Analysing the New ACTION Network - Part 1

I wonder if they’ve thought through the impact on school bus routes.

For example, friends tell me that, just by changing the 314 to take another 8-10 minutes to Belconnen, which will now make it a half-hour bus trip for 6 km, the connections to colleges and high schools at the Belconnen interchange will have to change. The morning 314 routes are packed anyway, so it’s hard to see where they got this idea of demand for travel from Fraser/Charnwood/Flynn to Scullin.

And before anyone gets uppity about Fraser/Charnwood/Flynn kids going to schools other than Melba, Andrew Barr’s school closures were based on the death of the concept of neighbourhood schools. As education minister, he heavily promoted travel to out-of-area schools as a good thing, so the fact it happens is to be expected.

On the other hand, a better service between Gungahlin and Belconnen town centres is to be applauded. If only ACTION could do more applause-worthy things.

I finally worked out that the roadworks near my house are new bus stops. it about halves the time to the nearest bus stop which is excellent on Tuesdays.

I think the Myway cards are too easy to lose. 🙁 and the bus rides without a myway card are really expensive.

Following on from my previous post re Weston Crk – I just don’t get Action’s thinking. At the last election we were promised extra expresso services. There was a press release from Katy Gallagher, a media conference, sine money got set aside for it. Two years on what do we get: yes there are a few extra expressos to the city but they’re all before 7.20am! And even the existing ones got pushed back to an ungodly hour

So basically you have no way of catching a bus from Weston Crk to the city or parl triangle after 7.20am. How is that going to encourage people from cars onto buses I’. Not quite sure. Surely the early bird market isn’t that big.

For Weston Creek Network14, despite the promises, is in many ways a step backwards compared to the current timetable – for residents of Duffy and Holder in particular

Key issues include:

– Holder and Duffy lose route 28, to be replaced by 83 for Molonglo, which follows too circuitous a route to be useful to Holder and Duffy residents

– Holder and Duffy bus users now have to wait 1hr instead of 30mins between buses off peak (previously they had option of catching 25 or 28, now 25 only).

– Loss of 225, 226 and 227 direct services to Parliamentary Triangle and Barton. Travel to and from these destinations will now involve interchanging at Woden

– All of the xpressos to the city leave too early in the morning – much earlier than currently. The 725 xpresso is set to leave Holder shops at 6.53am and 7.11am compared to 7.18am and 7.48am for the 729 route that the 725 replaces. Yup that’s right, you read correctly: the last morning bus people can catch into the city leaves at 7.11am!! The main problem with the current xpresso was that they were too limited and finished to early – the new timetable only makes the problem worse! Most people don’t want to travel to work that early.

– New xpresso route 726 also leaves for the city way too early: 7.02am and 7.16am from Cooleman Court. New xpresso route 783, leaves CoolemanCrt at 7.13am then goes via Molonglo to city – a long and circuitous journey. These routes simply depart too early to be useful to most potential commuters, and will do little to attract additional patronage. If anything, patronage will decrease because many current users of the 729 departing at 7.48am will opt for the car instead of the new 725 7.11am service that requires them to get to the bus stop 30 mins earlier. What is the logic in scheduling Xpressos so early? It’s like these routes were designed to be unpopular and fail from the outset.

– No sign of what the community has been requesting for years: a direct all-day (i.e. not just xpresso) bus service between Weston Creek and the city. The;local bus network remains reliant on interchanging at Woden to get into the City, which limits public transport uptake as this option is too indirect and inconvenient for most commuters

I’m upset by the loss of the 702 Expresso from Fraser to Dickson. I use this regularly, but the new 714 that I’d have to use means I must leave even earlier than before. When I use 702, I leave home 50 minutes earlier than using the car, and to use the new 714, it’d mean leaving quite a bit earlier again. Looks like I will just drive to work in Mitchell all the time now.

All these changes to the bus network are exactly why a light rail network is better. Even if you’re lost if you find the tracks you can follow them to a stop. They can’t change the route to somewhere else.

rommeldog56 said :

damien haas said :

I love the flexibility of buses

Does this mean that you have seen the light and abandoned your unwaivering support, as chair of the Canberra Light Rail support group (or what ever its called), and are now throwing your support behind busses instead of Light Rail.

Or by “flexibility”, do u mean capability to transport commuters to the nearest Light Rail station ?

ACT Light Rail has always been pro-bus. We want the ACTION network to carry more passengers.

The advantage of buses is that they are flexible. The routes can be configured to satisfy new and growing needs. The disadvantage of that flexibility is the bus can just go away.

The advantage of light rail is that it is not. When the rails are in, employers and employers know with some certainty that if they live or work near the rails, that the route cant be changed and moved away at the next network upgrade.

The latest change to my bus route means i can no longer travel directly to the George Harcourt, but now have to go through Crace. My other bus, the 312 now no longer travels into Civic, except for 4 or 5 peak hour services. I don’t even know what the weekend route number is, so we continue with different numbering for weekend and weekday services, which wont confuse many people.

So according to Action the buses I catch now leave ten minutes earlier in the morning and 15 mins later in the evening. That’s 25 extra minutes per day I have lost, or 2 hours per week. Driving to and from work is now really looking like a viable alternative taking into account how much time you can save every week.

Just looking at the new posts here and started thinking back to when I was growing up in the suburbs in the UK. The borough had 174,000 people living there in 2012.

Back in the 1980s and 90s when I was taking the bus there were three different number buses I could catch into town, the 29, 29a & 29b – a 20 minute trip. I don’t recall the trips every changing – just growing in frequency.

I acknowledge that there are many differences between the borough where I lived in the UK and Canberra, size being one of them (Canberra is bigger), but the population in Canberra is twice the size nearly, and yet my old suburb apparently now has two major companies these days servicing the area.

Do Action and the Government actually do any research to see how others do it?

random said :

As a regular user of the “late evening suburban services carrying few passengers” I’m pretty horrified that my last weekday bus has gone from 11:45pm a few years ago to 10:10pm under the new network.

ACTION buses are getting steadily less and less useful for anything other than getting to and from 9-5 jobs.

Yeah, my bus used to be the last out of the city to gungahlin at 11:17, now it is 9:43… fortunately for me, I don’t need night time buses as much as I used to anymore.

I’m happy with the addition of the 250, I had issues just a few days ago where a trip from gungahlin to kippax was going to take about an hr and a half each way because it went through the city instead of direct to belconnen..

joingler said :

GL700Wing said :

For me the loss of the 757 service will turn a 15 minute trip to work into a 45 minute trip – not happy!

This was one loss that I I’d write up but for an unknown reason i took it out whilst proof reading. Big error on my part

This express service was great because it bypassed both the Belconnen and City Interchanges and while some passengers got off at Russell (many of whom took services to Parkes and Barton) many continued on to Brindabella Park and Fairbairn.

I was really hoping they would add one more morning service (15-20 minutes after the last service they currently offer) – with paid parking about to be introduced I didn’t expect it to get axed!

GL700Wing said :

For me the loss of the 757 service will turn a 15 minute trip to work into a 45 minute trip – not happy!

This was one loss that I I’d write up but for an unknown reason i took it out whilst proof reading. Big error on my part

damien haas said :

I love the flexibility of buses

Does this mean that you have seen the light and abandoned your unwaivering support, as chair of the Canberra Light Rail support group (or what ever its called), and are now throwing your support behind busses instead of Light Rail.

Or by “flexibility”, do u mean capability to transport commuters to the nearest Light Rail station ?

damien haas said :

I love the flexibility of buses

Definitely. Their routes are certainly more flexible and can be adapted to go where they are needed, instead of just running backwards and forwards on some fixed tracks. And if the new routes are found to be lacking or inadequate, it is a simple stroke of a pen to change them, not two years of digging up lumps of steel and moving them.

But its not only the flexibility. It is the relatively low cost and ease of operation compared to something that just runs backwards and forwards over a set and inflexible route that cannot be changed.

I’m glad that you are coming around to see the folly of the great white elephant that is light rail Damien. It took you long enough.

Yet still, Damien, more flexible than light rail which would force people to go to a rigid route that serves few Canberrans. The problem is ACTION has no money because it’s all being sent to a useless invisible service called light rail. I hope Damien you have noticed the super fast Gunners buses that already make light rail obsolete!

Thanks for the great summary of the changes.

Overall I think the network look pretty good, and I’m glad to have the weekend services aligned with the weekday ones, tho it’d be nice to be able to go somewhere after 5pm on a Sunday!

I’m worse off, and girlfriend loses her Xpresso service, but I’m stoked for Gunghalin folks. Swings and roundabouts etc. Mainly roundabouts in C Town.

Seems ok.

I love the flexibility of buses

For me the loss of the 757 service will turn a 15 minute trip to work into a 45 minute trip – not happy!

I heard on the radio this evening that the union has issues with the new timetables and it’s unlikely that the changes will come into effect on 1 September. Something to do with break times. I have a feeling that this happened the last time though. Apparently it is before the tribunal.

My bus the 111/11 from Tuggers to the City, which is in my opinion a pretty good service now goes via Brindabella Park. I will now have to catch the new 171, which leaves my stop five minutes earlier and doesn’t appear to go to City West in the morning where I have for the last two years been alighting from the bus. Right near my office. I now will have to walk from Northbourne.

Have no idea why they changed the number, re-routed the new bus through an area which seemed to be serviced by two different buses already and then changed the way it travels through the city. There would be about 30-50 passengers on my trip alone who would I’m sure be wondering what they have done to deserve these ‘tweaks’.

I thought also today that Action had stuffed up the info on their website. If you looked at the bus numbers and the summary of the trip, they did not seem to be reflecting the changes. On the new timetable pages the 111 which I catch was saying it went from Tuggers to City. If you clicked on it, you then found out it goes from Tuggers to Brindabella park via Mars. (I made that last bit up).

What times do the Xpressos deliver people from the north into the City and Barton? The times for my new Xpresso 765 (Tuggers) are now way too early for me.

As a regular user of the “late evening suburban services carrying few passengers” I’m pretty horrified that my last weekday bus has gone from 11:45pm a few years ago to 10:10pm under the new network.

ACTION buses are getting steadily less and less useful for anything other than getting to and from 9-5 jobs.

Thanks for a great summary. I wonder how others see the routes.

I’m in the Belconnen town centre and I do a lot of walking, and even sometimes ride a bike, so I expect I’ll be fine no matter the route changes.

A lot of people who are less able will be displeased, especially the ageing population. This is going to be an increasing trend, so it will be interesting to see how Action use the current figures and map them against expected trends in the shifting population. That is, only using MyWay data causes an obvious statistical bias which is harmful to future planning.