CBD & South East Light Rail

[boronia]

I notice closures being planned for 7-10 July
weekend. L1 truncated DH to Exhibition (with replacement buses) and L2/3 terminating at Chalmers St (make other arrangements) .
Wondering if they are planning work on the George/Hay Sts crossing?

[alleve]

‘Jostled and pushed’: Sydney Boys High School brings forward start times in response to light rail overcrowding

In May, there were 7616 students tapping on and off via Opal Cards at the station – up from 5130 in the same month last year.

Moore Park also recorded the second most number of Opal trip passengers across Sydney’s entire light rail network last month – second only to the light rail stop at Central Station.

A Department of Education spokesman in a statement confirmed the school’s timetable change had been endorsed by the school council and “received overwhelming support from teachers”.

7616 students per month equates to around 380 per day; one tram load. As well as the normal 4 minute service, there are supplementary shuttles to/from Central-Moore Park. Students tend to straggle out after classes, so they are not all waiting there at one time. Hard to imagine any overloading.

The trams are already very busy without school students, it doesn't surprise me at all.

[hornetfig]

Also, are they tapping? It's two stops, and non-existent revenue enforcement, so there's little incentive to do so.

[Swift]

The trams are already very busy without school students, it doesn't surprise me at all.

Here I was thinking the coupled sets looked overkill.
Looks like they are sorely needed that way.

[alleve]

Also, are they tapping? It's two stops, and non-existent revenue enforcement, so there's little incentive to do so.

Doesn't really matter much past data collection seeing as school cards are free travel. So nobody is losing anything from kids not tapping on

[Swift]

All they need to know is there is a problem thanks to schoolkids invasion. A well known issue with buses.

Staggered finish time will help a bit.

[Aurora]

Doesn't really matter much past data collection seeing as school cards are free travel. So nobody is losing anything from kids not tapping on

Until those ingrained behaviours/habits carry over into adulthood, as it does with some of them, no one will stop me. Just catch a bus and see…

[alleve]

Doesn't really matter much past data collection seeing as school cards are free travel. So nobody is losing anything from kids not tapping on

Until those ingrained behaviours/habits carry over into adulthood, as it does with some of them, no one will stop me. Just catch a bus and see…

Don't think the behaviour of fare evasion comes from not developing a habit of tapping on as a kid. Pretty sure it comes from not wanting to spend the money, be it from not having the money, being anti-social, etc.

[Swift]

Many don't deserve free travel in the first place and have the means to pay.

[Merc1107]

Don't think the behaviour of fare evasion comes from not developing a habit of tapping on as a kid. Pretty sure it comes from not wanting to spend the money, be it from not having the money, being anti-social, etc.

It starts as that rebellious "F*** YOU!" attitude as a kid, and will persist into adult years. Look at any number of behaviours that go unchecked in childhood, or the role models children have, and how acceptance of that behaviour manifests in adulthood.

[tonyp]

I think it's worth noting at this point in recent history that CSELR has helped buck the trend of decline or stagnation of patronage that came with covid.

Bus patronage across Sydney is generally at about 2/3 of what it was during the last full financial year before covid (2018-2019). Suburban train patronage is even poorer, standing at about 60% of what it was then. The L1 IWLR is still only at about 50% of its pre covid patronage. On the other hand, metro and ferry patronage is pretty-much back to what it was in 2018-19.

However, there is one standout in this picture - that's region 9 where the combined bus and light rail patronage, at 69 million in the last twelve months, is 3 million higher than it was in the 2018-19 financial year. Breaking that down, like other regions, the bus patronage is at about 2/3 of its 2018-19 figure, but the tram patronage has risen from zero (it opened in December 2019-April 2020) to 27 million in the last twelve months. The majority of that is transferred bus patronage, but the line has also generated its own patronage growth.

[Swift]

The pandemic really set us back. I remember weekend train services were filling up where they used to carry mainly fresh air and government buses had healthy loads all day Saturday and Sunday which wasn't the case earlier.
The Liberals were increasing rail services in response to this increase in demand.
Now it looks like people would rather stick with their cars despite terrible weekend traffic these days.

[alleve]

Don't think the behaviour of fare evasion comes from not developing a habit of tapping on as a kid. Pretty sure it comes from not wanting to spend the money, be it from not having the money, being anti-social, etc.

It starts as that rebellious "F*** YOU!" attitude as a kid, and will persist into adult years.

Which is unrelated to whether kids tap on their free opal card or not. You're not gonna stomp out anti-social behaviour, or even influence it in any way, by making kids tap on a free card. Up the number transport inspectors during school holidays when kids actually have to pay and the message gets across a lot better

[tonyp]

The figures (rounded).

2018-19 figure is July to June. 2022-23 figure is June to May.

Metropolitan bus patronage
2018-19: 280 million
2022-23: 188 million.

Suburban train patronage
2018-19: 361 million
2022-23: 206 million

Metro patronage
2018-19: 20 million
2022-23: 20 million

Ferry patronage
2018-19: 15 million
2022-23: 13 million
(however Manly patronage is back to 2018-19 level due to upsurge following introduction of Emeralds)

Light rail L1 patronage
2018-19: 10 million
2022-23: 6 million

Light rail L2-L3 patronage
(opened 12/19-4/20)
2022-23: 27 million

Region 9 bus patronage 2018-19: 66 million
Region 9 bus patronage 2022-23: 42 million
Region 9 bus and tram patronage: 69 million

[Linto63]

The devil is always in the detail. Unlikely that patronage in region 9 has increased when it has tanked ererywhere else. Without knowing exactly how the data is calculated, we cannot be sure, but a likely scenario is that each journey by mode is calculated separately. So a trip from Little Bay to the CBD that was previously counted as one bus journey may now count as one bus and one light rail journey.

[tonyp]

It's a question of how many transfer between modes at Randwick and Kingsford. CSELR would certainly have taken up former bus passengers between Kingsford/Randwick and the city, plus some more. I suspect very few from further out change at Randwick. How many would change at Kingsford?

[Merc1107]

Bus patronage is down 24mil, light rail at 27mil. So there's still a 3mil patronage gain there if we assume everyone on a bus transferred and was counted twice.

[Linto63]

The potential issue is that because people are forced to change modes, what previously was counted as one journey now counts as two which would artificially inflate the 69 million figure. A more meaningful comparison would be how many individual credit and opal cards tapped on before and after per day. That would show the true swing in the number of people travelling by public transport.

With a higher white collar percentage workforce than most other regions, region 9 would be more susceptible to the move to working from home than other regions, meaning it would be unlikely that it has bucked the patronage decline trend.

[Merc1107]

The potential issue is that because people are forced to change modes, what previously was counted as one journey now counts as two which would artificially inflate the 69 million figure.

As I pointed out above, though, even going to an extreme by assuming the 24mil passengers 'lost' from the buses were completely absorbed by the tram (rather than lost to COVID-related impacts), there are still an additional 3mil passengers in the region overall based on that data. The actual situation on the ground wouldn't be to such an extreme, so it is quite plausible the light rail has been successful in growing patronage.

The overall picture of the bus network patronage is about 2/3 of pre-COVID levels, which is consistent with the fall seen in R9 in spite of the light rail being rolled out. Even if you remove the R9 component from the overall statistics, bus patronage is still sitting at 68.2% of pre-COVID levels. From this you could infer that passengers lost to light-rail, have been recovered elsewhere on the R9 bus network, otherwise R9 buses would be performing even worse than the rest of the network, which clearly does not appear to be the case.

If everyone was being counted twice, and accounting for the patronage sitting at 2/3 pre-COVID, you might expect the overall R9 figure to be around 87mil (66 * 2 * 0.66).

[boronia]

It's a question of how many transfer between modes at Randwick and Kingsford. CSELR would certainly have taken up former bus passengers between Kingsford/Randwick and the city, plus some more. I suspect very few from further out change at Randwick. How many would change at Kingsford?

There is usually a lot of bus boarding and alighting both sides in both directions at Kingsford, but really difficult to determine how much of it is specifically related to direct intermode transfer. Juniors is a major passenger generator alone.

[Linto63]

The key numbers are 66 million, being 18/19 patronage for the region 9 bus network before the light rail opened, and 69 million being the combined region 9 and light rail patronage in 2022/23.

If each journey including transfers was only counted once, that would equate to an increase in patronage of three million. But if within the 69 million, there were six million journeys which actually were not new journeys but people transferring from light rail to bus or vice versa, then patronage would really be 63 million. Of course without the actual numbers, its impossible to accurately quantify. But the principal still stands that the headline number of 69 million may be overinflated.

There are a myriad of other factors that may have smaller effects such as in 2018/19, the region 6 and 7 operators ran services into the eastern suburbs that have since ceased, with the region 9 operator taking up the slack, although I doubt this accounted for much in the grand scheme.

Transfers don't only occur at Randwick and Nine Ways, Kingsford and UNSW are also quite popular.

[Swift]

Doesn't sound like $3.1billion well spent!
Another New South Failure.

[Glen]

There are a myriad of other factors that may have smaller effects such as in 2018/19, the region 6 and 7 operators ran services into the eastern suburbs that have since ceased, with the region 9 operator taking up the slack, although I doubt this accounted for much in the grand scheme.

Region 6 still operates into Region 9.

[tonyp]

Doesn't sound like $3.1billion well spent!
Another New South Failure.

A line with twice the patronage of the Sydney ferry system, or significantly more than the whole of bus region 7 or 8 or the entire interurban train network. If it was a suburban train line it would be the 5th busiest in Sydney. Yeah, definitely a failure by any measure.

[alleve]

It's a question of how many transfer between modes at Randwick and Kingsford. CSELR would certainly have taken up former bus passengers between Kingsford/Randwick and the city, plus some more. I suspect very few from further out change at Randwick. How many would change at Kingsford?

Depends where past Randwick we're talking about. 356 passengers would change for a tram. 370, 374, etc passengers wouldn't.