Board the bus at Mooroolbark Station and be at Chirnside Park Shopping Centre in just 8 minutes. This is the benefit of the 675, one of the shortest and most direct bus routes in Melbourne's eastern suburbs. It's almost a perfect south-north line up Manchester Rd except for a clockwise loop around Chirnside Park.
Route 675's catchment is relatively low density 1970s - 1980s suburbia. It is lower middle to middle income with high rates of home and car ownership. Local curvy and disconnected street patterns (as fashionable at the time) make direct bus routes difficult to provide with 675 being a rare exception in the area. Almost all the route is in Evelyn, held by Bridget Vallence MP.
The map below shows the 675 relative to other routes. About half is overlapped by the 664 from Knox City and Croydon. The area is also in the catchment of the new FlexiRide Mooroolbark and before that the old Telebus (which started in the late 1970s as an experiment to provide transport in new estates with narrow winding streets unsuitable for conventional bus routes).
Timetable and service level
Route 675 runs a simple timetable with an hourly weekday service between about 6:30am and 7pm. The main exception is around 2:30 - 3pm where the gap narrows to 30 minutes, presumably for school patronage.
Its span makes it just usable for weekday commuters working standard office hours in the CBD but they will need to time their trips carefully given the low frequency. Consequently it is difficult to see many people with a choice using it.
Route 675 has no service on Saturdays, Sundays or public holidays.
Those wishing to go from Mooroolbark to Chirnside Park on a shopping centre on a Saturday thus need to catch the FlexiRide while Sunday and public holiday travellers need to backtrack via train to Croydon and catch a northbound 664 from there. These three combinations are part of what makes catching buses in this area complicated.
History
Route 675 was listed in the 2001 Melway street directory bus route lists but not in 2000. Hence it is just over 20 years old. It hasn't had any significant change in this time. Unlike the 664 with which it shares some catchment it never received 'minimum standards' service upgrades.
If one goes back further it was possible to get a fixed route bus from Mooroolbark Station to Chirnside Park. The 1978 map shows both routes 673 and 674 via less direct paths west and east of Manchester Rd. These got replaced by flexible route Telebuses as the area developed.
Usage
Route 675 gets an unusually high 33 passenger boardings per bus service hour on a school day. This doesn't make it a highly used route but means that it does very well for its 8 minute each way run time. On school holidays the figure drops to 22 boardings per hour (about average for a Melbourne bus). The variation means that 675 has a significant school student travel component. Route 664, in contrast, gets 26 passenger boardings per bus service hour on a school day, dropping to 22 on school holidays.
These usage figures are from DoT for late 2018.
Route 675 is likely to be several times more productive than the flexible route FlexiRide in the area.
Potential
A distinctive feature of the 675's strong usage is that when you leave out university shuttles, industrial and peak only routes, the 675 is the second most productive weekday residential area bus not to have Saturday (or any weekend) service. The only route that's more productive without a Saturday service is Frankston South's Route 774. This makes the 675 a strong contender for an upgrade to 6 and preferably 7 day service. Longer service hours and public holiday service would also be desirable.
Despite the presence of the nearby 664 and Telebus/FlexiRide services, 675 is a surprisingly good patronage performer as noted above. Of note is that it is very cheap to run using just a fraction of a bus. Presumably the bus is interlined with another route at either terminus for scheduling efficiency.
However if the 675 was to have its dedicated bus it should be possible to run a 20 minute frequency with one bus (if 2 minute layovers at each end are tolerated). While this doesn't match with weekday trains (currently every 30 minutes) it would if they were upgraded to every 20 minutes with a timetable similar to that which currently runs on weekends. Provided it was accompanied by longer operating hours this service uplift could make 675 a strong feeder.
Conclusion
Route 675 is a commendably direct bus that gets significant usage. However like most buses in the area it's had no service upgrades for 20 or more years. Its short run time however would make frequent service quite cheap to provide with a significant catchment that would benefit.
1 comment:
Very good and intresting read Peter.
Another option for Mooroolbark residents on Sundays is to backtrack via train to Lilydale and then catch a westbound 670 (which also serves Croydon), 679 or 683 bus to Chirnside Park.
Definitely agree that this route definitely feels like a route that needs more service than it currently does, such as a 20 to 30 minute frequency on weekdays (dependent on if train service frequencies get upgraded to 20 minutes in the near future. Here's for hoping) and a 40 to 60 minute frequency on weekends/public holidays to connect with train services, effectively creating an easy and useful Chirnside Park "Trainlink" that people in both suburbs can use for shopping/work/school/travel. Amazed it currently does so well with/without school students factored in considering the limited service and partial 664 overlap.
A couple of other options for reform:
Option A: Merge the route with the Kilsyth to Boronia portion of route 690 to create a north-south Chirnside Park to Boronia via Mooroolbark and Kilsyth route, however, this would likely require some reform to ensure there are still two bus routes running along Mt Dandenong Road between Croydon and Kilsyth (as opposed to just having the 688), such as having the 689 run along Mt Dandenong Road before heading along Durham or Cambridge Road and then either having the 680 extended along Hull Road to Croydon or creating a new Ringwood to Mooroolbark route via Eastfield and Hull Roads.
Option B: Delete this route, then reroute route 664 via Manchester and Hull roads between Chirnside park and Croydon, serving Mooroolbark Station in the process. Route 689 can then be rerouted via Lincoln Road to add coverage, and a new neighbourhood/local/coverage route can be introduced to maintain service along Dorset Road and Bellara Drive
Post a Comment