UN 169: Do busy lines get the best service?

One of the reasons you hear people give for suburban trains being not as frequent as they could be are level crossings. That might apply during peak times on busy lines but not really outside them. Ditto for signalling capacity, rolling stock or the Metro Tunnel not being open yet. People who should know better sometimes peddle myths around train frequency and how difficult it is to have all day.

That needlessly lets service sceptical state governments off the hook and makes trains less useful for diverse trips than they should be. This has been a particular problem in Melbourne whose evening and Sunday morning trains are now only half as frequent as Sydney's (whose state government has been much stronger on service matters than ours has). 

Low usage is another reason sometimes given for not running much service. Although it's a chicken and egg situation as poor service can induce low usage as much as frequent service encourages patronage. If you've got reasonable population density around stations (or good buses running to them) then that declines as an excuse too.  

Fortunately station boarding numbers exist and we can settle the question. Are busier sections of the network better serviced than quieter sections? Or are service levels more due to history and politics than catchment density, patronage and community need? It would be particularly extraordinary, and a failure of responsive planning, if a popular line also had low service with timetables basically unchanged for decades. You'll find out whether that is the case in a moment.

Gauging service by maximum waits

My interactive 10pm Sunday frequent network map has a layer where you can see stations colour coded by maximum wait between approximately 7am and midnight (on any day of the week).

I changed the presentation of that to show maximum waits by line section based on major junction stations in the suburbs. Because the central area (inside North Melbourne, Jolimont, Burnley, Richmond and Footscray) has many lines I didn't colour code frequency there. I then used per station 2022-23 boardings data obtained from DTP to add up boardings per section and plot them for each section. 

The result (Metro services only) is below: 

In most cases the longest waits happen on Sunday mornings, often closely followed by evenings. Pakenham had 60 min gaps while all northern suburb lines (and Sandringham) had intervals up to 40 min between trains.

30 minute intervals were common in the inland east, including busy junctions like Camberwell, Ringwood and Dandenong. These were also encountered not only on Sunday morning and evenings (particularly weekends) but also weekday interpeak at stations east of Ringwood.

Lines with the shortest maximum waits (20 min) were those mostly hugging the bay including Frankston, Werribee and Williamstown. These had 30 or even 40 minute gaps but a timetable improvement in early 2021 reduced maximum waits to 20 min. Sandringham almost qualifies but didn't due to its infrequent Sunday morning timetable. 

The maximum wait approach I've taken is not perfect. For example it doesn't differentiate between lines that have frequent service most of the time and those that don't. For example it rates Werribee higher than Dandenong despite the latter's 10 minute  midday service all week. But when you look at after 7pm weekend evening and Sunday morning service lines like Werribee take the lead with 20 minute frequencies versus 30 minutes for Dandenong. 

I make no apology for this since having short to medium maximum waits over say a 6am to midnight span is a necessary condition for a railway to be useful for diverse trip types. And if a line already runs frequently or semi-frequently 7 days then the extra annual service kilometres needed to cut maximum waits from 30 to 15 - 20 minutes at the ends of the day is trivial. So it's purely due to inertia that we don't have it. 

A move from a 'peak heavy' to 'all day frequent service' pattern is more aligned to modern working patterns, especially post-pandemic. A higher patronage to service elasticity assists the cost recovery ratio. Frequent all day service is also what differentiates a good system from a poor system and can drive more efficient land use and housing policies as well as widening households' choice regarding car ownership, with significant cost of living benefits. 

Patronage versus maximum waits

What about the patronage? I worked from the outside in, although the stars are at junction stations. For instance the 4.3 million is Werribee - Seaholme, 2.4 million is Newport - Seddon and 4.2 million is  just Footscray and South Kensington (actually mostly Footscray). Not surprisingly the inner area had the highest at 53 million (mostly comprising suburban residents returning home). 

What sections have similar patronage levels but very different services? Most notable is the Craigieburn versus Frankston lines. Craigieburn has higher patronage than the Frankston line yet gets only half the service. This applies not only when waits are maximum (every 40 vs every 20 min on Sunday morning) but other times eg midday (every 20 vs every 10 min 7 days). Evenings also have a gap with Craigieburn's 30 versus Frankston's 20 minute frequency. Frankston is a famously politically marginal line while Craigieburn is populated by Labor loyalists who (in public transport services) have not had their political faith repaid by successive Labor governments. 

The above north-south disparity reflects 2024 service levels but there wasn't always a difference. Thirty years ago the Frankston line had a similar off-peak service level as lines in the north. However there has been a long-term trend to boost Frankston line service while timetables in Melbourne's north stagnated with the disparity growing over time.

Hence Frankston line passengers now enjoy a 7 day turn up and go service (with a maximum 20 minute wait at night and on Sunday mornings) versus 20 to 40 minute frequencies on northern lines. To be fair the latter got extensions into growth areas (Watergardens, Craigieburn, South Morang, Sunbury, Mernda) however basic off-peak frequencies were never improved despite strong patronage.  

Also in the north-west/north are the Sunbury and Mernda lines. These have similar patronage (around 6.5 million) and, like Craigieburn, are in the 40 minute maximum wait club on Sunday mornings. Sunbury should get improvements when Metro Tunnel starts though nothing conclusive has yet been published since the 2016 business case. Each line's annual usage closely matches Ringwood's usage (6.4 million) which gets a 30 minute maximum wait. The difference between these lines is highest on weekends thanks to Ringwood's 10 minute midday service versus 20 minutes on the other lines.   

Pakenham, with its 2.6 million annual boardings gets a particularly raw deal on the maximum wait scale due to it's terrible Sunday morning timetable with hourly gaps. It's a big contrast with nearby Cranbourne (which has barely half the usage) and an even bigger contrast with Williamstown (with 1/5 the usage). It does however enjoy a better weekday interpeak frequency (20 min) compared to the also short-changed Belgrave and Lilydale sections east of Ringwood (every 30 min). Stations in this ara like Mooroolbark and Bayswater (recently rebuilt with level crossings removed) are demographically similar to the likes of Carrum and Frankston yet get only one-third the off-peak frequency (30 vs 10 min). 

Conclusion

It's almost all politics! Not 'objective' criteria like population density, usage and social needs. 

The maximum waits you have for trains depends on who your neighbours vote for and especially how politically loyal they are. Service differences between some lines have gone from negligible 30 years ago to about 2:1 today, despite major sections of the less served line attracting higher usage (notwithstanding the inferior service). 

The record shows significant policy difference between the main parties when in government. Labor has had a stronger public transport infrastructure agenda than Coalition governments. But on service, especially metropolitan rail service, if anything it's been the Coalition that has been stronger.

For example past Coalition governments (even Jeff Kennett's) greatly boosted Metro train services (mostly in their east-of-Yarra safe or marginal seats) while Labor governments returned few similar favours for their loyalists in the north.

The result is thus a widening have/have-not gap in the geographical distribution of 7 day frequent train service so necessary for Melbourne to function as a prosperous, liveable and equitable city. 

Another look at at patronage data is provided by Daniel Bowen here. 

Index to Useful Network items here