It is after 7:30 Sunday night in Civic & where is the farkin buses?

“where is the farkin buses?”

Where ARE the farkin buses”

“I wonder if they have thought that the mayors of Penrith & Campbelltown would allow such a big hole in their public transport services.”

Travelled publicly out that way of late? Thought not.

Re Holditz’s #17 post – Didn’t the nightrider service go to all suburbs? If so, it must have been a pretty slow ride or was it several buses (which would have cost a bit)? A half hourly or even hourly late evening intertown service would probably only need a couple of buses on the road. Better minds than mine can work out whether (partly) empty buses to the suburbs or (partly) empty buses between town centres is a better use of tax payer monies.

Anyway, I presume that the data from MyWay will quickly identify the profitable routes and times and then services will be upgraded or slashed accordingly. The problems will be both identifying the potential demand for routes and times if there are no buses running at the moment (and which takes time to build up)and better coordinating any changes with the service that taxis do or could provide.

Until 2007 each Nightrider used to leave hourly from about 0100 til 0500 and cost $5 a ride. In 2008 they changed to leaving every hour and a half and costing $10 a ride. Under the old scheme full buses were common, under the new scheme many runs had no passengers. Which proves that if it’s frequent enough and cheap enough people are prepared to spend a while on a bus to get home after a night on the piss.

PrinceOfAles said :

Cost effectiveness shouldn`t come in to it. Buses are a public service not a source of revenue. ACTION is already heavily subsidised. Don`t get me wrong they need to try and recover some of their costs but a few extra buses on a sunday night would hardly break their bottom line.

+1

Holditz said :

eily said :

Agreed. Running just the 900 Belconnen to Tuggeranong til late (10-11pm) would be a good idea. It’s about $20-25 by taxi from Belconnen to Charnwood but $50-70 from Woden. I image taxi trips would cost about the same (and in many cases less) out to the suburbs from their nearest town centre.

You would think so; but I figure that ACTION/TAMS have already looked at the feasiblity, and unfortunately it’s just not cost effective. Don’t get me wrong, as a bus rider I would love buses to run later on Sundays- but there simply isn’t enough patronage at the moment. And no, “if we build it they will come” won’t work here. The fact that the patronage on the Deans’ late night bus runs during summer was pretty low attests to this. It’s a vicious circle- patrons won’t use the services, and ACTION won’t schedule services because there aren’t any customers to ride them.

The so called Nightrider bus only run once every one and a half hours to an area and took over an hour to get to the end. And if you lived further south then Woden …stuff. Not exactly practical. So no wonder few took it up. Tokenism at its worst.

PrinceOfAles said :

A half hourly service between the interchanges on a sunday up until midnight is hardly an unreasonable thing to expect in a town of this size.

My experience is that a half hourly service during peak hours or any other time is an unreasonable thing to expect in Canberra.

Ex Warrior said :

PrinceOfAles said :

Holditz said :

eily said :

Agreed. Running just the 900 Belconnen to Tuggeranong til late (10-11pm) would be a good idea. It’s about $20-25 by taxi from Belconnen to Charnwood but $50-70 from Woden. I image taxi trips would cost about the same (and in many cases less) out to the suburbs from their nearest town centre.

You would think so; but I figure that ACTION/TAMS have already looked at the feasiblity, and unfortunately it’s just not cost effective. Don’t get me wrong, as a bus rider I would love buses to run later on Sundays- but there simply isn’t enough patronage at the moment. And no, “if we build it they will come” won’t work here. The fact that the patronage on the Deans’ late night bus runs during summer was pretty low attests to this. It’s a vicious circle- patrons won’t use the services, and ACTION won’t schedule services because there aren’t any customers to ride them.

Cost effectiveness shouldn`t come in to it. Buses are a public service not a source of revenue. ACTION is already heavily subsidised. Don`t get me wrong they need to try and recover some of their costs but a few extra buses on a sunday night would hardly break their bottom line.

Ahh the bottom line is already well and truly broken!!!
Do you honestly think costs should not considered in running public transport systems???
Its about time people who used public transport worked their schedule around what currently exists. It’s painful seeing buses driving around at ridiculous hours of the night with no or few passengers. Stop complaining and start becoming a bit more proactive

So we`ll just cancel all buses outside of peak hours then? I`m sure everyone can change their schedule to suit. A half hourly service between the interchanges on a sunday up until midnight is hardly an unreasonable thing to expect in a town of this size. I agree it would not be a heavily used service but there is no other viable alternative for shift workers, students that may be “studying” at a friends place or whoever else may be happen to be around at that hour.

Revert to the good old days ACTION and grant the shifts again that made the service a service!

Look after your long term staff who saved all of the buses and depots during the bushfires ‘voluntarily’, risk their lives and keep passengers safe (most over a 20 year period), have been flexible, giving and assisted the elderly and disabled and over past years until changes to the timetables were made (2009+) delivered an excellent punctual service on the southside.

Constant changes (excluding the My Way ticketing in its infancy stage) has been a no win situation for everyone involved with ACTION.

PrinceOfAles said :

Holditz said :

eily said :

Agreed. Running just the 900 Belconnen to Tuggeranong til late (10-11pm) would be a good idea. It’s about $20-25 by taxi from Belconnen to Charnwood but $50-70 from Woden. I image taxi trips would cost about the same (and in many cases less) out to the suburbs from their nearest town centre.

You would think so; but I figure that ACTION/TAMS have already looked at the feasiblity, and unfortunately it’s just not cost effective. Don’t get me wrong, as a bus rider I would love buses to run later on Sundays- but there simply isn’t enough patronage at the moment. And no, “if we build it they will come” won’t work here. The fact that the patronage on the Deans’ late night bus runs during summer was pretty low attests to this. It’s a vicious circle- patrons won’t use the services, and ACTION won’t schedule services because there aren’t any customers to ride them.

Cost effectiveness shouldn`t come in to it. Buses are a public service not a source of revenue. ACTION is already heavily subsidised. Don`t get me wrong they need to try and recover some of their costs but a few extra buses on a sunday night would hardly break their bottom line.

Ahh the bottom line is already well and truly broken!!!
Do you honestly think costs should not considered in running public transport systems???
Its about time people who used public transport worked their schedule around what currently exists. It’s painful seeing buses driving around at ridiculous hours of the night with no or few passengers. Stop complaining and start becoming a bit more proactive

Bennop said :

I would have thought that there are hidden costs associate with putting a bus on the road, that make it a really poor use of money.

-Interchange supervisors
-On call security
-Back end admin
-Workshop staff etc
-Petrol
Not to mention the hourly wage of bus drivers which on a sunday night is a minimum of $52 and hour (assuming double time loading).

All this for 2- 3 people who sometimes make awkward interstate travel plans? Hmmmm.

ACTION has no on-call security, no idea what gave you that idea.

For driving and presumably supervising as well, outside normal operating hours (ie after 0130 and after 2200 Sundays) we get a 75% loading so $52.33.

Holditz said :

eily said :

Agreed. Running just the 900 Belconnen to Tuggeranong til late (10-11pm) would be a good idea. It’s about $20-25 by taxi from Belconnen to Charnwood but $50-70 from Woden. I image taxi trips would cost about the same (and in many cases less) out to the suburbs from their nearest town centre.

You would think so; but I figure that ACTION/TAMS have already looked at the feasiblity, and unfortunately it’s just not cost effective. Don’t get me wrong, as a bus rider I would love buses to run later on Sundays- but there simply isn’t enough patronage at the moment. And no, “if we build it they will come” won’t work here. The fact that the patronage on the Deans’ late night bus runs during summer was pretty low attests to this. It’s a vicious circle- patrons won’t use the services, and ACTION won’t schedule services because there aren’t any customers to ride them.

Cost effectiveness shouldn`t come in to it. Buses are a public service not a source of revenue. ACTION is already heavily subsidised. Don`t get me wrong they need to try and recover some of their costs but a few extra buses on a sunday night would hardly break their bottom line.