Nightrider Trial ends - who's to blame? [With poll]

Sigh. Of *course* it’s going to lose money if you only run it for three weeks or whatever and people haven’t learned to rely on it. And running a huge bloody bus up Jardine street at 4 in the morning is just – a bad idea.

Smaller buses. More commitment to the idea.

And – an online service where you can request the nightrider on your iPhone and that shows you the current location and intended route of each bus. May mean that each bus needs two staff – a driver and a navigator. Or perhaps not: we have GPS phones now – it’s all do-able.

ML-585 said :

Had Deane’s been allowed to run the service their way, who knows what the outcome might have been. Certainly it couldn’t be any worse.

I can’t quite remember where I read it, but Deane’s offered to include a comprehensive promotion as part of the contract price, but were knocked back.

The article also said pamphlets including the timetable were distributed to pubs around the city (am yet to met a single person who got one though) – but then they cut services anyway so those (phantom) timetables were obsolete.

I agree that instead of trying to get everyone home on buses in the middle of the night (apparently they would drop you at the bus stop nearest your house) people would be happy to get at least in the vicinity of their house and taxi the rest of the way. A taxi from Civic to my house is $40+, from the nearest bus interchange, $10. I don’t understand why they’re trying to change to world when just cutting costs a little can make a huge difference.

When I’ve taken nightrider the buses usually go on some convoluted route through the stops in the suburbs.
2 Recommendations to fix night transport in the city:
1. On the hour buses to each of the main city centres (belconnen, gunghalin, woden etc) and then have a close taxi rank so people can get a cheap taxi back to their home. If the buses become popular the taxis will also go to these ranks instead as they won’t have the long empty return trip back to the city.
2. Multiple taxi ranks should be in the interchange (eg south rank and north rank). This will mean mean that people can share taxis more easily, taxi drivers can go to their preferred region and the taxi rank system will be more efficient. Have you ever noticed that often in the city there can be a huge line of people and a huge line of waiting taxis but both lines move so slowly because there is only one short rank for people to get into the taxis? They could at least make the line start closer to the lights so more taxis could pull up next to the queue at a time.

As a frequent late-nighter in civic I had heard of the service. However I had no idea how much is cost, where to catch it/how to arrange a ride, and what the full service it offered was.

Very poor advertising indeed.

I only found out throught this site that it was on.Total absence of public awareness, the idea is sound, but the promotion was non-existent.

totally agree

random said :

Why wasn’t there a huge poster by the taxi rank? “Taxi to Tuggeranong: $80. Nightrider bus, platform X: $10.”

I didn’t even know it was on at all.

A Uni of Qld study worked out in 2008 that road accidents cost Australia $17 billion annually. That is 2.3% of our GDP. “The damage and pain inflicted by more than 25,000 serious injury accidents each year is reflected in these costs. But our totals don’t even touch on the considerable burden that non-fatal injuries can impose on the victims and the families who care for them,” Dr Connelly said. (http://www.uq.edu.au/news/index.html?article=9863)

So, if you are complaining about $400 for one person to catch the bus and one of those people instead ended up needing years of rehab or a lifetime of physical care because they drove drunk and had an accident, then it seems like a bargain.

I blame KITT.

The Nightrider contract was always set to end last weekend so there is no-one to ‘blame’ for it ending as this article wants to suggest.

It’s not just a question of whether it could have been advertised better – there is also the question of whether it could have been run better. Just remember that Deane’s were contracted to run the service exactly as dictated by ACT Transport (fares, routes, timetables were all set in place by ACT Transport) – so this is an example of how well (or not) having a separate Government agency to control public transport works in Canberra.

Had Deane’s been allowed to run the service their way, who knows what the outcome might have been. Certainly it couldn’t be any worse.

I still have to wonder though why the service was not advertised on ACTION buses since the people who were most likely to use Nightrider would also travel on ACTION.

There was a nightrider service?
(Where did that 10% go, Mr Stanhope?)