TT 232: South-east Metro Tunnel bus recoordination and Mornington Peninsula network changes

Bus Recoordination in the south-east

The third (and I believe) final tranche of bus timetable recoordination to reflect the February 1 2026 Metro Tunnel and related train timetables will come into effect on Sunday July 5. 

The previous stage, recoordinating bus routes in Melbourne's north and west, happened in April, with details in the Projects section of the Transport Victoria website here. 

Recoordinations are typically minor tweaks of a few minutes to optimise connections (and sometimes bus running times) but a few lucky routes (like 467 and 503 in April) can get more trips to match bus with train frequencies. This is important because Melbourne's north (especially) still has many bus routes that run every 22-30 minutes in areas where trains are normally every 20 minutes, with resultant haphazard connections.  

As foreshadowed in the item on the April 2026 bus recoordination, more time changes were to come, but this time for buses feeding the Pakenham, Cranbourne and Frankston lines. These start on Sunday July 5, with a list of the 31 routes involved here. (627, 701,705, 708, 709, 760, 767, 770, 771, 772, 773, 774, 775, 776, 778, 779, 780, 782, 783, 788, 811, 812, 824, 825, 828, 832, 833, 857, 858, 863 & 887 for those interested) 

As far as I can tell the changes are small except for Route 833 between Carrum and Frankston. This route (written as 883 in the heading but corrected yesterday) will have its Saturday frequency boosted from every 60 to every 40 minutes.

This gets particularly strong use between Frankston and Carrum Downs so the upgrade will be welcomed. It does however mean that there will be uneven intervals between buses at locations such as along McLeod Rd, Patterson Lakes as the 708 that overlaps it will remain hourly on weekends. The same applies in areas where the (also hourly on weekends) 832 is an option for travel to Frankston.

As you can see from the print just above, this recoordination item is in the News (not the Projects) section of the TV website (unlike the April recoordination announcement). I prefer this but consistency that breeds repeated behaviour and thus reader familiarity and trust would have been nice.    

Also the south-east item lists Mornington Peninsula routes 781, 784 and 785. It needn't have as there is no elaboration of changes affecting them with the drop-down route list not including them. Instead that's the job of a separate website item, discussed below.  

Mornington Peninsula bus network reform

Also starting on July 5 are reformed routes on the Mornington Peninsula. Most notable features include: 

* A new cross-peninsula Route 886 between Mornington and Hastings, operating hourly all week

This will enable travel between both sides of the peninsula without the need to backtrack to Frankston. While Transport Victoria don't really promote buses for day trips or tourism, the 886 will make it easy to visit attractions across the peninsula such as Mornington and Tyabb's antique markets in a single day trip. 

* Deletion of Route 786 between Rye and St Andrews Beach due to low patronage

Removes all public transport network coverage from St Andrews on the Bass Strait side of the peninsula. 786 is the quietest regular bus route on the network with under 2 passenger boardings per service hour recorded in 2022. This is similar to that recorded on the old Route 687 to Chum Creek  before it got deleted as part of Healesville's bus reform a few years ago. Its service hours are being reused on other Mornington Peninsula bus routes.    

* Rerouting of bus routes 784 and 785 in the Mornington area

Reduces overlaps between routes and speed travel to Frankston from Mornington East. However this is at the cost of making buses more complex in central Mornington, something TV should be explaining better (more on this later).  

* Longer operating hours on bus routes 781, 784 and 785 

Extra trips so buses run from approximately 6am to 10 or 11pm across the week. Wider operating hours including later night trips has been a welcome and widespread trend of this and other recent bus network upgrades. However their application has been uneven; Melbourne's highest-usage routes such as the 900, 901, 902 and 903 SmartBuses now finish earlier on Sundays (around 9pm) than many local routes.  
Passenger communication

The Transport Victoria news item doesn't explain these network changes very well. There are links to  pdf timetables that show individual route maps but nothing for the network as a whole. That's important as some peoples' nearest bus route will change or they may need to wait at a different stop to reach their destination.

PTV and Transport Victoria communication has always been heavily text based. This limits the inclusiveness of their messaging, especially for people whose first language is not English or are visual thinkers. This bias cannot be put down to a lack of internal resources; DTP already makes maps for consultation purposes but forgets they exist a year or two later when they could help explain a reformed network.   

DTP has so many layers of management that they are forced to spend disproportionate time in meetings (it's a mathematical fact - work it out on paper - meetings rise exponentially with executive numbers). If results are any guide, this distracts bosses from actual productive work such as looking at outcomes (such as community benefits), processes (like knowledge management that  maximises value from work already done) and outputs (such as its website) to drive improvements. 

Central Mornington stops

What about central Mornington? You could argue that it is generously served with 5 buses per hour to Frankston on weekdays and not much less than that on weekends. However it is a key destination and people need to know where to catch their bus from given that (a) service is spread over four mostly hourly routes and (b) the altered routes change things. 

The complexity of buses in central Mornington was considered a problem about 20 years ago. This led to central Mornington bus stops being simplified about 12 to 15 years ago following state government funding in 2011 (background here, here and here).

That meant that you could get all local routes (781, 784, 785) towards Frankston from the one stop, even if the buses had to deviate a little. All three routes were relatively direct to Frankston so you would typically board the first bus that came along. Ideally scheduling would permit as close as possible to a 20 minute combined maximum wait given that each of these routes runs hourly. 

Quicker travel via the 788 from the Bays Hospital stop was possible but until improvements a few years ago (every 40 to every 30 min on weekdays, 80 to 40 min weekends) its frequency meant that unless you timed it well the wait time often exceeded (or felt like it exceeded) what you'd save by taking the faster 788.

The map below shows the main stops in central Mornington as they currently stand.  

As noted before Transport Victoria prefers text over maps. They resist drawing new maps and won't necessarily even reuse ones they previously made.

To fill this gap I made one for what I think will happen in Central Mornington, the busiest stops on the network outside of Frankston. Undoing the 2011 consolidation, travel from there to Frankston will be less legible with three rather than two stops. Rather than just rock up at the stop on the north side of Barkly St as you probably would today, this setup gives a bit of a nudge to check times and possibly walk a block to catch the faster route 788. 

This is the new network's main trade-off, noting that 784's new alignment delivers substantial travel time savings for Mornington East (which previously had no fast option to Frankston). Also people need to be made aware that the new 886 to Hastings will depart from the Bays Hospital, not the previously main stops in Barkly St. 

This needs a bit of explaining so that people get the right stop. Noting that these are well used stops and the area has a senior population skew, with a higher than average proportion of less mobile passengers. Hopefully DTP/Transport Victoria will come to appreciate this with graphical descriptions of the new central Mornington bus stop arrangements provided both online and at the site.  

See other Timetable Tuesday items here

UN 235: PTUA's plan for Geelong and Bellarine buses

Today I'm showcasing another vision for improved bus services, this time for Geelong, Bellarine Peninsula and Bannockburn from the Public Transport Users Association Geelong Branch. 

It is in response to the bus review DTP is conducting for the area, following funding in a recent state budget. They asked for public input back in April and PTUA responded with a detailed submission. 

My personal view is that Geelong is one of the places that least needs a wholesale bus network review. Geelong itself got a major network review in 2015 with routes dramatically straightened and (mostly) upgraded to every 20 minutes off-peak on weekdays. That compares well with routes in metropolitan Melbourne and meshes with trains that run every 20 minutes. 

If you want to look at places most in need of an overhauled bus network look at Wodonga, Shepparton and Mildura. Infrastructure Victoria recommended revamped bus networks in these places and more. The government actually started a review for Mildura (when it had an independent MP) but failed to carry through after it was safely returned in the 2022 state election. 

Having said that the Geelong area still needs some bus service improvements. Despite generally better weekday frequencies than Melbourne suburbs operating spans are shorter, especially on weekends. Late starts, early finishes and low frequencies stymie travel to places like Queenscliff, especially on weekends when intending visitor numbers are highest. And growing Bannockburn needs much more than its current sparse service. 

The PTUA submission tackles all these by recommending higher frequencies and longer hours. It also supports bus priority, improved bus shelters and the retention of the Moorabool Street bus interchange in the Geelong CBD. The latter is a hot topic locally; some retailers want the bus interchange moved due to antisocial behaviour and the sorts of people they say it attracts. A trial of a Night Network type service on the main bus routes is also advocated. 

Geelong's train service used to be hourly. It has been every 20 minutes seven days per week since 2024 following successive service upgrades. Line usage has surged, largely due to urban growth in Tarneit and Wyndham Vale with more to come when the new Tarneit West station opens in a few months.

However its peak timetable remains with excessively complex stopping patterns. Also a short-sighted decision was made to retain 40 minute weekday interpeak frequencies for Waurn Ponds despite a 20 minute service now operating on weekends. These oddities undermine the potential role of rail to operate as a spine for fast local travel for some within-Geelong trips. 

The key decision taken when planning Geelong's bus network is its base frequency. As noted before this is commonly 20 minutes on weekdays for local bus routes. It's on weekends when gaps widen. Even Geelong's busiest route (Route 1) has a (slightly uneven) 30 minute headway on weekends. This is actually similar to some Melbourne SmartBuses but was instituted when Geelong weekend trains were every 60 minutes. Buses were not significantly upgraded when weekend trains went to 40 and then 20 minutes. 

If you are not going to have buses running at turn-up-and-go frequencies and you value connectivity with trains then the other option is a timed transfer network where there is a family of frequencies that evenly mesh with train services. For example if trains are every 15 minutes then buses might be every 15 minutes for main routes, every 30 minutes for middle importance routes and every 60 minutes for local or semi-rural routes. 

In Geelong's case the pulse is set by a 20 minute train headway to South Geelong. The menu of acceptable frequencies for buses then becomes 20, 40 and 60 minutes (though 40 won't mesh with 60 for even bus to bus connections). A 20 minute interval with most routes (ie matching train frequencies) is basically what the planners in 2015 went with for weekday services. In contrast the 2014 Brimbank and 2015 Wyndham networks planned at a similar time went with a harmonised hierarchy with main routes every 20 minutes and local routes every 40 minutes. Melbourne uses 40 minute frequencies more than anywhere else in Australia. Its advantage is that it's better than 60 minutes but is not a memorable clockface headway. 

The PTUA submission addresses the headway harmonisation problem by ignoring it. Their proposed bus network is based on service every 15 minutes for urban Geelong and Lara routes and every 30 minutes for peripheral routes. Opting for this produces a memory timetable good for local trips but sacrifices even connectivity with trains, especially in cases where buses every 30 minutes meet trains every 40 minutes (or less worse every 20 minutes). It is possibly true that outside main commuting times travel within a city is more significant than trips involving a train connection. However longer tourist type trips where people are travelling to locations like the Bellarine Peninsula may have a significant rail connection component. But PTUA's headway choice does avoid horrid 40 minute bus intervals for outlying areas which might have been its main reasoning. 

The submission correctly (in my view) says the structure of network is strong. Thus it does not suggest major overhauls for the core of the network. But it does for some outlying areas with maps provided. 

Anyway that's my summary. Have a read and let me know in the comments what you think. 

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TT 231: The secret Sunday train PTV doesn't advertise

 

As noted here, the much-promoted "Big Switch" February 1 Metro train timetables were a huge boost for the Sunbury line, some handy uplifts for Cranbourne and Pakenham but pretty small affairs elsewhere.

This is because bigger initiatives are planned for later, with the minister describing the February 1 changes as only the beginning. These will include off-peak improvements for Sandringham, Craigieburn and Upfield and peak improvements for Werribee, 

However February 1 did treat the Frankston line to an extra outbound Sunday morning trip, departing Flinders Street at 7:39am and arriving Frankston at 8:43am. 

Its timing couldn't have been better so kudos to the Master Timetable schedulers. It perfectly plugs a 60 minute gap in the previous timetable that existed until the 9:12am arrival at Frankston. 

And whether by luck or design it cuts connection waits for the Mornington Peninsula's most important bus routes (including some first trips for the day) by 30 minutes. Without this train people travelling from the city direction would be unable to efficiently arrive at most Peninsula destinations much before late morning. 

Despite its network benefits this extra service has flown under the radar. Even though it's a perfect example of how adding a few services per week at important times (for tiny cost) can transform passenger experiences and the network's usefulness.  

The trip's low profile is not just due to the usual DTP/TV/PTV prosaic communication style and lack of marketing flair. Weakness in data management is also a factor. That's because the trip can be missing from what should be trusted resources like the PTV app, Transport Victoria website and Metro online timetables. Without departure time posters at stations (which were removed and not replaced for February 1) people might see the hour gap between trains and avoid travel or drive instead.

Without information one could call the 7:39am Sunday trip from Flinders Street to Frankston a 'secret' train, known only to a lucky few who either saw it or were browsing certain sources that showed it. 

Enjoy this video of my experiences planning and making a trip involving it last Sunday. 

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Note: There are other trains that run but are not in the public timetable. These 'non-PSR' trains are normally on weekdays. They can be cancelled without penalty. But this service is too useful for network connectivity to be considered a non-PSR. 

UPDATE: A commenter on the above video says that the train mentioned is also not listed in the printed timetable. The plot thickens! 

See other Timetable Tuesday items here