Executive summary: Too many plans for bus upgrades fail. Strike while the iron is hot - make yours succeed by having it ready to fund when political will is highest. And always prefer a staged program of quick wins with well-communicated successes over cumbrous and potentially controversial reviews that are rarely completed before political will and funding opportunities evaporate.
"If only we had an integrated transport plan" you hear some cry. It is an article of faith amongst transport planning professionals that Melbourne should have an integrated transport plan. Not only that but it is mandated in the Transport Integration Act 2010.
Others in urban planning and housing have different views. They contend that projects like the Suburban Rail Loop are exactly what we need as for too long transport has lagged rather than shaped development. This government agrees, with it describing the SRL as both a transport and urban planning project. Preferring to get their advice from elsewhere, they have basically sidelined what you might call the old transport planning establishment, possibly due to past bad experiences when they did trust the department. DTP and its predecessors have also had periods of pretty uninspiring leadership since.
Various plans
I'll run through the plans that cover buses but will veer into trains and trams occasionally as well.
* 1988 MetPlan
Unfortunate timing contributed to making this plan, which had many good features, fail. Within eighteen months of its release the state's public finances were in crisis and there were cuts not boosts. The minister's claim that a commitment to improvement had replaced the atmosphere of decline and decay soon proved false. However some of the directions in it (eg orbital buses) did end up happening much later.
* 2006 Meeting Our Transport Challenges
* Service upgrades and extensions for local routes, notably the addition of Sunday and evening service (to 9pm) through a program of minimum service standards.
* Expansion of the SmartBus network featuring more frequent service and longer hours on key routes, especially orbitals.
* A series of local area bus network reviews across Melbourne.
MOTC can claim to be the most successful metropolitan bus plan of those reviewed here. Receiving its first serious funding in the 2005 state budget upgrades continued to be rolled out until 2010 (when the government lost office). However momentum slowed from about 2008 as political priorities switched to fixing rail's numerous problems. About 60 to 70% of the minimum service upgrades and SmartBus was implemented with patronage rising in step with service.
The local area bus network reviews took a fair while to do. They were the least successful bus component of MOTC with only about 20% of recommendations implemented as funding was drying up when the reports were completed.
* 2012 Network Development Plan (Metropolitan Rail)
There was never a publicly released NDP (Metropolitan Bus). But there was significant bus network reform along principles that would likely have been in such a plan. This included a radical new bus network in Point Cook that started when Williams Landing Station opened in 2013. 27 July 2014 was a particular high point with major bus network reforms for Brimbank, Melbourne Airport, the south-east and the Transdev network. No other day since has seen a comparable large change to buses across so many areas.
One effect of this was an increase in the number of bus routes operating every 20 minutes as I discussed here. Since that item was written (2019) there have been further additions to the '20 minute club' with service boosts on buses in Fishermans Bend, Craigieburn and Werribee. Fishermans Bend even gained two routes every 10 minutes on weekdays.
* 2016 Regional Network Development Plan
All four of the last Labor premiers can claim a stronger personal attachment to regional Victoria than areas like Tarneit, Craigieburn and Dandenong. The public transport agenda of this government is overwhelmingly driven by a vision of statewide equity. That is you get the same flat fare cap to travel on services that are at least every hour (and increasingly every 40 minutes) across Melbourne and major regional cities.
A consequence of this is that when infrastructure is upgraded you are far more likely to get a large rail service uplift on regional lines than you are on metropolitan lines. Not only that but when regional lines like Ballarat and Gippsland have their timetables upgraded there are cascading upgrades for buses including service additions. This typically does not happen for metropolitan timetable changes which may get (at best) minor cost-neutral bus timetable tweaks as part of 'recoordination' (not that some routes were necessarily coordinated to start off with!).
A consequence of this approach is that regional areas get service upgrades whereas outer metropolitan areas (many in historically taken for granted Labor 'safe' seats) do not despite metropolitan routes having higher patronage productivity. The most recent Gippsland bus upgrades have been so great that at midday on a weekend the back streets of Moe gets buses as frequent as busy Bell Street near Bell Station (in both cases a 40 minute frequency). Such Moe routes also run 7 days unlike routes in similar low income but metropolitan neighbourhoods like Campbellfield and Dandenong North. Major routes have similar disparities; Route 1, the Latrobe Valley intertown route is now every 20 minutes on weekends versus 30, 40 and 60 minute gaps on main highway Melbourne bus routes on weekends.
Regional service provision remains with some gaps (Wodonga, Shepparton and Mildura still need town bus network reform and upgrades) but the general story for regional network development is one of major investment in public transport service that has exceeded that applied in major parts of metropolitan Melbourne, especially on a per-capita basis. Consequently the Regional Network Development Plan can be considered the one bus and train service-related plan that has had unwavering support for almost the entire life of this government.
* 2021 Victoria's Bus Plan
There's been developments regarding the new G Class trams and the Maribyrnong depot but little has been said or funded on the service side with the plan being fairly vague. Some tram service boosts have happened but DTP is weak at promoting them. Trams' low political profile may be partly because both major parties consider outer suburbs more important than inner suburbs with a Labor example below:
While it didn't have a lot of detail, the Regional Network Development Plan stands out as being the one that has retained political support the longest. I suspect this has a lot to do with the central role of regional Victoria in Labor's leadership with vocal support for fishing and acceptance of recreational hunting part of the same "see, we're not inner-city Greens" political thinking most personified by the premier's husband's background.
PTV successfully implemented Labor's 2014 plans after the change of government. But present a more radical proposal to a more wary minister and bus reform can die, like happened with the scrapped 2015 Transdev network. Especially if the department gets to be led by people who cannot sell public and political benefits.
People can spend a lot of effort lobbying for 'a transport plan'. But the record of implementation when we've had such plans has been mixed. Even successful plans rarely hold the interest of their political masters for more than a couple of years before something else captures their attention and budgets. The rare exceptions resonate politically with the government, for instance the priority this one gives to certain provincial areas.
Otherwise time is of the essence. By all means have a plan but develop it quickly. Be clear in what you want. Be able to implement quickly. Get as much funding locked in as early as you can.
Do the 3 Ms: Market Upgrades, Measure Results and Message Success to build political capital for future stages. Have a Secretary who can argue a case and a minister with weight in Cabinet. As seen recently, squandering the precious first two years on ponderous reviews risks nothing being done as political priorities change and funding interest wanes.