brett_lee wrote:I would be very interested to read about what you guys on this forum generally think about Brisbane's Bus Services and if you were to make changes to the system (e.g. editing current routes, adding new routess and deleting routes) what you would do to improve the overall quality of services, encourage the usage of Buses in Brisbane.
My 2/- ...
Crosstown Routes. Brisbane desperately needs good cross-town routes that allow you to get to your destination without having to take a trip all the way into the city and then back out again (often at a very acute angle). And by "good" I mean "decent frequency" and "direct", not "hourly daytime-only service" and "down every back street". I once knew a guy who lived in Forest Lake and studied at Griffith Uni Nathan campus. He used to catch a 460 all the way into QSBS, then a 135/155 back out again. What a joke! What will it take for BT/TL network planners to realise that employment, education and retailing are now widely dispersed across the metropolitan area and many people never need to go into the city? Hello! It's not 1936 any more! Every time I see a map of metropolitan Brisbane, my mind's eye sees all these possible cross-town routes: e.g., Ashgrove to Toombul via Newmarket Rd and Albion; Wacol to Springwood via Inala and Compton Rd; Mt Ommaney to Garden City via Oxley and Griffith Uni Nathan Campus.
Great Circle Line. The Great Circle Line could be one of Brisbane's most important and successful routes. But the way it's operated now, it will never be. There's a topological fact about circles - they don't have ends. This means that if a bus on one circuit is held up by traffic, the lateness is carried over onto the next circuit. BT tries to mitigate this by building "recovery time" into the 598/599 timetable at selected major interchanges - but it's often not enough to catch up after heavy traffic or a major accident. The result? Chronic lateness and unreliability - as I was reminded only last week when I dropped my car off and picked my car up to be serviced two suburbs away on the GCL. And those rare instances when the GCL is actually on time, you have an annoying wait at interchanges while waiting for the recovery time to lapse. My solution? I would divide the GCL into three separate routes: Indooroopilly to Chermside, Chermside to Garden City, Garden City to Indooroopilly. That way, traffic/accidents/roadworks on one segment won't affect reliability on other segments. I'd timetable the routes so, if they're on time, there's a 5-7 minute "window" allowing passengers to change buses (and in my observations, nearly everyone gets off the bus at Indro, GC and Chermside). I'd also up the frequency to about 15 mins daytimes, and 30 mins evenings and weekends (incl. Sundays), so people might actually use the GCL "arcs" to get across town and take pressure of the citybound buses.
Route 307. What a useless little stub that is! I don't think I've ever seen more than 3 people board this bus at Toombul interchange. What I would do is through-route the 306 shortworking which terminates at Toombul onto the 307. So you'll have three routes combining to provide the 20-minute service on the Sandgate Road - the 306 from Nudgee, the 307 and the 322. Who knows, if the 307 actually went somewhere, people in Northgate and Banyo and students at ACU might actually catch it!
"Milk runs". You know what I mean - those routes that run only hourly, and only during weekday daytime, that get from A to B via every bloody back street in C, D and E and also detouring to suburbs F, G and H for good measure. These routes in the off-peak rarely have more than three grannies, two junkies and a gunzel on board. Even in peak hours, there are rarely any standees. Salient examples which spring to mind are the 361, 354, 172, 232. What would I suggest? Straighten them out, so journey times are reduced and more people might actually catch them. Or get rid of them all together, and plough the money saved into extending the "Council Cabs" programme, which provides flexible and accessible transport to the aged and the infirm.
And other things I would do to "to improve the overall quality of services, encourage the usage of Buses in Brisbane" ...
Maps. I still can't believe that there is no system map for Brisbane Transport's bus services on TransLink's website. Even for the other regions, the TL maps are simplistic schematic diagrams - a mapping method that is suited to railways, not buses. There is seldom any indication on these diagrams of which roads the buses go down - and I would have thought that such information would be crucial for people trying to figure out which bus to catch, and where the nearest bus stops are likely to be. The TT maps are just as bad - they look like they were drawn by a Kindergarten kid given a pack of similarly-coloured Crayolas. Zone boundaries are indistinct, side streets are seldom shown, scale is thrown out the window, connecting bus routes are rarely indicated (the 598/599 TT is an honourable exception). Maps are how one communicates spatial information - the "what" and "where" of things - to others. You wouldn't like a restaurant which didn't have a menu or wine list - so why would you like a PT system that doesn't communicate information about its product effectively? TL needs to look at Adelaide Metro and the State Transit Authority of NSW to see how TT and network maps are done!
Advertising and Marketing. What would Macca's, Coca-Cola and LG be without advertising? Nothing! PT's competitors (the auto manufacturers and the oil companies) advertise constantly in order to build product awareness and brand image. So why not PT? If more people were made aware of the advantages of PT using clever and appropriate marketing methods, more people might use it. I like TL's quarter-page newspaper ads advising citizens of new routes and service enhancements - but even they don't have the "OOMPH!" that might get people to look twice. They're more like public notice classified ads.
That being said, there are many things with BT and TL do well - an awesome integrated ticketing scheme that goes for hundreds of kilometres, the system of high-frequency BUZ routes, timetables at every stop, usually friendly staff, a modern and well-maintained fleet, a smartcard which despite annoying technical glitches works better for me than paper tickets. But there is still much more room for improvement.
