A quick plot of Melbourne bus routes without Sunday service. Map shows unique portions only, ie most routes are longer than shown but may overlap sections of other routes.
A more detailed interactive map appears here.
Concentrations of non-Sunday routes form an arc from Melbourne's middle western, northern and eastern suburbs. There are also clusters in the south-east around Dandenong, the outer east around Croydon/Lilydale and some others around Frankston.
A lot of this is historical accident - there have only been sporadic attempts to correct high patronage or connectivity potential routes that the otherwise large scale MOTC 'minimum hours' upgrade program of 2006 - 2010 left off. Particular concentrations of high usage but underserved routes are found around Dandenong while high connectivity potential routes are the circumferential routes across Melbourne's inner/middle north and east.
The longest lines aren't necessarily the routes that need 7 day service most due to these being in semi-rural or industrial areas. But the map can still be helpful if you consider routes that serve major destinations, areas of high social needs and/or which have high productivity on the days they do run. And which could provide key cross-suburban links that would otherwise require long train or tram trips into the CBD.
Conspicuous examples include 503, 506, 536, 542, 546, 548, 609, 612, 800, 802/804, 844, 885 and a few more. Then there are routes with very short unique portions but which nevertheless link key weekend destinations like shopping centres. These are the likes of 468 and 549 that hardly show on the map if at all.
Another cluster of routes are in the outer east and south-east. Their catchment is mixed, with some low density. Still a basic minimum-standards type 7 day service would be appropriate. Most notable examples include 772, 675, 680 and 689.
I listed the 13 routes that most deserved Sunday service back in 2019. I discussed cost effective upgrades, based on more recent data here and here. Weekend and particularly Sunday buses are a proven patronage winner, with more and more bus routes recording higher passenger productivity on weekends than weekdays. And the costs are relatively low as weekend upgrades typically involve working the existing fleet harder.
1 comment:
If only there was a MOTC 2.0 to get these things sorted, as I have a feeling we're in for another twenty-year stupor until the last car-brained 20th-century dinosaurs in Spring Street and councils have retired. I can really only see EVs being in the spotlight for the next decade or two, where the "broke" government goes all-out making multi-billion-dollar deals with the Big Oil companies to install EV charging stations.
I can only see 2020s public transport reform in Melbourne being invariably like this:
Old: Diesel bus on unreformed route 666, running once an hour until 7PM but not on Sundays or public holidays
New: Electric bus on unreformed route 666, running once an hour until 7PM but not on Sundays or public holidays
Job done. Let's now plonk a $25m VicRoads building and a $3m car park in [insert random outer suburb here] lacking viable public transport.
(fun fact, Melbourne used to have a route 666, it was a short working of the 665 Ringwood-Dandenong route, which is now the 901).
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