What happened to Melbourne's bus audit?

The Victorian Auditor-General appears to have quietly dumped a planned performance audit that would have told Melburnians whether their metropolitan bus services 'integrate with the wider transport network and meet expected service demand'. 

Melbourne on Transit readers already know the answers are too often 'no' and 'no'. For instance we have convoluted bus routes every 22 to 25 minutes in areas where trains are every 20 minutes, making connections haphazard. Even many of our premium SmartBus routes are every 30 minutes on weekends, failing to frequently meet trains mostly every 20 minutes. Maps also show unproductive overlaps in places as new routes get layered over old without sufficient network reform. 

On the demand side buses in areas like Brighton and Eltham carry fresh air while busy routes (often in high social needs areas like Dandenong's Route 814) still finish midday Saturdays and not run Sundays. And main road routes may run only hourly on Sundays despite serving major shopping centres  that are busiest then. A 2020 splurge upgraded the little-used 704 bus while neglecting the nearby far busier Route 800.

State budget papers reveal a $1.4 billion annual spend on bus services (BP3, p333). It is in the public interest that we get maximum value from this. Such value can only be assured by delivering services efficiently (through appropriate contracting arrangements) AND delivering the right services (which depends on planning and monitoring with regards to routes, operating hours and frequencies). 

An audit here would have answered many of these questions. Findings from the Auditor-General carry much more weight than blog posts here. Most notably it would have forced the Department of Transport to respond. And encourage accountability with regards to how we plan public transport services. That's important because it's often seen as a secret art with little oversight nor discernible rationale for bus routes and timetables being what they are. 

Past VAGO bus audits

What's been the Victorian Auditor General's history in this area? In 2015 they looked at the tendering for Melbourne's Bus Franchise. This was the package of routes previously run by Melbourne Bus Link and National Bus in the Sunshine, Brighton, Heidelberg and Doncaster areas along with the three orbital SmartBuses. They were put out to franchise by the Baillieu government. The package included about 30% of Melbourne's bus routes including most of our busiest.

VAGO found that $33m cost savings were achieved in 2013-2014 but that the government hadn't got full value due to unreliable data and, related to this, their inability to withhold payments when performance was poor. The report was also critical of the (by then) Labor government for not extending the franchise model to more routes. 

Maybe they were constrained by limited scope, but one cannot help thinking the auditors' insight would have broadened if they walked a few hundred metres from their office and boarded one of the Transdev buses passing by. 

They would have likely found filthy buses that would have challenged whether the cost savings were real, ie not at the expense of quality. And apparently they missed looking at the conditions that gave rise to the biggest bus fleet safety crisis in recent memory when numerous Transdev buses were put off the road. While Transdev Melbourne lifted its game later, the government apparently remembered and awarded the franchise to Kinetic instead. More on that and better contracting here.

VAGO annual audit plans 

Annual Plans tell us what investigations VAGO is planning in the next few years. You can browse 15 years' worth of annual plans here. They come out before 30 June each year and are tabled in state parliament. 

Plans can be flexible and responsive, meaning that work might be shuffled around a bit. About 3 or 4 performance audits are on the go in the transport portfolio at any one time. 

Bus audit first mooted in 2019-20

The 2019-20 Annual Plan is the first recent one that mentions planning bus services. It had an audit planned for 2020-21 called planning and management of metropolitan bus services.

The audit aimed to determine whether metropolitan bus services were reliable, regular and integrated with other forms of public transport. It noted an Infrastructure Victoria finding that 40 percent of this network was underperforming (based on routes having less than 20 passenger boardings per bus hour). Also that buses were important to serving growing outer suburbs, new bus contracts had started, and that past VAGO audits (like mentioned above) had found poor performance management mechanisms. DoT's role included 'leading the development of an integrated transport plan' (which, in a separate audit tabled in 2021, VAGO found didn't really happen).  

2020-21 plan defers bus service audit

A year later the 2020-21 Annual Plan came out. The audit for bus service was still there but was deferred to 2021-2022. The reason for the audit was similar to above except that the number of routes had risen from 342 to 350. The audit objective had been slightly reworded with the words 'reliable, regular' removed, however 'reliable' still appears as an issue. 

2021-22 deferred again

2021-22 Annual Plan is here. The bus service audit this time appears as part of work proposed for 2022-23. 

The wording is similar to previous plans. 

As late as today, clicking on VAGO's website Annual Work Plan tab still takes us to the 2021-22 plan, with a page for the bus audit here. 

2022-23 plan - no buses!

The 2022-23 annual plan, tabled in parliament earlier this month has the bus audit dropping off the 2022-23 program. That leaves a thin agenda with just two audits. It's not even deferred to 2023-24. And unlike some previous years we don't have indications of 2024-25 planned audits. Maybe they're waiting until the election in case there are major programs announced that could be worth auditing then. 

While the Auditor General has repeatedly deferred and now apparently abandoned looking at bus services, this inertia has not been matched elsewhere in government. We saw the release of Victoria's Bus Plan in 2021, a little more kindness for buses in 2022's state budget and announcements regarding the electrification of the bus fleet with several depots undergoing conversion. 

It would have been good to have had the audit done before the Bus Plan came out. That could have  given reason for it to be a bit sharper and more specific than it was. An audit report out at a somewhat later time could have contributed to the Bus Reform Implementation Plans currently being developed. A still later release date could have enabled a look at some network reforms being done with lessons for those that follow. 

If VAGO ever does get around to auditing bus service planning, I have just one message. 

GOTB. 

Get On The Bus. 

As demonstrated by the salutary 2015 experience, your report will be 10 times better if you do!