What word am I?
Nothing else is more influential when it comes to getting more people using public transport.
Almost alone, I determine whether our buses, trams and trains are useful or not.
Despite this, DoT/PTV only rarely sell my benefits. That holds across all audiences, whether it's promoting service upgrades to the public or (apparently) briefing the minister eg for PAEC hearings.
I start with F.
I am frequency.
You could say I'm Melbourne public transport's almost unspeakable F-word.
I'm so unmentionable that if talked about at all it's only in the most abstract terms (eg extra trains per week) rather than something more day-to-day useful like minutes. Like a messiah, my coming is often conditional. In this case, only after infrastructure projects (on which I mostly do not depend) get finished.
Nothing else is so important yet has had so many excuses made on why you can't have much more of me in Melbourne. In fact the most recent news is about less of me for trams.
Even though it is me who should drive every decision made in public transport. Whether it's about infrastructure, networks, service reform and staffing. And ideally DoT/PTV bosses would promote upgrades made to me hard, living as though they'd lose their jobs if patronage does not respond.
Why is frequency key to public transport ridership?
Walkers, cyclists and drivers start moving immediately they decide to go somewhere. Whereas transit riders instead must wait for their bus or train to show up. If services are infrequent then that initial wait, and those for any subsequent connections, can easily double or triple total travel time, especially for local trips. It is this, more than in-vehicle travel time, that makes much public transport too slow.
An analogy, credited to Jarrett Walker, is that having an infrequent bus is like having a gate at the end of your driveway that only opens once an hour. That would be hugely inconvenient, no matter how fast you could drive once you left your gate. The biggest benefit to your mobility then would be getting the gate to open more often. Frequency is freedom as they say.
Public transport has numerous such gates with waits. Not only at the stop you board but also at every location you need to change. That's inevitable as being able to reach every wanted destination on one fast direct route is geometrically impossible, especially in a large city. So you need good connections for it to be useful for all but a few trips.
We know that more frequency makes public transport better for existing riders with improved overall speed, connectivity and reliability. Does providing such a better service attract more usage and if so by how much?
A 2010 ATRF paper by Graham Currie and Alexa Delbosc (both of Monash University) found that it did. They compared premium bus offerings in Adelaide, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. The first three had significant bus infrastructure (eg O-bahn, busways, T-ways). Melbourne's SmartBus routes had way less infrastructure but more service, with a 15 minute weekday frequency typical.
Guess what? Melbourne's approach won more passengers.
Currie and Delbosc found that frequency was by far the biggest influencer of bus ridership per route kilometre. Melbourne's service-heavier SmartBus performed better than infrastructure oriented routes in other cities. While desirable for other reasons, infrastructure, bus accessibility and catchment population density, hardly figured.
The research can thus be summarised in just three words. Frequency is everything.
Or, to put it another way, you can do other stuff with buses, but you need frequency to really succeed.
My personal view is that you do transport service in this order: Coverage > Span > Frequency > Speed. That is you get the previous to be at least OK before spending big on the next. Here in Melbourne we're pretty good with network coverage but have issues with span and frequency on many bus routes. So we sort out those along with some network reform (that also helps a bit with speed).
Then once that's pretty good we can do BRT-type speed-up projects (like Bus Wormholes) for the next upgrade stage. The increased speed generates returns that can be reinvested for even more frequency, so usage rises again.
The Currie Delbosc paper also found that transport is supply led. Add road capacity and you get more people driving. Add public transport service and you get more passengers. Both are examples of induced demand. In transport what you get depends on what you fund.
ATAP, the Australian Transport Assessment and Planning guidelines (p7) indicate the link between increased service and higher patronage. Transport for NSW economic parameter values (p45) confirm this with the greatest patronage elasticity being when off-peak service is boosted. In the long run you can expect passenger numbers to be proportional to service km added as an average. Here in Melbourne this was attained in 2006 - 2010 where bus service kilometres and patronage both rose by about 25% under Meeting Our Transport Challenges.
Even a 1:1 increase can improve the cost-recovery ratio as more passenger fares help defray the fixed component of costs. This is most likely during off-peak times where the existing bus fleet is worked harder, attracting higher revenue per bus. But even better results should be possible when frequency is accompanied by network reform as we saw in areas like Brimbank and Wyndham. As for trains, with track and signal infrastructure to maintain, railways have a high proportion of fixed costs, making the financial benefits of higher usage even more notable from low marginal cost off-peak improvements.
Despite frequency's uncontestable benefits, there's people who say we can't have it or it's too expensive. Here's six common objections to frequency and why they're (mostly) wrong.
1. We are not densely populated enough. This is based on public transport being demand rather than supply driven. As noted before, the latter is more often the case, at least in built-up areas. Anywhere where there's traffic congestion or parking pressures there's scope for public transport service upgrades.
2. People love their cars. Where they have a choice people will use whichever transport is most convenient. Where they don't have a choice and the available option is poor they will probably lessen use of it. Transport improvements will cause an increased take-up on the mode that gets improved. That includes public transport if frequency is boosted.
3. We don't have enough trains, trams and buses. Except in some fringe areas this is largely not the case. The greatest need for frequency, and the most economical time to provide it, is in off-peak periods. In most cases such an increase is possible by working the existing fleet harder for more of the week. Only when you want higher peak frequencies and for this to extend over a wider area (like might be done in a subsequent upgrade phase) do we need fleet additions, most notably for buses.
4. We don't have the rail infrastructure. Correct on some outer single track portions of the rail network. But most of Melbourne's suburban network is double track or better. 10 minute service to most stations on most lines is possible on the existing infrastructure, as we know from existing peak timetables.
5. We still have too many level crossings and boom gates would be forever down. Likely true if peak frequencies are increased on busier lines. However the greatest need is off-peak frequency. With widespread 30 - 40 min gaps between trains, large scope is possible to upgrade to 10 - 20 minute off-peak frequencies without imposing unacceptably long boom down times.
6. It costs too much. More frequency needs more drivers and more scheduled service kilometres. These impose ongoing rather than largely one-off costs as with infrastructure. Treasuries, in particular, don't like this, despite all the permanent jobs created (which Labor governments, especially, love to quantify and spruik). However the benefits from investments in service increase are high with at least 5:1 recently quoted by Minister Ben Carroll for buses, especially in areas ripe for network reform (with partly offsetting savings possible in some places).
Higher train frequency would create a robust spine for the network that we currently don't have in suburbs like Croydon and Bayswater where they currently only run every half hour interpeak. The good news for Metro Trains is that just a tiny increase in scheduled services (eg 1% or preferably 2 - 3%) can deliver big upgrades like halving maximum waits at popular travel times. Where it merely comprises working the existing fleet harder on existing infrastructure, the incremental costs of adding frequency is relatively small due to the relatively high fixed costs of railways. And it would generate higher usage which spreads costs across more passengers.
Organisational distraction: A past problem and present threat
I listed five impediments to bus service reform in a talk to Melbourne University students here.
Another issue is focus. Does the Department of Transport adequately advocate frequency's role internally when seeking funding for service upgrades? And if they do get funding do they (PTV) promote it to maximise usage and benefit from the investment made? Both must start with an understanding of frequency's transformative power so they can advocate from a position of conviction, strength and evidence. I'm not sure that this is necessarily yet the case for everyone within DoT.
Under successive governments DoT and their predecessors have not been immune to wasting time on badly managed, ill-advised or dead-end projects of marginal benefit to passengers. Only occasionally have they had clear air to attend to network building basics. Even rarer is roll-out at the metropolitan-wide scale and pace needed.
For instance ongoing difficulties with three awkward ticketing systems (scratch, Metcard and Myki) sapped attention for decades. As did issues with operator franchising in the 1990s and 2000s along with their many associated unnecessary rebrandings. More recently there's been a lot of interest in (admittedly worthwhile) infrastructure (although much is hived off to other authorities). Then there's the almost continual restructurings that cause a harmful internal rather than external focus. Even good people can get sidetracked in this manner as manufactured urgency overtakes what's important.
The Department of Transport can only juggle a few balls at a time. Network planning and service reform has come a poor last in much of the last thirty years due to all the other distractions. This is despite its decisive effect on how useful the network is for the trips people wish to make.
Behind the scenes it's also important for DoT to convince others of transport's supply-led nature (with implications not only for the benefits of public transport frequency but also the sustainability of congestion relief delivered by major road projects due to induced traffic and the Jevons Paradox).
Benefits of focus
Places like Perth have had a public transport bureaucracy that has been tightly focused on the things that matter. For example there have been no major system renamings since 1986, ticketing has rarely made headlines while operator contracting seems uncontroversial with privatisation accorded its rightful place (ie unimportant compared to service design and delivery).
Consequently Perth has succeeded at doing more network reform over more years without big backdowns like we saw in Adelaide. This is under both parties of government even when operational funding is limited. As it is now under its heavily infrastructure oriented state government. This is like Victoria but with a 3 year lag as premier McGowan only won office in 2017 and immediately started copying Andrews virtually word for word in transport policy and projects.
One can only hope that from experience our Department of Transport has learned what is productive and what is not. However the risk of its bosses (who don't all have a transport background) falling for cargo-cult distractions that stop them picking up the (now dusty) ball marked 'good service basics' and redressing a 30+ year backlog in bus network reform remains high.
So-called 'demand responsive' or 'flexible route' buses are the current fad. Despite abandonments elsewhere and high per passenger costs limiting scalability, they attract disproportionate unearned attention from senior DoT officials. This is not a rational choice given the pressing reform needs for fixed routes and their greater wider benefits if done.
A misplaced focus can colour the advice received by Minister Carroll and skew what he speaks of as being important. DoT advice hasn't always served Labor state governments well, as Joel Deane's Catch and Kill reminds us. At the very least it could be desirable for the minister to seek advice from lower levels in the Department where more reality-grounded views may be found.
And how do you maintain focus? That needs the word we mentioned before. When the value of frequency becomes recognised such that it is no longer so unspeakable we'll know that progress has been made.
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