Article: Traffic jams force cutbacks on northern bus routes

[ozbob]

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Traffic jams force cutbacks on northern bus routes

Traffic jams force cutbacks on northern bus routes

10 Jan 12 @ 11:14am by Michael Howard

TEN runs a week have been slashed from a popular Preston bus service after peak-hour pressure forced an operator to wind back its timetable.

Shane Dyson, director of Dyson Bus Company, said the bus route 513 had become "unreliable" because increased traffic was delaying drivers.
"We thought we really needed to do something now because the service was really being affected," Mr Dyson said.

"Some services were up to 15 minutes late. It got to a situation where we had to address the timetable. It's gone from a 13-minute timetable to a 15-minute timetable.

"People have said they would rather less, but more reliable services."

The Eltham-to-Preston route links Darebin residents with the Austin Hospital and vital surrounding health services.

Bundoora state Labor MP Colin Brooks said the only way the company could have maintained the existing timetable was to obtain state funding for extra services, but "unfortunately that request for funding was turned down".

As part of the Dyson Bus Company changes, which took effect on December 19, bus route 562 has also had 53 services removed from its weekly timetable and bus route 566 has had three services cancelled.

Daniel Bowen, president of the Public Transport Users Association, said "while we understand that the bus company was having trouble keeping to the timetables, the obvious answer is to put on more buses".

Transport Department spokeswoman Andrea Duckworth said the timetable changes meant passengers could have greater certainty about what time their bus would arrive.

She said some northern bus services would be "reviewed and restructured" when the new South Morang station opened in April.

Being on time is important

RELIABILITY is essential, says commuter Min Chen, before boarding a 513 bus at a Preston stop.

"A few weeks ago I was waiting for a bus for an hour," Ms Chen said.

"So next time I changed to the train. Reliability is very important."

The Reservoir resident of two years was taking bus 513 to the Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital, where her daughter, Grace, was due for a check-up.

"Before travelling I normally check the Metlink site on the internet," Ms Chen said.

"Taking the bus is a way to get around, but it's important they run on time and more services would be good."

[#Metro]

Yesterday afternoon I took a trip to the CBD, and I caught a 111. The bus driver told me that he was 15 minutes late because two buses had broken down on the busway and the entire timetable was out of whack.

Funny thing is this - I didn't notice he was hugely late. In fact, there was no perceptible difference! The bus turned up within 1 minute of me walking down to the busway platform and I didn't suffer any delay at all. In fact, had he not said anything, I would have been totally oblivious to the fact that the bus was late.

For a simple model of why this matters, imagine that you have a bus line running every 10 minutes, and every single bus is exactly 10 minutes late.  From the standpoint of a classic on-time performance measure (which typically counts the percentage of trips that are more than five minutes late) this situation would be described as 100% failure, because 100% of all trips are late.  From the customer's standpoint, on the other hand, this would be perfection: buses are coming every 10 minutes, exactly as promised.  Much more about this conundrum, and the choices it requires us to confront, here.

Suppose you went out to catch a bus that's supposed to come every 10 minutes, but every bus on the line was exactly 10 minutes late.  By any lateness standard, that would count as total failure.  But by any appropriate standard, it would be perfection.  You wouldn't know anything was wrong, and in a well-managed system, nothing would be wrong. 

So at high frequencies, "on time" shouldn't be about the time the bus arrives, but the actual frequency, i.e. the elapsed time between consecutive buses.  A standard might say that 90% of the time, the next bus will come in no more than 150% of the published headway -- i.e. 90% of the time you won't wait more than 15 minutes if the published frequency is 10 minutes.

http://www.humantransit.org/2009/06/mundane-things-that-really-matter-defining-on-time.html
http://www.humantransit.org/2010/06/now-anyone-can-monitor-reliability.html

[Jonno]

Bus lanes?