As a Perth resident, I do feel the need to jump in with my 2¢.Admet75 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 15, 2020 12:18 pm In Perth there is three main ingredients that make there services fast, well patronized:
1. Stations are presented modern and clean
2. Successsful Bus Feeder services
3. The station spacing between stations is quite high especially on the Mandurah and Clarskon lines (North).
Stations are clean, yes. In saying this, in most cases they are extremely utilitarian, without much protection from the harsh elements (sun, wind, rain) which are endemic to any Australian city. They're certainly not nice places to wait for a service for any considerable amount of time. I'm not sure if this negatively affects patronage or not, but it doesn't help the passenger's perception of the service. It often seems to be the case that the minute two drops of rain fall on Perth, everyone finds a car and goes home that way, instead.
Yes, the feeders are generally good at this purpose alone. In many outer-suburban areas, they are the only bus service the residents can ever hope of having. In saying that, though, even much closer to the city, there's still this ludicrous idea of shoving everyone onto the train at the closest train station. This completely disregards all the other types of journeys people might use the bus for - shopping, travel across town and so on, and instead assumes everyone wants to go onto a train.
As an example, one of our newest train stations, Aubin Grove (on the Mandurah Line) resulted in the local feeder buses being split in two; with services from Aubin Grove to Hammond Park (or Wandi) now ridiculously short 5-10min runs. The next station north, Cockburn Central, is home to one of the south's largest shopping centres. For a resident in the aforementioned areas to reach the shops, they must take either two buses (with a 10-15min gap between runs), or a bus, train and another bus. Prior to the split, the journey would've taken 15mins at most, with no need for multiple mode-changes. Such an operational regime is hardly conducive to encouraging public transport use, and guess what? Outside of peak, those short feeders are seldom-used.
I should make it clear I am not against mode-changes or feeder buses (as they are a part of Perth's success in providing good public transport), but they are not the be-all and end-all of getting people to where they're going, as the above example illustrates.