Sydney buses vs Translink buses

[somebody]

Average boardings per bus trip:
Sydney Buses (Regions 6-9): 36.78
Translink Buses: ?

Average boardings per service-km:
Sydney Buses (Regions 6-9): 2.92
Translink Buses: 1.28

Average distance travelled per passenger:
Sydney: 6.6km
Brisbane: 8.2km

Not entirely fair as it's including all of SEQ and only the denser parts of Sydney, and Sydney is too tight, but still...

The point is that what is considered an adequate loading here would not be in Sydney.  I doubt there is a huge about of difference in the average bus trip length, but I can't find info on that.

[SurfRail]

You will struggle with any meaningful comparison unless you factor in the other metropolitan and outer metropolitan contract regions.  (We are talking all the way from Cessnock to Nowra, by way of comparison to Noosa to Coolangatta).

BT vs STA would be the most pertinent, and would probably still come out in STA's favour.  Having said that, when was the last time they significantly increased service km or patronage down there anything like to the extent they have been doing up here?  Fleet has nearly doubled in 10 years, while down there it has stagnated at around 2,000 and there are still lots of ancient Mercs still roaming around.

[somebody]

No argument with any of that, but I don't have those stats.

STA have been increasing their fleet apparently, I think by about 15% over 4 years.  Not as dramatic as BT, but the base is higher too.  Trouble is that in Sydney nearly all the fleet returns to the depot outside of peak hour.

[somebody]

You know what?  Yes I do have those stats.  Look at the report for Auckland Council: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCYQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Furbanist.typepad.com%2Ffiles%2F1295-final-report-150811.pdf&ei=RCKZT_XFM6uOiAfz74j8BQ&usg=AFQjCNHowpk67gK9013TYiWeoHeR2Y3iWg&sig2=sVKVLmAYkcvg1xcij8xkuA

Sydney Bus (including private bus) overall: 14 bus passenger-kms per service-km
SEQ Bus overall: 10.4 bus passenger-kms per service-km

I'm surprised the difference isn't more, and that Sydney Bus is so low.  Must be private buses in less dense areas lowering the overall numbers.

[somebody]

Some additional stats here: http://www.bitre.gov.au/publications/2009/files/is_033.pdf

It's Brisbane stats are plain wrong, but unsourced or the TTA stats are wrong.

Assuming the other stats are OK:
Sydney has:
2005/6: 2.06
2006/7: 1.98
2007/8: 1.94

So it is/was in decline.  Perhaps this is due to the growth of the CDC services which travel a lot of kms to get their boardings.  Yet they are still performing far better than the Brisbane services.

[somebody]

An IPART report contains some additional stats which make for a more fair comparison:
Sydney (including Newcastle, W'Gong, Blue Mountains) in 2010/11 had 23 boardings per bus trip and 1.49 boardings per bus service-km.  Differs slightly with the BITRE report.  EDIT: I expect this is because the BITRE are counting only the Metropolitan bus contracts. /EDIT

Therefore, even on much fairer comparisons and in spite of everything done wrong and all the bus infrastructure built in QLD, Sydney still seems to be performing better on most PT-based criteria.

[somebody]

From some other stats regarding full buses, I estimate that BT's patronage rate is approximately 24 boardings per trip.

I expect that the problem is that this is considerably more lumpy than the STA service, which gets full buses across most of its routes.  Here, we get just a few routes filling up consistently.

[somebody]

http://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/2010%20Library/2009%20PDF%20and%20Docs/1.About%20Council/1.10%20News%20and%20publications/Budget%202011-12/Budget_2011-12_annual_plan_and_full_document.pdf  page 226 (228 Adobe)

2010/11 - Anticipated 78 million BT Bus trips, 64 million BT service-kms.  - 1.23 boardings per service km.

EDIT: Oops, actual patronage was slightly lower than forecast.  Refer to the BT thread for more info on BT.

[SurfRail]

It would be affected by the number of long routes we have.  STA have a lot more local and short routes.

Also it appears privatisation may now been on the cards if they don't get their act together - there was an article somewhere today which appears to have been taken down or put behind a paywall.