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Friday, July 21, 2006
Frequency of Service, Part 2
Opposing the busway, Tom Beard wrote:
...the buses will still have to meander through the sprawling suburbs at the end of
the route, and those suburbs will never have the density to support truly
frequent services, especially off-peak.
His assumption is incorrect. The suburbs already support a 5-minute bus frequency during the morning peak right now. As for off peak, they support a 30-minute frequency, which is the same off-peak frequency as Johnsonville rail.
If the current bus service, which suffers heavily from road congestion, can support a 5-minute frequency, the more attactive busway service will have no difficulty in doing the same.
Sources: Metlink timetables for Newlands and Churton Park bus services.
If the current bus service, which suffers heavily from road congestion, can support a 5-minute frequency, the more attactive busway service will have no difficulty in doing the same.
Sources: Metlink timetables for Newlands and Churton Park bus services.
posted by John Rusk at 8:39 am
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5 Comments:
"The top priority raised by submitters from all areas was a desire for new/modern trains on the Johnsonville line (including submitters that do not use it), with only a small minority that do not want the Johnsonville line to be upgraded."
- NWPT Study Stage 1: Issues and Needs Analysis
Comments?
Good question. I don't have time to answer in full just now, but breifly: If you ask the public "what's wrong with public transport", they are naturally going to point out flaws in what they can see now.
(As I recall, the initial consulation took place before the busway idea was well publicised, so the busway option wasn't even on people's radar.)
When asked "what's wrong with the rail line?", naturally people said "the trains are old". They didn't say, "What's wrong with rail? Well, for starters, it shouldn't be rail!"
The wording of the question, and the context in which it is asked, have a huge bearing on the answer.
30 minutes is not "truly frequent": 5-10 minutes is. And that's only achievable along relatively high density corridors.
And by "off-peak" I include evenings, and you'd be lucky to get hourly service on either buses or trains after 9pm. If the Jville line were extended through the city and became a high(er) density corridor, then it would become much more feasible as a frequent service for non-commuting travel.
Agreed, 5-10 minutes is not achievable off-peak, under any scenario, for suburbs at the end of the route.
It is achievable on-peak, as evidenced by the fact that we already have it :-)
One thing that interests me is that a busway scenario effectively combines the existing bus and rail corridors. Might that allow higher off-peak frequencies? E.g. the existing rail service and some bus routes (54 and 56) all run relatively infrequent services through until 11 pm. If they're all combined into a single buway service, might that allow a higher frequency at that time of night?
P.S. To elaborate on that point, consider the period between 9 and 10 pm. Currently, in that period we have 2 trains per hour, one 54 (Churton Park) bus and one 56 (Newlands) bus.
Imagine replacing those buses and trains with just 4 busway buses. The buses would stop at all stations, then half of them would go on to the suburban portion of route 54, and half to the suburban portion of route 56.
That's 15 minute frequency on the busway, and 30 minute in the suburbs. Everyone gets double their existing frequency, and yet the cost is comparable or even lower. (For instance, we would have only 4 drivers to pay; when the existing scenario has 4 drivers plus 2 additional train staff.)
This is not necessarily the way the busway would be operated (there are many possible options) but it does illustrate the point I mentioned above.
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