How healthy are our bus routes? (1000 day Bus Plan special)

Today marks 1000 days since Victoria's Bus Plan was launched. It ably diagnosed what was wrong with buses and outlined what improved services might look like. But it lacked specifics on what was to be done. That was meant to be covered in a later Bus Reform Improvement Plan that we all politely waited for. 

After an initially promising start in 2021 and further wins thanks to the 2022 state budget a large scale bus network review was announced for Melbourne's north and north-east two months before the state election.

However momentum had waned by early 2023 with warnings and then the reality of a tough 2023 state budget with very little new for buses. This caused me to query the health of the Bus Plan in June 2023 with a grim prognosis, even as others like Infrastructure Victoria, the Committee for Melbourne and Friends of the Earth were stepping up their bus research and advocacy.  

2023's end saw no apparent revival. It was then 931 days since the release of the Bus Plan. Not even the Bus Reform Implementation Plan had come out. So I devised an online clock to see if we'd see movement within 1000 days. That raised significant interest, with '1000 days since the bus plan' quoted by campaigns and in parliament. Which is actually today. 

link to count-up Bus Plan clock

To mark the occasion I did a desktop health check of all 349 regular (ie non Night Network) bus routes in Melbourne. Such a check, accompanied by punctuality data, patronage data and much more, would be a necessary prelude to any implementation plan. So what you read here is just a start. 

Method

The check is crude. It's based on existing routes, not peoples needs. There are just two measures: timetable and route. Both are judged on a yes/no basis with the result added. Thus the only possible scores for a route are 0, 50 or 100% even though it's more nuanced for each route. Still, adding the results of 349 quick tests is enough to convey a fair picture of the bus network's health which is what we want today.  

Timetables are mainly assessed by whether they meet 2006's minimum service standards. That is 7 day service at least hourly until 9pm, with 6, 8 and 9am starts for weekdays, Saturdays and Sundays respectively. Not a high bar but it is a service standard on which significant progress was made (though not recently).

I also compared timetables across days of the week, especially for busier or main road routes. If a major shopping centre route ran every 15-20 minutes Monday to Saturday but dropped to hourly on Sundays then I would mark it down as a major issue. As I would for a route whose frequency was irregular, was unharmonised with trains or over-serviced for its catchment. All of these would count as a major timetable issue.

On the other hand a peak, university, industrial or limited shopper route that lacked weekend service would not be marked down given their peripheral network role. Neither did I much consider overcrowding, appropriateness of run times or punctuality (though you can check the latter here). So don't be too surprised if I didn't pick up a timetable issue on routes you know there's problems with.   

Routes were rated on many factors including excessive indirectness (some being necessary for coverage), complex loops, deviations, weak termini and duplication with other routes. Minor problems were overlooked but your judgement may differ from mine in a particular instance. Overall I've erred on the 'soft' side; like with timetables there will be routes with issues that my desktop check still gave a 100% rating to (when 70% might be fairer). 

Still, this exercise should give an idea of whether bus reform is justified and an idea of its potential gains.  

Data summary

One third (116) of Melbourne's 349 bus routes had no major timetable or route alignment issues identified. The remaining two-thirds did.

Of those about 40% (ie 94 or 27% of the total) had both timetable and route issues. Especially where routes can be made more direct or duplication lessened this presents an opportunity for cost-effective  timetable upgrades with freed-up service kilometres.   

67 routes (or just under 1/5) had timetable issues only. Fixes could be anything from extending hours to minimum standards, adding weekend service or harmonising headways with trains for improved connectivity. While some funding is likely needed for the extra drivers and route kilometres timetable only upgrades are relatively easy with no public consultation or even extra buses needed (if done at off-peak times). Occasionally the problem is overservicing with a potential to transfer service kilometres to routes or time periods that need them more. 

72, the remaining fifth, largely need route reforms. Examples include removing a deviation, making service more direct, removing duplication or extending to a logical terminus like a nearby station or shopping centre. Cost-effective opportunities for improved service may be possible where multiple routes inefficiently overlap. 

Service upgrades over time

In November 2008 I checked the progress of the Meeting Our Transport Challenges program of minimum service standards for buses released in mid-2006. There had been some Sunday service additions in 2002 but evening service to 9pm remained rare in 2006, with only 13% of routes having it. MOTC upgrades had more than tripled this to 44% of routes in less than 3 years. This growth from 40 to 137 routes means an average of 50 routes per year gained minimum service standards during this period. For context Melbourne's metropolitan population was just under 4 million in late 2008. 

Where are we over 15 years later? We now have about 1.3 million more people and 40 more bus routes (rising from 309 to 349). The proportion of that 349 meeting minimum standards (including 7 day service to 9pm) stands at 61% (ie 213 routes). Or 63% if we are generous by discounting weekday only peak and university routes that you'd never run weekends. 

The gain from 137 to 213 (ie 76 routes) represents just 5 routes per year gaining minimum service standards between 2008 and 2024. In other words the rate that Melbourne upgraded bus service slowed by about 90% compared to 15 years ago.

 

Note: Contains only one intermediate data point. Thus the 2008 - 2024 trend will vary in rate. 
For example there were significant improvements in 2009-2010. And others in 2013-2016. 

Annual scheduled service kilometres is even better in that it counts all bus service initiatives. The 2015-16 budget papers reported that metropolitan buses had 110.8 million km per annum projected to be scheduled at the end of the 2014-2015 financial year (ie before the current government was elected). The 2023-24 budget papers had 129.3 million km per annum as a target for that financial year. This  does represent service growth in absolute terms.

However Melbourne's population grew even faster, by nearly a million, over that time (from 4.3 to 5.2 million). That means there is less bus service per capita now than in 2014. That would put Melbourne in a per capita bus service recession. Similar comments likely apply for metropolitan train or tram but not V/Line whose services have grown the fastest of all modes.      

It is in this less than buoyant context that recent statements from the Minister for Public and Active Transport with regards to her government's record on public transport service should perhaps be viewed. 

Some more numbers

Below is a table I've made of the raw spreadsheet data (which you can download here). I've already discussed the first data column re MOTC minimum standards compliance. N/A means routes like university shuttles that I excluded from the survey as they are not expected to run 7 days. 

There's a stack of routes that run 7 days but don't meet MOTC standards. This is mainly because they start too late or finish too early to qualify, especially on weekends. These would be very cheap and beneficial upgrades, especially where they include popular but underserved routes like the 630 on North Rd. 

While one could argue that not all quieter routes should run 7 days or MOTC hours, there's enough 'have not' routes (124) to demonstrate that a large number (at least half) should get upgrades on pretty solid patronage or social need grounds. Examples include key routes like 237, 281, 284, 404, 414, 468, 503, 506, 536, 546, 548, 549, 612, 800, 802, 804, 814, 844, 885 etc. 

The third column deals with timetable issues. Nearly half the timetables were identified as such. As noted before these might include not only non-adherence to minimum service standards but also other factors like headways unharmonised with trains or a big drop-off in weekend (especially Sunday) frequency versus other days. This (and the next) column is less objective than the first two so your judgement on this will vary from mine. This column forms half the final score. 

The last column on the routing forms the other half of the score. Again I saw serious issues in the alignment of nearly half Melbourne's bus routes. This includes cases where the route is sound but there's enough duplication with others to query the network's efficiency.   
  

Data

The above charts and tables are based on spreadsheet data that you can download below. 

Melbourne Bus Route Health Check data (.xlsx)

This includes comments for most routes to justify their scoring. 


Conclusion

This desktop review of all Melbourne's 349 regular bus routes shows a strong need for bus network reform. Most routes had issues with their timetables, alignment or both.

In addition the data presented indicates the extent to which 7 day bus upgrades have almost stalled since the MOTC program despite our city adding 1.3 million people in the interim. We've added service but  it's not been enough to keep up with population.

A failure to add sufficient service kilometres also harms the prospects for the sort of network reform envisaged in Victoria's Bus Plan. A major lesson from Auckland's success is that bus network reform is harder without extra service kilometres because you can't limit political risk by, for example, retaining some less direct / less frequent coverage style routes in high needs areas.

That doesn't mean you should give up on bus service reform. To the contrary. The more you pay attention to duplicative or overserviced routes the more 'greater good' improvements you'll be able to do. I described this more in Bus upgrades for a broke government. And if you've got processes to make several timetable adjustments in a year (rather than it taking it several years for one) you can follow the steady Perth approach of eventually getting what you want (ie simpler frequent routes) with a minimum of political backlash. 

Opportunities are especially high due to Melbourne's bus reform backlog. That can be demonstrated by the continued existence of embarrassments like routes 558, 566, 624 and 800 with severe alignment and/or timetable problems persisting for decades. Yet the record points to a reform stalemate, with the rate of even simple timetable optimisation exercises lagging cities like Perth.

It can't all be down to money; organisation and efficiency play a part too. Not only does Perth have more effective institutional frameworks and political support for improved buses but they also tolerate operational inefficiency and fare revenue loss less. Despite DTP having had a dedicated bus reform team there is as yet no sign of the promised Bus Reform Implementation Plan (that on March 6 was asked about in parliament). And, despite warnings, DTP has pursued failures like FlexiRide that have increased rather than decreased the cost per passenger carried, especially in high patronage areas like Tarneit where services commonly max out. 

Having now entered the Victorian Bus Plan's second thousand days, we hope that achievements in this period will greatly reverse the stagnation of its first three years and the per-capita service fall going back even further.

With a tough state budget mooted, network and service reform is perhaps the last and so far largely untapped hope for cost-effective improvements in public transport. However for this to happen political will and delivery capacity both need to be vastly better than now.

The ball is now in your court ministers Pearson and Williams.