ACTION subsidy blows out to $101 million

I catch four buses most days. The new timetable is taking a bit of time to adjust to, but I tried a different route-pair this morning and knocked 15 minutes off the trip in to work.

Complete no-shows or very-late-running services are pretty rare in Canberra, in my experience. Overall, across the different Canberra suburbs I’ve lived in, I’d say the weekday Canberra bus service is pretty good. MyWay has been a good change, speeding up the time it takes to get people onto the buses.

Where I think the service can improve is:
– A nudge up in peak hour frequencies
– Active displays of time to arrival of next service at bus stops (at least major stops)
– A trip query phone service like the old TransInfo service from Brisbane that could take queries about trip start and finish points and times, then give you the best trip option, including covering the walking legs of the trip
– Having a serious crack at linking services to shopping hubs (ie the Belconnen Markets) that currently force people to route a trip home, then a car trip out and back to shops.

I don’t catch the bus on weekends, except occasionally for going out, so can’t really comment on weekend services.

steveu said :

Fully support free buses as long as it doesnt take 20 mins to walk to your bus stop.

Walk faster.

Agree with a different approach is required…something radical. Fully support free buses as long as it doesnt take 20 mins to walk to your bus stop. ie. the walk to your stop shouldnt take longer than the bus trip itself. Seems a bit self defeating.
Funding the free buses? More speed cameras of course. I mean they are money printing machines arnt they? 🙂

markus_k said :

HenryBG said :

As a regular bus user, I can tell you that there is nothing “chronically unreliable” about them. Not even remotely.
Obviously it pays to understand your subject or at least have some experience of it before passing opinion.

I am a regular bus user myself, and actually found “chronically unreliable” quite an accurate description.
Unless you consider a route that arrives anywhere between 10-15 mins before and 15 mins after its scheduled time, and has regularly not turned up at all, as nothing more than to be expected in a public transport system.

You’re making it up.
I catch the buses at least 3 days a week and I can probably think of about 3 occasions when a bus has gone missing for me over the last 3 years.

The service between city centres is brilliant – where else can you reliably get 10km away by bus in about 15 minutes *including* the time spent waiting at the bus stop?
The feeder routes require you to indulge in a bit of planning, and getting from one suburb to a different suburb is the bit where you can end up spending 30 minutes going round and around in circles.
No problem, bring your smartphone and a book and either work or entertain yourself as you are driven by somebody else to your destination.

Jim Jones said :

dungfungus said :

HenryBG said :

dungfungus said :

Making the buses free isn’t necessarily going to increase patronage. This is because bus services only suit a certain number of people and they are chronically unreliable. Also, people driving to work have to have a car to drop off-pick up children, do shopping on the way home, go to the gym etc. The buses are only catering for the needs of last century’s commuters and school/uni students who haven’t yet got their own car. Canberra was specifically designed for everyone to have a car. ACTION is a union dominated and controlled dinosaur which re-invents itself every couple of years to justify its perceived ongoing need. It should be privatised and real demand would quickly sort out which routes were viable. I note NSW is considering selling off the public bus services in Sydney.

As a regular bus user, I can tell you that there is nothing “chronically unreliable” about them. Not even remotely.
Obviously it pays to understand your subject or at least have some experience of it before passing opinion.

Canberra is a peculiar place where some people just don’t “get” public transport. Those of us who have lived elsewhere in the world are perfectly happy to use the buses, and to teach our offspring to use them.
It really isn’t very hard.

I would be very interested in going through the costs of the service with a fine-toothed comb to find out where the money’s being wasted.
I’d particularly be looking at:
– unnecessary office space
– unnecessary office-workers
– uncompetitive contracts for providing services such as maintenance, cleaning
– over-generous shift loadings that are easy to “play” up.

Guaranteed there are a large number of people getting rich off this 100million/year by overcharging for their services, or for keeping a seat warm in an office somewhere when they are not needed.

Yeah, yeah Henry, whatever you say as you are the “expert”
Just do me a favour please and bag everyone else on this blog that has reported a negative experience with the same bus service that cossets some like you and couldn’t give a tinker’s cuss about everyone else.
Your suggestions for probing the costs are nevertheless a good idea but everything that ACTION and their unions are involved in appear to be contiguous so good luck with that one.

I’m amazed that he managed to move so seamlessly from defending the quality of bus services (and blaming the public) to “there’s too much dead wood in this town and we need to fire a whole bunch of lazy people”.

He’s like the angry (ever so slightly senile) grandpa of RiotAct … off on yet another mental frolic of his own.

At least I have both hands on my keyboard.

So that 21m is probably gross, what about the overhead costs of having fares?, there’s no doubt whole teams at action who jobs are dependant on the process of collecting fares, the IT section alone to run myway would be in the millions.

why not just cut the budget down to 95m, fire anyone to do with fare system and make it free?

dungfungus said :

HenryBG said :

dungfungus said :

Making the buses free isn’t necessarily going to increase patronage. This is because bus services only suit a certain number of people and they are chronically unreliable. Also, people driving to work have to have a car to drop off-pick up children, do shopping on the way home, go to the gym etc. The buses are only catering for the needs of last century’s commuters and school/uni students who haven’t yet got their own car. Canberra was specifically designed for everyone to have a car. ACTION is a union dominated and controlled dinosaur which re-invents itself every couple of years to justify its perceived ongoing need. It should be privatised and real demand would quickly sort out which routes were viable. I note NSW is considering selling off the public bus services in Sydney.

As a regular bus user, I can tell you that there is nothing “chronically unreliable” about them. Not even remotely.
Obviously it pays to understand your subject or at least have some experience of it before passing opinion.

Canberra is a peculiar place where some people just don’t “get” public transport. Those of us who have lived elsewhere in the world are perfectly happy to use the buses, and to teach our offspring to use them.
It really isn’t very hard.

I would be very interested in going through the costs of the service with a fine-toothed comb to find out where the money’s being wasted.
I’d particularly be looking at:
– unnecessary office space
– unnecessary office-workers
– uncompetitive contracts for providing services such as maintenance, cleaning
– over-generous shift loadings that are easy to “play” up.

Guaranteed there are a large number of people getting rich off this 100million/year by overcharging for their services, or for keeping a seat warm in an office somewhere when they are not needed.

Yeah, yeah Henry, whatever you say as you are the “expert”
Just do me a favour please and bag everyone else on this blog that has reported a negative experience with the same bus service that cossets some like you and couldn’t give a tinker’s cuss about everyone else.
Your suggestions for probing the costs are nevertheless a good idea but everything that ACTION and their unions are involved in appear to be contiguous so good luck with that one.

I’m amazed that he managed to move so seamlessly from defending the quality of bus services (and blaming the public) to “there’s too much dead wood in this town and we need to fire a whole bunch of lazy people”.

He’s like the angry (ever so slightly senile) grandpa of RiotAct … off on yet another mental frolic of his own.

HenryBG said :

dungfungus said :

Making the buses free isn’t necessarily going to increase patronage. This is because bus services only suit a certain number of people and they are chronically unreliable. Also, people driving to work have to have a car to drop off-pick up children, do shopping on the way home, go to the gym etc. The buses are only catering for the needs of last century’s commuters and school/uni students who haven’t yet got their own car. Canberra was specifically designed for everyone to have a car. ACTION is a union dominated and controlled dinosaur which re-invents itself every couple of years to justify its perceived ongoing need. It should be privatised and real demand would quickly sort out which routes were viable. I note NSW is considering selling off the public bus services in Sydney.

As a regular bus user, I can tell you that there is nothing “chronically unreliable” about them. Not even remotely.
Obviously it pays to understand your subject or at least have some experience of it before passing opinion.

Canberra is a peculiar place where some people just don’t “get” public transport. Those of us who have lived elsewhere in the world are perfectly happy to use the buses, and to teach our offspring to use them.
It really isn’t very hard.

I would be very interested in going through the costs of the service with a fine-toothed comb to find out where the money’s being wasted.
I’d particularly be looking at:
– unnecessary office space
– unnecessary office-workers
– uncompetitive contracts for providing services such as maintenance, cleaning
– over-generous shift loadings that are easy to “play” up.

Guaranteed there are a large number of people getting rich off this 100million/year by overcharging for their services, or for keeping a seat warm in an office somewhere when they are not needed.

It’s not that Canberrans ‘dont get’ public transport – its that there is no real reason to use it. Live in any other capital city in this country and getting to work by car takes hours to a journey. I used to live in a capital city where it took an hour to drive in peak hour and I lived in less than 5 kms from the city centre. Therefore the bus was the better option. Combine that with novated leases, freezing temps, unsafe bus interchanges with no lighting, and the most dispersed city in the country (exaggeration added), then is it any wonder? Should anyone be surprised that no one takes public transport when its a 5 minute car ride and a $7 parking cost with a subsidised car? They could pay people money to catch public transport in this town and id be still be shocked if patronage went up.

HenryBG said :

dungfungus said :

Making the buses free isn’t necessarily going to increase patronage. This is because bus services only suit a certain number of people and they are chronically unreliable. Also, people driving to work have to have a car to drop off-pick up children, do shopping on the way home, go to the gym etc. The buses are only catering for the needs of last century’s commuters and school/uni students who haven’t yet got their own car. Canberra was specifically designed for everyone to have a car. ACTION is a union dominated and controlled dinosaur which re-invents itself every couple of years to justify its perceived ongoing need. It should be privatised and real demand would quickly sort out which routes were viable. I note NSW is considering selling off the public bus services in Sydney.

As a regular bus user, I can tell you that there is nothing “chronically unreliable” about them. Not even remotely.
Obviously it pays to understand your subject or at least have some experience of it before passing opinion.

Canberra is a peculiar place where some people just don’t “get” public transport. Those of us who have lived elsewhere in the world are perfectly happy to use the buses, and to teach our offspring to use them.
It really isn’t very hard.

I would be very interested in going through the costs of the service with a fine-toothed comb to find out where the money’s being wasted.
I’d particularly be looking at:
– unnecessary office space
– unnecessary office-workers
– uncompetitive contracts for providing services such as maintenance, cleaning
– over-generous shift loadings that are easy to “play” up.

Guaranteed there are a large number of people getting rich off this 100million/year by overcharging for their services, or for keeping a seat warm in an office somewhere when they are not needed.

Yeah, yeah Henry, whatever you say as you are the “expert”
Just do me a favour please and bag everyone else on this blog that has reported a negative experience with the same bus service that cossets some like you and couldn’t give a tinker’s cuss about everyone else.
Your suggestions for probing the costs are nevertheless a good idea but everything that ACTION and their unions are involved in appear to be contiguous so good luck with that one.

HenryBG said :

As a regular bus user, I can tell you that there is nothing “chronically unreliable” about them. Not even remotely.
Obviously it pays to understand your subject or at least have some experience of it before passing opinion.

I am a regular bus user myself, and actually found “chronically unreliable” quite an accurate description.
Unless you consider a route that arrives anywhere between 10-15 mins before and 15 mins after its scheduled time, and has regularly not turned up at all, as nothing more than to be expected in a public transport system.