Article: Brisbane transport a zonal offence

[ozbob]

From the Brisbanetimes click here!

Brisbane transport a zonal offence

Brisbane transport a zonal offence
January 10, 2013 - 12:01AM
Tony Moore

Southeast Queensland's public transport zone system is pushing up the price of fares, according to one of Australia's leading public transport policy experts.

Professor Peter Newman, who heads a sustainability and urban planning unit at Western Australia's Curtin University, questioned why the region had 23 public transport zones.

"I don't feel there is any efficiency gains by having so many different zones," Professor Newman said.

"It would be simpler to have three or four at the most."
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TransLink's 23 zones run in roughly concentric circles stretching out from Brisbane. Noosa, in the north is in zone 23, Coolangatta in the south is in zone 18 and Helidon in the west is in zone 16.

"These things [zoning systems] just grow as the cities grow and it is a bit of a relic in my view," Professor Newman, a board member of Infrastructure Australia, said yesterday.

"And the impact is confusion and time-waste, which is everything in public transport."

Professor Newman said availability, rather than price, was primarily behind falling patronage in southeast Queensland.

"People will pay," he said. London, for example, has appalling prices for their train system. It breaks even because they are charging so much that it does break even.

"But it is just extraordinary the amount of growth they have in their system, because it is so hard to get around in the city by car."

Professor Newman said changes to better link Brisbane's middle and outer suburbs to rail lines had to be considered.

A major investment in parking at Melbourne's suburban rail stations had led to a big boost in rail patronage, he said.

"It grew nearly 90 per cent in five years. That was just in the outer suburbs of Melbourne," Professor Newman said.

Professor Newman said Brisbane's popular inner-suburbs - built before WWII - were developed "around public transport", while suburbs built between the late 1950s and the 1990s, were "built around the car", and the new outer suburbs were almost completely reliant on cars.

He said recent decisions to build rail lines to Redcliffe, north of Brisbane, and Springfield, to the west, were beneficial.

However, Professor Newman said the city should prioritise getting an extra Brisbane River rail crossing, which could be the Cross River Rail project.

"Brisbane is not just ready for an underground rail system, it is essential," he said.

"You can't just keep adding on extra bits at the end of the rail system because they are just clogging up in the central point."

Read more: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/brisbane-transport-a-zonal-offence-20130109-2ch07.html

[ozbob]

Blog comments:

Affordability, frequency and accessibility are all important.  Professor Newman's comments confirm how stupid the decision to have only 100, yes only 100 folks, park and ride spaces at Springfield Central, and only 200 at Springfield is.  Ferny Grove has a 1000 park and ride, Richlands has 650 for example. 

TransPerth, which Professor Newman has had and does have a very positive influence on, has a fare price table that encourages people onto public transport.  Here is SEQ, the fare price table turns people way.  They also run their lines generally at 15 minute frequency out of peak, compare that to the mediocre frequency - rail and bus,  that most endure in SEQ.

Professor Newman's also confirms indirectly the urgent need for a review of the fare system in SEQ.  Help us to help you, please sign our petition calling for a fare review.  The Minister for Transport needs to admit the fare strategy has failed and it is time to sort it.

Petition --> http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/fare-review-for-translink-south-east-queensland-now.html

In principle, there is nothing really wrong with our zones in fact.  It is the high base fare cost that is the issue.  If you reduce zones you then have considerable price jumps at zone boundaries eg. Melbourne.  This leads to rather odd effects eg massive overload at zone boundaries.  Fix up the fare table, the zones are ok.

Suggested fare table;

1   $2.00
2   $2.40
3   $2.80
4   $3.20
5   $3.60
6   $4.00
7   $4.40
8   $4.80
9   $5.20
10   $6.00
11   $6.80
12   $7.60
13   $8.40
14   $9.20
15   $10.00
16   $10.80
17   $11.60
18   $12.40
19   $13.20
20   $14.00
21   $14.80
22   $15.60
23   $16.40

[somebody]

Does Prof Newman really believe what he is saying?

Professor Newman said availability, rather than price, was primarily behind falling patronage in southeast Queensland.

Southeast Queensland's public transport zone system is pushing up the price of fares

Enough said.

[SurfRail]

I don't hear him clamouring to reduce the 9 fare zones in Perth.

[longboi]

I can see what he is getting at with that comment.

The fares in dollar terms aren't the issue. Whether people fully realise it or not, I believe this whole issue is actually more about the economic value of the current fare structure. London is a prime example - Despite the high cost of fares, patronage is growing exponentially because of the convenience of frequent underground services and extensive bus and overground rail services.

[nathandavid88]

Exactly Nikko. It's not just the price, but the value for money aspect that passengers take into account.

For example, if Brisbane had train services on all lines of 4–6tph at least, the busways had been converted to light rail, and vastly superior suburban and feeder bus services, the public would find the fare increases much easier to swallow, as they can still see the value in the service, despite higher costs. More so if Brisbane instigated a congestion tax of some sort as well, be it on a car park tax or a London-style system. But as it stands, train frequency is sub par in a lot of areas and feeder/suburban bus services are slow and often infrequent. The only disincentive to driving into the city is availability and price of parking. So what they are seeing are no notable improvement in services, but fares being raised to a level that is approaching the cost of parking, lowering the main disincentive to driving, meaning that more people are doing so as it's often more convenient.