It’s no secret that Perth is more than a little TransPerthphobic. Getting people to catch public transport has been the bane of Governments and city planners since time began.
Sure there has been some success getting those living along the eastern gentrification belt of the Midland line but generally people avoid the system like the proverbial floater in the Crown Towers pool.
So to inspire the ageing millennial population to give public transport a go again, TransPerth has decided to bring back a true icon of yesteryear – the 106.
The 106 was a grand chariot servicing the CBD to Freo route via Canning Highway. For reasons that no one will ever understand the route was renamed to the 910 and with the rebrand lost a generation of hearts.
For many, the 106 was the first bus a scummy little Freo tagger tried to roll you for your new runners on aths carnival day. Or perhaps it was the first time you witnessed the effects of a morning’s worth of goon on a man.
Needless to say, there was never a dull moment on the 106. A grand route that through the SOR elite into the oven with SOR riff-raff and baked a glorious cake of public transport memories.
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A spokesperson for TransPerth told The Times,
“Nostalgia is a powerful motivator and we hope a bunch of millennials just jump on the bus for old time’s sake. Then they’ll realise it isn’t so bad as they sail over the Causeway to work. Some might even bang it down Canning Highway to Freo and get into a fight at the Freo bus port like the good ol days”
The 106 will be gracing the roads from this weekend and millennials are encouraged to whip out their old Discmans and “give it a go”. We spoke to one millennial who said he was keen as beans adding,
“In many ways, the 106 made me the man I am today. It taught me that at any moment you could be in the safety of sunny South Perth but be staring down the barrel of a couple fingerblasting on the back seat while pumping out the worst Aussie hip hop you’ve ever heard from a stolen Nokia. It kept me on my toes, it was beautiful”
Freo has also thrown their support behind the plan and hope it will motivate bus loads of pissed up millennials to jump on and give Freo nightlife another go. It wasn’t the quickest route to Freo but it was the most eventful and after all, isn’t that what nights out are all about?
It’s an ambitious plan but they have to try something.
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