WA Transport General Discussion & Questions - 2017

[Merc1107]

Paxinfo, the information you've posted above is very comprehensive. Thanks for taking the effort to do so.

Just wanted to add my 2¢ in, particularly as regards applying patterns to Perth:
- 114 & 115 both seem to be relatively busy on weekends (not so much on the Canning Bridge to City sector), given both pass through Booragoon Bus Station, adjacent to the large shopping centre. Typically, a number of passengers board when headed towards the city. They alight at Booragoon, and another group of passengers board, alighting along Canning Highway or at Canning Bridge.
My limited experience with the 114 suggests a similar scenario, and the theory holds true during weekdays too.
Its worth noting the same is true for the reverse journey.*

- The 501 is a fairly direct link between Fremantle and Bull Creek. This route also services Booragoon and is probably one of the only Mandurah-line feeders retaining 15min service off-peak and Saturdays, going to 30mins on Sundays/Public Holidays.
Again, easy to see here you're connecting a busy cultural district (Fremantle) with a large-shopping centre, railways and additional bus services at reasonable frequency (Eastbound services from Bull-Creek, and the 114 & 115 from Booragoon).

* Several times now I have been aboard a Sunday afternoon 115 that picks up about half a seated load in the city, then another substantial pickup at Canning Bridge giving standees. In my opinion, this owes itself to the 114 & 115 departing the city together on weekends. Realistically, "opposed" clockface departures, i.e. one at :00 and :30, the other at :15 and :45 would probably spread the load better - as both use Canning Highway and Risely St.

[Mr OC Benz]

If these patterns were to be replicated in Perth, I would expect:

1. Rockingham/Mandurah to have nearly as much patronage on Sundays as Saturday being coastal areas with Sunday trading. Maybe Hillarys routes also?
2. Areas around Curtin (where there are many o/s students) having higher than average weekend patronage
3. Outer homebuyer type areas eg outer parts of Joondalup line and Ellenbrook to have low weekend : weekday patronage ratio (you almost need two incomes to buy a house and that may imply two cars with dispersed employment patterns so people will be driving on weekends too)
4. Lower income areas eg Mirrabooka, Belmont or Midland to have high all day patronage including good weekend usage
5. Direct circumferential routes that feed two or more train lines such as Fremantle - Mandurah - Armadale to do well on all days (and possibly also routes like Warwick - Mirrabooka or Morley in the north). Once you get these up to every 15 min Mon - Sun you have something approaching a versatile network in all directions.
6. The Circle Route to have high weekend patronage (like the populated parts of the orbitals do in Melbourne)
7. Short infrequent sometimes circular routes that only serve one station not to carry many (though their boardings per km might be OK)
8. The 900 series to have high usage all days of the week (being similar corridors to trams in Melbourne)

Great to see that PTV has bus route patronage numbers by day type. Perhaps the only authority in the country to release such detailed information?

Most of the feeders along the Joondalup line generate very low patronage on weekends. Reflective of the very stark contrast in service levels. Routes 460, 461 and 462 for example in the weekday peak direction have approximately 14-15 buses per hour. On Saturdays, only route 461 runs providing two buses per hour. Sundays is even worse with only one bus per hour and last bus at 7:49pm. Some exceptions I'd say would be those with greater catchment areas (e.g. route 423, 450) or lower income areas (e.g. route 483).

The weekend:weekday ratio in Ellenbrook is certainly significant given the strong commuter flow in the peak periods, but the services are still well utilised on the weekends given the frequency and span of hours. I'd also say it's one of a handful of examples where patronage Saturday vs Sunday is very similar.

You'd be on the ball in the other lower income areas generally have higher than average patronage. Routes 371, 935 as examples. Aside from these areas, it's mostly the inner-city routes doing the bulk of the heavy lifting however.

[PaxInfo]

The weekend:weekday ratio in Ellenbrook is certainly significant given the strong commuter flow in the peak periods, but the services are still well utilised on the weekends given the frequency and span of hours. I'd also say it's one of a handful of examples where patronage Saturday vs Sunday is very similar.

There could be several reasons for this.

Given Ellenbrook's distance from any train line, are those in 1 car households more likely to take a feeder bus for their whole trip on weekends rather than along the Joondalup line where a lot of people would get lifts to/from the station, thus depressing bus usage?

Perth's blocks are getting smaller. Not sure if Ellenbrook has smaller house blocks than other outer suburbs - if so that might support bus patronange.

Perth homebuyers seem to want to live in a coastal or river suburb as close to the city as can be afforded. But if houses are still too dear or people are NoR types and won't consider Rockingham/Mandurah then Ellenbrook offers under $300k opportunities. You'd need to check income & car ownership data to see if Ellenbrook has different demographics to the Joondalup line. If the Melbourne pattern applies in Perth we will see lower income housesholds in middle suburbs (eg Balga and possibly even Mirrabooka) priced out to newer less served areas eg Ellenbrook. And migrants might go to new areas directly, as we've long seen with the English going to the far north and far south coastal suburbs (in Perth) or Indians flock to Tarneit (in Melbourne).

A patronage breakdown by day for Route 950 is at http://www.aitpm.com.au/ArticleDocument ... px?Embed=Y

[Mr OC Benz]

Yes there are several factors influencing the higher than average patronage trends into and out of Ellenbrook. Predominantly the most visible to the passenger's eye is that of point 3. Still by any means, it's not as if buses are struggling to cope with demand. In fact, there is plenty of room for growth and there definitely isn't any need to even consider a train line for at least another couple of decades.

Key points I think are:
1. Not being near any train line naturally is likely to generate increased bus patronage. Particularly given the current line-haul route basically funnels right through the whole of Ellenbrook and thus covers a large catchment area.
2. Lot sizes are smaller than those middle-ring areas yet to experience the influx of infill development. Particularly now, there is a focus to increase densities along planned bus routes in order to support and enable viable transport options in new suburbs. Unfortunately the differences aren't that large for these outer areas (for example going from <R20 to R30-R40> coding), but I guess it's still something. An example to demonstrate this (and in by no means am I endorsing this sort of development at all!) is in the north of Ellenbrook along Banrock Dr which is served by routes 955/956. Smaller lot sizes are typically concentrated along Banrock Dr while larger lots extend further out. The higher concentration of housing closer to the bus route obviously increases the population catchment that is within range of a bus stop.
(Courtesy of nearmap)

3. There is a fair chunk in public housing and low income households in Ellenbrook (and in other outer areas like Clarkson, Merriwa etc). Obviously these areas are going to have higher patronage (depending on density). Outside of the peaks, it can be quite obvious (and sometimes overwhelming), the type of people using the 955/956. Mostly people on low incomes, centrelink support etc. There's a fair bit of it in parts of Ellenbrook and then there are also patches of it along its routing through Beechboro and Lockridge. Because the route has quite a large catchment, the buses manage to get quite busy even without the effort of encouraging more incidental journeys and for those who would normally drive. Areas like Balga, Mirrabooka etc are certainly changing, with the amount of infill development happening, the stories you hear from even 10 years ago are few and far between these days. Still exist, but not to the extent that they did in the past.
4. Population catchment for the 955/956 is further increasing with new estates being built in areas like Dayton and Brabham.

[TP1173]

I think someone brought up the point that there isn't enough patronage to justify service increases on weekends. I find this utter rubbish. While on paper, there is not enough patronage, no one is going to catch a bus if they run every hour. Most people go out on weekends at night time. So the lack of late night services on weekends would more than likely result in people choosing other methods of transport over public transport.

I'd like to see the Government and PTA do a month long trial, where for every weekend in a month, they operate weekend services to a weekday timetable (minus the peak, school and uni services). While it would probably take longer than a month for people to catch on and adjust their habits, a month is a reasonable period of time that can be justified for a trial.

[Mr OC Benz]

Going back to patronage for a minute, I stumbled across a Liberal policy document which indicates the Green CAT service introduced in 2013 is now carrying about 3,200 passengers per day.

It operates Monday to Friday every 8 minutes between 6am and 7pm, so this equates to about 16-17 passengers per trip. Given the decline in office workers commuting to the city over this same period since the service commenced, and the frequency that the service operates at, it's not a bad effort.

The 2014 CAT census report (which was contained within tender documents back in 2014) put the Green CAT at 2,825 boardings. Much of it concentrated in the AM and PM peak. So it's growth. A comparison with 2014 data for the other three routes provided below. I suspect numbers for the Red CAT will have declined a bit given it does the bulk of the work carrying office workers.

Whilst I'm at it, I may as well compare the 2014 stats with the other three routes. Weekdays count (measured between 6am and 7:30pm on a weekday) is:
Blue CAT - 3,364 boardings - Operating at a 7-8 minute headway. Most utilised between 8am and 7pm with peak utilisation between 11am and 2pm.
Red CAT - 14,114 boardings - Operating at a 3-5 minute headway (higher in peaks). High utilisation all day, but especially during the AM peak, 11am to 1pm and in the PM peak.
Yellow CAT - 8,787 boardings - Operating at a 7 minute headway (higher between 3pm-4pm). Most utilised in AM and PM peak periods. Peak utilisation is between 3pm-4pm (when supplementary buses help handle demand)
Green CAT - 2,825 boardings - Operating at an 8 minute headway. Most utilised during AM and PM peak periods.

[PaxInfo]

I'd like to see the Government and PTA do a month long trial, where for every weekend in a month, they operate weekend services to a weekday timetable (minus the peak, school and uni services). While it would probably take longer than a month for people to catch on and adjust their habits, a month is a reasonable period of time that can be justified for a trial.

My fear that a month's trial on all routes would be doomed to fail. People take much longer than a month to catch on to things. I can't put my finger on the study, but patronage typically is still growing up to 2 years after a major service upgrade.

Some international comparisons have shown that if you increase frequency by 100% you might get a 40% increase in patronage. That's a decline in occupancy and given that buses don't recoup their farebox it might not be very compelling for a government to keep it. On the other hand boosting weekend (and off-peak) service is much cheaper than adding peak service as the buses are already there. And the world's busiest and cost-effective transit systems typically run good service all day.

Better performance than 40% elasticity is possible, especially if the network is reconfigured at the same time services are boosted. Eg the southern suburbs reconfigured bus network after the Mandurah line went in. Or the 2000s upgrades in Melbourne where patronage went up by about the same proportion as service kilometres.

For the best chance of success I'd go for a longer trial period on selected routes only. Routes to pick might include those that (a) already have a well used 15 min service on weekdays (b) serve a catchment with good all-day patronage characteristics - eg serve areas with low car ownership, denser populations, more students, major shopping centres etc (c) have a fairly direct service with a lot of unique catchment.

Some possible picks for a trial:

15
41/42/48/55
72/75
81-85
100
245
323-325
345
360/361/362
371
376/377
384 - 389
415
480/482
501
507
540-543
558/561
955/956

In all cases Sunday would get wider span (eg 7am - 9pm or better). A trial could either upgrade Sunday to Saturday times (cheaper) or upgrade both weekend days to weekday interpeak frequencies (dearer). Some routes (eg 501) already have a good Saturday service so only Sundays need upgrade.

You might also put on a couple more Sunday night services on popular routes that finish early - eg 930. Longer term, the 900 series routes would be good picks for a 24 hour service, at least on weekends, but my priority would be upgrading more weekend timetables from 60 to 30 min first.

[Merc1107]

For the best chance of success I'd go for a longer trial period on selected routes only. Routes to pick might include those that (a) already have a well used 15 min service on weekdays (b) serve a catchment with good all-day patronage characteristics - eg serve areas with low car ownership, denser populations, more students, major shopping centres etc (c) have a fairly direct service with a lot of unique catchment.

Perhaps the point of the earlier suggestion of a trial of better frequency was not specific to routes that are already relatively frequent outside of peak. Its the suburban feeders that are essentially useless outside of peak periods - unless you intricately plan your journey from A to B to prevent significant waiting periods.
Even then, a short trip to shops nearby can turn into a very lengthy waiting game in many areas. In any case, most feeders are only hourly off-peak, so trialing weekend service at weekday, off-peak frequencies is still going to leave plenty of services stuck at the (useless) hourly frequency.

I do agree that people aren't likely to use a service if they have to plan their day intricately around it. People's days are not that rigid and inflexible.

[Mr OC Benz]

You would have to rely on a massive cultural shift for people to suddenly be taking the bus as regularly on weekends as they do on weekdays! Unlike weekdays where work/school commutes make up the majority of travelling pax, there simply isn't the demand on weekends for such travel (for obvious reasons). And there certainly isn't the density to support such travel options on weekends where most travel would be for leisure and work (retail/hospitality only) purposes. I agree there has been a massive focus on improving weekday services in recent years which has led to a widened gap of service levels weekdays vs weekends. But even if you had the equivalent core weekday service running on weekends, I suspect there still won't be enough people using them without any cultural attitude changes and/or changes to the layout of the city to increase density (and thus viability of frequent public transport).

In fact, it is almost unheard of for many cities around the world to operate a weekday type service levels (excluding peak/school/uni etc) on weekends. At the most, many cities may operate a similar timetable Monday to Saturday, but Sundays is always significantly lower. Take London as an example, routes which typically operate every 10-15 mins Monday to Saturday quite often only run every 20-30 mins on Sundays! In many European cities, Sunday frequency is quite often 25-50% less than that of Monday to Saturday.

The only places where you'd see similar service levels are those where the majority of the population have no choice but to rely on public transport, e.g Singapore which maintains relatively similar frequencies all week long, but has several unique factors influencing this that many other cities don't.
1. Land mass - Is an artificial barrier to outwards growth and hence forced concentration of high densities
2. Per-capita car ownership is about 1 car for every 8.25 people
3. Buying, maintaining and driving a car in Singapore is intentionally expensive
4. For the reasons of point 3, for a Singaporean to get anywhere will most likely require the use of public transport, hence there is a similar number of commuter trips typical of Monday to Friday (and occasionally Saturday) as there is on a Sunday for leisure trips.

Attitudes to public transport is one reason, but dwarfed by the impact that low density environments have on the ability to provide efficient public transport that can take you to many more places ( than just the CBD) is the overarching reason why Perth will never be able to sustain a weekend timetable that it is of as equivalent service levels as weekdays (minus peak/school/uni services). I haven't seen any traffic stats, but I still think it's pretty clear that for Perth at least, there isn't even the demand for travelling by car or other means as much on weekends as there is on weekdays. Why? That's not really my area of interest or any sort of expertise, but maybe people don't see the need to be going somewhere (far enough to drive or use PT) everyday of the week, or if there is, travel patterns are not as concentrated (i.e. people heading to work/school etc) as they are on weekdays, thus making it a lot more difficult to provide appropriate public transport for such a low density environment.

Sure, the above is not to say that there shouldn't be improved weekend services. There definitely should be to a level that will make it more attractive to the travelling public, but we have to be realistic and understand that there will never be enough demand to support service levels as high as on weekdays (minus peak/school/uni) on weekends for the majority of the city and that the inefficient distribution of resources is always going to be a hot topic given it is taxpayers money at work.

In trying to achieve something more conservative and consistent, my preference would be to see the majority of routes within a 10km radius of Perth CBD meeting "high frequency" criteria (which is actually achievable for the most part) and the majority of suburban routes meeting a minimum 30 minute daytime frequency standard all week. Beyond this, demand should dictate whether frequencies need to be better than or remain at, the minimum standard. There should also be minimum standards for span of hours. In recent years, some routes have had trips at the end of day chopped off due to low patronage which has led to an unbalanced difference of up to 3 hours between the last inbound service and the last outbound service. Works perfectly fine on the assumption that everyone is travelling home from the city/work etc, but really limits any other opportunities for people to use public transport who do shift work, going for a night out (which means only the return journey would need to be by taxi or uber for example) or even just visiting friends.

[esperanceguy]

Meanwhile, what's the deal with Greyhound no longer serving WA below the Broome-Darwin route? I was looking just yesterday for a way to get to Shark Bay that doesn't involve paying something like $800 return airfare, and there's no bus service at all! First they took away the Nullarbor service in the 90s or whenever, and now no service between Perth & the north of the state: when did this happen?!? Do ANY public/private northern services exist any more, or does one have to join a coach tour?

[Mr OC Benz]

There was some news on it a few years back, possibly in this forum. Don't think they could sustain the costs for the number of passengers they were getting from memory. Try Integrity Coachlines. I think they extended their Port Hedland service to Broome when Greyhound pulled out. Their coastal route from Perth to Broome departs on Tuesday and Thursday nights.

[esperanceguy]

There was some news on it a few years back, possibly in this forum. Don't think they could sustain the costs for the number of passengers they were getting from memory. Try Integrity Coachlines. I think they extended their Port Hedland service to Broome when Greyhound pulled out. Their coastal route from Perth to Broome departs on Tuesday and Thursday nights.

Thanks Mr OC I went seeking brochures 'n' stuff from my local visitor centre... had completely forgotten about Integrity! Gotta love how you have to hang around the city until stupid o'clock, ie 9.30pm, before the bus leaves :/

[Off The Rails]

I suppose this would be the best spot to post this...

A gun was pulled on transit officers and RPO's today at Oats Street, at around midday. According to Seven News, the gunman jumped on at Claisebrook, and was agitated when RPO's onboard asked the person for his ticket (which wasn't produced due to no ticket).

Link to Seven News report: https://au.news.yahoo.com/video/watch/3 ... ers/#page1

Cheers!

[tonyp]

https://thewest.com.au/news/wa/canberra-urged-to-back-wa-rail-project-ng-b88453835z

Interesting to see the RAC supporting this rail project as first priority.

I see the Minister has announced that planning will resume on the light rail line. My earnest advice from east coast experience is that PTA WA take advantage of its huge talents and skill itself up to run this project itself, as DoT in Queensland did with Gold Coast light rail, leading to an excellent result. The NSW consultant/consortium/manufacturer-led approach is a recipe for disaster.

It's essential to bear in mind that trams are fundamentally a (higher-capacity) bus on rails, not a train on the street. Perth is up with world's best in its bus system and should continue to follow the same approach. The place to observe for exemplars in tram system design and operation is Central Europe (countries like Germany, Czech Republic, Austria,Switzerland) and definitely not from France, UK, Spain or from American or Australian consultancies that claim to have developed "light rail expertise".

Perth has Australia's best bus system on all criteria and this sets a very high bar for a tram system to better. It's essential that a tram system should be value-added over what the bus system is capable of, otherwise you will have a wasted investment and it would've been better to go for train lines if buses ultimately can't provide the capacity on a corridor.

I agree that the UWA-(possibly Subiaco)-CBD-Curtin-Canning Bridge corridor would be ideal for tram provided that it is implemented properly. I'm also convinced now that Wellington St is the best path to cross the CBD. That Barrack St etc proposal was a bit of a disaster and didn't do the previous proposal any political favours. I think the section on the old Albany Hwy through Victoria Park is going to be challenging but there's not much choice and they'll just have to work away at it.

On another not unrelated matter, I went to North Perth a couple of days ago on the 960 and I think it was a wise decision to drop the Mirrabooka corridor from the light rail as buses would be more suited - subject to not knowing whether they are under stress in peaks. However, I still feel that the poor connectivity of the Perth busport with Perth railway station is a big problem. I had to let a couple of buses go past on the return because they only went as far as the busport and I wasn't going to go through that adventure again. Having the tram in Wellington St would mean it could service both the station and busport. That direct connectivity is so important and ironically is something that Perth is normally excellent at.

Incidentally, first time I've been in the busport in a bus. What an unlovely diesel fume experience when the doors are open, bleah! Roll on electric buses!

[Merc1107]

Interesting to see the RAC supporting this rail project as first priority.

I see the Minister has announced that planning will resume on the light rail line. My earnest advice from east coast experience is that PTA WA take advantage of its huge talents and skill itself up to run this project itself, as DoT in Queensland did with Gold Coast light rail, leading to an excellent result. The NSW consultant/consortium/manufacturer-led approach is a recipe for disaster.

Apart from a short sentence at the very end of the article, there is no discussion on light rail.

The main focus of the article from what I can gather was trying to redirect Commonwealth funding from the scrapped Roe Highway Stage 8 extension (which the RAC supports) towards the Thornlie to Cockburn Heavy Rail Link, which already has bipartisan support.
It is worth noting the original plan for the Mandurah line was to route via Thornlie rather than via the freeway north of Cockburn, but this was altered very early on after Labor gained power in the early 2000s.

As someone living in the area, I personally feel both projects should go ahead.
The Stage 8 extension to Roe Highway would cease a large quantity of "rat-running" of heavy and commercial vehicles through many roads of Cockburn and Melville; roads that require upgrades with the future prospect of Roe8 in doubt. Perhaps more freight should be carried by rail, but then another group of persons, namely those with houses and apartments (Fremantle!) along the busy freight line become upset. Its a balance that must be reached.

Naturally Thornlie should connect Cockburn by rail, the suburbs surrounding have grown significantly in the last 15 years. Congestion on Ranford Rd./South St. on the eastern side of the freeway attests to this, as do the rather busy feeder services leaving Murdoch even on weekends.

[tonyp]

Sorry, I pulled the wrong article because I read the originals in the print copies and got them mixed. It was the day before, the Minister's statement and she announced that planning work on the light rail would resume.

[tonyp]

http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/western ... 002bcb070e

Ms Saffioti said the Metronet timeline had not slipped since Labor took power and work would start in this first term of government on planning and costing a light-rail system. She said a route between Curtin University in Bentley and the University of WA in Crawley, potentially linking North Perth and Subiaco, had support.

[tonyp]

This is an interesting paper from about 1995 to read in light of how things have developed in Perth subsequently:

http://www.thredbo-conference-series.or ... dleton.pdf

[shinjiman]

Just searched around, and have been seen one of the video clip about the racism in Australia by SBS. This was filmed in one of the bus (2090?) around few months ago.

Looks like the bus was hired as a charter service to making of this video clip. And the clip is Google cardboard compatible to see that in the first person view.

[TP1462]

For those interested, 46 solar panels are going to be installed on the roof at Mandurah station creating an 11.96kW return system, the energy consumption will be reduced by 5% and TransPerth’s carbon footprint will be reduced by 1500 kilograms per year

http://www.pta.wa.gov.au/projects/curre ... urn-system




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[sylar]

Has 3030 been repaired and put back into service ? I regularly see Kalamunda's other B12 Artics 3005, 3010, 3011, 3016, 3031 and 3032 running in and out of Perth but still haven't seen the return of 3030

[the c man]

Has 3030 been repaired and put back into service ? I regularly see Kalamunda's other B12 Artics 3005, 3010, 3011, 3016, 3031 and 3032 running in and out of Perth but still haven't seen the return of 3030

No, its still in repairs.

[pasha241]

Hi i would kike to ask you what font is transperth use for put their rego number (i know for most of OC and o405NH they use gill sans but for new volvo what font they use. it look like helvetica but the number 6 not look like that font

[Bus Suggestions]

For all I know, its the same (Gill Sans MT). Otherwise there is a font I have heard of, called interstate font. Interstate, however, Not on MS Word though, if you wanted it on there.

[shinjiman]

Actually Gill Sans was used on those vehicles and timetables, Gill Sans MT is the Microsoft variant of the font.

By the way for the font used on the promotion materials for now, such as poster and flyers, the Tabac Sans font is used. However just a few websites are selling this typeface.