Is it time that the nightrider network was revamped?

[dex]

In fairness Peter, i spent a lot of my younger days pretty much drunk. Something I'm not too proud of. My parents dont drink, never have. Although i never went into the city and i never caused or got myself into any trouble.
There is a home for Alcoholic men in Greenvale called Corpus Christi. Meet a few of these guys, whether they're sober or not and it's enough to turn you of booze. I should say, it worked for me. They drop off the perch at one a week. I've seen a lot of residents who I've known for years kick the bucket. It's well and truly worked for me. They're pretty much drinking from dawn till dusk. They get on the bus smelling of all sorts of things, swearing, carrying on and being a general pain in the neck, anytime of the day.
Education is the key, as is moderation and knowing you're limitations.

[Peter1805]

Education is the key, as is moderation and knowing you're limitations.

Yes, it's the key to most things mate, pity our State government doesn't want to know about it.

I could be wrong, but have we strayed slightly off topic?

[dex]

Maybe, not sure, but i could really go for a nice coldy right about now lol....

[werd]

However, if I had my way and an endless supply of cash I would:

- Separate the Craigieburn route into two routes. One would run via Airport West to terminate at Broadmeadows, with the other running along Lygon St and Sydney Rd. (At the same time the Epping route would be altered to run along Smith St, with times offset from the Eltham route to provide a 15 minute frequency.)

- Separate the Bayswater/Rowville route into two routes. The Rowville route would run along Toorak Rd and Burwood Hwy then the reverse of the current loop to terminate at Knox City. The Bayswater route would run along Bridge Rd and Canterbury Rd, then via along the existing loop to Knox City.

- Separate the Cranbourne route into two routes. One would run via Endeavour Hills to Cranbourne, and the other would run via Fountain Gate to Pakenham. Both would run through to the city.

- Extend the Melton route into the city, via Sunshine, Highpoint, Footscray and Flemington.

- Reroute the Sunbury route via Churchill Ave, Hampshire Rd, Ballarat Rd, McIntyre Rd and Main Rd to St Albans, then via Main Rd and Kings Rd to Watergardens before joining the freeway. In addition the route would run via Docklands in both directions.

- Extend the Epping route to do a loop via South Morang and Mill Park.

- Truncate the Eltham route to Greensborough.

- Run the Werribee route via Tarneit on the inbound trip.

- Run the Croydon route directly along Whitehorse Rd, and the Doncaster route along Doncaster Rd.

Most ideas good for now but if I had my way I would make all nightriders stop at only train stations. Not all would stop all stations but all lines, except Eltham-Hursbridge and Stony Point would see service. With separate routes for trams. At major stations local nightrider routes would also run.

[RailwayBus]

Most ideas good for now but if I had my way I would make all nightriders stop at only train stations.

Yeah good on ya, take the service away from 90% of those who use it. Well done.

[werd]

Most ideas good for now but if I had my way I would make all nightriders stop at only train stations.

Yeah good on ya, take the service away from 90% of those who use it. Well done.

I would also run feeder services for everyone else. I would also run smartbus extras where needed.
Train/tram links would also become part of this night network

[Luke]

Most ideas good for now but if I had my way I would make all nightriders stop at only train stations.

I would also run feeder services for everyone else. I would also run smartbus extras where needed.
Train/tram links would also become part of this night network

So you expect people to wait around at some very unsafe areas (Werribee, Frankston, Footscray, Dandenong, Ringwood all come to mind) for a decent amount of time... good work genius

[CB80]

Why not run a train then?

[V981]

Why not run a train then?

If ran trains, you could essentially scrap the Nightrider bus service entirely.

[krustyklo]

The problem with suggesting NightRiders emulate Sydney in being purely a replacement all night heavy rail service is that the current route network serves many locations without a normal rail service. For example, LaTrobe University would generate a few boardings, yet is nowhere near a railway station (Macleod is about 20 minutes walk through an area I wouldn't want to walk along too much at night). Locations such as these would miss out.

The converse problem applies - many railway stations would be very poor traffic generators at night and some would be less than savoury places to be waiting for a bus. Then of course there's the NIMBY factor of buses travelling along small suburban streets at night to access some station locations to regularly collect or drop a sum total of almost nobody.

I think the NightRider system is fine as it is - some places get better public transport from the city at 3am in the morning that they do at 3pm. Personally there are things I would fix first such as the relatively poor 3pm services - or if there is no need for that whether there is genuinely a need for the 3am services in those locations.

The main changes I would seriously consider would be making some routes more direct by introducing new routes that also serve other locations, and investigating whether there are other middle of the night traffic flows that might be served that currently aren't. I'd also consider some targetted normal route upgrades such as the 86 or 75 or maybe the 59. Even then, you'd have to weigh up whether it would be worth cannibalising some NightRider traffic to provide these services and what could be achieved as an alternative. For example, would there be some benefit to redirecting the Eltham NightRider to run via Macleod and Watsonia stations if the 86 ran all night, or would it be better to keep the existing service as a network connection, or does the current service have flows from locations away from the 86 that would be critical enough to retain the current route whilst the 86 serves new flows, or provides a more direct service / diverse range of drop offs not current provided by the NightRider. Or is it really worth running the 86 at night at all if there is the NightRider...

To be honest, I can't think of any railway line that would be needed to run all night apart from special events like New Years Eve. Apart from the CBD and South Yarra (for Chapel St), I can't think of many locations along existing railway lines that would genuinely produce enough people to regularly fill a 3 carriage train every half an hour. And the problem there would be would such concentrations of users all be going enough in the same direction (ie to locations along the rail line) to make the service worth while?

To be honest I'm not especially convinced there is a huge market at 3am in the morning from shift workers either, as mentioned. There are certainly a few high profile examples such as Crown and the airport, but would they fill enough buses operating the full NightRider service on every other weekday evening? Even at hourly frequencies? Is Melbourne's nightclub scene really buzzing at 2am on a Wednesday morning? I'm genuinely interesting in hearing if there is, but I admit I would be greatly surprised! If the money is there, let's spend it on incrementally improving services more likely to put bums on seats, including the incremental one or two bus improvements to services Revenue likes to mention on here every now and then. I suspect there would be far greater bang for the buck given how little money is going to be spent on PT for the next few years.

[RailwayBus]

The problem with suggesting NightRiders emulate Sydney in being purely a replacement all night heavy rail service

As already mentioned above, Sydney's night time network is not only a heavy rail replacement.

They have three kinds of all night services:
1. Night Rider - this is the rail replacement, running 7 nights a week.
2. Regular routes from city - This includes routes to places like Bondi, Manly, Coogee, Parramatta, Castle Hill, Epping - May run 7 nights or just Fridays and Saturday's depending on route.
3. Feeder routes from Parramatta - these run on Friday and Saturday nights, to places like Castle Hill and Chester Hill.

[werd]

The problem with suggesting NightRiders emulate Sydney in being purely a replacement all night heavy rail service

As already mentioned above, Sydney's night time network is not only a heavy rail replacement.

They have three kinds of all night services:
1. Night Rider - this is the rail replacement, running 7 nights a week.
2. Regular routes from city - This includes routes to places like Bondi, Manly, Coogee, Parramatta, Castle Hill, Epping - May run 7 nights or just Fridays and Saturday's depending on route.
3. Feeder routes from Parramatta - these run on Friday and Saturday nights, to places like Castle Hill and Chester Hill.

Final Some kind of understanding in my plans.
1-Nightrider service.
2-Train/Tram replacement services.
3- Smartbus extras.

[krustyklo]

As already mentioned above, Sydney's night time network is not only a heavy rail replacement.

They have three kinds of all night services:
1. Night Rider - this is the rail replacement, running 7 nights a week.
2. Regular routes from city - This includes routes to places like Bondi, Manly, Coogee, Parramatta, Castle Hill, Epping - May run 7 nights or just Fridays and Saturday's depending on route.
3. Feeder routes from Parramatta - these run on Friday and Saturday nights, to places like Castle Hill and Chester Hill.

Sorry, I did read what you wrote - promise!

Even so, the NightRider rail replacement service would be the main backbone of the all night transport system to all parts of Sydney - I would be guessing that the regular services mentioned would all be Sydney Buses (i.e. government run buses) services? If so, then only available in Sydney Buses areas. In much the same way that most of the decent bus services after the end of the evening peak were those in (former) MMTB areas and the all night services were all MMTB routes prior to when they were discontinued? Did any private operators in Melbourne run all night services?

Even with your clarification of what Sydney does, I still don't think our NightRider should be changed to a rail replacement service as proposed above earlier in this thread. In fact what I said actually conforms to what Sydney does with targetted routes operating all night but without the rail service replacement and with the current NightRider network. I wouldn't be too surprised if Sydney would have done what we did if they had not had a historical all night suburban heavy rail service to replace, and supplemented it with all night regular routes as you have outlined. I can't imagine the Carlingford NightRide bus would be the most well used route on the network, nor the most direct compared with something running up Victoria Rd or running from Parramatta to Epping / Hornsby via Pennant Hills Rd. I don't recall much at Epping but Parramatta and Hornsby are certainly busy enough places at night having spent many a night at the Hornsby RSL in my younger days...

[1whoknows]

A few of those bus routes are run by privates but the majority are STA.

[revenue]

Doesn't really matter who runs them - they would all be funded by the State Government of NSW.

In terms of rail services - I think there are opportunites to operate some all night train services in conjunction with NightRider buses. For example, if you operated trains between the City and Caulfield, then you can offer connecting buses to Sandringham from South Yarra, and connecting buses to Frankston and Dandenong from Caulfield. This also gets a lot of people in the inner city home (eg. there is high public transport useage between the City and Caulfield). This approach means you can avoid buses having to go into central Melbourne (which takes times). It also gives customers a choice of locations to board the services in the inner city. I think there is merit for such an idea because it resolves a number of issues without having to go to the expense of operating the full network. Trains every 20 minutes to Caulfield, Newport, Clifton Hill and Camberwell would provide a number of benefits - and wouldn't necessarily be horrifically expensive. Having said that, the first step is to increase NightRider services.

[Fleet Lists]

As already mentioned above, Sydney's night time network is not only a heavy rail replacement.
2. Regular routes from city - This includes routes to places like Bondi, Manly, Coogee, Parramatta, Castle Hill, Epping - May run 7 nights or just Fridays and Saturday's depending on route.
3. Feeder routes from Parramatta - these run on Friday and Saturday nights, to places like Castle Hill and Chester Hill.

2. Operated by STA except for Castle Hill which is CDC (Hillsbus)
3 To Castle Hill is CDC (Hillsbus) and to Chester Hill is Veolia Transport.
So these service are not restricted to the STA but as most routes in 2 eminate from the CBD they are mostly operated by STA (Sydney Buses)