Last week I graphed the frequency of Melbourne bus routes at midday weekdays, aided by data from Adam Bain's Frequency Finder.
Matching the common reputation of Melbourne buses, this graph showed that just 7 out of over 350 routes ran every 10 minutes or better while a further 18 ran every 15 minutes. More ran every 20 minutes but the vast majority were still every 30 or 40 minutes.
However that data didn't tell us whether weekday peak service is much better than off-peak. Or how weekends fare.
Fortunately Adam has since added peak and weekend charts to his item on bus route numbers. So I'm back to look at what these tell us about the frequency of bus frequencies at these times.
Weekends (every 40 minutes is king)
Below shows number of bus routes in each frequency band at midday. It's like the graph last week but I've added Saturdays and Sundays plus a 'No service' grouping.
You will notice that while the 31 - 60 minute grouping was tallest on weekdays there was still a substantial number of routes in the 21 - 30 and 16 - 20 minute frequency bands.
That is not so on weekends. On Saturday and (especially) Sunday most frequent and semi-frequent weekday bus routes become infrequent. That introduces an inconsistency of service that is not present with trams and trains.
For example on Saturdays the 31 - 60 minute column is five times taller than the next. This overwhelmingly comprises routes either every 40 or 60 minutes. Even semi-frequent service is rare on Sundays, with barely 10% of the total (or 38 routes) operating every 30 minutes or better versus nearly double that (78) not operating at all. For some reason the 901 and 902 orbitals (nominally every 30 min) made the 31 - 60 minute grouping on Sunday, possibly due to a slightly uneven timetable.
Personally I'd have split the 31 to 60 minute groupings so that 40 and 60 minute frequencies were in different ranges. If this was done you would find that 40 minute column is tallest, ie it becomes the mode (ie most common) off-peak frequency for Melbourne's buses. This would likely apply on both weekdays and weekends though there are routes that are every 40 min on weekdays but 60 min on weekends, especially Sundays.
Be aware that this generalised data also doesn't tell us the very large differences between routes. On some service levels collapse between weekdays and weekends, others are frequent Monday to Saturday, collapsing on Sundays while a third group run the same frequency all week.
Examples of routes (that mostly but not always have legacy timetables) with sharp weekend frequency falls include 410, 472, 828 and even the new 241. All these drop to one-third or one-quarter weekday frequencies on weekends, particularly on Sundays.
Drops to half frequency are common on most SmartBuses that drop from every 15 to every 30 minutes on weekends. Similar applies to new or upgraded growth area routes in Craigieburn, Diggers Rest, Melton, Mt Atkinson, Cairnlea and Clyde where every 20 minutes weekday, 40 minutes weekend is the standard pattern.
Conversely some of the newer or recently upgraded Wyndham area routes (eg 153, 154 and 182) have their flat 20 minute frequency operating 7 days to late with no weekend service 'cliff'. Similar (but at lower service level) applies in areas such as Pakenham and Mornington where a flat hourly service all week is the norm as can be seen from Adam's new interactive interchange and service map (with context here).
Peaks (a little better than interpeak)
If midday weekends get far fewer buses than midday weekdays, what happens during the weekday peaks? This is the most challenging time to run buses, especially in the morning where school and commuter peaks coincide. Traffic volumes also make for longer or more variable run times, making it harder to schedule efficient yet reliable timetables. The graph below is the previous one with peak columns added for each frequency range.
Many bus routes in established areas had higher peak frequencies prior to large service cuts in the early 1990s. Many have gained (or had restored) evening and weekend service but not all peak service has yet been restored. This goes some way to explaining why about 100 bus routes are still infrequent in the peaks.
Like with weekends there are variations. A welcome new trend on some new growth area routes (eg 154, 405, 451 and 475) is to run a 20 minute frequency peak and off-peak. In contrast some earlier routes (eg 150, 160, 182, 494, 495, 497 etc) have a ~20 min peak service but only a 40 minute off-peak service. The fact that these rate amongst the most productive bus routes in Melbourne make a 20 minute off-peak frequency a better fit.
A table showing the numbers in the above graph is below.
Trams (the mode is the service)
Trams have a distinctive operating culture including operating over long hours and at generally high frequencies all week in a manner that buses do not. This is made graphic below (Sunday shown as a 'worst case' - better views of this and other days here).
The graphic doesn't analyse evening frequencies but if it did trams would look even better. Whereas trams have a maximum evening wait of 20 minute Monday - Saturdays, the figure for the above four routes is 30 minutes with 234 and 246 finishing much earlier on Sunday than trams.
Buses 234, 246, 905 and 907 are the only ones that have somewhat tram-like frequencies on all days of the week. All are east or south of Melbourne CBD, none north or west (apart from part of 246). The one bus that offers a tram equal service is the small segment of the 732 between Vermont South and Knox City that was instituted to partly meet a 1999 political promise to extend the 75 tram to Knox City.
This consistently high service is a major contributing factor to why the tram network, despite it serving only a small part of Melbourne, carries tens of millions more people per year than buses, which serve millions more homes. With wide hours, decent daytime frequencies and a rarely broken 20 minute maximum wait*, trams have a sort of dependability built into the timetable that Melbourne buses lack. This regular service induces more routine usage for a wide variety of trips that buses could have but don't due to their often more limited hours and frequency.
The tram/bus inequality demonstrates the significant gaps between inner/tram and middle-outer/bus suburbs in their public transport provision. This includes busy middle-suburban destinations (eg Box Hill/Chadstone/Monash) and denser outer areas (eg Tarneit and Craigieburn) that strongly justify frequent tram-like bus service all week compared to their existing back-street type service levels, particularly on weekends.
(*) Sunday mornings and evenings excepted.
Adam's analysis did not assess trains but there's not many lines so I made a frequency of frequency table for completeness (excluding peaks due to complex stopping patterns on some lines).
Why are 21 lines shown when our metropolitan rail network has only 15? Firstly I've included the two heavily outer suburban Geelong and Melton lines. Secondly I've doubled up on lines like Sunbury, Hurstbridge, Belgrave/Lilydale and Pakenham/Cranbourne that have outer suburban branches or frequency fall offs to convey a fairer impression of frequency much of their catchments have.
The data behind the graph is below.
The biggest gap between trams and trains are the latter's 30 (and sometimes 40) minute intervals at nights and on Sunday mornings. 2025 and 2026 state budget measures will go part way to closing these gaps to 20 minutes on the Craigieburn and Upfield lines (all times), Mernda and inner Hurstbridge (weekends) and Belgrave, Lilydale, Alamein and Glen Waverley (weeknights). There has so far been no commitment to closing the 30 minute weekday gaps for Belgrave and Lilydale and the 40 minute weekend gaps for Melton.
This data says several things about buses in Melbourne. The typical route runs every 30 minutes in peak and about every 40 minutes off-peak. Many Melbourne bus timetables have a weekend cliff where services are much less on weekends than weekdays with a significant minority still not running seven days.
In addition there is not a large defined group of frequent all week routes with similar service levels to trams. Instead only a handful run frequently seven days with the most common pattern being frequent weekdays and infrequent weekends, particularly Sundays.
Melbourne's lack of a premium bus network of maybe 50 main road bus routes operating at tram-like frequencies seven days (as proposed in the Bus Reform implementation approach that the Auditor-General said was unachievable at the current rate of progress) remains (along with low all day frequencies on certain train lines) the biggest block on patronage growth.
The steep service drop-offs show that lack of bus vehicles is not the problem; rather it is the lack of a will to work them harder for more of the week due to recruiting too few drivers. And in some areas there is also significant scope to make better use of existing bus and driver hours by simplifying routes and removing inefficient overlaps.
Attention to these service matters would transform public transport's usefulness in ways that the 'Big Build' so far has not in most suburbs.
1 comment:
As many commentators have said, in any other city, our Tram routes would be BRT or other high frequency bus routes. Instead, they are trams.
Perhaps one factor contributing to good tram performance is that they are all grouped under a single operator? They are all moderately high-productivity routes (by bus standards), and so the operator has a single culture of delivering high-frequency service. It would be harder since the routes are more geographically spread out across many depots and operators, but should DTP be thinking about spinning off the routes they want to be high frequency (SmartBus + new Frequent Routes) into their own operator (or clear sub-department within an operator) so that they can focus on high quality performance of those routes?
It could also provide a clearer pathway to service uplift, when a route gets transferred from one department to another, to get all the 'trimmings' of a high-quality service.
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