Timetable Tuesday #125: Croydon's bus 690

 

Running between stations on two railway lines, the 690 is your typical neighbourhood bus route in outer Melbourne. It connects residential areas with two medium sized suburban shopping areas. As you can see from the map it runs roughly north-south with some wriggles off the main road to provide residential area coverage. It serves two fairly marginal seats - Croydon held by the Liberals David Hodgett MP and Bayswater held by Jackson Taylor MP for Labor.  

Compared to outer areas in Melbourne's north and west, the Croydon/Boronia area has larger house blocks, lower population density and often higher car ownership. The outer eastern area has long had buses but they, and the trains they feed, are typically infrequent at most times. During peaks the trains are more frequent but the buses typically do not get much more frequent.  

The 690's catchment relative to other bus routes is below. It provides largely unique north-south coverage with the long-established 679 providing an east-west connection. The kink in Croydon South is because it avoids the northern part of Colchester Rd. The portion near Canterbury Rd is a light industrial area with poor permeability. Instead it serves Liverpool Rd with a larger residential catchment. 

Further south the bus does serve Colchester Rd but it frequently deviates off it for neighbourhoods either side (map below). Then, after Mountain Hwy it runs quite directly to Boronia Station. 

Timetable

Route 690 operates seven days with a finish of approximately 9pm. It comes close to meeting the minimum service standards for buses in Melbourne with gaps between trips rarely exceeding 60 minutes. This by itself qualifies it as being one of the area's key routes given that so many others in the outer east only operate 5 or 6 days per week, or even once per day (like the various 745 routes at Bayswater). 

End to end run time is approximately 35 minutes. The first weekday trips arrive at Boronia and Croydon stations around 6:20am. Weekday frequencies average about 40 minutes though they are not even intervals with irregular headways between about 30 and 50 minutes. Trips during some peak periods are nearer to 30 minutes apart. Mostly it would be a two bus route. 

Connectivity during the day would be difficult to optimise as trains at both Boronia and Croydon operate every 30 minutes, the lowest of any continuously developed suburban line in Melbourne and even inferior to Geelong. More on getting to 20 minutes for the Belgrave and Lilydale lines here.  

Weekend service is approximately hourly with some longer gaps. Most notable is a 75 to 80 minute interval around 7 to 8 am on Saturday. This may be as only one bus is out until another joins it later. Otherwise gaps are more likely to be around 60 to 65 minutes, though Sunday is more often nearer to hourly.

History

The 690 can trace its ancestry back to at least 1963, with a route bearing that number operating as an indirect route from Croydon to Kilsyth via Dorset, Canterbury and Liverpool roads showing on early 1970s maps.  The 1978 map shows it reconfigured to operate Croydon to Boronia, sort of like it does now. However the southern part headed west off Colchester Rd, going via Dorset Rd to Boronia. This remained until at least the early 1990s with Albert Av (the southern continuation of Colchester Rd) being served by the 755 (that then didn't go via The Basin - this being 737's job). 

Later the 737 was run north to Croydon, replacing the abolished Metlink 634 on Dorset Rd, 755 went in and out of The Basin while 690 became the Albert Av bus via more of Colchester Rd but with some squiggles either side to penetrate residential neighbourhoods. 

In 2008 the 690 got its service extended to 7 days and a 9pm finish as part of the large MOTC minimum standards bus upgrade program. More details on this and other upgrades across Melbourne's bus network in this archived list. 

Patronage

Buses in Melbourne's outer east are often fairly quiet. However the 690 does better than most, particularly on weekdays. Then (in late 2018) it attracted 24 passenger boardings per bus hour on school days, dropping to 20 per hour on school holidays. This is almost exactly average for buses in Melbourne. The fall in school holidays indicates it has some role in getting children to school. 

Weekend patronage is around half, at around 14 (Saturday) or 12 (Sunday) boardings per hour. This below average result may indicate wider access to cars than in some other areas (including around Clayton/Box Hill/Springvale) where weekend bus usage is high or the likes of Frankston (where it is nearer to weekday usage). Weekend boarding numbers are also quite like some routes around Reservoir/Thomastown which tend to be traditional areas with less Saturday afternoon and Sunday trading. On the other hand there may be scope to improve 690's weekend usage. Keep reading. 

Scope for network reform

The general setup of the 690 is sound. That is it connects residential (and some industrial) areas to anchor termini to the north and south. This is efficient because it means that in peak hour buses in both directions can feed people to stations. That is unlike routes that serve only one station and have a weak anchor at the other end attracting little counter-peak usage. Sometimes that's unavoidable but where possible buses should have useful anchors at both ends to assist both usage and connectivity to other routes. 

Croydon and Boronia score well as being transport interchanges but are only medium sized centres in themselves. Those wishing to go to larger centres need to change. Sometimes that's an inevitability to avoid duplication. But if a bus can continue to a larger centre without duplicating anything then it should do so as it would make the route more useful. 

The key centre in the Boronia area is Knox City. The fact that passengers on the 690 can't directly go there is costing it patronage, particularly on weekends, which, as we saw above, is currently low. A possible way to fix that is to run the 690 to Knox City via the 753 alignment. While that is along back streets it would still be much quicker than relying on a bus-bus connection to another route like the 737. To maximise efficiency reform would need to occur to the complex route 753, but simplification of that is needed anyway. A 690 extension might also assist with scheduling as the new route length may be less awkward for connections with trains and/or to provide even headways. Plus it could connect Knox City to more of its surrounds including parts of nearby Ferntree Gully currently without a bus to it. A possible reform approach is discussed in this $1m fix for Bayswater's buses. 

Conclusion

What do you think about route 690's role? Does it have potential to do better? Should it keep its deviations off Colchester Rd in the interests of residential area coverage or would more direct be better? And is a Knox City extension desirable? I'd appreciate your comments which can be left below.

Index to Timetable Tuesday items