The 400m rule - just a guideline says Translink

[ozbob]

From 612 ABC Brisbane radio Breakfast with Spencer Howson

The 400m rule - just a guideline says Translink

Is it true that no home should be more than 400m from a bus stop? Translink CEO Neil Scales says it's a guideline, not a rule, and it's not always possible:

Click--> here!

[SurfRail]

It's not a 400m rule in Brisbane - more like a 200m rule...

[somebody]

It's not a 400m rule in Brisbane - more like a 200m rule...

Only if you live exactly on the route.  Not a side street.

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Isn't the CEO incorrect?  The PIDs are scheduled time, but adjusted for current running based on feedback loops in the road.

I think the caller doesn't have a case.  The 465 is near the southern end of Ritchie Rd.  Further north on the road is too sparsely populated for a bus service.

[ozbob]

I don't think the feedback loops have been working properly for some time now.  Maybe Otto or someone else may know for sure.

My own observations have generally been no real correlation between bus appearance and times on PIDs ... 

[SurfRail]

Only if you live exactly on the route.  Not a side street.

The spacing should be governed by distance between stops, not distance to everybody's house.  I think even 400m is too low - 600m between stops would be fine on most routes (averaged out - retirement villages, schools, shopping precincts and other landmarks justify a bus stop and they may happen to be more closely spaced than this).

[HappyTrainGuy]

Hourly frequencies, poor running times and random stopping patterns are a bigger issue for me. Stops are worthless if you can't even wait at one for a bus to turn up or have to consult multiple timetables just to figure out how to get/leave home because at this time your local bus terminates 1km over there.

[somebody]

I don't think the feedback loops have been working properly for some time now.  Maybe Otto or someone else may know for sure.

I don't think they ever worked properly.  At least not to my knowledge.

Even the timetable info is wrong.  Wrong time of day, routes that don't run on the current day, no display at all are all par for the course.

Roma St one is decent, but mostly the buses have just started their trip.

[#Metro]

If you want all houses within 400m, then get the buses to drive into mazes - which provide a service SO BAD that nobody will catch it ANYWAY so the presence of a bus stop wouldn't actually make a difference!

[AnonymouslyBad]

The spacing should be governed by distance between stops, not distance to everybody's house.  I think even 400m is too low - 600m between stops would be fine on most routes (averaged out - retirement villages, schools, shopping precincts and other landmarks justify a bus stop and they may happen to be more closely spaced than this).

I understand why they measure distance to everybody's house. For express routes it doesn't matter and they should focus more on key centres, however many people don't live in the highly populated areas and can only use an all-stops, milk run "welfare" service. Perhaps they deserve better, but the point is that even though these services probably bleed money, TL must run them because they must provide a minimum standard of service for everyone. One measure of that is walking distance to a bus stop; sounds fair enough.

IIRC, within 400m or a bus or 800m of a train (silly, I know) you are "serviced" by public transport.
My understanding is also that TransLink has to, as a minimum, service 90% of the population under this definition. Obviously it's not possible to get 100%. Maybe that's what they meant when they said it's a "guideline"?

A substantial portion of that last 10% is probably actually within the depths of suburban McEstates, so options for reducing stops elsewhere are probably limited. :/

[SurfRail]

^ The vast majority of SEQ has nothing like the interminably short distances between stops that BT maintains.  Having a system of bus routes which stop every 200m and an overlaid system of express routes is massively ineffective. 

For instance, what is the big issue with having the 333 and 340 stop at Truro St and Federation St, both of which are "signature" stops and shown in the busway network diagram?

Everybody on a given line could have high frequency if the stops were sequenced a little better (Coro Drive, Old Cleveland Rd, Gympie Rd), plus the number of vehicles needed to operate routes like the 199 would drop as services speed up.

[AnonymouslyBad]

^ The vast majority of SEQ has nothing like the interminably short distances between stops that BT maintains.  Having a system of bus routes which stop every 200m and an overlaid system of express routes is massively ineffective. 

For instance, what is the big issue with having the 333 and 340 stop at Truro St and Federation St, both of which are "signature" stops and shown in the busway network diagram?

Everybody on a given line could have high frequency if the stops were sequenced a little better (Coro Drive, Old Cleveland Rd, Gympie Rd), plus the number of vehicles needed to operate routes like the 199 would drop as services speed up.

Yeah, BT does tend to put stops closer together than everybody else. (And by "everybody else", I really mean Translink; the approach everywhere else is fairly consistent, but just like most things as soon as you enter BCC jurisdiction it's their way or the highway.)
While I understand and see value in the 400m rule, I'd suggest that if you need stops every 200m just to service your catchment, "you're doing it wrong".

For example in West End, the 199 has stops as little as ~150m apart! Looking at a map, I can't help but think this is because of the huge gap between the 199 and 196. In outer suburban areas they'd never bother putting stops that close together, but my theory would be that - being so inner-city - BT insists that West End must have 100% "coverage" within the 400m rule. Now, if the options are to run three routes, or run two routes with stops at every second intersection, I'd say go with the former. BT seems to think the latter is better.

As for the busway stops... well... that's the Northern Busway for you. I agree that it's silly to skip all of those two stops, but by not putting in a station and dumping a bus shelter there instead, it's kind of like they're acknowledging the stops are too close together anyway.

As for everybody having high-frequency: it would be nice. In many places now, the express stopping pattern is by far dominant and the all-stops is little more than a welfare service. It would be nice to see that in more places, but that's probably as good as it's going to get. It doesn't matter if there's express services every 5 minutes on every corridor, and services are running at a huge profit - if the disabled/elderly/etc. can't get to them then the system has, by its own KPIs, monumentally failed. While efficiencies should be introduced where they can, and I agree our buses (BT in particular) can be far more efficiently run, that is all secondary to the public interest purpose.
That said, the 400m number is never cited; I'd like to assume there was research done about what's acceptable walking distance, but if they did pull it out of nowhere then by all means I'd like to see it revised. 400m or 500m seems to be pretty standard everywhere though.

[STB]

As was made quite clear in that interview, it's based on density, ie: dwellings per hectare, whether a locality gets a bus route and/or bus stop within 400m, whereby along that route the bus stops will be 800m apart in residential areas and 1600m apart in rural areas. 

So if you live in between a bus stop along a particular route, in theory it would be no more than 400m (bus stops 800m apart) to walk to the nearest stop if you lived in a residential area with a certain population that justifies running a bus route, or 800m (bus stops 1600m apart) to walk to the nearest stop if the bus route happens to pass through a rural area eg: route 280 along Mt Cotton Rd. 

That's all theoretical though as obviously, there are other things taken into consideration such as places which require a bus stop such as nursing homes, hospitals, shopping centres etc, also the road itself has to be taken into consideration so bus stops are not placed in places which may cause an accident eg: in a blind spot, on a curve etc and even proximity of driveways etc.

In regards to Ritchie Rd, I'd suspect that it falls under the minimum dwellings per hectare to justify running a bus route to service Ritchie Rd, unless a bus had to go through that particular area to get from A to B, in which that caller would be out of luck.  Same with areas such as Karalee for example.  If however Ritchie Rd was the main throughfare to service suburb A with the minimum density to suburb B with the minimum density or attractor eg: Route 280 that services a residential area in Victoria Point/Redland Bay through to a major attractor ie: Garden City/Griffith University, that's when it's more likely that caller would get a bus route.  Which unfortunately in this case, I think that's highly unlikely.

By the way, the above is talking from experience ala 2006-2008 when this was part of my job.

[somebody]

^ The vast majority of SEQ has nothing like the interminably short distances between stops that BT maintains.  Having a system of bus routes which stop every 200m and an overlaid system of express routes is massively ineffective. 

That would be your opinion, not a fact.  <mod hat>Such things should be explicitly stated IMO.  Many forums have things in the rules which state this.  Perhaps this point should be discussed.</mod hat>

I could stand to see blue stops further apart in some areas, but there are other areas where they are still quite far apart, e.g. many stops on Ipswich Rd, Taringa GCL-old Denmac Ford roundabout@Indro
What I couldn't stand to see is the existing express routes slowed down with a number of additional stops

[SurfRail]

That would be your opinion, not a fact.  <mod hat>Such things should be explicitly stated IMO.  Many forums have things in the rules which state this.  Perhaps this point should be discussed.</mod hat>

Why single me out?  Plenty of opinionated posts on here, including yours! 

It is a fact that there is NOWHERE on the Gold Coast where bus stops are as closely spaced as they are on corridors like Gympie Road, Old Cleveland Road or inner-city routes like the 196.  It is also a fact (as I have demonstrated previously) that timetabled speeds for all-stops services on the Gold Coast Highway (and not just in peak hour) are faster than the expresses on Old Cleveland Road and other corridors, even with a bus stop every 400m on average.

It is also a fact that express stops have much higher frequency than the majority of these intermediate Brisbane stops, whereas every single stop on the Gold Coast Highway in the same stretch of route has the same frequency as the adjacent stops (and generally higher than BT intermediate stops), even though the number of buses down the GC Hwy at times is fewer than on those Brisbane corridors.

I could stand to see blue stops further apart in some areas, but there are other areas where they are still quite far apart, e.g. many stops on Ipswich Rd, Taringa GCL-old Denmac Ford roundabout@Indro
What I couldn't stand to see is the existing express routes slowed down with a number of additional stops

The fact they have it partially right in some isolated cases does not give me any cause for satisfaction with their present mindset.  The entire system needs to be rewritten from the ground up, bus stops included. 

I remain convinced that many bus stops are only there because of (a) former tram stops; or (b) past political decisions of no continuing relevance. 

I would also question the logic in having express routes at all in some cases.  Maybe they should be limited to "all stops to [X] then non-stop to the CBD fringe" type services.

[somebody]

As previously mentioned, if the GC Hwy has a faster general traffic speed than O-C Rd that is not proof that the expresses wouldn't be slowed by adding more stops.

[SurfRail]

Because this thread happens to be open and I need to take care of a few things, here is some of the pervasive silliness you get when you don't consolidate frequency (note Simon this is not in response to your points, which I take and on which I think we can agree to disagree as per previous discussions - but I know you will likely agree with me on this particular issue):

http://translink.com.au/resources/travel-information/network-information/maps/busway-station/120618-truro-street.pdf

Outbound 321, 334 and 370 do not go via the outbound Truro St stop, even though it would be possible for them to do so by using the exit lane AND STILL CONTINUE AS WASTEFUL SURFACE ROUTES.  They even fail at failing!

I suppose not as important as getting it right inbound, which they have, but its still pretty lame.

(I also still think the 333 and 340 should stop here too, and at Federation St.)

[somebody]

The major issue as I see it is that the 321 has a different set of city stop locations from the other routes serving Federation St.

I don't really see the need for city-valley-RBH, or at least not so much of it.  I think the 370 & 375 particularly should go via Normanby and into KGSBS.  379 should go along for that ride.

That would leave 321, 334, 335, 346, 353.  I haven't given a huge amount of thought into the solution for those routes.  Perhaps the former two should go into KGSBS but the latter three are not via Windsor rail so I can live with a variation.

Valley-RBH should really be provided largely by a Story Bridge route or routes IMO.