UN 237: A new Melbourne PT frequency map

Melbourne's public transport has its share of disruptions, wildly varying service levels and (for buses) limited operating hours and indirect routes. 

But parts of the network are pretty good, with tourists awed by the size of our train and tram systems. 

Every route is equal - how Transport Victoria maps

However, although charged with network marketing, DTP through its Transport Victoria brand has a habit of allowing the good parts of the network be lumped with the bad parts. 'Use the journey planner' is their normal refrain, with no thought given to expanding would-be users' ideas of what is possible first. 

Especially for buses, which have the highest patronage growth potential of the three main modes yet low social licence (as revealed in internal Bus Plan documents tabled in parliament), fixing these perceptions requires (i) changing reality by chopping out the bad bits through bus network reform and (ii) accentuating the positive through good information and marketing. 

Auckland has done both. Its bus network is probably now the best of any similar city in Australia/NZ and, with 15 minute 7 day frequencies on its main routes, certainly beats Melbourne's. AT also understands messaging with it defining a 'frequent promise' with main routes highlighted on maps.  

DTP/Transport Victoria presents buses more or less the same, regardless of how useful or useless they are in reality. This is exacerbated by our wide variation in bus service levels. The Knox example below displays the main road 901 (every 15 min weekdays, 30 min weekends over long hours) at equal prominence to the 757 (8 trips on weekdays, none on weekends). The former is useful for many trips, the latter for only a few.  

If you're house hunting and want to know whether a bus route is useful without having to pore through hundreds of timetables, you won't get much help from DTP/Transport Victoria. They provide basic information (equal for all bus routes) on a take it or leave it basis. Unlike a more dynamic private sector company or even a government business enterprise they appear not to have much of a stake in whether people use buses or not.  

Frequent routes are more useful - some independent maps 

Fortunately there are independently-produced frequency maps for Melbourne's public transport that start where TV's local maps finish. 

There's my interactive frequent network maps here (that has just had an update with Bus 140A added). 

But today's topic is to introduce the amazing new Melbourne frequency map developed by Adam Bain. Available at ptmapmelb.com it is based on midday weekday frequencies. Switchable layers exist for 10, 15, 20 and 40-60 minute frequencies. It is inspired by similar maps for Seattle and Miami.

Just like with Melbourne, Seattle had a disconnect between what was important for passengers and information that was published by the siloed transit bureaucracy. Creating a gap filled by independent map makers and activists.  

You really need to spend some time with ptmapmelb.com. Achieving something that a hundred timetable lookups or journey planner searches will never do, it will change how you view Melbourne's PT network. You can zoom in for more detail but at no point does it become overwhelming. 

To get an idea of high and low service areas I suggest first ticking the 10 minute box and looking at the network. You'll see many (but not all) tram corridors and a few train lines. It's overwhelmingly a radial  inner suburban network with only a handful of cross-radial routes. You'll need to look carefully to see any buses. 

Ticking 15 minutes adds the rest of the tram network, some extra Metro lines in the east and quite a few buses, with the SmartBus orbitals being most prominent. But remember this is a weekday map with services on the latter (especially) collapsing on weekends. 

A substantial growth, particularly in the west and north comes when 20 minutes is selected. Apart from the outer-east this substantially completes the Metro train network, Melton and Geelong V/Line and adds many bus routes. But you will still see large populated areas without coverage. Most prominent gaps include Point Cook, Melton, large parts of Brimbank, Wollert, Epping, Thomastown, Mernda, the entire outer east, Greater Dandenong, Pakenham and Frankston. 

Adding 30 minutes brings up the Belgrave and Lilydale Metro lines as well as large parts of the bus network in the north and east. This include a lot of odd frequencies like 22 and 25 minutes around Epping and Reservoir where connections with trains are particularly poor. 

The much finer drawn 40-60 minute range includes most of the rest of the bus network including the areas listed as missing out on 20 minute service. In the west, north and outer south-east this may be due to an unwillingness to schedule buses every 30 min as they do not meet trains typically running every 20 minutes. If there is not the interest to run buses every 20 minutes then this confines large areas with (at best) a 40 minute service. As well as being good for its own sake, moving to a Metro rail network based on 10 minute core frequencies (as per the NDP) allows a wider range of connecting bus frequencies. 

The final two boxes are for limited service or FlexiRide routes. These routes are common in parts of the outer east (eg around Knox) eg 681, 682, 757, 758 and more. Although developed around 30 or more years ago these areas never got a full bus network then and still don't have one today. If an area has a lot of complex peak, limited service or FlexiRide routes it is likely to be crying out for bus network reform, as in the Reservoir and Knox examples below.  

The frequency finder

I said before that Adam's map was based on midday weekday frequencies. That's a problem because weekend frequencies in Melbourne can vary between 0.25 and 1.5 times weekday interpeak frequencies with Sunday service sometimes a fraction of Saturdays. 

Frequencies may also vary across the day between peak, interpeak and night time bands. Buses (especially) lack consistent operating hours so services may not run when you need to travel. 

However help is at hand through the companion Frequency Finder for trams and buses. 

Frequency Finder lets you find frequency by route by day of week and time of day. There's also a handy span guide and a map that changes colour (to indicate frequency) by line selected.

I deliberately selected a complex route (824) to test whether the graphic would show the more frequent Moorabbin part of the route (every 20 min) differently to the Keysborough end (every 40 min). It did.

However the frequency finder is limited to a single route and not a corridor. Thus overlaps like 250/251, 411/412 or 811/812 will not be shown as higher frequency here unlike they are on the map. 

Conclusion

This map and the accompanying frequency finder will encourage people to see the Melbourne public transport network differently with service have and have not areas really made apparent. This will make it a useful planning and advocacy tool. 

See other Useful Network items