Discussion on 20 minute off peak frequency

[ozbob]

You are misinterpreting what the Minister said. He simply said it is unlikely immediately but remains the aim, i.e. 15 minute services.

SEQ Rail Connect --> https://www.tmr.qld.gov.au/_/media/aboutus/corpinfo/publications/seq-rail-connect/seq-rail-connect.pdf page 16

Service types matched to demand

We will continue to move towards our vision for two consistent service types across the network, each with distinct
characteristics:
• faster, more reliable express services for customers travelling longer distances from the Gold Coast, Caboolture/
Sunshine Coast and Ipswich
• suburban 'turn up and go' services providing frequent and flexible connections for customers in inner areas, knowing there will be a train at their local station at least every 15 minutes from 7am to 7pm.

[Arnz]

Re Outcomes from the Ministers meeting.

Now that the cat is out of the bag regarding funding and resources not being available for 15 mins or better network wide, it's time to push for 20 mins or better as a staged solution. This can be easily achieved with the current infrastructure in place along with a few tweaks.

Benefits include

Faster cross town trips

Turn up and go with 10 mins or better from Darra to Roma Street as well as on the inner north and south lines.

Better off peak frequency, especially on weekends.

As well as many more...

***20 mins or better 7 days from 7am-9pm with frequency dropping back to 30mins or better outside those times except for the current BUZ services and event services.

TBH , RBOT has been advocating for nearly 20 years on 15 mins or better and it's still unlikely to come into fruition, as a result of the minister's meeting last week. Thus, 20 mins or better will be a huge improvement for the travelling public.

As many others said, you are not very likely to get a majority at all from RBOT for that 20 mins to everywhere idea.

There's nothing stopping you from starting an alternative side group such as "VBOT" for example, and lobbying for your 20 min idea on your own page.

[#Metro]

I prefer 15 min frequency because with 20 min frequencies, you wear the increased cost of crewing extra services but you don't get the increased convenience, easier connections, and so forth. To be fair, we have had increased train frequencies. The following lines have all currently have 15 min train frequencies:

- Beenleigh Line to Coopers Plains
- Cleveland Line to Cannon Hill
- Ferny Grove Line
- Ipswich Line to Darra

These were all rolled out during the last Blue Team administration. Nothing much since then.

The next most pressing one is 15 min to Kippa-Ring. Doing this sets up the ability to run BCC buses across the Northside to train stations.

[HappyTrainGuy]

Metro, Can you stop mentioning what party did what. It has no bearing. It's easy to point back to points because thats what you remember. You don't remember the smaller details. Details that haven't been made public or the public knows. The 4tph we have don't spawn out of something for a public benefit. It spawned out of a privatisation idea which involved gutting the company. On paper it looked good by slashing the IT department, gutting the driver program, gutting front line workers, outsourcing a quite substantial amount of in-house services but internally it was not sustainable long term. Once it was sold off that was a problem for whoever bought it. Beerburrum-Beerwah duplication was promised to be built on the back of selling off assets. Many of the actions by the blue team have prevented increased frequencies. To run the network now because of the blue team we have gone back to the same staffing levels prior to the blue team while still paying for those same outsourcing services or areas outsourced to TMR. And don't forget the blue team ordered DOO trains in a non DOO configuration for a non DOO network.

[achiruel]

20 mins or better will be a huge improvement for the travelling public.

No it won't, and the reasons have been made clear here numerous times.

[AnonymouslyBad]

There's nothing wrong with upgrading 30 minute service to 20 minute service. Where 3tph is an infrastructure constraint and there's no immediate plans to fix it (is Cleveland an example?) that's exactly what they should do.

But if by "20 minutes everywhere" we mean either of:

• passing it off as an interim version of turn up and go
• scaling back the current 15 minute network

then no.

If the only barrier to high frequency service is money, (e.g. more drivers), any "interim" solution is a distraction - nobody in the government intends to ever find the money.

[achiruel]

There's nothing wrong with upgrading 30 minute service to 20 minute service. Where 3tph is an infrastructure constraint and there's no immediate plans to fix it (is Cleveland an example?) that's exactly what they should do.

But if by "20 minutes everywhere" we mean either of:

• passing it off as an interim version of turn up and go
• scaling back the current 15 minute network

then no.

If the only barrier to high frequency service is money, (e.g. more drivers), any "interim" solution is a distraction - nobody in the government intends to ever find the money.

So how does a 20 minute frequency integrate with the parts of the network that are 15 minutes e.g. Ferny Grove to Coopers Plains, Shorncliffe to Cannon Hill?

That is why it's a bad idea.

Edit: I'm not really sure there's demand beyond Manly for 15 minute services anyway. Maybe extending 15 minutes from Cannon Hill to Manly should be the priority, rather than some half-baked solution.

[#Metro]

Red Team hasn't instituted any off-peak all day train frequency upgrades during their term of office that I can recall off the top of my head.

Perth manages to do 15-min trains everywhere, so the ideal case is 15 min to Cleveland too.

[HappyTrainGuy]

Red team hasn't been able to due to rollingstock uncertainty combined with pipeline projects that they can't guarantee that there would be crews or trains to do so. You saw the blowback from MBRL. It would be too political for them should they bump frequencies then when crr comes online have to reduce services elsewhere. Remember NGRs were multiple stage projects. Fleet expansion. Rollingstock replacement. Fleet expansion. They delivered stage one of the fleet expansion and partial EMU replacement. The remaining fleet expansion and EMU replacement stages were cancelled. EMUs were to be fully withdrawn by 2016-2018. It's 2023 and EMUs are still roaming the network. Cancelling the remaining NGR stages for Queensland built gave them brownie points with voters but screwed network operations and expansion. If we go back 10 years SMU200 were also on the early withdrawal list for a number of years. A couple years back 2 sat idle at Redbank for nearly a year as a third unit was investigated at Maryborough to see if they were worth saving or full fleet withdrawal was to be approved. EMUs are still progressively being withdrawn. The public doesn't see this but they are slowly getting smaller and smaller in the fleet number pool. So you have the ICE trains and 87x 3 car EMU guaranteed to be removed and 12x 3 car SMU200 trains potentially to be removed from the fleet pool (we now know that's not the case with the 200's). You also have the entire NGR fleet being taken out of service twice for ETCS installs and DDA mods. On top of that you also have the SMU260/IMU160 refurbishment programs which require them to also be removed from service. NGR requirements also were another sticking point. Beenleigh-Ferny Grove do not have NGR operations purely from a PSA cost. Doomben and to some extent Nambour have no additional PSA requirements in place for NGRs but it has been known that the lack of these PSA's has resulted in network delays (once CRR comes online rollingstock will be sectorised with MBRL, Nambour-Gold Coast via CRR being NGR only and other lines will see a reduction in PSA levels as staff migrate to particular lines full time or at particular times for NGR services).

I'm not listing excuses for it but just levelling the playing field of expectations and reality. QR can run 4tph and express trains quite easy tomorrow if they wanted to (as was the intention of translink for MBRL/bus network mods) but serious political problems occur when you have to reduce services because EMUs must be withdrawn due to whatever reason, CRR opening etc etc. We've already seen slogans and banners for CRR change as reality sets in for the rollingstock issue. PT is always political driven. There were serious issues with timetable mods in 2011 on the Nambour/Caboolture line. QR saw the passenger loading issues straight away and had crew roster and rollingstock positioning changes in place ready to go after the third day. It took another 3 weeks for translink to approve the change (not sure if true but from what I heard was someone high the food chain up wanted to see if people would fix the issue themselves without having to go through the expense of reprinting timetables and roster mods only to swiftly approve it once media attention on the problem gained traction).

[ozbob]

^ thanks HTG.

We know the new timetables have been basically finished.  We will not know what they are until they start public consultation next year hopefully.

For reasons you have alluded to HTG, and the fact the new timetables are all based on 15 minute pulses there is no way anyone is going to do another complete timetable rewrite etc. etc.

I understand verbatim9's motivation in trying to get improvements and good on him. But we are very constrained by political incompetence over a long period.

[HappyTrainGuy]

The timetables shouldn't be too much different from what they are now as most are within a few mins of each other. Sector 3 Ferny Grove-Cleveland should be somewhat the same as most services are within a couple mins. Same with sector 2 Airport-Ipswich as they already go through the cbd at the same time. Shorncliffe—Springfield on sector 2 is the only one with a 5 min gap difference through the city but that can be adjusted for. I think everyone is just keen on the sector one times