Travelling to the cities from Armidale is a real problem for non-car owners. The Greyhound coach bound for Brisbane arrives at the Armidale Visitors Centre at 2.30 a.m. and the one to Sydney at 1.30 a.m. The coach is frequently late and passengers have to wait outside the building in the cold and sometimes wet and windy weather. There is not even a place to sit except on the concrete floor.
Surely the front section of the Visitors Centre could be opened for a period of time for passengers to wait. Armidale is one of the coldest cities in Australia with a large number of students. Not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to fly to the capital cities or even to wait in a car until the coach arrives. Surely Council is not so poor it cannot provide a heated waiting room as it did in the nineties, especially in winter when the temperature plunges down at night. I am a frequent traveller on Greyhound and I recently travelled to Brisbane and back. On both occasions the coach was late and the passengers waited for over an hour in the cold and foggy night.
Please think a little about the poor travellers and the elderly who don’t drive cars.
Halimah Mohd-Arif,
Armidale
