Bus 554 & Kuraby Station

[#Metro]

The 554 has considerable potential as a connecting service, because it takes a very un-congested secondary route through the back of Kuraby and Eight Mile Plains and consequently manages much better on-time running than the Warrigal Road bus services.  Due to congestion and "bunching" effects, I have found the BUZ route that travels along Padstow & Warrigal roads to be a complete crapshoot - sometimes it is fantastic, but I have also sat at the "Multicap" stop in Padstow Road for over half an hour waiting for the supposedly 15 minute off peak bus to appear.  Then three came at once.

I'll have a look at this area when I have some time. Any ideas on how it should approach or where it should stop?

[Golliwog]

Well IMO, they should be focusing on grade separating road-rail intersections. But I also think some bunching actually speeds up services, like when I catch the 385 I actually like it when you get two traveling together in tandem. It usually ends up with each bus frog leaping each other as most passengers are going all the way to the city. However, obviously when they are scheduled to be 10 minutes apart or whatever this isn't really a good thing, but you get the idea. Perhaps as a way of making the services more reliable, instead of changing the frequency of some services say from 10minutes to every 5, they could pair them instead?

[#Metro]

My view is that it is highly inefficient.

Bunching reduces service reliability, makes services irregular and increase waiting stop time, like colinw pointed out. They can also delay each other as they compete with themselves for the one bus stop, all along the route. It makes one bus full of people or overcrowded, and the other one lightly loaded.

Maybe next time use articulated buses.

Explanation here:http://www.sbstransit.com.sg/doyouknow/facts_bus.aspx#1

[somebody]

Maybe next time use articulated buses.

That would make bunching worse!  Bunching occurs when a lot of people use a particular service and longer dwells more often occur so that it runs late. Traffic congestion can do it too, but that generally affects the following service too.

Better to increase the frequency.

[#Metro]

A frequency increase would likely lead to a situation like this.
Adding more buses would make it even worse, not better.


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/13/Busbunching.jpg

Some of Brisbane's buses are running every 5 minutes. I think a larger, articulated bus, and a frequency reduction to 7.5 minutes should be looked at for those routes that are plagued with this problem. Or at least signal priorities and ways to get separation from cars, but sometimes this can be hard to do- it depends on the location.

[somebody]

I think only the 199 & 412 run every 5 minutes in peak.  Best off peak frequency for a single route in Brisbane is the 199 - 10 minutes.

[#Metro]

Here is the timetable for this bus
http://download.translink.com.au/timetables/080331_554.pdf

Here is the Beenleigh line timetable:
http://download.translink.com.au/timetables/090223_beenleigh.pdf

This bus is interesting- it is a feeder bus service to a busway station, terminating at Garden City Interchange (correct me if I am wrong here).
If it is good enough to terminate buses at bus interchanges, it is good enough to terminate buses at railway stations.

It would be a bit tricky timing with feeding two railway stations I would think.
The times given for the train in the timetable are slightly different to those given in the Beenleigh train timetable.
So maybe they have not been updated?

The bus also does not meet every train. 
A bus stop where it does not have to cross a level crossing and do a loop should be looked at.
There is a car park next to the public park there, maybe that could be looked at.

Proper integration.       

[somebody]

I'd far rather an extension of selected 111 trips to the current way things are done here.  There are numerous other instances of this across Brisbane.

[#Metro]

Is 111 done by articulated buses now?

[somebody]

Is 111 done by articulated buses now?

Usually.  So your point is that this would be an underutilised artic here?

[#Metro]

Um. What makes you think that? 

[somebody]

Um. What makes you think that? 

Seemed the only thing that made sense.  Then what was your point?

[#Metro]

 

I just wanted to know if 111 buses had been made larger so that if your idea was taken up, they could handle the load; That's all.

[somebody]

This run is that busy?

[Golliwog]

I had a look at your link. Thats not hte type of bunching I was talking about. The bunching I experienced on the 385 was beneficial bunching, as the first bus would stop to pick up, and so long as the 2nd bus didn't have anyone wanting to get off, it would just overtake and move on the the next stop where something similar would happen, and this would be repeated further along the route. It worked well as effectively you were halving the number of stops the bus was making. The example at the link you gave is also true, but it had the buses still 5minutes apart where as what I'm suggesting is they actually travel as a pair, or as close as possible at least anyway.

Probably not really suitable for this route, but for some of the higher frequency ones I think it would be.

[ButFli]

Of course the problem with bus-pairing on the 199 is that at times when the frequency is 5 minutes, every second one is taking a different route via Ivory St.

[#Metro]

I had a look at your link. Thats not hte type of bunching I was talking about. The bunching I experienced on the 385 was beneficial bunching, as the first bus would stop to pick up, and so long as the 2nd bus didn't have anyone wanting to get off, it would just overtake and move on the the next stop where something similar would happen, and this would be repeated further along the route. It worked well as effectively you were halving the number of stops the bus was making. The example at the link you gave is also true, but it had the buses still 5minutes apart where as what I'm suggesting is they actually travel as a pair, or as close as possible at least anyway.

Probably not really suitable for this route, but for some of the higher frequency ones I think it would be.

Hmm. Maybe. Some places do have 2 buses paired to travel as if they were 1 unit. But in my view, if you have that much demand, you may as well get a tram and get the second driver to do some other run.

The second thing is that one of 2 things must be happening. Either two buses are being used to carry half the passengers each (inefficient) or the right number of passengers are there but one of the services is running early, or late- which are both bad.

Anyway, this topic is drifting. What should be done about 554?