THE MYSTERY OF 1X IN WHITE

Is that a Waiheke Island bus? Displaying route code 1?

Yes, it was, in Belgium Street, in the early afternoon today. It had a lot of passengers so it must have come from the ferry at Matiatia (or at least from Oneroa) and it was going to Onetangi because it showed that as its destination. The Onetangi buses had been route 1 for years, until insane, worse-than-incompetent Auckland Transport (AT), led by Colin Homan, got the notion that the code for every single Waiheke route had to be 50-something, where something can be a number or a letter whose meaning is known only to Mr Homan and his AT staff. Of course, because all the codes start with 50, that makes those characters meaningless. So 50-something is meaningless piled on pointless: well done!

But that bus was displaying a variation on 1: 1X. And the LEDs displaying both it and the destination were white.

Does that mean that at least some Waiheke buses have the kind of LEDs that can change colour, even though till they have have displayed only amber? All buses should have that sort of LED.

If they have, AT should roll back a tad of its insanity and use them to help people; either use white for buses going to and fro between Onetangi Beach and the ferry, and amber for the ones going to and fro between Rocky Bay and the ferry; or white for buses going to the ferry from both places (because the ferries are white), and amber going to beach/bay (because wet sand is roughly that colour).

Then we would all be able to recognise instantly which bus was ours, at a considerable distance. And there would be no need for those silly, useless, meaningless, pointless route-codes. Only names would be needed, which is all that ever is needed--i.e., ONETANGI via Surfdale, ROCKY BAY via Palm Beach (not that PC-activist, historically-wrong 'Omiha'), MATIATIA FERRY via Surfdale, and MATIATIA FERRY via Palm Beach.

People go to destinations, Mr Homan and your staff, not routes, and destinations have names, not codes dreamed up by profligate, worse-than-incompetent bunglers.

(They underline their worse-than-incompetence by still displaying the winter ferry timetable on their website. If that link no longer works it means they have finally got it right some time after this blog entry was posted. They also display the current one elsewhere. Confusion rules: OK!?)

It is of course impossible to imagine that anyone at AT could suddenly have had a rush of sense, especially on a holiday, so the mysterious 1X in white must have been set up by someone at the Waiheke Bus Compaany. Whoever it was, take a bow.

Footnote:
It seems that the bows should be taken by some Waiheke-minded bus-drivers, because yesterday a 1 appeared in the LED signs of an Onetangi bus passing through Oneroa. It must have been put there by the driver (he also had a physical sign in the window showing AT's insane 50A, thus thumbing his nose at AT in that way too). Would that all the drivers and the management of the Waiheke Bus Company would do the same. Would that they would have the guts to carry on as if the evil, mad entity called AT had never existed. Reset everything: routes, codes, timetables. Everything. AT could not do anything about it. And if they tried, tell them to pull their wicked heads in or there will be a strike. Thus use the driver-shortage as a weapon to restore sense and service.

Defying AT and reinstating what has worked for years would be the right thing to do. It is always right to defy madness and evil. Will the drivers and their company have the Kiwi guts to do the right thing?

CODED INTUITION IS AN OXYMORON

Colin Homan, Group Manager - Integrated Networks - Auckland Transport (AT), made a three-page response to Case Number CAS-17112-M7B8S3 (how do they get those enormous codes?), ie., the response to this blogger's abbreviated complaints about the mess that AT has made of the bus service on Waiheke Island--a profligate mess made at profligate expense.

His letter covered a lot of paper, but the sub-text right through it was 'we are right, anything else is wrong' and showed how divorced from Waiheke's reality he is, and how incapable he is of listening to facts and of making decisions on them.

Colin Homan

It would be a waste of time going through all his letter, because it is just another wearisome sample of bureaucratic flim-flam, a transparent attempt at manipulative mollification, but amongst other things he said: 'We’ve put the network together with residents at front of mind, as well as offering a more intuitive system for tourists.'

That 'we've put the network together' is a rather grandiose way of describing services that are only to and from the ferry to two places (Onetangi and Rocky Bay), with  Kennedy Point to Oneroa to be added perhaps. But bureaucrats like to make everything sound very important, thus putting themselves above everyone else. And 'network' is as bad as 'hub', because using words that do not apply misleads those who use them; they are led into la-la land by their la-la terminology,

His 'intuitive' is an interesting choice of words, because later in the letter he 'explains' why the destination signs on buses and the codes for routes in timetables are what they are--i.e., why AT chose to use those silly codes 50A, 50B, 50C, 502, 503, 504. First, he cannot see that when all the codes start with the same two characters--50--that makes them useless, because they convey nothing, which is not intuitive, it is anti-intuitive. But he is content to make them consistent with the codes used on the mainland, as if that could make them right, as if that has anything to do with reality, but it again has nothing to do with intuition.

Then he explains what is oh-so very, very obvious and oh-so very, very intuitive--i.e., why there are letters on the ends of some codes and numbers on the ends of others. It should of course be oh-so obvious to us insular Waiheke dummies, and should be oh-so important to us, why it should be as obvious and important as in his 'intuitive' mind, namely, that islanders and visitors from all over the world will instantly know 'intuitively' that when we see a letter on the end that means the service is every 15 minutes, and when we see a number that means it is every 30 minutes.

Of course! That's obvious!!! How silly of us not to get that 'intuitively'!!!! But Mr Homan, apart from your not being able to see that that is not obvious, not intuitive, and not of any use to anyone, not even you, you also do not see that the services with numbers as suffixes are not in fact running at 30-minute intervals. For instance, your timetables say that Rocky Bay buses from the ferry are passing Placemakers at a mix of 20 and 40 minute intervals, which is not 30, but that in fact they are taking the better part of an hour, because they are late or not coming at all because the timetable has been mucked up and because there are not enough drivers. Why are there not enough? Because there never were, and then fifteen quit in disgust at the insane mess that you, Mr Homan, have made of the 'network.'

Mr Homan, you have to learn that your pronouncements do not create reality. Your artefacts are not facts, and you have to base your decisions on facts if you are to make wise decisions for people. Such as the fact that your 'network' needs well over forty drivers (forty-nine says a reliable source) and a fleet of buses that are not there. They were never there at the beginning, and because you caused fifteen  drivers to quit there are far fewer now. And there was never enough accommodation at the bus deport for anything more than a fraction of that number in the lunch/tea-room, another pesky fact.

Your diploma in Road Transport from Rand Africaans University showed you none of those facts nor any others... Nor did your claim on Linked-In of having in excess of thirty years experience, because that would have to have started in the mid 1980s, when your Linked-In CV says you were a university student. University is not experience in the real world. The same applies to the years 1981 to 1984 when your Linked-In CV says you were gaining a Bachelor of Commerce in Business Accounting and Management. The evidence on the Waiheke ground shows that none of that was of any use in the real world.

When Waihekeans did the services they wisely tailored them to match the juice-and-chips resources. But you, Mr Homan, tailored them for champagne-and-caviar resources that did not exist, do not exist, never will exist, and the resultant mess destroyed a large chunk of what was there. Your 'intuition' got everything wrong. If you had the guts you would admit that you have fouled it up, hand it back to Waiheke, and leave us alone. We need a Boer-constrictor crushing the sense out of our bus service like we need sunken ferryies.

FERRIES AND 3 ISLANDS OF BUSES

One of the many things got wrong by the insane mainlanders in Auckland Transport (AT) when they decided recently to revamp Waiheke Island's bus service was that they did not understand that it could not be treated as one clump. It had three distinct part, which could not be integrated in the way so beloved of the cookie-cutter mentality of bureaucrats, and that is how it must be treated.

(1) Buses coming from the ferries to Onetangi and Rocky Bay
Those buses have always had their schedules dictated by the ferries, which means by the sea, and the buses must allow ten minutes for the ferries to empty before they set off for Onetangi and Rocky Bay. If the sea-conditions do not allow the normal swift transit from the mainland to the island, the arrivals have to be later than scheduled, and therefore the buses meeting those ferries must set off later. They cannot run to a fixed timetable. They are tied to the ferries, so when the ferries are late the buses have to be late too--late plus that ten-minute wait so that all the passengers have time to get off the boat. But AT could think only in fixed departure times, and it cut out the ten-minute wait, which was worse than incompetent, like everything else AT did. It also installed electronic displays at the island's ferry terminal, and issued drivers with voluminous books, telling them exactly when to depart--regardless of whether the ferry was late, or had even arrived. Brilliant! >:-(

(2) Buses going to the ferries from Onetangi and Rocky Bay
Those buses could run on a fixed timetable all the time, and always had to, on the assumption that the ferries were leaving the island on time, because passengers needed to operate to that assumption. So the buses left Onetangi and Rocky Bay at fixed times, they took standard lengths of time to get to the ferries, and they would arrive in plenty of time for the scheduled departures. If the ferries were running late, passengers had to wait. But the buses delivering them would run like clockwork. That is what islanders wanted. But mainlanders did not get that. Mainlanders never get the island.

(3) School buses
Only blind fools would try to integrate them with the other two parts. But AT hurled itself straight into that trap. It decided, against the obvious facts, that school buses were to leave the schools at arbitrary fixed times that AT decided, times that did not take into account how long it takes for kids to exit the schools and load the buses. And AT also failed to see that the lengths of time it had allocated for the runs did not take into account the fact that school buses have to stop at virtually every stop to let kids off, and therefore that those buses would always be late changing over to a passenger-to-ferry buses. The result was disastrous, which messed up the clockwork of (2), and therefore people were likely to miss the boats they aimed to catch, needed to catch.

AT started the revamp in the wrong way, because it started with the belief that a revamp was necessary, and that its ideas about what should happen were right. It then asked for feedback on its ideas, but its ideas were always going to be first and foremost, regardless of feedback,  and it got a mess of 900+ submissions, which it did not have the skill to analyse, and it was always biased to it 'We know best' mentality. It also did not have the skill, the honesty and lack of hubris to ask itself the basic question.

It failed to ask itself what it should have asked, what all good designers ask: 'It is working now? Did it work last summer?' The answer to both questions was yes. If it ain't broke don't fix it--but AT 'fixed' it--and the result is a mess. Passengers were betrayed, drivers quit, infrastructure was ruined all over the place at enormous expense.

AT had failed to perceive the underlying thread of those 800 submission, which was that no change was needed; no fiddling about should be done. Sure, add a Kennedy Point service and a Matiatia-Oneroa shuttle--if, and only if--you have enough drivers and buses. But perceive that nothing needs to be done to produce a working system for this summer, because the one we had last summer worked fine. But AT, like all dogmatic bureaucracies, thought it knew best. Events have proved it wrong at every point, and has had to put bandaids on its broken fiddle. A big mess at the beginning of the peak season. Brilliant!!! >:-(

But AT will not, of course, say 'We goofed', then reset everything to last summer, and reset both routes to go via Korora and Waikare Roads to the top of Oneroa as they used to for very good reasons. Reset the stops, and the routes (with that proviso), and the rosters, and the ruined infrastucture. Admit failure. They won't, of course, because they are psychologically incapable of doing that. So we are stuck with the mess.

Sack them. That's what you do when the hired help proves incompetent. AT has proved worse than incompetent. Sack them. Sack them. Sack them.

JUST ANOTHER WEARISOME SAMPLE

The insane, vandalistic, profligate mess that Auckland Transport has made of the bus service on Waiheke Island is just another wearisome manifestation and reminder of the fact that democracy does not exist in New Zealand. We are told it does, and the trappings of elections and seats and councils and Parliament and prancing politicians and fake consultations make it seem to, But what we really have of course is bureaucracy.

We do not have government of the people by the people for the people, we have control of people by dysfunctional persons for vanity and self-aggrandisement. Always they are the same kind of persons: not very intelligent, not perceptive, not wise, devoid of common sense, and their minds closed to everything but their own foolish notions. They are blind to their follies and incapable of admitting to and resiling from their insane blunders.

Psychologically they are weak, they have low self-esteem, and their public actions are useless attempts to compensate for their weaknesses with the fake strength of assaults on people, the exercise of titular power. They are public thugs not public servants, malign bullies not benign hirelings. They do not act for their own good or for the good of society, because they cannot, and they are incapable of seeing their psychological, mental, emotional and social dysfunctionality.

When dysfunctional individuals gain control of any public entity they make it socially dysfunctional. It reproduces in society the dysfunctionality of its individual parts.

HUB CRAZY

It was revealed by a spokesman for Auckland Transport at the December 2019 meeting of the Waiheke Local Board that the 'rationale' for what AT has done to Belgium Street was to make it a 'hub'.

For AT's notion of 'rationale' common sense must read irrational craziness, arrogant insanity, worse-than-incompetence, blind nonsense, profligate waste, stupid vandalism, et hoc genus omne (Latin for all that kind of thing).

In making its insane mess of the street, to satisfy its obsession that it was a hub, AT overlooked three Waiheke facts. First that it never was a 'hub' and never should have been thought of as one; second there already was on the island in front of Placemakers the perfect multiple-transfer stop, where anyone could transfer from any bus to any other, because that was the one stop through which all buses passed in both directions, and it was big enough for three buses; third that because that stop was off the road it was eminently safe--there was no need to cross a road, all you had to to was walk along the footpath from one bus to another or wait for the one you wanted to come through a short time later. And there is a cafe 20 metres away to eat and drink at if you want.

Normally four buses would come through that stop. First the one from Rocky Bay going to the ferry at Matiatia, next the one from Onetangi going to the ferry, next the one from the ferry going to Onetangi, then the one from the ferry going to Rocky Bay. At some times of the day there was also an express bus to Onetangi, making a fifth passing through that stop. There was a spread of about ten minutes. That had been worked out long ago by people who understood Waiheke, enabling islanders and visitors alike to move about the island. Its placement about two-thirds of the way along both routes also made it perfect.

But AT has no understanding of any of that; it doesn't have a clue. It was blind to that eminently sensible arrangement, which worked superbly well.

That blindness and insanity piled on its hub obsession caused AT to wreck Belgium Street, by filling in the bus-bay, which forced it to delete the vehicle-refuge for turning vehicles and the pedestrian-refuge in the middle of the pedestrian-crossing; and then to wreck the Placemakers stop by changing it to a place for buses to do a U-turn, although the depot in which they had been turning for many decades is only 120 metres further on. AT also stopped some buses from going through there when it revamped the bus service recently. Ponzi insanity.

AT: obsessed with 'hub' and distracted by its insanity, not like James Dean who could be forgiven for being by shiny chrome, a whitewall and a pair of shapely legs.

How to cap off your hub obsession: add insanity.

And some conjurer's misdirection by AT does nothing to hide the outrageous mess it has made. Its insane stupidity cannot be hidden this 'Christmas present' (to quote Cath Handley). The insanity remains; calling it a Christmas present is an insult what Christmas truly is.

TEMPORARY BANDAIDS ON A WRECKED FIDDLE

By making minor, temporary tweaks to the mess it has made of Waiheke's bus services, Auckland Transport has tacitly admitted that it got things wrong. But, being insane bureaucrats, it cannot bring itself to look in the mirror and say 'mea culpa' and repair anything it has wrecked

In the 'more details' part of that media spin, the chair of the Waiheke Local Board, Cath Handley, praised AT for a tweak to the HOP payment card for Waihekeans travelling on buses and ferries to the mainland. But she and her Board have obviously been complicit in the mess that AT has made of the island's bus service. It is that that she should have been 'working hard' to fix (to use her phrase).

Neither AT nor the Board have shown any willingness to see that the solution to the problem is to get rid of everything that AT has done. Reset the routes and timetables to what they were last summer--the ones done by Waihekeans, which worked--and also reset the first part of the routes to the optimum: i.e., to what they were years ago, namely to run both routes round Korora and Waikare Roads, thus taking the buses out of the main drag and using the stop at the top of Oneroa outside Waiheke Real Estate.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And if your 'fix' broke everything, abandon your 'fix.' That is the sane thing to do. But insanity can never bring itself to do that. It can never admit that its looney fiddling has wrecked the fiddle. All it can bring itself to do is blame something else--in this case, the driver-shortage that it itself caused--and put 'temporary' bandaids on its fiddled wreckage.

Meanwhile, underlining the point, at the stop outside Placemakers, people wait for buses in the rain, because the insane fools that wrecked the island's well-made, well-tuned fiddle have yet to replace the perfectly serviceable bus-shelter that they hocked off for $100.

AT's Service Network Manager, Pete Moth, says AT has tried to balance the needs of residents across the island, while facing a shortage of drivers. 'We will monitor use on the Ostend Rd service--so that when we review the service, we can assess its value on Waiheke Island.'

In that 'we' is the problem. We will monitor, because we know best, we know best, we know best, we know best, we know best... No, Mr Moth, you know nothing of any value, best is nowhere in functioning. Your 'trying' is an arrogant  lie when used in the sense of making an effort to do well. But you are certainly very trying in the sense of making islanders suffer daily the consequences of your entity's insane fiddling with our home. Our home. But AT's arrogant insanity can never get that, can never care a fig for that, can never leave us to ourselves and our hearts.

AT THE BREAKER OF LAWS

In the insanity it has inflicted on Waiheke Island's bus service, Auckland Transport has broken at least seven enactments--at least seven sections in four Acts of Parliament: the Local Government (Auckland Council) Act 2009, the Local Government Act 2002, the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990, and the Imperial Laws Application Act 1988.

But when did sociopaths care anything for the rule of law? They never care about anything except their own vain notions. But, sooner or later lawbreakers, always have to face the rule of law...

AT CREATED THE DRIVER SHORTAGE

Auckland Transport is blaming the driver shortage for the grossly dysfunctional situation that now exists in Waiheke Island's bus service, since AT revamped it in early December [2019].

That is a blatant lie. There were enough drivers last summer, when the timetables and rosters were done by the Waiheke Bus Company (WBC), and more drivers have been trained since. But now there has beens a steady stream of drivers resigning on the island, all because of the insane shemozzle created by AT that they are expected to work to--namely, AT's insane, impossible timetables and rosters. One of the effects of that insanity was that some drivers were forced to be away from their homes and families for sixteen hours. That is no way to treat human beings.

On top of that, a new manager at the WBC has proved less than optimal (to put it politely).

And old saying puts neatly much of the problem: 'Those who have a power but newly gained are ever haughty of spirit.' That is AT and the new manager: combined they made the perfect storm, and there was no sailing through it. Vanity, stupidity and insanity combined to sink the ship.

The result was that by late December [2019] fifteen drivers had quit. Forty-odd are needed for the summer timetable, so to lose fifteen destroyed any hope of making the revamp work--even if it had not been insane . And those drivers were recently trained, so all the money spent to train them was down the toilet.

On top of that, the revampers failed to work out how many buses they would need. So they found themselves short of both drivers and buses. And it is all their fault. They blame the consequences of their insanity as the cause of the mess. No, they are the cause. They are both cause and effect. None of the decision-makers knew what they were doing, they do not understand Waiheke, they are dysfunctional, incompetent and damned fools, and they expected good human-beings to be happy to obey them and somehow manage to do the insane and impossible--right at the start of the tourist season. Well done!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There is a very skilled and experienced maker of rosters in the WBC, who offered to do them, but they refused to allow that. They wanted to do them; they did; they made an insane mess of it; and drivers are quitting. They also refused to use last summer's timetables, because, of course, they thought they knew better. But their 'better' is insane. Literally. It lacks sanity.

So they sowed the wind and are reaping the whirlwind. Blaming something else for the bad weather is typical of sociopaths/bureaucrats--those who rule from the black swamp. They cannot see shemozzles created by them; all they can see are opportunities to do yet more damage, but they cannot see that it is damage, they think it's brilliant. They attempt to lie their way out. Of course.

Making the shortage worse is AT's damnably incompetent summer timetable, which has created a noticeable jump in the number of buses trundling about displaying 'Sorry Not In Service'. If we had a better timetable, such as the one that the Waiheke Bus Company did last summer, there would not be all that redundant effort. Good designers of systems eliminate redundant effort, they do not create it.

.........

Now it is obvious that they want to destroy a beautiful pohutukawa tree that is in the way of their insanity (in front of the Waiheke Living department store). It is just coming into flower--the New Zealand Christmas Tree. Happy Christmas from the insane swamp! >:-((

This is what that tree looked like nine years ago, before AT muscled its way on to the island (the one at the far end of the footpath). It is more than twice the size now, doing very well, and just coming into flower.

Fortunately--we hope--AT has not been granted a resource-consent to take that tree out or do anything to it, and it will not be says the Council, because it is a native, a pohutukawa, and because of its size. We also hope they will not kill the tree by stealth, by the work being done around it.

So unless AT resorts to midnight vandalism or daylight audacity and take it out illegally, it is stuck with the fact that its insanity has reduced the only transfer-stop on the island from a three-bus stop to a one-bus travesty.

And, to pour salt into the wound, they hocked off the bus shelter shown above for $100, although it had many years of service-life left, and have yet to put anything in its place. So a much-used stop has nowhere for islanders and visitors to shelter from the rain when they wait for a bus--and because AT has messed up the timetable and created the driver-shortage, that can be a long wait.

REALITY ATTACKS AT'S INSANITY

Auckland Transport is being forced by reality to ditch part of the insanity it inflicted on Waiheke Island in its recent 'revamp' of our bus service, in which all it did was to make an arrogant and insane mess of it. It has been forced to restore a small part of what had been there and had worked for years.

Of course its spin in that article blames the 'shortage' of bus-drivers, when the real cause was its own worse-than-incompetent messing about, at our huge expense, which created a need for drivers that never used to exist and never should have existed. Bad design needed more buses and drivers than reality ever had.

But sociopaths/bureaucrats can never admit to their own blunders and fix them. Public servants can. Sociopaths/bureaucrats never can. They always have to pretend something, such as a shortage of drivers, or that their new action is only 'interim', or that their 'revamp' was based on 'rationale' when in fact it was entirely irrational, etc., etc. They blame anything and everything except the damned fools in their mirrors.

Those who design systems in which people are to work must always remember that they are not designing systems they are designing people's lives, and people matter. When they fail to remember that they will produce an evil mess. As AT has on Waiheke.

The mechanics of design must include three things. They must look for and eliminate bottlenecks; they must look for and eliminate imbalance between flows; and they must look for and eliminate wasted action. AT did the opposite. It created them.

It created traffic and pedestrian bottlenecks in Oneroa and Ostend, for example. And it made what was already the longest run longer, by taking the Blackpool loop off the Onetangi run and putting it on the Rocky Bay run, which made it impossible for the Rocky Bay bus to get round in time, so more buses were needed to cover that run. And the sudden jump in the number of buses showing 'Not in service' is glaring evidence of a huge amount of wasted effort, and thus yet more proof of very bad design. Then there is the hideously expensive vandalism in road-works all over the place.

What AT should do, what it must do, is restore the whole service, both logistically and physically, to what was there before it attacked it with its insanity. It must restore it to the sanity that was there before.

That means it should, it must:
1) Make the island's two routes--Onetangi and Rocky Bay--what they were last summer, but also restore the first part of the Onetangi route to what it was even further back, so that it again goes along Korora Road and Waikare Road and stops in front of Waiheke Real Estate, where there is room for two buses, off the main drag, and where there is a big paved area for lots of passengers to mill about (outside Lazy Lounge there is neither, so using that creates a traffic and pedestrian bottleneck)

2) Destroy all the vandalism it has perpetrated in road-works, especially Belgium Street and the stop outside Placemakers. Make those as they were, so that the Placemakers stop is again what it has long been--the island's only full transfer stop, through which all the buses pass in both directions in a very safe place. That means telling the bus company that the U-turn is again to be in the depot, period. And AT must abandon its nonsense (its 'rationale') that Belgium Street is a 'hub'. That is bunkum, that is folly, that is insanity, that thought has ruined the street and created unsafe situations for traffic and pedestrians.

3) Leave the organisation of the service wholly to good-hearted islanders.

Get off our island AT; sack yourselves off our island AT; and take your insanity, your sociopathy and your profligate vandalism with you. We need you like we need a bullet in the brain.

PONZI STUPIDITY

Auckland Transport (AT) ignores logic. There is only one way of arriving at a true conclusion: you must start with a true premise and reason logically and honestly from it. If the premise is false or the reasoning is false conclusion must be false.

AT starts from a false premise, and therefore of course arrives at a false conclusion. It then manifests that with a fact in the ground in concrete, steel, etc.--an artefact that must be monumentally stupid because it is founded on falsehood and arrived at by an illogical path.

But then it makes matters worse. It then bases yet more 'reasoning' on that foolish artefact--it uses it as a premise for further action, and of course because that is a false premise, the next conclusion is also false, and worse. It is a Ponzi scheme of stupidity, with each input relying on the previous one and the notion that the whole edifice will hang together.

For example, they ruined Belgium Street on Waiheke Island by filling in the bus-bay with concrete, which narrowed the road, so then they had to eliminate the vehicle-refuge in front of the shops, the refuge people needed to wait safely before they could turn into the parking area, and they also had to eliminate the pedestrian-refuge in the middle of the pedestrian-crossing in one of the busiest roads on the island in front of homes for the elderly.

Then they noticed that the pedestrian-crossing had been fouled up (by them, but they can never see their own bungles), so now they plan to move the pedestrian-crossing to the west, which means they will oblige themselves to destroy the vehicle-refuge in the rest of Belgium Street as well as remove the much-needed parking spaces on both sides of the street.

Ponzi Rules, OK! >:-(

Which is why AT cannot design or organise its way out of a wet paper bag with the help of nuclear weapons, a squadron of bulldozers, forty-five pea-shooters and a barrage of tiddlywinks.