Action - new timetables, same old tricks?

Let’s not start on Telstra, ant.

And that’s another thing. Once something’s privatised, it’s nice to think that it’s “performance based”, but having seen what happens when gov’ts contract out services, it seems that once they’ve got the contract, anything goes.

The provider knows the gov’t isn’t going to rip the contract off them, because what’s the alternative? And when it’s renewal time, suddenly it seems no one dares to use performance in the old contract as grounds for not re-awarding it. It’s almost like a trial, previous behaviour is inadmissable. All tenders have to be considered fairly, against the same criteria etc etc.

We’ve all seen how it didn’t work during the great outsourcing/privatisation bonanza of the last decade.

Did anyone consider that Deane’s are probably not subsidised? Privatisation still requires subsidies to work, however with privatisation it is *performance* based rather than union based.

Well said ant.

That being said, the free school passes were handy when I was a kid. Did anyone in the ACT get anything like that ever?

Deanes charge that much because they CAN! They’re a private company. Call for privatisation at peril, private companies must make money and the more the better. Deanes is a nice reminder that privatisation is not the answer.

Deanes p*sses me off with their prices for trips in-between Canberra/Queanbeyan. Queanbeyan isn’t far from the city. It’s pretty much just another district. Why should it cost $6 to travel that far on a bus? (Was about $3-4 concession last time I caught it, and that’s still pretty steep all things considered.)

Action’s TV ads are so annoying too.

‘if only action would listen to what we want’ ‘WE Have!’

No they haven’t. I don’t remember asking for my bus to terminate in civic instead of proceeding to Russel and Kingston like it used to.

madman, I’d love a motorbike but my wife has worked for too long in neurosurgery and seen too many young people turned into a vegetative state from an accident…usually not of their fault. Canberra times today had a front page article about a young fella (22 i think) who lost his long fight after an accident not of his making. Held on since august last year but never regained full consciousness. Ride safe friend.

So has Heargraves (our transport ‘minister’ no one has heard of) actually bothered to turn up to work long enough to comment at any point?

mmmm… yeh… I got a motorbike instead. I got sick of getting on a full bus to have to stand all the way from conder to the city.

fearless frank said :

46: no self-respecting private company would touch it…

Don’t bank on it! I bet Deanes would love a go. But privatisation doesn’t do anything good. Prices go up, service actually goes down, and anything that’s not profitable doesn’t happen. Things like public utilities, caring sectors, and mass transport need to remain with the gov’t. Action *should* work, and you have to wonder why it doesn’t.

I only catch a bus on the dreaded days when the car is in for its oil, usually from Civic to Barton and back, and the bus from Civic to Barton is a disgrace, they are all incredibly crowded, people squashed against the windscreen! I catch any bus that reckons it’s going through Barton, some are expresses and others do a guided tour of Campbell, Russell and anything else it can find, and they’re all crazy-full.

Well I just looked at the timetable for my bus and It has not changed. I can be at the bus stop at 0715 or 0730 to get to work by 8…. Thats it… No earlier busses than that and they mostly run at 15 to 30 minute intervals. The early bus is packed and the later bus (0730) is chockers.

I arrive at work on a sliding timeframe between 0700 and 0745. Where then is the inspiration for a gunghalanite like me to catch the “Pleb Chariot” (Cheers for the term vy!!) regularly??

Oil prices are so pathetically high that our next car is going to be leaseplan commodore or falcon…The way its going we can subsidise out car payments by not paying for the cost of fuel.

46: no self-respecting private company would touch it…

Privatise ACTION or put it out to tender?

Post up the line: “Apparently ACTION recommends that you be at a stop 7 minutes early and be prepared for it to be 7 minutes late.”

That’s just ridiculous! So a bus that is sceduled for, say 5.02pm could ACTUALLY turn up anywhere between 4.55 and 5.10? I can understand buses being late. But there is NO excuse for being early.

I agree with another riot-er above that buses should be fitted with GPS, AND told to go back if they’ve left a stop early.

In Melbourne the company that runs the trams and trains has to report on on-time performance. If they are more than 5 minutes early and more than 10 minutes late over 20% of the time in a month, commuters with permanent tickets (weekly/monthly) are entitled to compensation. How about we up the ante and introduce something like that?

I like the idea of free helicopters for everyone too but it too can not justify the cost.

We just need to kick out this disinterested government. Why do we even *have* self government?

The ‘decentralised city’ excuse is really wearing thin. They can run shuttle busses to main roads where larger busses run frequently or something, I don’t care, they can fix it.

I do actually like the idea of Bungendore and QBN being connected by light-rail.

I’m still not entirely sure whether it justifies the cost, though.

damianheffernan said :

The Brisbane Airport Link was just approved for $4.5 Billion and it’s only 7km’s long for God’s sake! They had three tenderers as Private Industry see’s the profit potential.

.

4.5 billion for 7kms? For Canberra’s 2 billion dollar economy that’s a lot of money whichever way you cut it.

Have people complained to ACTION or Heargraves about any of these problems? I have, more times than I can remember. After getting an article in the Canberra Times after my bus failed or whatever in peak time 5 times in a row, I received a half baked acknowledgement email from Heargraves to brush me off. What does he *do* all day?? Sit around in cafes enjoying the good life while we struggle to get to work?

Maybe he should actually try using the bus system he so half heartedly manages.

oooh, the shortcuts.
I am so over standing in the cold, because “Oh. The bus driver forgot to turn at the roundabout, so has just gone straight ahead, missing you..”
Gahhhh.

ACTION buses need GPS. This solves the problem of bus drivers taking short cuts and cheating posted times. It also enables commuters to call a central line and determine when the next bus will arrive at a specific stop.

Before you introduce light rail into your public transport system, take a look at the management of the current system to get an idea how light rail will fair. This is not to say that light rail is not viable – I think more cities should aim for a light rail – but I also think that there is room for great improvement within the ACTION service before the hurdle of light rail is reached.

@#18We believe that a proof of concept Light Rail line should be built before construction of a wider network, which links employment areas and town centres.

From their own website they say: “A proposed Light Rail network could initially utilise the existing Tuggeranong, Kingston, Queanbeyan/ Bungendore rail lines”

Is that a cuckoo I hear?

imarty said :

Excuse me if I’m being ignorant but why do public services need to be profitable? Isn’t that what taxes are for?

They’re not, but they do cost money to run, the bus service is a user pays tax like a lot of other services provided to us. 75% of ACTION’s “revenue” is from the ACT Government 23% from bus fares.

But as for the main comment. Happened to me for many times for many years, hence why I rarely catch a bus anymore. Inconvenient and unreliable are the two main problems, the new network is nothing but a patch up to restore most fo the services from 2 years ago, it’s not an improvement at all as the same problems exist. They will never succeed until they introduce services that don’t take 45 minutes to travel to a destination that would otherwise be 15 minutes away.

As for the bus drivers, while i’m sure there are some bad ones out there, they deal with the morons of the world every day like any other person in the service/retail industry, and put up with people complaining and whinging about things they can do nothing about. Smile and sit down (or shuffle towards the back of the bus cause there are no seats), you’re lucky they’re driving in the first place or you’d be standing in the cold. Oh and the sudden stops I generally found that it normally occurs: when the idiot at the bus stops signals the bus when it is 2m away; someone pushes the bell for the stop when it is 2m from the stop; or when a marvellous canberra driver cuts infront of the bus. Deal with it!

you know, if they cancel a peak hour bus, it kinda helps if the next one that comes along can cope with the load from the passengers that should of gotten the bus before, AND the usual passengers.

i am so sick of having to wait an hour, because the bus has drove past because its full, because so many more people have to cram onto it!

But with the new network, i’ll be able to get a seat! because my stop will now be one of the first ones, before it goes through all the other suburbs.
So i now get to turn a 10 min drive/15 min bus ride with current network into a …30 minute bus ride.

Thanks action, you’ve done it again!

damianheffernan’s idea of light rail links and an integrated system sounds sensible. Light rail between town centres and leave the buses to do the running around the suburbs. Park and rides would be good also but only if you can get to them, hence have the buses do the running around.
Dunno really as I’ve never caught PT in Canberra and didn’t really either in Sydney when I was living there but the above idea seems to make sense to me.

It would also help your whinging Uni friends Ant in their endless quest to seek re-dress for the terrible social injustice visited upon them by the ANU when they purchase parking permits.

District-based park and rides would solve a lot of issues. the buses wouldn’t have to trawl around endless far-flung suburbs, and people wouldn’t be driving their cars into the various town centres. Park n rides in paddocks in Belconnen, Gunghalin, Tuggeranong etc, away from town centres.

We have great buses, the green ones I mean they are comfortable and they use CNG which is great for the environment. The timetable is on it’s a lot better than western Sydney.

Light Rail would be so good for Canberra for so many reasons. But it’s going to take a strong leader in Government ot just do it. YO can do studies and amke the figures say whatever you like and if you lay out massive cost figures you can certainly see people jacking up about the waste. So you just need Government to step up and make it happen.

Of course there’s a cost. But massive infrastructure investment is recouped over very long timeframes. How about 85 years for the Harbour Bridge? The Brisbane Airport Link was just approved for $4.5 Billion and it’s only 7km’s long for God’s sake! They had three tenderers as Private Industry see’s the profit potential.

If Action put in light rail links and incorporated it into their system they would have one intergrated, profitable, efficient system. But the board of Action is as uninspiring as the rest of our conservative Government. Look at their annual report: most of Actions staff have been there 12 years or more. They’re having trouble recruiting because who wants to work for a crap organisation. If they ran a great service with customer focussed staff then being a bus driver would be a great career.

Action needs a broom run through it from the very top (hargreaves you’ve had years to fix it now move on), to the very bottom.

Light Rail will take pressure off the buses so you can use them more efficiently elsewhere. Actually on the buses how about you have them all pram and wheelchair friendly so lots of people who need to catch the bus actually can without trouble.

imarty, I agree with you. Public services should not be profitable. If I had my way, public transport would be free. Unfortunately, the gov. does not agree with you or me and apparently does not have enough money to provide a free service.

Agree that if it is profitable, great but surely the first priority should be to provide the service that it has been set up to provide in a reasonably cost effective manner.
What do these clowns learn when they go on their “OS study tours”?

The new timetable didn’t take into account my comments!!

Well the drivers have to be there for a start.. But we do subsidise many sedentary unproductive lifestyles care of the taxpayer so perhaps we can recruit some bludgers to drive busses.

As for having to be profitable – if it can be – absolutely! Just because taxpayers pay tax doesn’t mean they are happy for it to be thrown around without a care in the world. There has to be a clear return to society or the treasury.

So this cuts out arts funding.

From original post: “A new timetable is a like a new coat of paint”

So, how much money has been wasted in actually re-painting painting our buses in the new funky ACTION branding? Surely that money could have been put into driver recruitment?

Excuse me if I’m being ignorant but why do public services need to be profitable? Isn’t that what taxes are for?

At least once every two years or something, it feels like. Canberra is a bad place to have public transport. The districts are too spread out so a lot of people rely on cars anyway, which means there isn’t enough profit being made.

Pug, I’m not sure how it is down south, but the 117, 313, 315 etc. isn’t that bad in between the Belconnen and Civic interchanges. It only goes through Bruce on the way and that detour doesn’t really take that long.

How many times has the Action timetable been redrafted under this Government ?

Woody: we reckon the recent timetable would have done well to have intertown-only express 333 buses. No stops except for the interchanges. Just imagine how quick the trips would be…

Forgot to mention my other pet hate about inAction:

You’re waiting to catch an express / peak-only service that goes to your suburb, and it drives straight past you because it’s full. Unfortunately, it’s usually full of people who just want to go from one town centre to another, not to one of the destination suburbs. They could’ve caught any 300 service, but they got on this bus because they know it goes through Woden / wherever and it just happend to pull up.

Maybe they could sell tickets that are cheaper but only valid on particular services to make sure people catch the bus they need to catch, rather than the next bus that comes along? If you just want to run between town centres or transfer, catch an ordinary 300, and leave the express / peak-only for people who actually need to go to the bus’ destination. Hell, I’d probably pay extra to catch an express / peak-only if it meant the rest of the great unwashed caught an ordinary 300 service and I wasn’t pushed up against the windscreen in some guy’s armpit or left behind completely.

Most people are just stupid, they use a two tonne piece of machinery to drive four blocks and pick up a loaf of bread, and then angrily demand that the government do something to fix global oil prices. The whole thing about reducing petrol excised is absurd. Reduced price = increased demand = increased price again, so we’re right back to where we started.

Rather the petrol excise should be re-directed to better public transport and better studies in to the design of cities that from the 1950s have been designed around cheap oil. Well that was fine when it was only the USA and Australia that designed cities in such a stupid way and oil was cheap. Now no-one wants to live in beige coloured suburbs and pay a fortune to get to work, no wonder!

What *does* concern me though is the clear contempt that many bus drivers hold toward the public due to a typical unionised attitude toward the world. If demand increased and they received more patronage, I wonder if their attitudes would worsen even further. There are some fantastic drivers but many display clear contempt for their job and customers.

Why are we funding stupid arts statues or whatever when more bus drivers would be better?

Apparently ACTION recommends that you be at a stop 7 minutes early and be prepared for it to be 7 minutes late.

Of course now the new timetable reduces my connecting buses (for an express bus) this means I need to be at the bus stop 20 odd minutes earlier to get to work 4 minutes earlier. I bet I am by no means the worst effected here.

I do wonder how expensive petrol has to become before people catch more buses. The majority of cars that pass my bus-stop have one person in them. Still its a bit chicken and egg.

Deadmandrinking said :

The idea does sound good, but it also sounds extremely expensive. That, and I’m not sure if Canberra’s public transport usage would justify light rail.

Yes Light Rail is relatively expensive, but the road network and bus infrastructure you use today is and remains expensive too. People seem to have a conceptual problem that a Canberra wide Light Rail network will appear overnight and hence the misapprehension of prohibitive upfront capital cost. Think about it the road network you are using today evolved over time too.

The reality is that any major infrastructure project should be implemented in a phased approach. The ACT Light Rail group believe that it could take 15-20 years to fully roll out a Light Rail network that would reach the whole (backbone) width and breath of Canberra, obviously the first links to implement will be the ones that make most sense.

To determine whether the network is viable for the Territory the ACT Light Rail group has been advocating a proper and detailed feasibility study. Quoting some core beliefs from the group:

We believe that one or both of the ACT or Federal governments should fund a detailed feasibility study to establish viable routes for a Capital Region Light Rail network including proper triple bottom line assessment.

We believe that a proof of concept Light Rail line should be built before construction of a wider network, which links employment areas and town centres.

We believe that consideration should be given to leveraging existing infrastructure and development opportunities to assist in this process.

Given the release of the Federal Budget and a specific portion within it allocated to “Tackling Urban Congestion and Planning” (http://www.minister.infrastructure.gov.au/aa/releases/2008/May/budget-infra_14-2008.htm) The ACT Light Rail Group’s next steps will be to start actively lobbying our local Federal members to have a slice of that money allocated to a proper feasibility study. Unfortunately it appears that the ACT didn’t appear to get a mention in that media release, but we have not had time to fully dissect the budget yet to see if there is possible funding “hidden” elsewhere.

In comparison local ACT Transport Minister – Hargreaves is simply a “vision vacuum” with his insistence that the Territory can never afford light rail and the only solution is more and more buses. In terms of planning he fails to look further than the next election term – implementing Light Rail requires true vision as it is a long term project.

It’s an absolute shocker how ACTION bus drivers have always just sailed past bus stop early, or worse – when people are clearly running for the bus (which has come early), the driver will not wait an extra 10 seconds to pick them up. This really is bad! Before the comments about “if a driver has to wait an extra 10 seconds at every stop then the whole route sufferers blah blah blah”, I lived in London for several years, and generally the drivers always waited for people who were running for the bus, sometime waiting 20-30 seconds. Why…because they know driving off leaving people stranded is a shit thing to do. I wonder if they considered if a driver did that to their family members, would they feel the same way!?

If they can manage it in London of all places, why the hell not Canberra?.

Good point aidan, be interesting to see what happens. Given the cost of buses, the sheer inconvenience, and the distances travelled, I reckon petrol will need to get a fair bit more expensive than it is now for us to see much difference. It will happen eventually, though.

VY,

No need to do anything to the roads, just wait for the price of petrol to bite and reduce the number of cars on the road.

Be interesting to see if the buses are better utilised with higher fuel prices.

Remember previous examples of amazing narrow roads, like Lanyon, Banks, Gordon and bits of Gungahlin?

no – make the lanes narrower *and* create more bus lanes.

VYBerlina, remember what happened to Northbourne Ave? Used to be three lanes, then they added one measly cycle lane, and now if you’re next to a bus or truck you worry about your duco because canberra truck drivers don’t seem to know how to fit their vehicles within the lines.

Narrowing lanes isn’t a good idea, imho.

A bit OT, but given how wide our roads are (the lane widths seem huge), surely we could reduce traffic problems a bit by taking roads where they are currently 2 wide lanes, and remarking as 3 narrower lanes. I mean, vehicles are only supposed to be what – 8 feet wide at most anyway? Surely a foot each side (more for most vehicles) in each lane, meaning at least 2 foot between vehicles, is heaps, especially when speed limits are 100km/h or less anyway.

What’s the advantage of light rail over bus lanes? Oil will go past $2.50 a litre and we just have to accept this.

Could it be possible that public transport could ever be commercially attractive? Why can’t taxi drivers do bulk runs?

I just signed up for some ride-sharing website, it looks promising. Perhaps eventually we will really need something more like that, being more ‘demand driven’.

But the age of cheap cars is over.

I also agree the light rail is a good idea, and you can see in and around central canberra in particular that the big wide roads have been built with light rail in mind.

but i think we kind of missed the boat on getting this one built considering the huge cost. the age of public infrastructure spending (despite the new government’s zeal), is really passed, and the ACT govt has a lot of other stuff to spend on.

also, while traffic at peak times is a factor in how long it takes to get to work, it’s hardly on a Melbourne or Sydney scale – and mostly it’s due to major arterials (such as the road near the airport, which I note is being fixed) being one lane each way.

but i would support a light rail system, just don’t know who would pay!

with the way oil is going, maybe we will go back a century.. when cities *had* public transport.

Jonathan, I’ve heard about this from you in all kinds of media. The idea does sound good, but it also sounds extremely expensive. That, and I’m not sure if Canberra’s public transport usage would justify light rail.

Can you address this?

Yeah – love it when they work the brakes – there is a big difference between a good and a bad bus driver.

Perhaps I can interest you in supporting a light rail network, where you know exactly where the vehicles will be running because they run on tracks and the network will run on time?

http://actlightrail.info

If the busses run.. Last year the 36 peak hour bus just didn’t rock up several times in a row.

I also love how the bus drivers slam on the brakes and acceleration at every stop, throwing us all over the place.

I was using the bus system in SLC for a while. It wasn’t great, but they had a hard-and-fast rule, the buses MUST NOT be early. If a driver was running early, he drove slowly, or camped out at a stop until back on track again.

They had their enquiries line number everywhere too, so you could call from a stop to find out where your bus was, they’d call the driver and then let you know. One time they evidently had a new driver on, and he had gone by my stop early, so they sent him back! (he was hopeless, driving along with the route map spread out on his steering wheel, I didn’t see him again).

Yes this can happen even in the Civic interchange – buses can leave 3-4 mins late and the following day 3-4 minutes early. At least at Civic there is a ticket machine guy who ticks the buses off as they leave.

This really, really makes my blood boil. You need to add fifteen minutes to your trip to catch the drivers thinking “the sooner I can get to the depot, the sooner I can have a fag – in the bus, because it’s cold outside.”

I remember catching the old 30 / 32 routes through Curtin. The driver would just skip whole streets on his route. I missed the Canberra Hospital explosion this way – watched the bus cruise by a block down, decided to walk to Woden, heard the explosion. Probably for the best, actually.