TT 213: How Melbourne added 8000 weekly bus services in just 18 months

Executive Summary: Melbourne can roll out upgraded bus services at a far faster pace than has been the case in recent history. We just need to draw inspiration from our own achievements in 2005 to rediscover how to do it. 

Whenever people say that we can't roll out bus upgrades quickly I point out to them that such capability is not impossible with Melbourne having a record to prove it.

As I mentioned a few years ago bus upgrades have their slow and fast times. The early 1990s saw large cuts followed by almost a decade of stagnation. Melbourne had changed but buses hadn't. There were some small improvements in 2002 (including pilot SmartBus routes) but most routes still had restricted hours and frequencies, especially on weekends or after 7pm.

The 2005 state budget sparked a big acceleration with many bus upgrades financed. The following year better bus services was not then the most prominent but became the main legacy of the 2006 Transport and Liveability Statement, otherwise known as 'Meeting our Transport Challenges'.

Since then governments have gone backward in their appetite for bus network upgrades.

In the 2020s getting even one bus route to 7 day service requires significant community campaigns. Victoria's spending on metropolitan bus services is $112 per capita per year - the lowest in the country according to an internal DTP bus benchmarking study made public thanks to its tabling in parliament.

Those documents also reveal that fare evasion on buses is running wild (despite other official numbers understating it) while plans to make buses better stalled due to apparent cabinet rejection of a DTP plan for radical bus network reform in late 2023. That rejection reaffirmed the primacy of infrastructure over service in setting the government's metropolitan public transport priorities ever since 2015. 

2005's big bus budget

The political environment a decade prior was the opposite. In 2005 we weren't spending much on public transport infrastructure. However relatively good economic conditions led to a government that could still consider itself financially prudent while lifting spending on services.

Well-targeted and highly effective advocacy from BusVic's John Stanley and others channelled some of that into buses. That led to improved bus services becoming a major transport policy thrust for several successive state budgets from 2005.   

To get an idea of how big this is I'll let archived Department of Infrastructure websites and media releases do most of the talking. But trust me these upgrades compared to those that followed were huge in both scale and impact.  

Our story starts with a major announcement from Transport Minister Peter Batchelor about the bus improvements funded in that year's state budget. Read the release here: 
https://web.archive.org/web/20070831034319/http://www.dpc.vic.gov.au/domino/Web_Notes/newmedia.nsf/798c8b072d117a01ca256c8c0019bb01/f44b350a8cc385f7ca25709d00002e9d!OpenDocument

Premier Steve Bracks' media release from May 17, 2006 is here: 

https://web.archive.org/web/20080325084926/http://www.dpc.vic.gov.au/domino/Web_Notes/newmedia.nsf/b0222c68d27626e2ca256c8c001a3d2d/c87cb70942f9247aca257172000617f7!OpenDocument

This laid out a $1.4b 10 year plan to boost bus services, with a 22% increase in the first four years involving 250 routes. This was evenly split between weekend and evening upgrades to local bus services and four new SmartBus orbitals (though only three were identified). There was also a major Doncaster area bus package. The first improvements would commence in three months - fast by 2020s standards. 

These bus upgrades were a part of the Meeting Our Transport Challenges plan (or MOTC). It was a sign that metropolitan public transport was emerging as a major issue. There had been changes such as franchising, ticketing, numerous rebrandings and unified information under Metlink but these were not bread and butter fundamentals like infrastructure and more service as were also sorely needed. 

A year after the October 2005 announcement came this update in October 2006: 

https://web.archive.org/web/20070830131004/http://www.dpc.vic.gov.au/domino/Web_Notes/newmedia.nsf/798c8b072d117a01ca256c8c0019bb01/33f2468c487ca1a5ca257202000af987!OpenDocument 
It revealed 8000 more metropolitan bus trips per week had either been added or were to be added between November 2005 and early 2007. Those early 2007 upgrades alone benefited 36 bus routes. The vast majority of these would included new Sunday service plus longer operating hours on other days of the week. 

Growth area transport was then, as it is now, an issue. Here is a page of upgrades that were done. 

https://web.archive.org/web/20060112092321/http://www.linkingvictoria.vic.gov.au:80/DOI/Internet/transport.nsf/AllDocs/6393108372420DE6CA257097000B7001?OpenDocument

Possibly most impressive is this list of upgrades by local government area. This shows the volume of work that was done. It really shows that where there is the will a lot of upgrades can be done in a short time.  

https://web.archive.org/web/20070902004327/http://www.linkingvictoria.vic.gov.au/DOI/Internet/transport.nsf/AllDocs/F048187CAB95259BCA2571800002B357?OpenDocument

An index page to much of the above is here: 
https://web.archive.org/web/20070830151937/http://www.linkingvictoria.vic.gov.au/DOI/Internet/transport.nsf/AllDocs/6393108372420DE6CA257097000B7001?OpenDocument


Successes in service boosts and SmartBus roll-out

In summary this program delivered large (but not total) implementation of: 

* Minimum service standards on local bus routes (that is at least hourly to 9pm 7 days) 
* A network of premium service SmartBuses operating every 15 minutes weekdays and 30 minutes weekends over long operating hours

These measures were transformative at the time. As would a similar magnitude service uplift would be now. They were also very successful with patronage rising in line with service increases despite the above two not resolving many overlaps on the network.

The MOTC bus upgrades were fortunate to have as sponsor minister Peter Batchelor whose standing in the party and cabinet could see them through (despite him being factionally opposite to then premier Bracks and Treasurer Brumby). They also had the relatively then more prominent (due to its then high membership coverage of metropolitan bus operators) BusVic playing the role of supportive stakeholder. 

Whereas Dr Paul Mees, the state's most vocal and media-successful transport advocate, was pungently dismissive of MOTC with personal animosities towards both Minister Batchelor and Jim Betts, the then Director of Public Transport.

Ditto for the Mees-influenced Public Transport Users Association, whose committee unanimously called on Minister Batchelor to resign the day the MOTC plan came out.  PTUA wanted a revised institutional structure, suburban rail extensions instead of freeways and an even bigger stress on service. Some of these were to later come but not in 2006.

About 70% of the minimum service standards and orbital SmartBuses had been rolled out by the time of Labor's defeat in 2010. Stage 3 (more orbitals) and Stage 4 (grid network across Melbourne) of SmartBus did not proceed, having been dropped from later, more rail-heavy plans. But by 2010 the success of what was done was undeniable. 

Challenges for bus network reform 

The third leg of the MOTC bus initiatives, the sixteen local bus network reviews, was not so successful. Done by consultants commissioned by the department these were more complicated pieces of work than straight service upgrades.

The potential risks (as reform can create 'losers' as well as 'winners') added to the increased costs may have made implementing the reviews less politically attractive than a specific upgrade on a familiar route or an orbital you could draw on a map. Especially as political interest in transport had shifted to addressing surging rail crowding and collapsing reliability by the time the bus reviews came out. Thus only a minority of bus review recommendations were ever implemented.

Changing political and budgetary priorities is one reason why bus reform fails. Budget funding is like acetone - it evaporates quickly if not used. Sometimes it's better to grab what money is going and do stuff ASAP. Even if small or imperfect it moves the network forward. Unlike the nothing that can happen after a grand network review is met with no funding by the time it is ready to implement. Splitting big reviews into smaller ones (maybe only involving 4 to 6 routes), compressing time-lines and (hopefully) developing the capability to do several simultaneously are potential ways forward here.  


Baillieu / Napthine government priorities

What happened after the 2010 state election? SmartBus expansion remained paused but bus network reform survived and even thrived after the change of government. While the incoming Coalition government didn't put in as much new money for buses that the previous Labor government did, it was more open to (potentially controversial) network reform. This was of a somewhat more austere brand than in the Brumby era bus network reviews. But where implemented it still simplified the network, boosted frequencies on key corridors and rolled out more seven day service.

This work was assisted by better focus afforded by the creation of PTV out of Metlink and parts of the department, effectively creating a public transport agency that was not distracted by other matters. 

Achievements under PTV included the radical new 2013 Point Cook bus network and the massive (never exceeded) train, tram and bus reforms of July 2014. Reforms devised during this time continued to be implemented in the first term of the Andrews Labor government, notably Wyndham/Geelong in 2015 and Cranbourne in 2016.


Andrews / Allan government priorities

Under successive Andrews/Allan government transport ministers service upgrades continued apace in regional Victoria, especially for rail but also bus. As the numbers presented above show, Victoria now spends twice as much per capita on regional bus services as it does on metropolitan bus services - a bigger ratio than any other state. With 1100 new bus services per week being added from September 14 2025, the back streets of Moe now have weekend buses as frequent as operate on sections of busy Bell Street Preston (in both cases every 40 min) despite very different demand profiles.

To the extent that Victoria has a public transport service policy, its first priority has been what you might call equal fare/equal service across the state. Expression of that can be found in our almost flat fare structure and the (often laudable) push to upgrade service frequencies on trains and buses across the state to every 60 and increasingly every 40 minutes. 

Metropolitan public transport services, in contrast, were not necessarily the highest interest for either the infrastructure focused premier nor the then (regionally-based) transport minister. This change soon translated into outcomes, including a big drop in service uplifts and service reform compared to the more active 2005-2015 decade. 

Planning that was done, such as 2012's Network Development Plan (Metropolitan Rail) service upgrades or the promised 2022 Mildura, north and north-eastern bus network reviews, were at best marginally implemented or at worst abandoned.

Piecemeal changes including new routes in new areas and some welcome service increases continued. There was however not a lot of network reform, with the Baillieu/Napthine government's record in this area looking like a model for dynamism (the reverse of the narrative for infrastructure). Overall bus services improved at a slower pace than the hopes generated in the 2021 Bus Plan and the network reviews launched the following year.  

Some lessons for bus reformers

Large-scale service-oriented policies like bus service expansion and reform need to be carried by a minister who is a compelling policy champion with the required cabinet support and not in any  premier's 'freezer'. DTP also needs leadership that can win support both internally and with stakeholders. Whatever his other merits, the previous secretary could hardly be described as having a magnetic approach that readily attracted such critical buy-in.  

For buses this was history repeating itself from fifteen years prior - the more complex or bigger the network reviews, the less their chance of success seems to be. On the other hand a small number of small reviews delivers small results so that's not great either.

The best outcomes seem to come from either doing a large number of small changes as part of daily business (the Perth model) or some medium sized area reviews (which Melbourne did well in the 2013 - 2016 period). 

Going big (like was attempted with bus reform - and you need to credit DTP's audacity here) was however no impediment for infrastructure construction. Indeed it seemed the bigger it was the more likely a project was to happen.

Encouraged by a bullish population outlook, low interest rates and the perceived excitement of infrastructure, metropolitan transport policy came to be 99% about major projects with this core to how the Andrews government saw itself. Regional services have also done well, with midday service levels now equalling or exceeding some underinvested-in metropolitan routes. 

While this mix has to date not necessarily delivered the best value transport network outcomes for the biggest number of people, this stance was rewarded by electoral success and not challenged by a disunited state opposition too busy fighting (and suing) itself. And there is always the opportunity to add service in the future with the overhaul of the timetables after the Metro Tunnel's opening a test of the government here.

See other Timetable Tuesday items here