Frequent Service Map 2: Melbourne’s north-east

A few posts ago I posted a frequent service map for Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs to show the area’s high-service train, tram and bus corridors.

You might choose to live along these corridors if you value the choice of not having to drive everywhere. Businesses can establish in these areas and have quality public transport for their employees and customers in at least some directions. Or, if a tourist, you can travel to these locations with the confidence that service will still be running when you want to get home and that you won’t be waiting an hour if a service was missed.

Today’s map covers the north-eastern suburbs – roughly the City of Manningham with a bit either side. It was done in time for the introduction of five SmartBus routes to the area (mostly as part of Doncaster Area Rapid Transit) within the next month.

The map below shows Manningham’s frequent service network from October 4, 2010. The main routes form a grid of roughly 1 to 3 kilometre intervals. These put most of Manningham within 20 minutes walk of at least one SmartBus service. Service levels include a 15 minute weekday frequency until 9pm. At other times buses operate every 30 minutes until midnight, except Sundays where a 9pm finish applies (do people near trains and trams have later bedtimes?).

Click here for higher resolution pdf (recommended for printing or study)

As with the earlier map, continuous lines indicate long service spans and thick lines indicate the highest service frequencies. Low-frequency and peak-only routes are omitted except where they overlap much of a higher service route and boost frequencies along a corridor.