, such as the changing of the ads. This also allows ACTION to seperate the “bus spotters”, the people mentioned above, from the bus users like myself who take an interest in what happens behind the scenes without being obsessed with buses.
I have no problem with the event, and I wish ACTION all the best of luck with it, I just think it would be nice to have a proper open day with proper publicity, something which might drum up a bit of interest in the general public and potentially increase bus patronage. The way ACTION are conducting this, they will be unlikely to get anyone outside of the local bus enthusiast community attending.
Samuel