Merc1107 wrote: ↑Sat Dec 11, 2021 11:54 am
In Transit wrote: ↑Sat Dec 11, 2021 10:30 am Vehicle unavailability and lack of operator focus also sometimes leads to substitution of scheduled artics with rigids, on occasion for more trips than probably necessary.
Is there also a potential issue at play with how the contractors are drawing up the shifts, resulting in the trips requiring articulated buses being mixed up among other trips not needing them, or even on the wrong type of shifts?
I'm far from a full bottle on the art of scheduling, but from personal experience (i.e. Perth), it often feels like there is blind acceptance of what the computers spit out. The result being oddities like a late nightshift yielding an artic because the first trip was a school run, or artics bumbling around on runs that could never hope to fill a Toyota Coaster, whilst rigids make the arduous journey into the city from the same area to pick up a busy evening peak trip.
For quite a few years, Perth operators were pretty poor in scheduling artics - some operators being better than others. In some cases, as you say, shifts were built first and then artics placed on those shifts which had a trip which perhaps required them, regardless of the rest of that shift's work. Contrast this with the days of Perth Bus for example, where artic blocks (after a poor period of random allocations) were manually constructed to ensure their optimal utilisation. This situation is slowly improving with the PTA having belatedly understood the importance of specifying some artic trips to operators as a contractual obligation, although there is still some way to go to optimise this.
The Region 9 changes just introduced in Sydney, however, have been very specific and targeted in the scheduling of artics. For efficient scheduling, you can still see them pop up where they aren't necessarily needed, however this isn't at the expense of where they are required.
However, this still relies on the operator in delivering this effectively - for example placing importance on not just scheduling and then allocating the correct bus type, but also in managing any unavailability on the day - such as trying to minimise sending out rigids on a lengthy 12+ hour block scheduled for an artic, or by changing the rigid off with an artic later in the day when one is available. This used to be particularly frustrating when seeing non accessible buses running all day wheelchair bus blocks - its understandable that sometimes at the height of the peak you can get caught short of the right buses, however not that you do nothing to rectify it later in the day. Try explaining to an elderly passenger, or a parent with a pram, or someone in a wheelchair that you ran out of accessible buses at a time of day when you have half a depot full of them...
Of course, this isn't only STA's (or any other operator's) responsibility. TfNSW as the agency in charge is where the leadership needs to come from on these matters - setting expectations and then ensuring they are followed. Given it took Perth's PTA over 20 years of contracting to recognise this (when they are generally the leader in effective bus contract management), some other states and territories might have a while to go.