Few things infuriate me more than irresponsible driving. A car, in the hands of an idiot, is more deadly a weapon than a pistol in the same idiot’s hands. While a gun is only capable of maiming or killing people one bullet at a time, a single act of carelessness or stupidity behind the wheel can take out — as Thomas Towle tragically discovered — several people in one fell swoop.

As a daily tram user, I witness one particularly dangerous act of stupidity on a depressingly regular basis: drivers failing to observe the law that they must not pass the rear of a stopped tram, thereby allowing passengers to disembark safely.

In high school, a mate’s mother was killed in such an incident, so I’m especially sensitive about this all-too-common traffic violation. So are tram drivers, but the most severe censure they’re able to give motorists who zoom past their stopped trams is the embarrassingly impotent bell treatment: take that (ding!) and that (ding!) and THAT (dingding!) you naughty man or woman!

Of course, in most cases the drivers are so far beyond the tram by this time that they won’t even hear the bell, let alone realise how close they’ve come to injuring or killing someone. That is, until today.

This morning, at a very busy intersection, I was the last passenger disembarking from my tram. As I stepped down onto the road, I noticed an approaching taxi that didn’t look like it was going to stop. It wasn’t moving very quickly — the traffic light ahead was red — but it showed no intention of slowing down until it reached the stop line.

I held out my hand to indicate that the driver should stop, but he completely ignored me and kept driving. In a remarkable stroke of luck, the planets aligned and the timing was perfect for me to indulge my righteous indignation — so as the taxi drove between me and the tram, I sunk my knee into its back door. Really fucking hard.

It produced what I can only assume was the most satisfying crunching sound since George W Bush fell off his Segway.

Apparently the Melbourne public transport system has an image problem.

ALMOST half of Victorians think the state’s public transport system is worse than five years ago.

The latest Age/Nielsen poll found that 49% of Victorians think public transport is worse, while 27% say it’s better.

Dissatisfaction with public transport appears to cross the political divide, with 48% of Labor voters and 54% of Liberal voters saying it is worse.

And of course public transport Minister Lynne Kosky is completely dodging the issue and further enhancing her image as a complete tool.

The report, released by the Department of Infrastructure this month, found 30,000 more people were working in the city centre in 2006 than in 2001. Despite this jump, almost 5000 fewer people drove to work.

And the number of people who walked to work in the city centre rose to more than 5%, up from less than 3% in 2001.

Ms Kosky said she was extremely pleased with the results. “People are voting with their feet,” she said.

Remember, this is the same Minister who has blamed train commuters for delays by taking too long to get in and out of carriages, blamed commuters for expecting that the train or tram will show up when the timetable says it will, and demanded that workplaces and schools change their behaviour to match the public transport service rather than the other way around.

Now, everyone has a couple of hundred public transport horror stories but here’s my most recent.

On Sunday McBec and I wanted to get from Brunswick to St Kilda to meet friends at the pub. We left home just after 2pm and didn’t expect the trip to take much longer than an hour. The Sydney Rd Street Festival was on so we thought we’d walk our way through and grab a tram at the end of Sydney Rd. However, we got there and found the tram service replaced by buses. After waiting 20 minutes for a bus we walked, frustrated, to Jewell train station to catch the 3.04pm service to the city.

Of course, Connex regretted that the 3.04pm to the city had been cancelled.

So we walked back to Sydney Rd and watched a bus go past just before we got to the stop. 20 minutes later we finally got on a ridiculously overcrowded bus to Elizabeth St in the city. It was 3:20pm. By the time we got to St Kilda it was just past 4pm — a travel time from Brunswick of two hours. We could’ve driven to Bendigo in the same amount of time.

We don’t own a car because we live in the inner city and there is public transport almost everywhere we need to go. But every single day I thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster that I don’t rely on public transport to get to work like so many other poor saps who either have no choice or try to do the right thing by leaving the car at home. I get homicidal when trains are cancelled when I’m trying to get to the pub, let alone get home after a ten hour day at work.

It’s time for Lynne Kosky and the Brumby government to wake up and provide a public transport system that meets the demands of the people of Melbourne and that justifies the overblown cost of a ticket to use it.