New bus network arising from SMNW opening

[boronia]

Complaints about this tend to be ignored. Same problem with the R6 routes that operate into R9

[Ted]

“With the introduction of new/altered Routes and Timetables to reflect these changes dated July 28th, 2019 present bus services on Routes 621 and 644 have been ‘lost’ and as a consequence residences who reside at the Anglicare Retirement Village now have no direct bus service to Oakhill Shopping Centre.

Prior to the introduction of Routes 621 and 644 several years ago Route 632 operated along David Road to the Oakhill Shopping Centre and would now be timely for this arrangement to be reinstated to serve those who have relied on Routes 621 and 644 to go to Oakhill Shop Shopping Centre.

Weekend bus services through the village have had their two bus services per hour reduced to one per hour. Given that there are 7 bus services per hour (Route 600 (3), Route 626 (1) Route 633 (2) and Route 651 (1)) along Castle Hill Road between Old Northern Road and County Drive may be that one of two Routes (626 or 633) be re-routed to travel by way of County Drive, Treetops and then through the Village thus restoring a more frequent service particularly at weekends. It should be noted that Route 635 operates weekdays only and therefore Cherrybrook Station at weekends only has one bus and hour (Route 632) through the Village serving that Metro Station

[burrumbus]

Thanks for the detailed info Ted.
What sort of patronage does the Anglicare Village generate per day??.
I have not been there for several years but I can remember good patronage there.

[tonyp]

Thanks for the detailed info Ted.
What sort of patronage does the Anglicare Village generate per day??.
I have not been there for several years but I can remember good patronage there.

In all the years my parents were there it seemed to me that it was just small dribs and drabs of people who would have filled only a few seats on each bus by the time it exited the complex, but of course it was not the only catchment for the services that passed through it. What seemed disproportionate was the extent to which the buses smashed up the roads at bus stops, resulting a few years back in major reconstruction of the roads and kerbs at stops, with massively thick concrete pavement being laid. Presumably the church paid for this since it was private roads. It was a good opportunity to see what braking and accelerating buses can do to road surfaces in an environment in which there is little other traffic. Who said buses don't incur infrastructure costs!

[mandonov]

The individual bus maps for each SMNW station are yet to be updated.

[Evergreen]

I think the residents of Wirreanda Retirement Village would love to have their 633 bus route be reinstated to the West Pennant Hills Valley. This was the perfect service to get to their local shops and Post Office at Thompsons Corner and also to Pennant Hills shops/station. They have been left with just an hourly service to Castle Hill which is probably too much hussle and bustle for the elderly. The new bus routes to pick up a package at the Thompsons Corner post office are unbearably long and convoluted and would require many hours of total travel. It used to be about 12 minutes each way on the 633.
The 633 was also a wonderful way to get to the top of the hill from the depths of the valley, past the Coonara shops and IBM. From the top of the hill it becomes a more bearable walk across to the Cherrybook station.
Also the Nordby Retirement Village has also lost its only bus. So it appears that the planners don't care about catering to the elderly. Good luck with better services through the Anglican Village.

[neilrex]

Most of the "elderly" of 20 or 40 years ago, didn't drive. Particularly the old women.

Now the elderly all drive until they are totally unable to.

[tonyp]

Good luck with better services through the Anglican Village.

The Anglican villages don't need better bus services. A quick glance at the journey planner shows buses through it around every 10-15 minutes each way during the day. Having often stayed there I recall it was a bus watcher's paradise.

[swtt]

Well - you really couldn't have it all, all of the original pre-metro bus network AND the metro.

Although there are certainly some things that should be done - e.g. bolstering the on-demand services.

https://www.facebook.com/9NewsSydney/vi ... 4NjczMzUz/

[tonyp]

Well - you really couldn't have it all, all of the original pre-metro bus network AND the metro.

Although there are certainly some things that should be done - e.g. bolstering the on-demand services.

https://www.facebook.com/9NewsSydney/vi ... 4NjczMzUz/

There is certainly a huge whinge-fest in the comments but how many people are actually affected? The direct city buses pre-metro were only carrying a few thousand a week. They didn't have the capacity for more than several hundred an hour anyway, compared to the metro presently carrying thousands per hour and a capacity way beyond that - and when the metro is open to the city it will cut another 10 minutes off the total trip time.

As I don't live in the area, I don't have any insight into this situation but I've had a lot of experience of the same type of high-frequency interchange-based system in Perth where I find that the pattern of settlement on the Joondalup line in particular is very similar to that along the NW metro. It would be interesting if channel 7 in Sydney did something similar to these surveys it has been doing in Perth:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaArj_zjRtc

This route, the 484, comes every 10 minutes in peak periods, that sort of frequency being a hallmark of the Perth operation and a key to why it has attracted good patronage. (Admittedly the 484 reverts to 30 minutes off-peak - 15 in sync with the 483 - but Perth outer suburbs are quiet places outside peak compared to Sydney.) A look at the map in the 483/484 timetable shows a common pattern of these feeder bus routes - linking two stations and feeding through the suburbs in between, but not too long a journey (20-30 mins end to end, meaning less than this for anybody joining the bus in between).

https://www.transperth.wa.gov.au/timeta ... 190721.pdf

I would be interested to hear from anybody how the NW feeder system differs from this and in what ways. One issue that I think burrumbus mentioned is that some routes may be too long and they are trying to do too much with one route(?). I will do some more analysis myself once I've got on top of the new maps and timetables, but I'd be interested to hear any comments.

[neilrex]

The latest huge whinge from Cherrybrook, is that the absence of direct bus to the CBD does not cater to the transport needs of sprightly 96-year-olds.

And if you want to avoid the Batley Townswomans Guild treatment, avoid suggesting that said user is not a key commuter demographic.

[neilrex]

getting from Cherrybrook metro station to Cherrybrook seems to be more tricky and complicated than it needs to be.

there is a lot of slightly different options involving different amounts of walking, and catching 2 buses to go 3 km.

I'd certainly avoid a plan that involved a 2 minute change between two buses on some random streetcorner unless I knew exactly what I was doing, the risk of standing around for an hour is just too great. Maybe keen users of real-time apps don't get this feeling.

That's to the Cherrybrook shops, other locations may vary.

[neilrex]

the most consistent method to get from cherrybrook station to cherrybrook shops, seems to be.

Leave Cherrybrook station and walk 13 minutes ( 887 metres ) towards Castle Hills, including waiting at lights to cross County Drive.

Catch bus 13 minutes to Cherrybrook. Route 600. Total 27 minute journey plus however long you actually waited for the bus.

So that would be more than 1 km walk from the actual platform.

The whole plan there seems very poorly thought through.

The other schemes seem to involve the 626 and 632.

You have to be some kind of intellectual to understand the 626 information, because the route map appears to show it travelling from Kellyville to Pennant Hills but on each page of the PDF it says in large black and white letters at the top of the page DURAL TO PENNANT HILLS. Really ? Am I the only person who looked at this thing ? Its 2019 not 1997. Anyone can fix PDF files now.

Anyway, this bus runs more or less half-hourly all day ( peak and offpeak ) on weekdays and hourly at weekends.

It runs from Kellyville by a reasonably sensible route to Cherrybrook station, then in a vast maple-leaf shape around cherrybrook ( the central shops just about last ), then to pennant hills station.

I can see why this would be a problem for a metro commuter from Cherrybrook station. During times of road congestion, time reliability at Cherrybrook station is going to be impacted by any congestion that the bus has been affected by, coming all the way from Kellyville ! And that's on top of the very mediocre frequency.

If I lived at Cherrybrook, I'd be wanting to catch this bus from Pennant Hills station. At least it has a clockface timetable there. But coming from the metro, its an extra change at epping with extra delays. The bus starts on the east side at Pennant Hills with consequent congestion risks. It is a scheduled 45 minute trip from Pennant Hills through Cherrybrook to Cherrybrook metro station.

Its not hard to see why people would rather cut off their own head rather than make bus-train commutes.

[iamthouth]

Smart commuters would travel two minutes further on the metro to Castle Hill, and catch frequent all day 600 services to Cherrybrook Shops. Not every street and area can have a direct link to their nearest station.

[moa999]

Its not hard to see why people would rather cut off their own head rather than make bus-train commutes.

Building a metro to within 200m of everyone's front door might be a little expensive though.

Sticking Cherybrook Shops-Epping into Google, via Castle Hill generally seems to be quickest, followed by via Pennant Hills

[neilrex]

Smart commuters would travel two minutes further on the metro to Castle Hill, and catch frequent all day 600 services to Cherrybrook Shops. Not every street and area can have a direct link to their nearest station.

If that route could keep to its alleged 16 minute time in peak hour, then I'd agree with you. I don't know how it actually performs. It's a long way round. It's still turning a 60 minute one-way CBd commute into more like 90 minutes.

You see so many contradictory statistics bandied around about how long it takes workers to get to and from work, it's hard to know which ones are fake. How long is reasonable ? How long is not ?

My personal view would be, up to 60 minutes, door to door, one way would be OK. 90 minutes would not. It would be onerous. More would be ok with some lifestyle benefit ( Koolewong waterfront, something like that ).

In a lot of otherwise "good" suburbs, living 500 metres or 2500 metres from the station makes that difference between 60 and 90 minutes. And here's the key point. In most cases, that trivial extra distance makes no material difference to the time it takes to DRIVE to work. In fact, it might not be any extra distance at all. That's why "feeder buses" suck.

The woman at Cherrybrook was claiming it took her 35 minutes to Wynyard by bus and it takes 90 minutes now.

Were the old buses really that good ? Did the timetable claim that ?

[neilrex]

So, to look at this, I picked two random houses, one 400 metres from Pennant Hills station and one in a residential street close to the junction of New Line Road and Boundary Road at Cherrybrook. Google maps directions setting out 7:30 AM Thursday.

Driving: 30-56 minutes via M2, 30-61 minutes via M2. Hardly any difference, certainly not a difference worth paying $300k for "walk rail". Google being wisely circumspect with driving time estimates there. I'd think that an hour would be sufficient about 9 times out of 10.

PT: Train 55-61 T9.
For the second location, the 620X bus. 72 minutes. Does this still run ? what are they complaining about ?

And if it does still run, how was the woman who claimed it took 35 minutes going to work ?

[mandonov]

So, to look at this, I picked two random houses, one 400 metres from Pennant Hills station and one in a residential street close to the junction of New Line Road and Boundary Road at Cherrybrook. Google maps directions setting out 7:30 AM Thursday.

Driving: 30-56 minutes via M2, 30-61 minutes via M2. Hardly any difference, certainly not a difference worth paying $300k for "walk rail". Google being wisely circumspect with driving time estimates there. I'd think that an hour would be sufficient about 9 times out of 10.

PT: Train 55-61 T9.
For the second location, the 620X bus. 72 minutes. Does this still run ? what are they complaining about ?

And if it does still run, how was the woman who claimed it took 35 minutes going to work ?

Yes, they still run. It's handy to look at the Hillsbus region map, where you can see that Cherrybrook still has peak hour 620X and 642X services.

There's a variety of options people can take, but I think the real issue is the very short communication time between announcement and implementation, with no community consultation. 3 weeks is not enough time for people to realise a change this big will come.

[J_Busworth]

They need to put a booklet outlining the changes and their justification in everyone's letterbox a month ahead, or at least hand them out at major stops district wide for a couple of weeks starting at least a month out. Also consulting the community like they used to back in the early 00s with STA and maybe people will whinge less. The new network seems to be very paltry on the off peak and weekend services, and for some people they now have less transport than the old network with no consultation and barely any notice. People will and do get angry.

More consultation, more notice!

[swtt]

Travelled from Victoria Ave/Carrington Road Castle Hill (in the Trading Zone!) back home to Concord West Station tonight at around 9:15 pm.

In the short space of 6 min, there were three departures (626, 633, 651!) to Hills Showground Station. Then no bus for another 24 min or so! All of those buses were carrying fresh air, and in fact the drivers didn't even have the passenger saloon lights on!

However, it was amazingly fast. Interchanged for metro at Hills Showground with 30 second spare (Chatswood bound train pulled up just as I arrived on Platform 1) and at Epping, only a 4 min wait as I ascended on to Platform 2.

Total time: 35 min from Victoria Ave/Carrington Road to Concord West Station. It's very similar if driving.

Only other wish: TfNSW to spread out the bus departures a little bit more where possible on trunk routes.

[tonyp]

However, it was amazingly fast. Interchanged for metro at Hills Showground with 30 second spare (Chatswood bound train pulled up just as I arrived on Platform 1) and at Epping, only a 4 min wait as I ascended on to Platform 2.

Total time: 35 min from Victoria Ave/Carrington Road to Concord West Station. It's very similar if driving.

That's the "Perth feeling" you're experiencing there. It's an interchange-based system working as it should.

The only difference is that in Perth you'd be getting the buses at a regular 15 minutes (admittedly probably 30 late at night though) without bunching. I'm still poring through the NW feeder bus timetables and surprised at finding 30 minute headways sometimes. Like, I see that there is actually a bus connection between Cherrybrook and Cherrybrook station but it's only 30 minute headway. No wonder they think there's no connection. Come on TfNSW, this is Sydney, not Melbourne.

Transitioning from a single-seat journey system can be painful but it's worth it when you get there. The single-seat system is no longer sustainable when cities get to Sydney's size.

[tonyp]

Travelled from Victoria Ave/Carrington Road Castle Hill (in the Trading Zone!) back home to Concord West Station tonight at around 9:15 pm.

Just curious also whether they took the trouble to create some footpaths from the station across Cattai Ck to connect to Salisbuty Rd/Anella Ave and Hoyle Ave to shorten the walk to different parts of the trading zone. They don't generally give much thought to lines of pedestrian movement in this country so I always live in hope of some change of attitude on this. Pedestrians after all have the slowest journey and it's more important for them to have a more direct route than car drivers who can move along faster to compensate for the disadvanatge of a longer route.

[tonyp]

As a measure of how much things have changed since the NW metro and its bus system, Look at this now completely outdated description of how to get to Rouse Hill House that's still up on the Historic Houses Trust website.

https://sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/rous ... farm/visit

I was at Rouse Hill on Saturday afternoon and had a good chance to observe the bus procession out of Rouse Hill terminus. The carpark at Tallawong had several hundred cars in it and it wasn't even a working day! Still plenty of traffic but the metro must have made an impact on what it used to be. Now they need to get the metro over to Richmond Rd (Marsden Park) to help clean up the mess over there. I have strong memories of this area in the 50s and 60s and, man, how it's changed - now it's another major city. It's good that they've kept two legacies of the former rural area - Bella Vista Farm and Rouse Hill house, not to mention the 1829 Fiddlers pub. The floodplains further west will continue to ensure green space fortunately.

I still can't fully decipher the feeder bus system. It's not very legible, unlike Perth's. At least there seem to be plenty of buses appearing at the stations but how frequent they are on the individual routes I don't know.

[mandonov]

The floodplains further west will continue to ensure green space fortunately.

Which is the primary reason why they want to raise Warragamba Dam.

[tonyp]

The creeks flowing through western Sydney will still flood from their own catchments regardless of what happens on the Hawkesbury.