Re: [Sydney] Ticketing - was Light Rail into the CBD?

[Gobbledok <chippies@ihug.com.au>]

Bradley Torr wrote:

> a n d R e w ; <rods42@hotmail.com> wrote in article
> <9f56m4$3sr$1@bunyip.cc.uq.edu.au>...
>
> > The last time I looked, you have to be willing to accept any job
> > with up to 90 mins travel time each way in order to keep on
> > receiving a Centrelink payment (eg. if you were offered a job
> > with 80 mins travel time and refused it because it would take
> > too long to travel, you would get penalised by Centrelink).
>
> When I was on unemployment last year and I asked the fellows down at
> Centrelink about this, they said that the 90 minutes was just a 'guideline'
> issued by the Department of Social Security and that there really was no
> fixed guide - the regulations (or legislation, as may be the case) merely
> says 'reasonable distance' - a manager there said that 'reasonable' was
> defined as 'if there's anybody in your neighbourhood who travels a certain
> distance to work, then you should be able to do that too.'
>
> They couldn't be specific as to what 'reasonable distance' was in my case,
> and I wasn't about to knock on 200 doors in my neighbourhood to ask 'So
> mate, where abouts do you work?'
>
> I wonder how this rule applies to people who have poor access to public
> transport - someone has a car and drives 90 minutes to work; an unemployed
> person without a car has to catch a bus or train which takes 150 minutes -
> is he still expected to travel the same distance?
>
> At the time I was on unemployment, and I wasn't living too close to a
> railway station - about half an hour's walk through a very shady area
> dominated by prostitutes, drunkards, junkies and not very well lit, and
> with no integrated bus/rail connection, last bus around 8pm. It usually
> took me well over two hours to get to the city centre of Sydney - and these
> days, employment tends to be much more dispersed around Sydney, so many
> jobs would have been much much farther.
>
> As it happens, I know that there were people in my precinct who worked in
> Sydney, but they all drove - as railway station parking is extremely
> limited and the buses here are abysmal when it comes to integration with
> the trains.
>
> Regards
> BT

When I was on unemployment benefits in 1999 (straight out of university), I had
to leave the Hunter valley, and head down to Sydney to look for work. I was
staying with my sister in Penrith, and I was offerred a retail traineeship with
Coles. There was a Coles supermarket only two blocks from where my sister
lived, yet Coles placed me in a store at Ramsgate. I used to have to walk to
Penrith Railway Station, catch a train from Penrith to Central (approx 1 hour),
a train from Central to Rockdale (approx 15 minutes), a bus from Rockdale to
Ramsgate (approx 15 minutes), and I was at work...the travelling time took up
nearly two and half hours, including waiting times at stations, and walking to
the station...and the guy at Centrelink I spoke to said that I am able to
include waiting times for the next available train, AND, the walking distance
to the railway station...and basically, if I had the job anywhere outside a 15
minute walking distance from Central station, I could have knocked back the job
offer, and still gotten benefits.