State budget: Good for country, little for metro

I spent some of yesterday going through the Victorian State Budget as it applied to public transport.

In summary, the document is good for country Victoria but generally disappointing for Melbourne. Though there is a 7% increase in public transport expenditure, except for some socially-useful additional bus services and improvements to accessible transport, it's hard to see what extra value or patronage this above-CPI increase will deliver.

The Government has lowered some of its performance targets after it failed in meeting many of last year's. Key examples include passenger satisfaction and on-time running. The fine print states that previous targets were 'stretch targets' and that the revised targets are more achieveable.

This year's patronage targets were similarly modest and barely meet population growth. With car trips growing faster than population, even if the targets were achieved, modal share for public transport would still fall. This is a far cry from the government's much-repeated '20% by 2020' mode share target it set as part of Melbourne 2030.

Here is a quick rundown, in point form.

Melbourne

- 1.1% increase in metro train services (ie barely population growth)
- 0% increase in metro tram services
- 4.2% increase in metro bus services (20 routes boosted soon)
- A lower target for train service delivery (from 99.5 to 99.2%). Thus the increase in actual train services is not the 1.1% quoted above but nearer to 0.9%)
- Forecast patronage growth approx 1.5% (more for trains, less for trams)
- Performance targets for passenger satisfaction and train on-time running lowered to last year's actual figures.
- Payments to operators up roughly 10% for buses and trains and a whopping 20% for trams (despite there being no extra services added for trams)
- Reduced taxpayer value for money and likely lower cost-recovery ratios. This is due to above-CPI cost increases for negligible additional service and patronage increases (especially for trams).

Country Victoria

- Nearly 20% increase in V/line train/coach services & 5% more country buses
- 9% increase in country patronage
- Introduction of more performance measures for service delivery
- Slightly lower target for train timeliness

Accessible transport

- 30 tram stops
- 3000 tactile indicators at bus stops

To repeat the previous comments, it's pretty good for country Victoria but represents a 'standing still' budget for Melbourne. 'Boring' and 'minding the shop' are adjectives that come to mind. This budget is not the sort of thing that substantial efficiency improvements, mode shifts and patronage increases are made of.

Mainstream or specialist services?

An article on page 7 of the May 30 Glen Eira-Caulfield Leader confirms that the free Monash University intercampus shuttle bus between the Caulfield and Clayton campuses will be replaced by a new Smartbus service between Caulfield and Rowville.

Some time earlier we heard that a new route 400 service will operate between Laverton and Sunshine via the correctional facilities at Laverton North. The only transport in the area is currently a free hourly prison shuttle from Laverton Station. I understand that this prison service will cease to operate once Route 400 begins.

Both examples share a common element. That is of free specialist shuttle buses with limited frequencies and operating hours being replaced by mainstream bus services attracting standard fares.

Unless the passengers involved are physically unable to use a regular bus service (in which case a subsidised taxi or paratransit service is most suitable), such 'mainstreaming' is generally sensible policy.

For a start existing users of the specialist service get better service frequency, operating hours and more readily available information. Overall patronage is increased due to the service being opened to general passengers. For its part, the government gets higher efficiencies (through combining duplicating, often state-funded services) and increased fare revenue.

The only shortcoming is that users of the existing shuttle services may not like having to pay a fare for somewhat slower travel (given that there would be intermediate stops). However even these passengers would gain from the frequency, hours and route improvements. Also the fare argument loses its potency when it is realised that those who used public transport to reach the (previous) shuttle service will find that their existing tickets are valid on the new service and no extra fare may be needed.

The State Government is right to explore avenues for mainstreaming services. It should consider further steps, especially in low-density rural and semi-rural areas with limited regular service.

Although specialist services ('community buses') run in some suburbs, the most important of these are school buses, particularly in rural areas.

With an ageing population in rural areas, there is much scope for much smarter use of these services. Local innovations might include devoting the front row or two of seats to adult passengers and extending school bus runs to a town centre stop.

If there are spare buses during the middle of the day, it might be possible to operate some regular midday town services between the peaks. In the larger centres late-afternoon post-school services for commuters (using buses returning from the afternoon school run) might also be practical.

Though such services are unlikely to be very frequent, they could still provides a social benefit for little cost. Travel could either be free or attract a gold coin fare (eg $2 adult, $1 concession) to go towards improvements such as passenger information and seats at stops.

For another creative example of cleverly using existing services for public transport, but this time courtesy of the local postman, read about the UK's Post Office Buses.

Do transport bureaucrats and activists use the same language?

To answer this question I decided to do a crude text analysis of documents from the State Government and the Public Transport Users Association. Both are freely available and can be downloaded from the respective organisations' websites.

The first document is the State Government's Meeting our Transport Challenges that came out last week (pdf 4.4M). The second is It's Time to Move by the PTUA (pdf 1.5M). In both cases I use the word search function in Adobe Acrobat to count the number of times important transport terms are mentioned.

Counts are presented as follows: Meeting our Transport Challenges - It's Time to Move

mode share: 0 - 3
mode shift: 0 - 2
tram priority: 1 - 5
bus priority: 4 - 3
frequency: 3 - 18 & frequencies: 2 - 16
integration: 5 - 1 & integrated: 9 - 7
transfer: 5 - 17
patronage: 7 - 28
coordination: 4 - 18
passenger information: 1 - 1 & information: 11 - 7
timetable: 8 - 19 & timetables: 2 - 13
2020: 0 - n/a
Melbourne 2030: 9 - n/a
sustainable: 18 - 4
interchange: 23 - 16
passenger: 25 - 95
smartbus: 25 - 1
planning: 32 - 48
roads: 39 - 70
connections: 44 - 3 & connect 103 - 13
equity: 0 - 1
disabled: 0 - 1
accessible: 18 - 3
access: 97 - 27
infrastructure: 51 - 30
network: 143 - 63
pedestrian: 11 - 3 & walk 20 - 23
cycle: 12 - 10 & bicycle 9 - 4
car: 66 - 236 & cars 15 - 62
train: 97 - 160 & trains 29 - 57
tram: 63 - 163 & trams 20 - 63
bus: 132 - 193 & buses 20 - 46
public transport: 116 - 266

Terms searched for but used in neither paper include scheduling, marketing, service planning, route review, modal share. Melbourne 2030 and 2020 (in reference to the 20% modal share target) were not counted in the PTUA paper, which came out before these became policy.

Patterns evident

The PTUA paper (ITTM) mentions transport vehicles such as cars, buses, trains and trams more than the State Government's paper (MOTC) with the only exception being bicycle.

MOTC gives somewhat more weight to infrastructure and much more weight to accessible (as in disabled access).

Key transport planning issues such as frequency, transfer, timetable, co-ordination (and indeed planning itself) rate higher in ITTM. These are all essential if good connections are required. However MOTC has many more mentions of 'connect', 'connections' and 'network'. 'Interchange' also gets more emphasis in MOTC.

Patronage is a higher priority for ITTM than MOTC. The PTUA also mentions roads and cars more. However this greater emphasis is mostly in the context of the need for a significant mode shift away from the private car and for resources to be diverted away from road building to provide conditions and services conducive to higher patronage. Government policy (Melbourne 2030) also supports such a mode shift (20% by 2030) but the failure of the MOTC paper to even mention mode shift or the 20% target seems to indicate that it may have since gone cold on the idea.

Overall the PTUA paper covers the specifics of planning, timetables, and co-ordination more comprehensively than MOTC, which seldom goes deeper than numerous references to connections, network, and, to a lesser degree, infrastructure. It also would have been helpful if the MOTC paper showed more evidence of starting with a desired modal share target, prescribing specific service levels and only then documenting what operating resources and capital expenditure items are required to bring these about.