GREAT NEW IDEA, in getting public transport for people to do

[tranzitjim]

Listening to the radio in the last few seconds had reminded me of something I want to talk about. (Well it had been the last few seconds, right on half an hour ago when I first began to do this post)

THE ISSUE
The greatest issue is getting public transport not only in places of demand, but operating along routes where people want to travel.

Naturally, the idea is to find out the motoring habits of automobile drivers, with the idea that we already have people who need to travel between point A and point B, although they are currently doing it by the use of an Automobile. A ready customer base for any bus we choose to set up along that route.

Simple really.

THE IDEA
The best way to get people onto public transport is,
#1, Find out where motorists drive
#2, Put a service in that goes the way they want to go
#3, See them all start using that service.

WHAT WE SHOULD DO
Make use of registration plate readers to read the plates of motorists, cross reference with who lives at which location, and see that...
...x amount of people visit this venue
...y hour of the day at that venue
...z postcode of which these people visit here from.

EXAMPLES
Naturally, the best way is to get the registration plate reading technology and try forming a pattern of driver travel routes much like the Metcard and MyKi systems do for public transport.

All you need to do is....
....set up a plate reading device at the entry of a point of interest like a shopping center, get Vicroads to cross reference that with their database of addresses, tell you...
... ... how many visitors in each hour live in each postcode.

What had inspired me this moment was recent news that police are doing this crackdown by checking all registration plates on all vehicles leaving the city of Melbourne. This could also be a great source of such information. See how many V/Locities we need to get, just to handle all these extra holiday traffic.

One more opportunity, could you make use of tollroad data in this way? They would do one step better. Say on Eastlink, they can tell you....
....how many Ringwood residents went towards the city. Cross reference this with CityLink data, to see how many of them continued along that route.
....how many Ringwood residents got off around the Dandenong area
....how many Ringwood residents went all the way to Frankston.

Lastly why not try and get traffic fine data in the same way. Not only is this a handy source of 'these people where here at this time' type data, BUT, someone who is getting a lot of fines in the post, would have to be the most keen to ditch the car for public transport. If only there would be a public transport service operating at around their travel times and direction.

Quick summary of sources
++ Cameras set up by DOI or PTV at points of interest
++ Police crackdown events
++ Local councils checking who is parking in an area
++ Toll road data
++ Traffic fines

To conclude
What do people think of this idea?

What other sources of registration plate data could we obtain?

[BroadGauge]

What had inspired me this moment was recent news that police are doing this crackdown by checking all registration plates on all vehicles leaving the city of Melbourne. This could also be a great source of such information. See how many V/Locities we need to get, just to handle all these extra holiday traffic.

You could do all sorts of evaluation of licence plates and work out that the same five families all drive from Eaglemont to their holiday houses on the Great Ocean Road every second weekend, and run a new express bus route from Heidelberg Station to Apollo Bay and you'd find none of them would be interested in using it.

You can't expect people to dump using cars by providing public transport routes for every obscure trip that people make, and people going on a trip to the country/beach or whatever probably couldn't be less interested in catching a train or bus down there, that leaves them stuck in the township not able to get anywhere else except by walking (when they would have used their car whilst down there otherwise).

Nearly every origin/destination combo that people actually want to go between in any number already has a direct link between them anyway.

[Fleet Lists]

I agree with the final paragraph of the previous post but the problem is that compared with say 40 or 50 years ago, the origins/destination combinations are now much more varied. And they are becoming more so every year.

Hence it is becoming more and more difficult for public transport to cover all these combinations as most would see only very people using most of these new combinations - thus uneconomical to provide public transport for them.

[simonl]

Which is where interchange comes in. The rest of Australia and most of the world has shown the way to NSW on this point - don't put obstacles in the way of interchange, like fare systems.



admin: quoting removed - no need to quote the entire message directly above.