TT 201: How many hours of frequent service does each line get?

Every large city with substantial public transport usage has a core trunk network of high capacity lines that are fast, direct and have their own rights of way. Most Australian capitals have electrified suburban rail systems to do this job, with some having busways too.   

What about service levels? 6am to midnight is about the basic span, with Sydney and Melbourne having somewhat longer hours. Notably Sydney's early starts and Melbourne's all-mode Night Network on weekends.

The biggest differences are frequency. This typically varies between 10 and 60 minutes, with 15 to 30 minutes being most common. Some cities run lines that are only frequent in peak times while others operate all their lines frequently all week. This has a major bearing on whether the network is largely for CBD commuters or it can also suit diverse trips at more varied times. 

Melbourne's maximum waits

Where does Melbourne stand on suburban rail frequency? Last year I looked at maximum waits across the network. Two things were notable: (a) big service variations, with the better served lines having half the maximum waits of others, and (b) longer maximum waits than other cities, with 40 minute gaps being a Melbourne specialty versus the 15, 20 or 30 minute maximums more common elsewhere. 

Most would assume there's a rational reason for such service variations with lower frequencies provided because the lines were quieter. However this is not so, with busy stations on lines like Sunbury and Craigieburn having amongst the longest maximum waits. Instead it's more a historical/ political thing with lines in the south and east having shorter maximum waits. However Sunbury line stations should get some relief under the Metro Tunnel timetable starting later this year.  

Who gets the most hours of frequent service?

Maximum waits was one way to compare service between lines. Shortening them by using otherwise idle trains is a highly cost-effective way to massively speed end to end PT travel. Yes, I said speed. Cutting trip time variability by boosting frequency is the single most effective way to increase all-day speed on a suburban network like Melbourne's, especially for multimode trips. 

It reflects poorly on rail planning priorities in Melbourne that so little has been achieved in this area. However if the maximum wait is only experienced for a few hours of the week (eg Sunday mornings) it can be less representative than other measures of service quality. 

Counting the number of hours per day or week a line offers frequent service is one such better measure of rail service and thus usefulness. If it's only a few hours per day then we know the line favours peak commuters. On the other hand a line that is frequent for 15 to 20 hours per day favours more diverse trips. The latter also also offers better return on infrastructure and greater scope to reform tram and bus networks to feed rather than parallel trains (as happens in cities with less frequent rail like Brisbane and Adelaide). 

What should one define as a frequent service? It depends a lot on the trip but this exercise requires a single number. While arguably not quite turn-up-and-go, a 15 minute all-day frequency is a popular choice for key rail and bus routes in Australia, so I've chosen it here. 

You'll all want to see the map first, so without more words here it is. 

CLICK MAP FOR CLEARER VIEW

The four per cent of week classifications I use makes the data fall into convenient groupings; That is frequent service (i) Mon - Fri peak only, (ii) Mon - Fri day only, (iii) Mon-Sun day and (iv) almost all week day and night. 

Apart from some inner area stations (bordered by Newport, Footscray, North Melbourne and Clifton Hill), frequent suburban rail in the west and north is a peak only affair. As it is in the outer east and south-east (check the grey lines on the map - deliberately made less prominent). 

Whereas in the east and south there is frequent weekday and sometimes frequent weekend service during the day. Sydney and Perth are shown for comparison in the top right. Both beat Melbourne on weekly hours of frequent rail service whereas Brisbane and Adelaide lag us.  

The map shows a huge inequality across Melbourne in the provision of rail service, with this even more marked when we check the numbers per line. That's up next.  

Variations between lines and cities graphed

The map above was derived from a graph. That's the product of a spreadsheet that is in turn the result of checking PTV website timetables. 

Let's talk about the graph first. It shows weekly hours of frequent service by line. Lines are shown in clockwise order, starting with Werribee in the west. The last three columns are typical interstate lines for comparison. 

CLICK GRAPH FOR CLEARER VIEW

I usually analysed service at the last station on each line unless many trains terminate before it. These exceptions apply for Sunbury (Watergardens), Hurstbridge (Greensborough) and Lilydale (Croydon). Doing this prevents unfair undercounts of service on a line's busiest portion. Similarly junction stations like Ringwood and Dandenong get their own bars on the graph where these are at the end of a corridor with many busy stations. I left Newport and Clifton Hill off the graph but did have them on the map.  

Lines with around 20 to 40 hours of frequent service per week are only frequent during the weekday peaks. Examples include most major lines in the west and north including Werribee, Craigieburn and Mernda. Branches in the outer east and south-east such as east of Ringwood and Dandenong also only operate frequently during the peaks. 

Lines with around 60 or 70 hours enjoy 12 to 14 hours of frequent service each weekday. That includes  midday and both peaks. Evenings and weekends are not frequent. Examples include Glen Waverley and Sandringham, both in the east or south. 

Melbourne's best served lines have 90 to 100 hours of frequent service per week. This includes daytime every day of the week. However in Melbourne's case frequent service vanishes at night and doesn't start until late on weekend mornings. Trains to Ringwood, Dandenong and Frankston fall into this category. All are in the south or east, with their prevalence of frequent service being 3 to 6 times that of lines in the west or north.  

Williamstown and Alamein are both quiet lines. However Alamein, with frequent service between the peaks, is better served than Williamstown which has none and even Upfield which has very little. 

How do lines in other cities compare? 

Perth's two lines reflect that city's new and heritage lines and thus the network generally. Both enjoy over 100 hours of frequent service each week, exceeding any line in Melbourne. 100 out of the week's 168 hours means frequent service 14 hours per day extending to approximately 9 pm. In Perth you can rock up at any station and, as long as it's daylight, have a train arrive within 15 minutes. Whereas that number in Melbourne is 20, 30, 40 or even 60 minutes due to our higher maximum waits. 

Sydney is however the gold standard with frequent service for 140 hours per week, or 20 hours per day for the Penrith example given. That ranges from before 5am to after midnight on any day of the week.

To put the differences in another way, Sydney's outer western station of Penrith (55km from CBD) gets as much frequent service in one day as Melbourne's outer western station of Werribee (30km from CBD) has in a week. Similarly Perth's Mandurah (70km from CBD) gets more than triple the hours of frequent service that Melbourne's Craigieburn (30km from CBD) receives. 

The raw numbers

Want the raw numbers? They're below. 

How did I get the numbers? I just looked at PTV timetables and counted the span of hours in which there was service every 15 minutes or better. Sometimes that involved three time blocks as on some lines there were longer than 15 minute gaps in a peak period. I did this for both inbound and outbound directions and averaged the two. Weekday hours were multiplied by five and then added to Saturday and Sunday hours of frequent service (if any) to get a weekly total. 

Weekdays versus weekends

So far we've only looked at the amount of frequent service per week. That obscures differences between days, eg weekdays versus weekends. The graph below has hours of frequent service split out per day.  

CLICK GRAPH FOR CLEARER VIEW

Notable features include: 

* The hours of frequent weekday service at Melbourne's three best served corridors (Ringwood, Dandenong, Frankston and Sandringham) are about the same as what Perth's Midland line gets on weekdays (their Mandurah line isn't shown but is similar).  

* Sydney's Penrith has more hours of frequent service on a Sunday than any Perth or Melbourne line gets on any day of the week. In fact Penrith's frequent service is basically uniform all week with 20 hours per day provided.   

* Perth's rail network has approximately 15 hours of frequent service on weekdays. That steps down to 13 hours on weekends. 13 hours is midway between the wide span of frequent weekend service in Sydney and the much shorter spans in Melbourne.   

* Frequent weekend train service does not exist beyond inner suburbs in the west and north (ie beyond Newport or Clifton Hill) whereas it extends further in the east and south (to Ringwood, Dandenong and Frankston).

* Even on its best served lines, Melbourne is alone in having a much shorter span of frequent service on weekends than on weekdays. That is 8-9 hours (or ~10am - 7pm) versus 15 hours on weekdays. This means that unless your trip is short the chances are that at least one and possibly both legs of your trip will be travelled when service is only half-hourly or worse (especially on Sundays). To be fair, Melbourne passengers on its five frequent weekend corridors get a 10 rather than a 15 minute service as they do in Sydney. But it is probably also true that the Sydney approach of a long span 15 minute service is more attractive than Melbourne's lumpy 10-40 minute gaps while costing similar to run.  

Conclusions

The findings for access to frequent service are even starker than they are for maximum waits.

Whereas maximum waits had about a 2:1 difference between worst and best served major lines in Melbourne, the difference in relation to hours of frequent service per week are more like 3:1. Perth and Sydney lack this huge service inequality between lines. 

The same lines that were short-changed on maximum waits were also short-changed with the fewest  hours of frequent service per week. Examples of lines that are underserved relative to their patronage include Craigieburn, Mernda, Werribee, Upfield and Hurstbridge, roughly in that order. Alamein, in contrast, was generously served, with more hours of frequent service than main lines in the north and west. Although Alamein's frequent service is largely interpeak, not peak. 

  

Even Melbourne's busiest lines had fewer weekly hours of frequent service than Perth lines, with dramatic differences on weekends. Still influential austerity scheduling has given Melbourne's quirky  train timetables with long waits at stations and at times people would not expect them. There's no link between service and development intensity either. A lower rise Moonee Ponds had many more hours of frequent train service in 1939 than high-rise Moonee Ponds does now.  

The thing that really stands out though is Sydney. Their 20 hours of frequent service per day at most stations sets the standard that we should aspire to. Melbourne did the planning work required with the Network Development Plan (Metropolitan Rail) released in 2012. Finally delivering the service uplifts in that would likely have bigger patronage benefits than almost any conceivable rail infrastructure project in the next decade.  

** UPDATE: Thanks to Lachlan Abbott from The Age for covering this analysis. Read it here. 

Index to other Timetable Tuesday items

UN 198: How fast is Melbourne really upgrading bus services?

The other day I found an interesting Age article from September 2010 discussing the pace at which the government was upgrading buses. It's so old that you don't need a subscription to read. 

The article is on what was considered the slow pace of bus reform. Advocates wanted faster bus network reform while the government was defending its record of adding service. 

What we have now but lacked then was the vantage point of history. Both the advocates and the government spokespeople (who then allowed their names to be published) turned out to be right.

Yes, more could have been done. But it's equally true that the Brumby government was achieving a lot with buses with a plan that not only existed but also got significant funding. It was arguably even a golden age for bus service additions if not for bus network reform (that was to come a little later).    

Feast or famine, one constant is the imperative for ministers and departments to defend their achievements. Let's look at the past quarter century to see how this government's Bus Plan record stacks up compared to its predecessors so we can more fairly evaluate progress.  

Bracks/Brumby government policy approach

First network reform. The Bracks/Brumby government had commissioned 16 local area bus network reviews (which you can read here) but implemented only a minority of recommendations. The reviews were basically the third (and least successful) prong of that government's bus reform agenda. This agenda was assembled under a plan called Meeting our Transport Challenges (or MOTC) that had been put together to respond to building (but then still underestimated) stresses on the transport system.  

While it had implemented some service upgrades in 2002, it was not until its seventh year, in 2006, that it got really serious about buses. To understand this take yourself back to the mid-noughties when premier Bracks was enjoying a big majority from 2002 and the Liberals were busy churning leaders. 

Buses were cheaper than and served more suburbs than rail. Rail franchising had failed in its first iteration with a big bail-out, funded by tolling EastLink, needed. V/Line to marginal regional seats got big upgrades but metropolitan train and tram basically stagnated under multiple rebrandings, with 1999 election promises of extensions substantially broken. The Melbourne 2030 plan raised and then dashed expectations with no accompanying funded public transport program to complement the intended higher population densities around stations. 

Much of this austerity was due to Labor's wish to be fiscally prudent to avoid comparisons with their embarrassing last time in office a decade prior. Borrowings for big projects were off the menu. Hence the off-books PPP arrangements for Southern Cross Station's construction and operation. Which proved a mistake in retrospect as it ceded control of a key station to faceless financiers. Although to be fair, Eastlink, another PPP at the time, was well regarded as a project.

Improved financial conditions did however permit some increase in direct government recurrent spending, even if not yet on megaprojects. Instead a good proportion in transport went on improved bus services, encouraged by advocacy from people like John Stanley in BusVic. This is opposite to this government's recent policy settings but more on that later. 

Returning to bus reform, the other two prongs mentioned in the 2006 Meeting Our Transport Challenges Plan were (i) minimum service standards for buses (as most routes then finished at 7pm and didn't run Sundays or even necessarily Saturday afternoons) and (ii) a network of premium service SmartBus routes (notably the orbitals but also routes that substituted for expected rail extensions to Doncaster and Rowville). 

Although a significant minority of bus routes remained without 7 day service and the SmartBus orbital program was not fully delivered, you could reasonably say that about 60-70% was by late 2010. That's a pretty good promise/delivery success rate with bus patronage rises closely tracking the service increases.

In contrast only 153 out of 711 bus review recommendations were delivered according to the 2010 Age article. This made the bus reviews the weakest of the three prongs of bus reform. That can be attributed to factors like complexity, perceived political risk and cost as implementation was largely unfunded.

Bus network reform done right can be more cost-effective than just adding trips on existing indirect routes. The reformed 2014 Brimbank and 2022 Yarra Valley networks are prime examples. While it was largely timetable rather than route based, the 2025 Manningham area service redistribution (which upgraded weekend service on four routes) also deserves high credit. In contrast some of the reform proposals in the 2006-2010 era reviews were expensive and retained some inefficient overlaps. Then new SmartBus orbital alignments (sections of which suffer low productivity and/or duplicate other routes) were also unchallenged.   

Another factor weakening government interest in buses was changing transport politics as rail meltdowns increasingly dominated the headlines. MOTC's weaknesses on rail made its period as the main transport plan for Melbourne short. Hence the Victorian Transport Plan of 2008, fed by work from Sir Rod Eddington. However that plan's increased investment in rail came too late for the Brumby government which was defeated in 2010 (as the reliability turnaround happened in 2012-2013).        

Baillieu/Napthine government policy approach

The subsequent, fiscally tighter, Baillieu/Napthine Coalition governments had other priorities, including restoring rail reliability, staffing stations with PSOs and making a descoped myki work. All three could be considered successful. However there was also scrimping through ill-advised decisions to reduce the scope of the Regional Rail Link (then under construction) and accept a cheap and nasty offer from Transdev to take over the franchise for Melbourne's longest and busiest bus routes.   

The Liberals (and the Andrews Labor government that succeeded it) added no new SmartBus routes. However the (effectively then bipartisan) approach to improved metropolitan rail frequency continued. The pace of bus network reform also picked up under new PTV CEO Ian Dobbs (back for his second sojourn after leading the PTC in the '90s).

An Englishman like many Melbourne transport leaders, the high-handed Dobbs would readily wield a felt pen to shorten or extend a route his staff had planned. He was also a radical, much less sensitive than Labor ministers (especially) to the political risks of network reform. The highlight of his (and PTV's) planning was reached on July 27 2014 which saw large reforms on the franchised Transdev bus network, reformed Brimbank bus routes and turn-up-and-go off-peak trains to Dandenong. This included an extra 3260 bus, 470 tram and 200 train services per week. While it had some shortcomings, no bigger integrated network and service reform has happened across Melbourne in the decade since. 

Transport minister Terry Mulder generally accepted bold service reform while his successor Jacinta Allan mostly recoiled, seeing more risk than reward. Dobbs was gone within six months of the new Labor government taking office. Proposed metropolitan rail and bus service reform was abandoned a few months later, with a decade of big infrastructure replacing the previous decade of service.   

Bracks/Brumby government record on bus service

How much bus service were we adding when political interest in it was at its peak? One answer was in the final paragraph of the 2010 Age article. That cited 13000 new services per week added in the four years since 2006. Or about 3250 weekly trips added per year. 

Note that these services could be anything from new Sunday trips on a 10km long local bus route to trips on an entirely new orbital route (which could be up to four hours long) as were added up to 2010. Or they could be just a ten minute ride on a short university shuttle (such as have been added since 2016).

Even though it's the preferred measurement metric in the political playground, counting trips is a terrible measure for anyone wishing to understand the real magnitude of a service increase. For that purpose it's better to look up annual service kilometres in the budget papers, like I did here.

By any measure the Brumby government added a lot of bus service. That grew patronage, with this continuing after that article was published. However certain network planning efficiency gains that could have been achieved then were not. However some were tackled under the following Baillieu/Napthine government, notably in the big 2014 reforms mentioned above.   

Andrews government record on bus service

Sticking to trips added, what have been more recent claims?

The government, which did largely honour its 2014 promises on bus services, told the Metropolitan Transport Forum that it has added "20 000 new bus services in 9 years" to 2023. That's about 2200 weekly trips added per year. Or about 1000 less than the 3200 per year average between 2006 and 2010. 

The disparity grows when you factor in Melbourne having a smaller population then and the longer average trip lengths due to the SmartBus roll-out up to 2010 versus the concentration on short university and Port Melbourne services more recently (eg 202, 235, 237 & 301 every 10 min).  

Measuring annual service kilometres added fixes that 'apples and oranges' problem to give a truer portrayal of bus service increases. For example around 8 million annual bus service kilometres were being added in 2007, 2008 and 2009 as opposed to around 2 or 3 million per year more recently according to budget papers. 

It also needs to be understood that service tended to be introduced at a faster pace in the first term of the Andrews government than later. For instance new bus networks in Geelong, Wyndham, Cranbourne and Plenty Valley plus university shuttles (which have a lot of short trips) were all running by late 2016. As you'll see in a moment the pace of bus service addition declined after then.    

Has the Bus Plan made a difference?

What about even more recently, in the era of Victoria's Bus Plan, ie since June 2021? In a written response to PAEC received 28 November 2024, then DTP Secretary Paul Younis said that 4600 bus services were added in that 3.5 year period. That's a rate of 1300 weekly trips added per year, even counting school services (see below). It also looks low compared to the 3260 weekly bus trips that one day's reform added in 2014. 

The evidence is that even if you have a plan it can't achieve much without a funded implementation strategy. As a result Victoria's Bus Plan has yet to deliver the step change in bus network service levels, directness and connectivity that was intended for it 1390 days ago.  

Conclusion

Victoria's Bus Plan notwithstanding, the decade-old Andrews/Allan government has yet to reach anywhere near the pace of bus service uplift achieved under the Brumby government. Or even its own 2015 - 2016 period when big new reformed bus networks (some planned under the previous government) commenced service. What five years ago I called the 'second stupor' for Melbourne buses has yet to be decisively broken. 

The pace of the sort of local tweak bus network reform that is possible without much money has also been slow. That presents many still untapped opportunities to cost-effectively get the most from our buses. 

If this government is serious that the time for buses is now it will need to get moving!  


See more Building Melbourne's Useful Network items here

Transport and Planning done differently: Introducing the Green Light People

Just  because little has been publicly heard from new DTP Secretary Jeroen Weimar since he took over two months ago does not mean he has been idle. Indeed it's been the contrary with much private work, the pre-requisite to public success, being completed. 

This work has included a strategic review, addressing questions such as how best to restore DTP's central role in the transport policy framework, reviving its public standing and reposition it to become, in premier Jacinta Allan's words, a builder not a blocker.

It's nothing short of a complete 'go revolution' for a department that's long needed something like it. 

A 'dep sec diet'? 

Having a staff of thousands to write business cases that too often failed to win state budget backing or draft strategies no one reads was the first bit of junk for Jeroen to jettison. 

Taking ideas from the Yanks but lingo from the Brits, Source Savings or Sod Off is said to be the survival priority for the department's deputy secretaries as the state struggles to find offsets for North East Link's $10 billion budget blowout.

Thus, to avoid potential embarrassment, the organisation chart listing dep secs was quietly deleted from the DTP website sometime between January 8 and February 25 2025 so the nosy public has to wait for the annual report (or lurk Linked-In) to see whose gone.

Each dep sec cut can buy about $400k in extra program funding from their employment costs saved. That excludes even more freed from supernumerary send-offs and time savings accruing from processes that have to be, by necessity, leaner. While those who remain may gain broader responsibilities this is partly mitigated by them having exponentially fewer meetings, as illustrated below. 

Sources close to the Secretary said that with 'razor gang' Silver Review staffing cuts looming, it was better to be on the front foot rather than effectively being under Treasury administration (as happened in the 1990s with the Transport Reform Unit). 

Enter 'The Green Light People'

The above may seem pretty dire if you were a targeted executive. But DTP leadership is very alive to the need to maintain morale internally and community standing externally. Full transparency requires a message that works for both internal self-talk and external engagement. 

That's best articulated by DTP becoming The Green Light People 

The new DTP will facilitate, not fumble.
The new DTP will catalyse, not clog-up.
The new DTP will revitalise, not retard.
Above all the new DTP will build and not block. 

Green Light will replace Red Tape in everything the Department does. 

Green Light's three key directions in the DTP portfolio include: 

Housing and Planning: The Green Light principle is most obviously topical for tacking Victoria's housing affordability crisis. At its core the new Plan for Victoria is about saying yes to more.  

Transport: the narrative here is about keeping people moving. First emphasis will be on cutting waiting at intersections (through shorter traffic light cycles), faster end-to-end public transport (through higher frequency partly funded by service reform) and improving railway reliability (by fixing unreliable recurring track and signal faults). A smaller but stronger DTP will also veto planned rail shutdowns that disrupt too many passengers. 

Cost of Living: An overarching theme across all of government for next month's state budget, with implications for DTP explained here. 

Branding to convey 'Vision Go'

For maximum transparency there will be no difference between internal and public-facing branding. After 20 years of obsessive branding and rebranding between 1998 and 2018, public transport (especially) went through a period of 'brandlessness' with little or no branding appearing. This opposite extreme led to a loss of network identity and confidence.

Green Light People branding will restore transport network pride and the sense that there's someone competent looking after the system and helping you go. You'll recognise this by the green light triangle progressively appearing on drivers licences, the public transport network (example below) and completed housing projects.  

QR codes will be installed at intersections to allow walkers to report waits of more than 60 seconds and drivers more than 120 seconds. The volume of requests thus received will dictate funding for "Vision Go" speed-up treatments. This will be done in a similar mechanism to the community-driven 'Pick My Project' scheme trialled before the 2018 state election. 

Summary

Delightful in both simplicity and profoundness, The Green Light People gives a new focus that the Department of Transport and Planning has lacked and needed for years. 

To mark the launch it is understood that DTP staff will enjoy a long morning tea, with this strictly concluding at noon today.