17 June 2012

The ACTION bus "service" debacle. There has to be a better way!

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Sigh. The service just seems to be getting worse and worse.

Begin rant here (read on only if you are frustrated with ACTION too)

It seems Alistair has got some figures on ACTION’s Dead Running. I found it via a CT article .

Love or hate Alistair and the way he can twist a stat but, if true, this service is going down the tubes (no pun to underground rail intended) at a ridiculous speed.

As far as the Dead Running issue goes, I understand the problems with remote depots but I’m less clear on why buses, at least for routes in Belconnen and Tuggeranong, don’t start and end nearer these depots. As well, I don’t understand why buses in more central locations aren’t housed at interchanges or a more central depot rather than driven to the current depots. We need a lot more information to see why other options such as overnight security guards and CCTV at interchanges or one or two extra depots (for parking only – ie not maintenance) are not cheaper than the cost of dead running. Also, it is not clear why a bus ever should be dead running. If a bus is on the road, it should be able to pick up passengers, albeit probably only a handful, and deposit them en route with very little impact on time.

Honestly, I thought that MyWay would better target ACTION’s services but instead they seem to be getting more inefficient while at the same time exponentially more expensive. I’ve seen posts and threads on RA reporting that Government subsidies are around four or five times the revenue – the latest being the 2012 budget figures showing $21m in ticket sales and $101m in subsidies. This seems to suggest, very simplistically, that the true cost of a trip is somewhere between $10 ($2.50 * 4) to $ $20 ($4.00 * 5). I know that Canberra is spread out but this is crazy! There must be a solution.

For starters we should be getting a lot more information. ACTION should be publicising the cost and revenue for each route. I know that many don’t want specific route expenses and revenue published because this would encourage public pressure to cut or limit less profitable routes. I’m not suggesting that outcome – far from it – but we need to be able to find more cost effective service solutions. With MyWay, the ACT Government now has this information so that they can cut services when they choose, such as the Causeway, but we don’t get to see the numbers for all services so that they can be accountable.

The Government has always stated that smaller buses in less populated areas is not cost effective but I for one would like to see the costings for this and other options such as dedicated multi occupant taxis or subsidies for personal transport to and from bus stops on main routes. (A little out there I know but, in this technological age, they could even introduce a cheaper registration, insurance and stamp duty system that allows people – who could afford it – to buy and drive cars only within a certain radius of home to more regular bus services).

As far as light rail is concerned, the ACT Government now have said that the cost of light rail versus buses is disproportionately expensive but we haven’t yet seen detailed costings. I’ve always been in two minds about light rail but the way those costings have been managed is pushing me towards thinking that they are hiding something and I am starting to lean towards the merits of light rail over buses.

End rant…….

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damien haas said :

Its not ACTION that needs to listen. Its your elected politicians.

I invite people to have a read of this paper from 1976:
http://www.atrf.info/papers/1976/1976_Webb_Cooper.pdf

Any familiar issues in that ancient tome ? Unless there is a modal change away from buses as the mass transit heavy lifter in Canberra, we will continue to experience these problems.

Politicians need to act in the best interest of Canberrans, not their best interests every 4 years.

Gobsmacked that back in 1974 the authors clearly spelled out the writing on the wall. yet almost 40 years later and here we are. No progress.

It took just under 2 hours to get a bus from Hughes to the Airport area this morning. Took me 10 minutes to drive to Hughes, 2 hours to get back. faaaaaaaaaaa…..

Muttsybignuts said :

Every time I have just looked it up on my phone which takes me to google maps which tells me where to be and when. give or take a couple of minutes everything has worked perfectly.
The second time I caught the bus I was standing outside my home with a confused look as a bus drove past, trying to work out if I should have walked to the nearest bus stop and caught that one or not and the bus pulled over to see if I wanted to get on!

TRIP 1: Your location TO Civic

1) Walk outside house (15 metres – 10 seconds)
2) Stand by kerb and wait (0 metres – 5 minutes
3) Look confused as bus goes past (0 metres – 12 seconds)
4) Walk to where bus has pulled over (20 metres – 14 seconds)
5) Travel to Civic (7.2 km – 12 minutes)

Muttsybignuts9:43 am 21 Jun 12

I haven’t had to catch buses for 20 years. In the past couple of months, with only 1 family car again I have used ACTION about a dozen times to go between suburban Belconnen and Civic, Deakin, Macquarie and Pearce. Every time I have just looked it up on my phone which takes me to google maps which tells me where to be and when. give or take a couple of minutes everything has worked perfectly.
The second time I caught the bus I was standing outside my home with a confused look as a bus drove past, trying to work out if I should have walked to the nearest bus stop and caught that one or not and the bus pulled over to see if I wanted to get on! I was very pleased.
So the buses may not be perfect in a town without enough users to make it viable. At least there still is a service and, for my mind, worked quite well.

Sandman said :

For starters we should be getting a lot more information. ACTION should be publicising the cost and revenue for each route. I know that many don’t want specific route expenses and revenue published because this would encourage public pressure to cut or limit less profitable routes. I’m not suggesting that outcome – far from it – but we need to be able to find more cost effective service solutions. With MyWay, the ACT Government now has this information so that they can cut services when they choose, such as the Causeway, but we don’t get to see the numbers for all services so that they can be accountable.

Ummmm why? Is every person who’s ever ridden on a bus suddenly qualified to analyse the figures and work out a way to run the whole company better than the people that do?
I’m starting to get little flashbacks of the Simpsons episode where Homer believes he can do a better job of Sanitation Commisioner by giving everyone exactly what they want and ends up blowing the whole years budget in a matter of weeks.

What exactly does “accountable” mean in a system that is running, overall, at an 80% rate of subsidy? If I were absolutely certain that I used a route that covered its costs, and would continue to do so if it were the only route in town, I’d be happy to see the figures. Otherwise I’d want to bury them 100m deep, and pray every night that my fellow-citizens would continue to sub up.

Was trying to quote this paragraph in the OP.

For starters we should be getting a lot more information. ACTION should be publicising the cost and revenue for each route. I know that many don’t want specific route expenses and revenue published because this would encourage public pressure to cut or limit less profitable routes. I’m not suggesting that outcome – far from it – but we need to be able to find more cost effective service solutions. With MyWay, the ACT Government now has this information so that they can cut services when they choose, such as the Causeway, but we don’t get to see the numbers for all services so that they can be accountable.

For starters we should be getting a lot more information. ACTION should be publicising the cost and revenue for each route. I know that many don’t want specific route expenses and revenue published because this would encourage public pressure to cut or limit less profitable routes. I’m not suggesting that outcome – far from it – but we need to be able to find more cost effective service solutions. With MyWay, the ACT Government now has this information so that they can cut services when they choose, such as the Causeway, but we don’t get to see the numbers for all services so that they can be accountable.

Ummmm why? Is every person who’s ever ridden on a bus suddenly qualified to analyse the figures and work out a way to run the whole company better than the people that do?
I’m starting to get little flashbacks of the Simpsons episode where Homer believes he can do a better job of Sanitation Commisioner by giving everyone exactly what they want and ends up blowing the whole years budget in a matter of weeks.

X71 said :

No wonder no one catches a bus. ACTION would make more profit by scraping all bus services and buying a fleet of electric cars that would be positioned around the place for people to use.
Until that tech exists, maybe they could buy everyone a cheap car and put their money into building more roads.

Beware of what you wish for, if you are going to pay for the subsidy. Canberra is built in a way that makes car ownership mandatory for anyone who is not too poor to own one; physically incapable of using one; or put off by very strong ideological objections. Once you own one, actually using it is the option of choice except for the small minority of trips where public transport would be particularly convenient (and could realistically be available), and the disbenefits of car use (congestion, parking) particularly high.

Self-service cars cannot answer any of these needs, except perhaps for the ideologues (if the electric cars were charged up from renewable sources). Using one presupposes that

you don’t already have your own car which would be more convenient and a lower marginal cost

you can physically get to the parking place, and use the car once you get there

there is a car available when you want it (e.g. in the rush hour, when everyone else wants one too)

there is somewhere to park it at the end of the trip (e.g. in the rush hour, when everyone else is at the end of theirs).

If you don’t believe this, do some research (and thinking) about the only scheme that has actually been implemented to my knowledge, i.e. Autolib in Paris. The circumstances there are vastly more favourable than they could ever be in Canberra. And the ambitions are far more modest – Autolib sits on top of what is already a superb, and cheap, public transport system, and needs only to cater for the tiny proportion of cases (in the Paris context) where a car would be better than public transport, but the customer does not already own one (but can afford to hire one and is capable of driving it).

Even then, it has been only a modified success so far. In particular, the problems of positioning seem pretty intractable – too few cars at the beginning of peoples’ desired trips and too many at the end of them (blocking the parking bays to new arrivals). In the equivalent scheme for bikes they put a lot of effort into moving the bikes from areas of short-term surplus to areas of scarcity (and then moving them back again once the daily tide has run the other way). It seems much less practicable to do that with cars (and if you tried, it would make “dead running” by buses seem even more trivial an issue than it already is).

Sorry to seem negative: but wishful thinking is not going to provide even the very marginal improvements that are realistically achievable.

It would be better if intertown services were replaced by light rail, then buses could be retasked to increase frequency of local services. Thi is better all round for local users and commuters travelling between employment and population centres.

Agree.
And the light rail can be the latest battery powered (no overhead wires) system now being used in Munich. The Labor government cannot sqib on the cost factor as it is one third of the cost of the proposals they have been “looking at” and it is clean, green and can run to Queanbeayan and beyond immediately. Ban buses from the main intertown thoroughfares and then ACTION buses and “runs” can be sold off to existing drivers who are interested – if not interested sell to private operators like the taxi system. The current annual ratepayers subsidy would only be needed for the first 2 years to fund the light rail. The ACT would then have an efficient, cost effective integrated transport system free of ratepayer subsidies.
Of course we could always keep the current system and build another arboretum.

If you are going to make comparisons with Munich, the mode of traction is hardly the place to start. A little googling says that Munich has a population density of 4359 per sq km; and Canberra has 428.6. The figures could hardly be neater if I had made them up.

I am sure that the current system has many weaknesses. But anyone who thinks that Canberra could have adequate public transport by any conceivable means, at a price the majority of non-users would be prepared to finance, is deluding themselves. And so is anyone who thinks that the non-users could be turned into users by any programme of coercion or inducement that is politically feasible. Short of knocking the whole place down and rebuilding on a plot one tenth the size.

KB1971 said :

Two stops on a Sydnay or melbourne train would cost a lot more than 4 bucks.

$3.40 for me to get to Town Hall (2 stops from Redfern).

Casual users of ACTION are often infuriated. After just missing my bus last week (my own fault) i waited an hour for the next bus. In that time I observed casual users try to decipher both the map and timetables at Belco Westfield. Without fail at least one person per bus that pulled up would ask the driver a question about a service. Some were helpful, others not so much. Two I recall partiularly were an older gent with a hearing aid who didnt hear the bus drivers instructions too well to board a 31- series bus. After he watched two pull away I suggested to him he might want to get the 31- bus that was about to pull up. The second was a guy trying to get to Dickson from Belco. After looking at platform info, and then asking a driver, he sat down. I suggested an alternative that would get him there quicker (but required a change of bus and walking a block).

I’d like to see a sign on the imetable board that would direct casual users to the Belco Myway office for these questions. The long promised realtime display woudl also be useful,m especially if it was inside the ‘airport style bus lounge’ so that in 8 degree weather you didnt have to walk half way up the platform to find out you have a half hour wait in teh poorly designed bus shelters.

Weekend services on Network 2012 are an improvement, but I agree about the service times. ACTION really should operate a 7 day network that starts and finishes at the same time, with perhaps reduced services on Sunday. Once again its the local services that suffer on weekends while intertown generally runs well – during the day.

KB1971 said :

JC said :

X71 said :

I tried to catch a bus two Saturdays ago from Harrison to gungahlin raiders club. The bus was 5 min late so I decided to walk the 20 min instead. Of course the bus went past me 3 min later!
On the way home from the game I caught the bus and they wanted $4 for the 2 bus stops!

Of course you have chosen the most extreme case. To counter if you had of used a myway it would have cost about $2.50 and if you were going to Condor using a myway it would have cost you about $2.50.

Yep, the bus ride for me from Civic to Conder is a bargain at $2:50. For this I do have to forsake the comfort and convenience of my car but if I travel bu bus every day to work that would only cost me $25 versus $50 for parking & whatever fuel I will use each week (normally $50 worth).

To the OP you criticise the “service” but really it’s not the service its the cost of running that service. I heard about this on the radio yesterday & said to my wife that it had been mis reported with no facts ( as proven here in this thread).

Do you ride the bus regularly? My general experience with people on RA having a winge about ACTION is they dont and have a holier than thou inflexible attitue to public transport.

Two stops on a Sydnay or melbourne train would cost a lot more than 4 bucks.

I and my family use the bus often. We would use it considerably more with slight modifications (ie extra stops along public corridors). I agree that the fare (apart for short distances and for families) is extremely reasonable for the service. However, I cannot understand how the true cost doesn’t result in a considerably better service. My point is, without again trying to sound like the opposition, that we are not getting anywhere near enough information about service costs vs revenue and comparisons with a wide variety of alternative public transport options.

silvernitrate11:57 am 18 Jun 12

Yes, again i question the Sunday service. Why is that buses depart from interchanges starting from 7am when most suburb services only reach the interchange from 10am.

Are they catering for the leftovers of the saturday night/sunday morning crowd? It doesn’t make sense…

JC said :

X71 said :

I tried to catch a bus two Saturdays ago from Harrison to gungahlin raiders club. The bus was 5 min late so I decided to walk the 20 min instead. Of course the bus went past me 3 min later!
On the way home from the game I caught the bus and they wanted $4 for the 2 bus stops!

Of course you have chosen the most extreme case. To counter if you had of used a myway it would have cost about $2.50 and if you were going to Condor using a myway it would have cost you about $2.50.

Yep, the bus ride for me from Civic to Conder is a bargain at $2:50. For this I do have to forsake the comfort and convenience of my car but if I travel bu bus every day to work that would only cost me $25 versus $50 for parking & whatever fuel I will use each week (normally $50 worth).

To the OP you criticise the “service” but really it’s not the service its the cost of running that service. I heard about this on the radio yesterday & said to my wife that it had been mis reported with no facts ( as proven here in this thread).

Do you ride the bus regularly? My general experience with people on RA having a winge about ACTION is they dont and have a holier than thou inflexible attitue to public transport.

Two stops on a Sydnay or melbourne train would cost a lot more than 4 bucks.

Madam Cholet @ #1 – I saw the irony too as I was typing my tirade (I’ve always thought he was a twat),

damien haas @ #2 – I would have thought that it was the other way round but you may be right.

spooner @ #6 – That document was a start but we should have access to a lot more information. Also, if the subsidy is 5:1, it sounds ridiculous but it would almost be cheaper to fund/provide taxis for many trips.

Felix the Cat @ #9 – I agree that there are economies of scale in running only large buses. But if smaller buses were used just to get passengers out of the suburbs to the nearest major bus stop the smaller buses would be constantly in use. Some bus routes are so under used, ACTION could almost modify and trial their existing Taragos to zip in and out of suburbs.

Also, the strange costings for light rail are causing me to question any cost comparisons. For example, what was the cost of fuel savings, were they looking at modified intra suburban routes (for which you might almost get away with very small electric vehicles) or were they trying to preserve the suburban to interchange routes, did they cost the damage to roads from the extra weight of larger buses.

The road damage from extra weight argument is also interesting. There is a quote in today’s CT(http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/gas-leak-shuts-down-city-centre-20120617-20hs5.html) ”With the weight of the buses the asphalt tends to deteriorate, so they do this [a routine upgrade of the platform] about every 12 months”. If the roads at the interchange are damaged that much then I wonder if this damage on other roads is costed into comparisons for small buses, light rail etc.

X71 @ #13 – I’m sorry but if you are only using the bus twice a year then you don’t have much to whinge about. If, like many of us, you would like to use public transport more often, then that might be a different story.

X71 said :

I tried to catch a bus two Saturdays ago from Harrison to gungahlin raiders club. The bus was 5 min late so I decided to walk the 20 min instead. Of course the bus went past me 3 min later!
On the way home from the game I caught the bus and they wanted $4 for the 2 bus stops!

Of course you have chosen the most extreme case. To counter if you had of used a myway it would have cost about $2.50 and if you were going to Condor using a myway it would have cost you about $2.50.

This was discussed a few months back. The dead running figure may well appear high as a headline, but when you look at it it is less than 50km per bus per day.

Now for one if you look at the passenger flows in the morning you have more people coming in from the suburbs and in the afternoon they go home, so you need more services one way, which means you need dead running from the depot to where the route starts in the morning and vice versa in the afternoon.

Now considering where the two depots are that means a run of probably around 10km. The bus then runs into somewhere like Belconnen where it terminates then has to make it’s way back to the burbs, so add another 10km to the dead running list. So we are up to 20km by the end of the 2nd run. So add a 3rd and a school run and already before the end of the peak your looking at 30-40km.

This is offset by the buses that run the odd contra peak flow service or those that operate the 300 series as these don’t need to dead run as much as they operate routes that have equal services in both ways.

With the dead running it could well be argued that the service could be improved by operating these buses in service. However this will take more time than running empty, which in turn means more buses are required and more drivers are required which means more cost.

Likewise out stationing buses (as they do for trains) is not very practical.

So dead running isn’t necessarily the evil pollies are making out.

X71 said :

So, you are saying that the bus shouldn’t stop within 2km of my house?
It was raining that day when raiders got beat 40 zip. I would of preferd to sit in a warm dry bus than walk in the rain.
As for a card…I only catch a bus about twice a year. Why should I be penalized for being an occasional user?

Fair enough if it was raining, but there is nowhere in Harrison that is more than 2km from a bus stop. The 58 runs through parts of Harrison itself and there are at least three or four routes that run up Flemington Road.

If you’re only using the bus twice a year, paying an extra $3 a year over regular bus users can’t be considered a penalty.

Buses aren’t the most convenient option, especially outside commute hours, but for Harrison at least, the ACTION routes aren’t as terrible as they’re made out to be.

puggy said :

puggy said :

Sorry for the quote foobar above, should be cut after …”banks are closed”

So, you are saying that the bus shouldn’t stop within 2km of my house?
It was raining that day when raiders got beat 40 zip. I would of preferd to sit in a warm dry bus than walk in the rain.
As for a card…I only catch a bus about twice a year. Why should I be penalized for being an occasional user?

puggy said :

Sorry for the quote foobar above, should be cut after …”banks are closed”

Problem:

X71 said :

I tried to catch a bus two Saturdays ago from Harrison to gungahlin raiders club.

which is less than 2km. Hence the solution:

X71 said :

… so I decided to walk the 20 min instead.

As far as

X71 said :

I caught the bus and they wanted $4 for the 2 bus stops!

goes, it’s about $2.50 on a MyWay card. You don’t need to keep much credit on a card and they are readily available. No one whines that they have to have an ATM card to get cash when the banks are closed.

No wonder no one catches a bus. ACTION would make more profit by scraping all bus services and buying a fleet of electric cars that would be positioned around the place for people to use.
Until that tech exists, maybe they could buy everyone a cheap car and put their money into building more roads.

I tried to catch a bus two Saturdays ago from Harrison to gungahlin raiders club. The bus was 5 min late so I decided to walk the 20 min instead. Of course the bus went past me 3 min later!
On the way home from the game I caught the bus and they wanted $4 for the 2 bus stops!

No wonder no one catches a bus. ACTION would make more profit by scraping all bus services and buying a fleet of electric cars that would be positioned around the place for people to use.
Until that tech exists, maybe they could buy everyone a cheap car and put their money into building more roads.

Felix the Cat6:34 pm 17 Jun 12

“The Government has always stated that smaller buses in less populated areas is not cost effective…”

Problem with buying smaller buses you still need the normal size buses for peak hou,r so you then have the added expense/waste of another lot of buses that sit parked for half the day (plus the cost of buying them and dont forget servicing and rego).

Its not ACTION that needs to listen. Its your elected politicians.

I invite people to have a read of this paper from 1976:
http://www.atrf.info/papers/1976/1976_Webb_Cooper.pdf

Any familiar issues in that ancient tome ? Unless there is a modal change away from buses as the mass transit heavy lifter in Canberra, we will continue to experience these problems.

Politicians need to act in the best interest of Canberrans, not their best interests every 4 years.

fabforty said :

ACTION might get somewhere if they actually listened to customer complaints and acted upon them. A couple of years ago I sent an e-mail to the “customer service” address stating that my route was routinely severely overcrowded and the buses were old, dirty and mostly without air-conditoning. It was several weeks before I received their “nothing” reply. The problem continued so I wrote another e-mail. The long-awaited response this time was basically “we won’t take your word for this, we’ll use data from My Way”.

Luckily I no longer need to take the bus.

The acronym ACTION is often modified to read “IN-ACTION” or “INDUSTRIAL ACTION”

Please don’t listen to Alistair’s crap. Dead running is en par with national levels and the budget just announced an extra terminus here and there (and the reopening of woden depot as parking only which is exactly the kind of thing OP is asking for) to bring it down even more.

Why do we subsidise tickets 5:1 and what are the most profitable routes? If only there was a document that explained this… oh wait there is http://www.transport.act.gov.au/pdf/Public_Transport_EDS_ACT_Transport_Policy_FA_final_web.pdf
Basically there are three networks – the extremely profitable peak pubes transport service, the alright school routes business and the bleeding heart off-peak disabled/elderly/low income concessions network which promises a bus stop every 500m.

It beggars belief that old man Coe seems to spend his time writing press releases about the same issue over and over when he could be reading and criticising what the government actually comes up with. Maybe some day a Liberal will have actual policy instead of mindless negativity when he wants to be elected?

ACTION might get somewhere if they actually listened to customer complaints and acted upon them. A couple of years ago I sent an e-mail to the “customer service” address stating that my route was routinely severely overcrowded and the buses were old, dirty and mostly without air-conditoning. It was several weeks before I received their “nothing” reply. The problem continued so I wrote another e-mail. The long-awaited response this time was basically “we won’t take your word for this, we’ll use data from My Way”.

Luckily I no longer need to take the bus.

damien haas said :

Part of the reason ACTION has a lot of dead running is that it is a bus service asked to do two things:

be a local bus service
be an intertown bus service

I suspect many of the dead running services would be intertown services that have concluded their run. At peak hour, many empty buses would be returning from the ‘burbs.

It would be better if intertown services were replaced by light rail, then buses could be retasked to increase frequency of local services. Thi is better all round for local users and commuters travelling between employment and population centres.

Agree.
And the light rail can be the latest battery powered (no overhead wires) system now being used in Munich. The Labor government cannot sqib on the cost factor as it is one third of the cost of the proposals they have been “looking at” and it is clean, green and can run to Queanbeayan and beyond immediately. Ban buses from the main intertown thoroughfares and then ACTION buses and “runs” can be sold off to existing drivers who are interested – if not interested sell to private operators like the taxi system. The current annual ratepayers subsidy would only be needed for the first 2 years to fund the light rail. The ACT would then have an efficient, cost effective integrated transport system free of ratepayer subsidies.
Of course we could always keep the current system and build another arboretum.

They would have picked all this up during modelling….. or are ACTION routes *not* the result of rigorous mathematical modelling by operations research specialists? A fraction of the money lost to empty running might be well spent on it.

Part of the reason ACTION has a lot of dead running is that it is a bus service asked to do two things:

be a local bus service
be an intertown bus service

I suspect many of the dead running services would be intertown services that have concluded their run. At peak hour, many empty buses would be returning from the ‘burbs.

It would be better if intertown services were replaced by light rail, then buses could be retasked to increase frequency of local services. Thi is better all round for local users and commuters travelling between employment and population centres.

Madam Cholet2:16 pm 17 Jun 12

Ok Alistair…..I mean Innovation….

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