WHAT is it about Canberra that has students and healthy public servants with lanyards around their necks, taking up those seats on buses marked as intended for use by the disabled, pregnant and seniors?

And then they bury their heads in their tablets and smartphones so they don’t see that category of passenger get on and, as required, give up their seat.

It seems never to occur to anyone that a passenger getting on a bus at a hospital stop may be coming from treatment.

There was a public consultation, a pilot and an agreement by Action Buses to roll out a series of reforms, including seats marked as “reserved” to remove the ambiguity.

That undertaking has never been actioned and Chief Minister Andrew Barr has been persistent in not answering why not.

Some reforms were implemented, the yellow bar on such seats, the different colour fabric to distinguish such seats, the announcements (last) on the loudspeaker at interchanges, but the public is seemingly ignorant of the intent of these seats for a specific-need passenger – and the able bodied will use them on every occasion as a first resort and expect those on crutches, pregnant and 90-year-olds to go to the back of the bus.

Our university vice-chancellors have been asked by members of the public to include bus manners in their orientation material as students are major offenders. School principals have also been asked to include the bus-courtesy message in school assemblies with responses that include the advice that schools are not responsible for student behaviour outside the schoolyard.

If the priority seating of the disabled, pregnant and elderly is included in bus-driver training then it is unsurprising that drivers do not enforce the intent given the violence they may well be subjected to these days. As a general rule, if a relevant passenger does ask for this seat, there is too frequently a blanket refusal by the occupant to vacate.

Shame on Canberran commuters.

Grumpy is an occasional column dedicated purely to things that get up your nose. Readers are invited to vent (no more than 300 words, please) at editor@citynews.com.au