Tuesday, September 23, 2025

TT 214: Craigieburn upgraded bus timetables to start next month (and what's next for bus reform?)


A major feature of bus upgrades in 2025's state budget was a package for the Craigieburn area. These were needed due to the area's high population growth and the strong usage of buses in more established parts of Craigieburn. 

The upgrades, which will start on October 5, were announced on the premier's website and later on Transport Victoria's. However people might have missed it as TV put it in the Projects area, not where  they have other bus upgrades announced. 

PTV/TV shies away from using maps to publicly explain services upgrades even though they need to be produced to explain them to stakeholders such as MPs. Said MPs like them, and being better at public communication than the generally taciturn TV, sometimes post them online. So Ros Spence MP posted a handy TV-produced map on her Facebook page that you won't see on TV's. 

In summary the upgrades include: 

* Craigieburn routes 525, 528, 529, 533, 537 

- Monday to Saturday evening hours boosted to 11:40pm approx

- Monday to Saturday evening frequency boosted to 30 min

        - Route 525 made more direct with the extended 524 serving Kalkallo instead 


The operating hours extensions are arguably most significant of the measures above. These, along with upgrades to several routes in Werribee funded in the 2025 state budget and some earlier initiatives in Cranbourne, ditch the practice that all local bus routes in Melbourne should stop at 9pm Monday to Saturday despite trains, trams and SmartBuses continuing until at least midnight. 

The later trips represent an advance on the 7 day 9pm finish set down in the 2006 MOTC minimum service standards. This was a widely (but not totally) implemented plan that benefited over 100 bus routes in the vigorous period of bus service addition between 2005 and 2010. MOTC reversed about two or three decades of cuts which by late 1991 had removed almost all after 7pm and Sunday service from privately operated (but state funded) metropolitan bus routes.  

What didn't get changed on Craigieburn buses? Weekend morning start times remain too late for some early events or transport connections. Weekends remain at every 40 minutes even though a 20 minute service on routes like 529 and 533 would bring Craigieburn in line with Werribee which already has some 7 day 20 minute services. However Sunday evenings improve with their last buses now nearer to 10pm than 9pm. 

A notable omission is that Route 541 from Broadmeadows to Craigieburn North does not gain from these changes even though, with 24 hour weekend service, it could be a worthy replacement of the less known 953 Night Network only route. 

Also of future interest is what happens to evening bus frequencies when Craigieburn evening trains improve from every 30 to every 20 minutes after the Metro Tunnel opens. Maintaining connectivity will require some headway changes, possibly involving the 20 minute weekday service continuing to later at night before dropping to 40 minutes for the last few trips. 

Overall though these are a good set of bus service upgrades that will make a real difference to how people get around in Craigieburn and surrounds in the 8pm to midnight time slot. 

* 511 Modified to operate to Craigieburn station (instead of Donnybrook) 

Remains a limited peak-only service for now but will get extra trips next year. Craigieburn station has more trains and buses to other destinations. 


* 524 Extended north to serve Cloverton Estate and becomes bidirectional.

Some improvements to operating hours though ~7pm weekend finish remains. The extension adds coverage and replaces 525 in Kalkallo. 


* 543 Extended to Craigieburn Central 

Also with service boosts including:

- Weekday peak frequency boosted 30 to 20 min

- Weekday interpeak frequency boosted 40 to 30 min

- Later finish (10pm instead of 9pm)

As well as providing new coverage the 543 Craigieburn Central extension makes a lot of trips quicker; previously Greenvale and Mickleham Rd passengers had to backtrack to Roxburgh Park and catch a train or bus to get to Craigieburn, which is their nearest large centre. The extended route should get good usage from Day One as the extended route facilitates a bidirectional passenger flow across the day. 

Two things of are of note. (i) The opportunity was not taken to join it to Route 537 to provide a one seat (though somewhat indirect) ride to Craigieburn station and (ii) The 30 minute interpeak weekday frequency (which it shares with the 544) does not harmonise with trains every 20 minutes but offers a more intuitive clockface service that people will probably value more. It is also a step towards an ultimate 20 minute frequency as already runs on most Craigieburn local routes. 

Summary

These Craigieburn area bus network changes are good and will be welcomed by passengers. They bring much needed route coverage, frequency and operating hours extensions to a high patronage and fast growing part of Melbourne's outer north. Usage of the new services is likely to be above the metropolitan average for buses.  

However the government appears to be using a pivot to growth area service boosts like these as reasons to ditch its ambitious but unfunded program of Melbourne north, Melbourne north-east and Mildura area bus network reviews that were promised before the 2022 state election. When both are needed and should not be traded off against the other.

The fate of the bus network reviews represents a continuation of historical patterns writ large. The 2005 to 2010 period was marked by high activity in expanding growth area coverage, upgrading existing local routes and even rolling out new SmartBus routes with the majority of these initiatives done by 2010.

Bus network reviews were in the same MOTC package. They were commissioned but implementation was limited. By the time the reports came out the government's priorities had moved on (in this case addressing severe problems with rail crowding and unreliability) and political interest in buses (and especially network reform) had evaporated.

A similar thing appears to have been repeated (with even less to show) despite substantial DTP spending on staffing, consultants and reports to develop reform proposals that may never see the light of day. Like with financing for large infrastructure projects the financial and/or political appetite needs to be just right for significant bus network reform to happen. If the opportunity is not grabbed immediately it will vanish or at best be redirected to something else.  

Notwithstanding the high value of the funded bus upgrades in areas like Werribee and Craigieburn, dropping the ball on network reform will mean that 30 year backlogs in maybe two-thirds of Melbourne suburbs extend to 40 or 50 years if not more, leading to mounting inefficiencies and a bus network decreasingly fit for purpose.

It looks like the people of Reservoir North-West, for example, will continue to have their midday reversing, occasionally extending 558 bus that finishes at 1pm Saturday for years to come. That is unless an alternative more agile and politically acceptable path to successful and implemented established suburb bus network reform like Perth has developed expertise in can be found.  
 




Friday, September 19, 2025

UN 211: Talking buses - A massive week in the media



Executive Summary: A few thoughts on the future of bus network reform in Melbourne (it needs to proceed in some form despite the reported setbacks) and a summary of numerous media appearances in the last week.  

I've been in the media a lot lately regarding the documents about DTP bus planning that were tabled in the Legislative Council last week.

I was one of the first outside the department to read and index nearly 2000 pages worth of these documents and reports that reveal previously unknown information about Melbourne's bus services and  the implementation of the Bus Reform Implementation Plan as called for in Victoria's Bus Plan. I had worries that the network reform elements of the plan were ailing back in 2023. The released papers validate these concerns.


Background to the 2022 proposed bus reviews

About 18-24 months of substantial planning work, including public engagement and the use of consultants (which wouldn't have been cheap) was done before the plan to reform buses in the three pilot areas of Mildura, Melbourne's north and Melbourne's north-east was apparently ditched.

After that there was to be a staged plan to review and reform buses all across Melbourne out to 2031. This may have increased annual bus usage by around 80 million trips annually, making bus reform about four times the size of the Metro Tunnel and comparable in magnitude to the entire Suburban Rail Loop for its patronage impact. 

Despite Melbourne spending less than other cities on running buses, it is also true that (as it has pointed out) the government is continuing to invest in new bus services. Especially in outer western and northern suburbs with genuinely high transport needs. Examples include growth area funding through GAIC and funding for improved bus services that feed the Ballarat and Traralgon train lines as part of re-coordination with V/Line trains. The 2025 state budget was much better for buses (and also Metro train services) in Melbourne's west and north than the generally threadbare 2023 and 2024 budgets. 

However these upgrades, welcome as they are, do not address multi-decade network inefficiencies and service shortfalls that plague buses in the 5 to 25km ring from Melbourne. The reviews would have done that by tacking route overlaps and weak termini to get us towards a more direct network with buses every 10 minutes along main roads. Instead, especially on weekends, we have long gaps with parts of Bell Street Preston (for example) having similar 40 minute gaps between buses as local routes in the back streets of Moe. Low frequency and short operating hours contribute to the poor perceptions of buses confirmed by market research. 

Unless the government can revive bus network reform in some form (possibly involving simpler, quicker to implement reviews involving small clusters of routes), we'll be waiting years if not decades for weekend service better than every 30 to 60 minutes on key roads like Millers, Bell, Murray, Mahoneys, Warrigal, Springvale, Wellington, Cheltenham, Stud, Narre Warren - Cranbourne and more. Doing nothing here should not be an option given Melbourne's rate of growth and travel patterns that continue to change. 

Bus network reform can be controversial, creating 'winners' and 'losers' even though there might be an overall good. This might have caused some in cabinet to be wary of it. Maybe some involved bit off more than they could chew and/or did not sell the benefits sufficiently to people who mattered. Then there is the opex starvation problem where, especially in a low interest rate environment, it is easier to find (say) $10b for a capital infrastructure project than to fund (say) $200m extra annually for improved services, despite the latter often moving more people. 
 

Views may differ over the merits of the reform plan that got presented to cabinet and not funded.

But there is not doubt that proceeding with Werribee-style weekend frequency and operating hours bus upgrades on main roads and completing the 2006 minimum service standards program on popular local routes in areas with high social needs present a massive opportunity given the power of good quality bus services to spread connectivity, broaden housing choices and save people money. The success of this approach is shown by the strong patronage results arising from service upgrades on key routes such as 733 and 800. Candidate routes could include the likes of 160, 411, 418, 420, 460, 494, 495, 508, 532, 561, 570, 623, 630, 670, 693, 737, 742, 828, 841, 900, 901 (part), 902 (part), 903 (part), 926 etc. 


Media comments

My comments have been on bus service resourcing, bus network reform and tacking fare evasion. 

Here is where people saw, heard or read my comments:  

* 10/9/2025 Australasian Bus & Coach item on Melbourne's bus underspend
https://www.busnews.com.au/tabled-documents-reveal-victorian-government-underinvesting-on-metropolitan-bus-services


* 12/9/2025 Dandenong Star Journal item on bus service underfunding
https://dandenong.starcommunity.com.au/news/2025-09-12/underfunded-bus-boost-call/


* 17/9/2025 ABC News website item on bus network underspend and failure of bus reform plan
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-17/victoria-bus-system-public-transport/105780926


* 17/9/2025 7am ABC Victoria Radio News item regarding bus reform plan


* 17/9/2025 ABC Melbourne radio interview with Raf Epstein on bus network reform (from 36:50 in)
https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/melbourne-mornings/mornings/105771218

* 17/9/2025 7pm ABC Victoria TV News item on failure of bus reform plans 
https://iview.abc.net.au/video/NU2502V260S00 



* 18/9/2025 ABC News website item on low touch on rates on Melbourne's buses
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-18/victoria-bus-fare-evasion-public-transport-myki/105785946


* 18/9/2025 4:15pm ABC Regional Drive with Prue Bentley (approx 1hr 17 min in) 
https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/vic-statewide-drive/drive/105772482

* 18/9/2025 7pm ABC Victoria TV News item on bus fare evasion 
https://iview.abc.net.au/video/NU2502V261S00


Thanks to journalists Sean Mortell, Margaret Paul, Prue Bentley, Raf Epstein and others for compiling these stories. 

Index to Useful Network items

Tuesday, September 16, 2025

TT 213: How Melbourne added 8000 weekly bus services in just 18 months



Executive Summary: Melbourne can roll out upgraded bus services at a far faster pace than has been the case in recent history. We just need to draw inspiration from our own achievements in 2005 to rediscover how to do it. 

Whenever people say that we can't roll out bus upgrades quickly I point out to them that such capability is not impossible with Melbourne having a record to prove it.

As I mentioned a few years ago bus upgrades have their slow and fast times. The early 1990s saw large cuts followed by almost a decade of stagnation. Melbourne had changed but buses hadn't. There were some small improvements in 2002 (including pilot SmartBus routes) but most routes still had restricted hours and frequencies, especially on weekends or after 7pm.

The 2005 state budget sparked a big acceleration with many bus upgrades financed. The following year better bus services was not then the most prominent but became the main legacy of the 2006 Transport and Liveability Statement, otherwise known as 'Meeting our Transport Challenges'.

Since then governments have gone backward in their appetite for bus network upgrades.

In the 2020s getting even one bus route to 7 day service requires significant community campaigns. Victoria's spending on metropolitan bus services is $112 per capita per year - the lowest in the country according to an internal DTP bus benchmarking study made public thanks to its tabling in parliament.


Those documents also reveal that fare evasion on buses is running wild (despite other official numbers understating it) while plans to make buses better stalled due to apparent cabinet rejection of a DTP plan for radical bus network reform in late 2023. That rejection reaffirmed the primacy of infrastructure over service in setting the government's metropolitan public transport priorities ever since 2015. 

2005's big bus budget

The political environment a decade prior was the opposite. In 2005 we weren't spending much on public transport infrastructure. However relatively good economic conditions led to a government that could still consider itself financially prudent while lifting spending on services.

Well-targeted and highly effective advocacy from BusVic's John Stanley and others channelled some of that into buses. That led to improved bus services becoming a major transport policy thrust for several successive state budgets from 2005.   

To get an idea of how big this is I'll let archived Department of Infrastructure websites and media releases do most of the talking. But trust me these upgrades compared to those that followed were huge in both scale and impact.  

Our story starts with a major announcement from Transport Minister Peter Batchelor about the bus improvements funded in that year's state budget. Read the release here: 
https://web.archive.org/web/20070831034319/http://www.dpc.vic.gov.au/domino/Web_Notes/newmedia.nsf/798c8b072d117a01ca256c8c0019bb01/f44b350a8cc385f7ca25709d00002e9d!OpenDocument

Premier Steve Bracks' media release from May 17, 2006 is here: 
https://web.archive.org/web/20080325084926/http://www.dpc.vic.gov.au/domino/Web_Notes/newmedia.nsf/b0222c68d27626e2ca256c8c001a3d2d/c87cb70942f9247aca257172000617f7!OpenDocument

This laid out a $1.4b 10 year plan to boost bus services, with a 22% increase in the first four years involving 250 routes. This was evenly split between weekend and evening upgrades to local bus services and four new SmartBus orbitals (though only three were identified). There was also a major Doncaster area bus package. The first improvements would commence in three months - fast by 2020s standards. 

These bus upgrades were a part of the Meeting Our Transport Challenges plan (or MOTC). It was a sign that metropolitan public transport was emerging as a major issue. There had been changes such as franchising, ticketing, numerous rebrandings and unified information under Metlink but these were not bread and butter fundamentals like infrastructure and more service as were also sorely needed. 

A year after the October 2005 announcement came this update in October 2006: 
https://web.archive.org/web/20070830131004/http://www.dpc.vic.gov.au/domino/Web_Notes/newmedia.nsf/798c8b072d117a01ca256c8c0019bb01/33f2468c487ca1a5ca257202000af987!OpenDocument 
It revealed 8000 more metropolitan bus trips per week had either been added or were to be added between November 2005 and early 2007. Those early 2007 upgrades alone benefited 36 bus routes. The vast majority of these would included new Sunday service plus longer operating hours on other days of the week. 


Growth area transport was then, as it is now, an issue. Here is a page of upgrades that were done. 


Possibly most impressive is this list of upgrades by local government area. This shows the volume of work that was done. It really shows that where there is the will a lot of upgrades can be done in a short time.  


An index page to much of the above is here: 
https://web.archive.org/web/20070830151937/http://www.linkingvictoria.vic.gov.au/DOI/Internet/transport.nsf/AllDocs/6393108372420DE6CA257097000B7001?OpenDocument


Successes in service boosts and SmartBus roll-out

In summary this program delivered large (but not total) implementation of: 

* Minimum service standards on local bus routes (that is at least hourly to 9pm 7 days) 
* A network of premium service SmartBuses operating every 15 minutes weekdays and 30 minutes weekends over long operating hours

These measures were transformative at the time. As would a similar magnitude service uplift would be now. They were also very successful with patronage rising in line with service increases despite the above two not resolving many overlaps on the network.

The MOTC bus upgrades were fortunate to have as sponsor minister Peter Batchelor whose standing in the party and cabinet could see them through (despite him being factionally opposite to then premier Bracks and Treasurer Brumby). They also had the relatively then more prominent (due to its then high membership coverage of metropolitan bus operators) BusVic playing the role of supportive stakeholder. 

Whereas Dr Paul Mees, the state's most vocal and media-successful transport advocate, was pungently dismissive of MOTC with personal animosities towards both Minister Batchelor and Jim Betts, the then Director of Public Transport.

Ditto for the Mees-influenced Public Transport Users Association, whose committee unanimously called on Minister Batchelor to resign the day the MOTC plan came out.  PTUA wanted a revised institutional structure, suburban rail extensions instead of freeways and an even bigger stress on service. Some of these were to later come but not in 2006.

About 70% of the minimum service standards and orbital SmartBuses had been rolled out by the time of Labor's defeat in 2010. Stage 3 (more orbitals) and Stage 4 (grid network across Melbourne) of SmartBus did not proceed, having been dropped from later, more rail-heavy plans. But by 2010 the success of what was done was undeniable. 

Challenges for bus network reform 

The third leg of the MOTC bus initiatives, the sixteen local bus network reviews, was not so successful. Done by consultants commissioned by the department these were more complicated pieces of work than straight service upgrades.

The potential risks (as reform can create 'losers' as well as 'winners') added to the increased costs may have made implementing the reviews less politically attractive than a specific upgrade on a familiar route or an orbital you could draw on a map. Especially as political interest in transport had shifted to addressing surging rail crowding and collapsing reliability by the time the bus reviews came out. Thus only a minority of bus review recommendations were ever implemented.

Changing political and budgetary priorities is one reason why bus reform fails. Budget funding is like acetone - it evaporates quickly if not used. Sometimes it's better to grab what money is going and do stuff ASAP. Even if small or imperfect it moves the network forward. Unlike the nothing that can happen after a grand network review is met with no funding by the time it is ready to implement. Splitting big reviews into smaller ones (maybe only involving 4 to 6 routes), compressing time-lines and (hopefully) developing the capability to do several simultaneously are potential ways forward here.  


Baillieu / Napthine government priorities

What happened after the 2010 state election? SmartBus expansion remained paused but bus network reform survived and even thrived after the change of government. While the incoming Coalition government didn't put in as much new money for buses that the previous Labor government did, it was more open to (potentially controversial) network reform. This was of a somewhat more austere brand than in the Brumby era bus network reviews. But where implemented it still simplified the network, boosted frequencies on key corridors and rolled out more seven day service.

This work was assisted by better focus afforded by the creation of PTV out of Metlink and parts of the department, effectively creating a public transport agency that was not distracted by other matters. 

Achievements under PTV included the radical new 2013 Point Cook bus network and the massive (never exceeded) train, tram and bus reforms of July 2014. Reforms devised during this time continued to be implemented in the first term of the Andrews Labor government, notably Wyndham/Geelong in 2015 and Cranbourne in 2016.


Andrews / Allan government priorities

Under successive Andrews/Allan government transport ministers service upgrades continued apace in regional Victoria, especially for rail but also bus. As the numbers presented above show, Victoria now spends twice as much per capita on regional bus services as it does on metropolitan bus services - a bigger ratio than any other state. With 1100 new bus services per week being added from September 14 2025, the back streets of Moe now have weekend buses as frequent as operate on sections of busy Bell Street Preston (in both cases every 40 min) despite very different demand profiles.



To the extent that Victoria has a public transport service policy, its first priority has been what you might call equal fare/equal service across the state. Expression of that can be found in our almost flat fare structure and the (often laudable) push to upgrade service frequencies on trains and buses across the state to every 60 and increasingly every 40 minutes. 

Metropolitan public transport services, in contrast, were not necessarily the highest interest for either the infrastructure focused premier nor the then (regionally-based) transport minister. This change soon translated into outcomes, including a big drop in service uplifts and service reform compared to the more active 2005-2015 decade. 

Planning that was done, such as 2012's Network Development Plan (Metropolitan Rail) service upgrades or the promised 2022 Mildura, north and north-eastern bus network reviews, were at best marginally implemented or at worst abandoned.

Piecemeal changes including new routes in new areas and some welcome service increases continued. There was however not a lot of network reform, with the Baillieu/Napthine government's record in this area looking like a model for dynamism (the reverse of the narrative for infrastructure). Overall bus services improved at a slower pace than the hopes generated in the 2021 Bus Plan and the network reviews launched the following year.  

Some lessons for bus reformers

Large-scale service-oriented policies like bus service expansion and reform need to be carried by a minister who is a compelling policy champion with the required cabinet support and not in any  premier's 'freezer'. DTP also needs leadership that can win support both internally and with stakeholders. Whatever his other merits, the previous secretary could hardly be described as having a magnetic approach that readily attracted such critical buy-in.  

For buses this was history repeating itself from fifteen years prior - the more complex or bigger the network reviews, the less their chance of success seems to be. On the other hand a small number of small reviews delivers small results so that's not great either.

The best outcomes seem to come from either doing a large number of small changes as part of daily business (the Perth model) or some medium sized area reviews (which Melbourne did well in the 2013 - 2016 period). 


Going big (like was attempted with bus reform - and you need to credit DTP's audacity here) was however no impediment for infrastructure construction. Indeed it seemed the bigger it was the more likely a project was to happen.

Encouraged by a bullish population outlook, low interest rates and the perceived excitement of infrastructure, metropolitan transport policy came to be 99% about major projects with this core to how the Andrews government saw itself. Regional services have also done well, with midday service levels now equalling or exceeding some underinvested-in metropolitan routes. 

While this mix has to date not necessarily delivered the best value transport network outcomes for the biggest number of people, this stance was rewarded by electoral success and not challenged by a disunited state opposition too busy fighting (and suing) itself. And there is always the opportunity to add service in the future with the overhaul of the timetables after the Metro Tunnel's opening a test of the government here.