Sprangles

They’ve recently opened the new Southern Railway line, and yesterday Lana & I took the train to work for the first time. It was really great — much smoother and cooler than catching the bus, and quicker too.

We still catch the same bus from our house, but instead of taking us all the way to the city it now takes us to the Bullcreek Interchange Station: a railway/bus station in the middle of the freeway (since the railway line goes down the middle of the freeway).

I noticed yesterday on my first trip through the station that there’s a little Kiosk in the station, owned by a hopeful-looking Asian couple.

(The security guard wasn’t very happy with me taking that photo. Maybe I was planning to blow up the kiosk?)

Nobody that got off my bus went into the kiosk before getting on the train, and I’m not surprised. I don’t think they’ve thought too carefully about their business, and I don’t expect they’ll be operating in a year without making some big changes.

For one thing, their shop is chock full of drinks and food. The station in which they’re located is strictly an interchange station for people going from bus to train and vice versa. It’s in the middle of the freeway, so they won’t get any traffic from casual passers-by. TransPerth forbids food and drink on buses and trains so they’re selling something that people aren’t technically allowed to buy. Certainly people break the rules and will buy stuff to eat and drink later, but it’s hardly an optimal market.

So then I started thinking about things that people might want to buy on the way through. Newspapers? They don’t sell those. Magazines? Nope. Stationery? Nope. Drycleaning? Nope.

At the very least observing the life of this little business is going to make my commute a bit more interesting.