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 in detail in an article published April 10. Read it here. A Herald Sun article the previous day focusing on less than envisaged peak service levels under the Metro Tunnel is here.  

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