Route 950: Morley - Beaufort St - Perth - UWA - QEII

Perth / Western Australia Transport Discussion

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Re: 950 'SuperBus' - Morley - Beaufort St - Perth - UWA - QE

Post by User 11872 »

No artics on the 37? Says who?
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Re: 950 'SuperBus' - Morley - Beaufort St - Perth - UWA - QE

Post by adx666 »

I have seen tons of rigid silvers on the 950 but not 1 artic. Did see 1 Renault being 1076
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Re: 950 'SuperBus' - Morley - Beaufort St - Perth - UWA - QE

Post by 102 at 1625 »

I see at least one articulated bus operating route 950 on Mounts Bay Road when I am near UWA in the morning peak.
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Re: 950 'SuperBus' - Morley - Beaufort St - Perth - UWA - QE

Post by pasha241 »

Stig! wrote:I have seen tons of rigid silvers on the 950 but not 1 artic. Did see 1 Renault being 1076
I only saw 1 or 2 artic on 950 this months at perth stn . I see more artic on other routes (eg: 41, 60, 66, 67)
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Re: 950 'SuperBus' - Morley - Beaufort St - Perth - UWA - QE

Post by In Transit »

VL6MT wrote:No artics on the 37? Says who?
I remember a request I received to not roster any artics out of Kings Park in or around 2000/2001, following a near miss. It was still the 33 - and probably the 32??? - running to Kings Park back then I imagine, meaning it would have been pretty unusual to roster one up there, although not so unusual for one to turn up anyway.
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Re: 950 'SuperBus' - Morley - Beaufort St - Perth - UWA - QE

Post by PaxInfo »

Someone has uploaded Route 950 and its service levels onto Transitmix.

http://www.transitmix.net/map/1050/line/2439

They assume 20 mph, which assumes some fantastic bus priority!
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Re: 950 'SuperBus' - Morley - Beaufort St - Perth - UWA - QE

Post by User 11872 »

In Transit wrote:
VL6MT wrote:No artics on the 37? Says who?
I remember a request I received to not roster any artics out of Kings Park in or around 2000/2001, following a near miss. It was still the 33 - and probably the 32??? - running to Kings Park back then I imagine, meaning it would have been pretty unusual to roster one up there, although not so unusual for one to turn up anyway.

This is a different operational matter to the other 37 services that don't use KP. I can understand 37s running into difficulty at the airport bay with other services. Overall though the remainder of the route is artic friendly.
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Re: 950 'SuperBus' - Morley - Beaufort St - Perth - UWA - QE

Post by 900 series »

May as well put this in here: work on the bus lanes on Beaufort street is now complete from Brisbane St to Walcott st
PTA wrote:Work is complete on creating peak-period bus-only lanes along Beaufort Street in Mt Lawley, between Clarence Street and Brisbane Street {southbound} and between Brisbane Street and Walcott Street {northbound}.

Completing this work marks the final piece of the Beaufort Street Bus Priority Plan with an unbroken bus priority link from Grand Promenade to Roe Street in the city.

The decade-long $14.2 million project will increase service reliability with bus travel times from Perth’s north-eastern suburbs into the CBD reduced by about three to four minutes, depending on traffic conditions.
Buses carry 38 per cent of people on Beaufort Street but only represent 3.2 per cent of vehicles on that section of road.

The Beaufort Street bus priority lanes were funded by the State Government and the cities of Perth, Vincent and Stirling.
source
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Re: 950 'SuperBus' - Morley - Beaufort St - Perth - UWA - QE

Post by 102 at 1625 »

900 series wrote:May as well put this in here: work on the bus lanes on Beaufort street is now complete from Brisbane St to Walcott st...
Media Statement
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Re: 950 'SuperBus' - Morley - Beaufort St - Perth - UWA - QE

Post by In Transit »

VL6MT wrote:
In Transit wrote:
I remember a request I received to not roster any artics out of Kings Park in or around 2000/2001, following a near miss. It was still the 33 - and probably the 32??? - running to Kings Park back then I imagine, meaning it would have been pretty unusual to roster one up there, although not so unusual for one to turn up anyway.

This is a different operational matter to the other 37 services that don't use KP. I can understand 37s running into difficulty at the airport bay with other services. Overall though the remainder of the route is artic friendly.
Agreed - but Mr OC Benz's original comment about restrictions on the 37 specifically referred to trips from Kings Park and the roundabout used to exit from Fraser Ave towards Malcolm St... hence my historical note.

At least the Transperth operators have relatively few restrictions imposed on the use of artics compared to some other operations in the country... ;)
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Re: 950 'SuperBus' - Morley - Beaufort St - Perth - UWA - QE

Post by User 11872 »

yeah sorry you're right (regarding that awful thing)
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Re: 950 'SuperBus' - Morley - Beaufort St - Perth - UWA - QE

Post by 900 series »

3.7 million boardings during the first year of the 950, up 1 million on the old 21/22 and 78/79
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Re: 950 'SuperBus' - Morley - Beaufort St - Perth - UWA - QE

Post by Mr OC Benz »

Here's an interesting read on the success of the 950 SuperBus: http://www.aitpm.com.au/ArticleDocument ... px?Embed=Y
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Route 950: Morley - Beaufort St - Perth - UWA - QEII

Post by Mr OC Benz »

A snippet from the media statement for the new Route 960 indicated that Route 950 is now averaging 18,000 boardings per day.
PTA website wrote:
Transport Minister Dean Nalder said the new service would build on the success of Transperth's busiest bus route.

"When Route 950 was introduced in January 2014, it took less than a month for it to become Transperth's most successful bus route ever - it currently averages about 18,000 boardings a day," Mr Nalder said.
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Re: Route 950: Morley - Beaufort St - Perth - UWA - QEII

Post by Mr OC Benz »

Route 950 gets a mention in Transport @ 3.5 million (page 19 of the full document). With the 950 already operating at high frequencies and in dedicated bus priority lanes (in peak), there is still some room to maximise capacity and efficiency, however eventually, this would eventually exceed the physical constraints of the road network it operates on. The East Wanneroo Link would hopefully ensure that point to point journeys from Morley to Perth can be undertaken on the new rail link rather than on the 950, freeing up this capacity for the line-haul service to continue focusing on providing frequent and fast access along the Beaufort St activity corridor and between activity centres.

Proposals for an underground orbital rail link and the Perth light rail serving QEII and UWA should also reduce demand along the Mounts Bay Rd corridor enabling frequencies to normalise and to be more consistent with the northern sector (as oppose to the current situation with a significant number of short trips required to cater for demand on the southern sector to UWA).
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Re: Route 950: Morley - Beaufort St - Perth - UWA - QEII

Post by Mr OC Benz »

The success of Route 950 continues with a new timetable from 9 October including additional PM contra-peak trips and later Sunday night services to cater for increased demand.

Bus Timetable 202

I wonder how much longer until we see 24 hour operation?
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Re: Route 950: Morley - Beaufort St - Perth - UWA - QEII

Post by Merc1107 »

I imagine the following opinion might apply to other high-frequency services (particularly the Circle-Route), although the following is based more on what I see on the 950, having spent a number of mornings & afternoons at EQBS, and even riding the 950 just once*

Its great that these routes are springing up, although it would be nicer if perhaps the existing high-frequency could be supplanted with articulated buses?

Any time I've hung around EQBS, every bus leaving towards UWA appears to be a standing load. Including the odd artics that do service the route. The 950 I rode just last week during peak picked up a substantial loading between the William St. and Wellington St. stops, to the extent passengers had difficulty exiting the bus at their stops along Beaufort St. (myself included).

Would be nice to see articulated buses used a little more often, or all the time to try and reduce crowding.
Obviously it could end up such that a preceding rigid bus ends up full, whereas the following artic is empty. In my "not so humble" opinion, it would be a better use of an articulated bus than deployment for a few busy services, then relegation to relatively quiet suburban services.

The other issue I noted was that the 60 & 67 services departed roughly at the same time as the 950, and did not appear to be timed so as to better distribute passenger loads. Of course, that can often come down to traffic lights and other malarky enroute. :?

* Unfortunately I happen to be a fan of anecdotal evidence** :mrgreen:
** Nor in brevity, it would seem, although I did proof the post for a change and remove trivial anecdotes and information
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Re: Route 950: Morley - Beaufort St - Perth - UWA - QEII

Post by Mr OC Benz »

This has probably been discussed in this thread in the past, but I agree. I think once frequency reaches a certain level, then the boost to capacity should come in the form of larger vehicles rather than additional trips wherever possible. Perhaps a bit difficult to do with UWA-Perth short runners, but can't see it being a problem with full length trips. Hopefully any further boost to capacity required during peak times will be through higher and smarter artic utilisation. Any further increases to what is already a service running full length at 3-4 min intervals would not be ideal and increase cases of bunching. The other thing is I have seen on a number of occasions is midis being used on Route 950. Licensed capacity of midis is only 65 passengers while standard 12m buses can carry 82 passengers, so there should be more discipline on ensuring that standard length buses are being prioritised on these high demand routes.

Routes 67 and 68 are timed to coordinate between 950 departures. So perhaps what you are seeing is just late running. There is no need to coordinate with Route 60 as it travels a different route to Morley and also runs relatively frequent on weekdays.
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Re: Route 950: Morley - Beaufort St - Perth - UWA - QEII

Post by tonyp »

If its not too much trouble to ask, what's the length of route 950 in km, how many stops does it have and how many of these are compulsory and what proportion of the buses deployed on it are artics? TIA.
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Re: Route 950: Morley - Beaufort St - Perth - UWA - QEII

Post by Off The Rails »

It's about 21km, with 42 stops (3 being compulsory, not including the timing points if early), and from memory the artics are randomly allocated from Morley and Bayswater shifts. The Swan depots that run the 950 (the 13xx and 15xx O405NH (Shenton Park and North Fremantle) don't have artics at all.

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Re: Route 950: Morley - Beaufort St - Perth - UWA - QEII

Post by Mr OC Benz »

It's actually only just a tad under 16km in length. Elizabeth Quay, William St, Perth Station and Museum are compulsory stops AFAIK, along with the two outer termini.

Not sure about the proportion of artics as this varies quite a bit. There certainly isn't as many as there should be, that's for sure! Out of the four depots servicing this route, only the Path Transit ones have artics (15 in total out of a combined contract fleet of about 180 buses). But the majority/all of these are based at Malaga which is not as focused on the 950 as other routes (since Bayswater depot is closer to the Morley terminus), meaning that these available artics are quite often required elsewhere on suburban and school runs (e.g. Mostly on routes 60, 344, 345, 360-362, 371 etc). Unfortunately, I've long been of the opinion that these artics are not being used to their maximum potential. They are typically allocated to specific trips that require them, meaning that the rest of the shift could quite often be on routes that never need them when they could be on routes that could benefit from them.

In saying that, there are specific trips on the 950 which require artics. But I rarely see them when I'm over there. Not sure if it is still happening, but I believe at one point, the very first trip of the morning around 4:50am from Morley used to be scheduled for an artic as it would carry a standing load of workers going to QEII (many for ongoing construction projects I believe). This bus would then go on to do several 950s throughout the morning as a part of the shift.

There has actually been previous discussion on artic utilisation in this very thread about two years ago if you go back to around here: http://www.busaustralia.com/forum/viewt ... 65#p916477. Many of the points discussed still apply today. I prefer to see frequency prioritised before larger buses are brought in, but only to an extent. Once you get to around a regular 5 min headway, it's time to increase vehicle size or provide alternative options.
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Re: Route 950: Morley - Beaufort St - Perth - UWA - QEII

Post by tonyp »

Yes I saw the earlier discussion about artics. Yes it's true that once you're getting under 5 minute headways and definitely under 2 to 3 mins you're going to run into the issue of buses bunching and overtaking (thus out of order) and you wouldn't want a fine operation deteriorating into a Sydney-style shambles!

So then you're looking at artics, the only alternative being moving to the European operational style with multi-door buses and all-door loading like a tram (= short dwells).
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Re: Route 950: Morley - Beaufort St - Perth - UWA - QEII

Post by Merc1107 »

I whole-heartedly agree with the discussion previously in the thread (and those posting today) about artic deployment.
It frustrates greatly me to see these vehicles wasted operating quiet, suburban feeder services (many of which aren't greatly patronised) when there are services elsewhere where passengers are literally sandwiched in the bus.

At times some runs are used to "rotate" buses into an area where the capacity is needed - which is not an issue. What is more irritating is see buses doing full shifts on quiet suburban runs, after being deployed specifically to operate a School-Special. Admittedly, with Perth's urban sprawl, moving these vehicles to serve busier runs would be impractical. Although it begs the question - could individual routes be put out for contract, specifically with the use of high-capacity buses in mind?
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Re: Route 950: Morley - Beaufort St - Perth - UWA - QEII

Post by Mr OC Benz »

Route 950 does experience some bunching in peak (and sometimes off-peak and weekends), but I'd say it's fairly limited. Outside of the peaks and on weekends, it is mostly related to patronage surges that can occur, especially around lunch time and start of/end of retail hours when higher than normal loadings are experienced while a relatively high frequency is still in operation.

Bunching will no doubt become a bigger issue in the future. Bus size will need to increase and lower dwell times will need to be achieved through all door boarding and proof-of-payment system to maintain good and reliable service levels. The current trend is there is a much significant increase in patronage outside of peak times, so this will start to balance demand out with the peak periods and thus start to make an all day artic operation more feasible. The transport plan @ 3.5 million, suggests that an East Wanneroo Rail Link is likely to alleviate some pressure on the 950 by diverting passengers travelling between Morley and Perth onto the new underground rail link. And even longer term, a subway system could potentially serve the inner core, which would help to relieve pressure in the inner areas served by the 950.

Hopefully they'll squeeze the most they can out of the 950 though (without doing too little too late!) through increased efficiency measures such as all door boarding, signal priority, consolidated stops, high capacity buses etc.
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Re: Route 950: Morley - Beaufort St - Perth - UWA - QEII

Post by tonyp »

Of the 42 stops along the route, how many would be regular stops (obviously including the compulsory stops) that most services would stop at - at a guess of course. That is, would a typical service be stopping at most stops, half the stops, a minority of the stops etc? (I imagine the section alongside Kings Park would be pretty much express.)
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