Would you take a bus if it were 'free'?

Good public transport which is of fixed design has significant impacts upon the futures of cities. People choose to live near it, and will pay a premium. Employers choose to operate near it (to attract employees). Governments use it to guide development.

I think a key driver of the ALP change of heart on light rail, is more the opportunity to reap revenue from transport oriented development, than sustainability. But as one outcome leads to the other, thats OK.

How many people regularly need to go from one end of Canberra to the other? SFA that’s how many!

And how many people going to work at JDOC? SFA as well!

It’s just more BS that will only have a positive impact on a small percentage of Canberrans.

Light rail would have to travel non-stop at 100km/h through town centres to get you from one side of Canberra to the other in 30 minutes. Can you imagine what Northbourne Avenue would look like if this was the case?

>nonsensical ‘busway’ scheme.
The Adelaide O-Bahn for all its cost is vastly succesfully used with buses running at 20 second intervals in peak times on it.

Buses running every 15 minutes would be what 4 times todays frequency? That means at least 4 times the cost to subsidies the buses alone. Then lets not forget that the 100km/h light rail network, which is more like heavy rail, would cost billions in todays dollars and would have to be paid for. How? Increased taxes, increased parking costs, less parking spaces.

Oh if more people lived closer to their work and cycled or walked to work, there would be a lot less obesity. Therefore build more town centre apartment slums.

How much do I have to pay for a realistic timetable?

As Canberra grows light rail will make more and more sense. But we need to be starting now. I don’t really get the defeatist attitude fighting against it.

and the legless lizard is extinct, there is no ridge to save and the lightrail runs on fresh air and sunshine

I agree light rail is not the sole ‘silver bullet’ solution. Its all labout inegration of existing infrastructure and looking at new solutions to existing problems.

So lets look twenty years into the future:

The Canberra region light rail gets from one side of Canberra to the other on grade separated corridors in less than 30 minutes. You can take your bike on board. The ticket system automatically senses the ticket in your wallet which is in your pocket. You dont need to check the bus timetable because with buses running 4 to 5 times an hour, it will be along fairly soon.

Your wife gets off at the Molonglo ‘park’n’ride’ and walks 75 metres to the child minding centre to collect Pandy Jnr. Its open until 7.30 at night, which is convenient for non flex time people. Because you dont need two cars, your family saves 10 grand a year, so when you visit the rellies in Sydney for a holiday, you tell them about the wonderful lifestyle in Canberra.

When you get back, you start your new job at Defence HQ in Bungendore. Thats OK, because now the light rail runs out past Queanbeyan to Bungendore, and although it is a 45 minute ride, at least you dont get stuck in traffic snarls in Queanbeyan. Also its a nice stroll from the Defence stop to you desk, where you helping to plan the invasion of New Zealand.

These solutions are in reach.

regards

Damien Haas

ACT Light Rail

Brilliant ideas, I think if there were mini buses in every neighborhood that connected with the main routes and call buttons on bus shelters with an eta, that would be great, I already use buses and pay would use them more if they had a cafe up the back, telephones like aeroplanes you know.

I like the drivers license Idea. Thats a good one.

hehe

Well if buses were free except peak hour, the pubes would be separated from the great unwashed anyway.

sepi said :

We just need more buses, so we don’t have to sit next to them on a crowded bus.

Tiny little buses that we don’t need to share with anyone else. I wonder what they would look like?

Also, these people are the most likely to need the bus – who wants them driving.

We just need more buses, so we don’t have to sit next to them on a crowded bus.

and yep – schoolkids should only get a discount until 5.00 – after that they should pay full price, to encourage less of a peak usage from 5-6.00 on the bus.

– drivers use their judgment to say “You know what? Maybe these people don’t want to ride with a smelly smack addict – get off”

Oh, so wouldn’t you like to be the one to tell the smelly smack addict to get off Woody?
Or, I know, let’s just let the driver get a punch in the face while I just bravely look on.

I would love to catch a bus to work, but the ‘expresso buses’ take too long and by the time it arrives at my stop, its sardine standing room only! Why would I want to spend 45min plus on a crowded bus with people coughing and picking their noses, when I can drive to work in comfort in less than 20!

PsydFX said :

The fact of the matter is, as I have said before, Canberrans on average are the best paid in Australia, and most of us prefer the convenience a car gives us regardless of fuel or parking prices.

So I’m all right Jack.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see light rail in Canberra, but I don’t think it’s the silver bullet which your making it out to be “ACT Light Rail”.

It’s great you feel so passionate about light rail, but it will never work.

The research on public transport (PT) use is exhaustive, and conclusive.

Frequency, comfort, attractiveness and simple network. That gets people using PT

If you have enough frequency you can know with certainty that you can get from A to B in x time. If the mode of transport is comfortable and you can get on and off quickly, without queuing at the front and then walking all the way from the seat at the back, down to the front to get off, then youre more attracted to use PT. If you can understand that getting on at A delivers you to B, instead of going via E, J and P then you are more likely to use PT.

See where Im heading…

Light Rail as a fixed mass transit backbone, with increased frequency ACTION buses delivering you from your neighbourhood to the light rail nodes is the obvious solution.

Im hoping that the current ALP Government are genuinely committed to the light rail business case, and that the current enthusiasm for light rail survives the election cycle and doesnt come back as a recommendation for more buses powered by hydrogen or some other nonsensical ‘busway’ scheme.

People need to contact their state and federal elected representatives with public transport ideas, voicing them here is only one way to get your view on the public agenda.

Id also encourage anyone with an interest in sustainable transport and light rail to attend the next ACT Light Rail meeting.

Does anyone know who determines the fare structure and what their motivation is?

I took a look at the budget papers and they say ACTION costs about $100 million a year to run and brings in around $20 million in revenue.

It seems that money cost is not a particularly important factor in usage compared to time cost. I have heard anecdotally that the ticketing system costs a large chunk of the ticket revennue. What is the big resistance to just making them free?

pelican said :

There are many reasons why people might not choose to use buses other than the cost factor.

* The weather – too hot/cold/wet/windy
* Too slow compared to alternatives – time spent on a bus is time you don’t have to do other more important things
* Timetable doesn’t fit my work/leisure schedule
* Routes don’t go near where I want to go or involve multiple connections
* Totally impractical – try catching a bus with a length of 6×4 from Bunnings, or the weekly shopping, or more than one kid/slab of beer (or both)
* Unreliable service – if you rely on buses and they don’t turn up or are full you are stranded.
* Inflexibility – trying asking the driver to drop past the shops so you can pick up some milk on the way home.

I’ll go back to catching a bus regularly when:

– they tell kids with free / discounted passes they have to use designated school services instead of overcrowding direct routes to the Parliamentary Triangle, Russell etc

– you need to have a pass to catch particular express buses (don’t have a pass for the 170? Looks like you’ll have to take a regular intertown service from Civic to Woden instead of leaving people who actually need to catch that bus home on the side of the road)

– drivers use their judgment to say “You know what? Maybe these people don’t want to ride with a smelly smack addict – get off”

– they synchronise their watches so you don’t arrive ‘early’ but too ‘late’ to transfer

– there’s actually an incentive to buy a monthly ticket, rather than saving cents in the dollar

– drivers use their judgment to say “hey, maybe this bus is dangerously overcrowded, and those people can catch the next bus instead” rather than having alternating buses that are completely empty

– there’s piped musak instead of talkback radio

– if the bus is more than five minutes late, it’s free

Wide Boy Jake said :

Why would you bother taking a bus if you have a car and a licence? I thought the whole aim of public transport was to get private cars off the road, not to have twice the number of vehicles belching out fumes. What a stupid idea.

The idea is not to get double the amount of vehicles on the road (I’m still puzzling how you came to that conclusion) but to encourage people with a driver’s licence to get on a bus INSTEAD of taking their car. Because, and here’s the catch, they can ride for free. Clever hey?

Why would you bother taking a bus if you have a car and a licence? I thought the whole aim of public transport was to get private cars off the road, not to have twice the number of vehicles belching out fumes. What a stupid idea.

The bus service in Canberra is not good enough to entice me to use it (even if I could – I have a small disability). It takes my hubby nearly an hour to get to work on a bus and 10 minutes by car. He needs the car anyway to see clients during the day.

There are many reasons why people might not choose to use buses other than the cost factor.

so you pay a (small) fee to use the buses, AND you pay for your registration. Why wouldn’t you drive again?

’cause then someone else pays for the petrol andf the angst of driving through the melee of arrogance that is canberra peak moment traffic… plus, i actually really enjoy riding the bike (some people seem to forget this aspect of the question), but i know i have the car for when routine changes and i need it.

AG Canberra said :

I am in the great position to be able to chose one of 5 departure times to and from and I have never had to sit next to “smackies and space invaders” (just the occasional “larger” person.
quote]

If you rarely have to sit next to smackies or space invaders on the bus, it’s likely you are probably one of those two types of people 🙂

I don’t understand why public transport is so difficult in Canberra. With our town centre set up – surely it is easier to run the busses to them in the morning and away from them in the afternoons?

I am a regular busser and yes it takes longer than driving but at 22 bucks a week is far cheaper than paying for fuel and $45 bucks a week for parking. I am in the great position to be able to chose one of 5 departure times to and from and I have never had to sit next to “smackies and space invaders” (just the occasional “larger” person.

Yep – make it free for a set period and let everyone experience the plusses of busses….

PsydFX said :

Here’s a nice green policy for you all that could potentially annoy enough people forcing them to consider either car-pooling or public transport.

More Transit 2 Lanes.
Make a lane of the Parkway T2, a lane on Monaro Hwy T2, make another lane on Adelaide Ave T2 and then police it.

Make it so inconveniet for single car commuters that they are forced to reconsider their travel habits.

Hell yes. Do that, offer free parking for cars carrying 3 or more people in the town centre car parks, and set up a suburb-by-suburb online car-pooling network to make it easy for people to network with others in their suburb going the same way.

2 people in a car causes the same pollution as public transport, so you’d get massive benefits whilst not spending hundreds of millions on unnecessary unfrastructure.

If you want a FREE buse ride……just buy a pushie…..the “tip shop” has some rippers, throw it on the front of the bus…..enter the bus, no money changes hands and the best bit is you have the right to pusn in at the front of the queue and take a seat while leaving the “real people” who pay for the service queing up and by the time you get on the bus its standing room only, bad luck if you an “older person with crook knees”. What else would the “peddlers”like for nothing ?

Some thoughts:

1. There are many people who salary sacrifice their car. One of the conditions of this is that you must drive in excess of 25,000km per year. The Greens regularly complain about the green house gas emissions this causes – and rightly so. What I’d like to see is that public transport usage can be used to count towards your 25,000km. Administratively it probably wouldn’t be easy – especially as most places now have time, rather that distance based ticketing.

2. There needs to be bi-partisan agreement to really improve public transport. i.e. for the next 10+ years governments will expect public transport to be loss making. I reckon you need that sort of time frame to get people to change behaviour in the time cycle of car purchases.

3. Free bus use is a good idea to get people using public transport – I have to admit to not taking buses at time because I don’t understand the ticketing and couldn’t deal with the hassle.

The fare deterred me. My bus went from 2 houses away, direct to work. I caught it for quite a while.

But 6.00 a day to bus, or 7.50 to drive, I eventually ended up driving. (I actually started driving in Winter – waiting for a late bus in minus degrees is no fun).

Pensioners pour onto the buses after nine when their cheap tix start working. I’d make buses free for everyone between 9 and 2.

And I’d reduce the price for normal hours. Everytime ACTION loses more money they increase the prices – which just drives people away. If they reduced the prices more people might bus, and the service might become more viable.

There was a discussion about this a few months ago. I think we came to the conclusion that its not the price, but the bus schedule that deters people.

The fare is not the reason why I rarely catch buses. It’s time and convenience that prevents me from regularly catching buses (as well as the bus that goes to Fyshwick not having bike racks).

For most people who drive, the small cost of the fare is already most likely cheaper than the petrol used. Taking a further 1.5/3 of that amount probably isn’t going to be a great motivation.

Finally I don’t like this policy because it is essentially trickery. If a robber takes my money at gunpoint, and then says ‘you know, I’m actually a vacuum cleaner salesman on the side and I tell you what, take one for free’, I’m still being robbed.

Having to provide enough infrastructure to shunt both the cubicle dwellers and the school kids in the mornings is what makes ACTION a money pit.

Until we formalise a 24/7 work structure, our public transportation is going to cost us and cost us plenty. Alternatively, we can ditch the peak services and just keep the buses for the people ambling about between 9-5.

madocci said :

@PsydFX – you think making the parkway a crawl in the morning would make people use a bus or carpool? Try driving down the M5 in sydney at peak hour. They have access to public transport that is way more time and cost efficient than ours and they all still drive their cars to and from work, pay tolls to use the road daily and drive at a snails pace.

Of course there will always be people who will need to / choose to drive.
All I’m trying to get accross, is that if busses became the faster way to get to work maybe they’d be used a little more than they are and there’d be more car pooling which is better for the environment.

burkes08 said :

Don’t forget the shift workers of the world. Way too hard to get buses on night/early morning shifts without having to leave 4 hours before you start.

I’m a shift worker but I’m lucky that my house and my work are on the same bus route. The only shifts i can’t catch buses for are the ones that start at 6am and Sunday night if I finish late- the majority of the time I catch the bus, I am also lucky enough to have nice colleagues who help me out when I’m in a bind + because i don’t maintain a car, the $20 to work in a taxi is an expense I cop.

Buses can work but I admit I work at making them work for me.

Why would anyone who has kids and works take the bus? It is not practical in this town. Catching buses to childcare, schools, then work, then back again in the afternoon would be just insane. The constant punishment of people who drive to work is rediculous! We have roads, why cant people use them without being punished? We do pay for them after all!

@PsydFX – you think making the parkway a crawl in the morning would make people use a bus or carpool? Try driving down the M5 in sydney at peak hour. They have access to public transport that is way more time and cost efficient than ours and they all still drive their cars to and from work, pay tolls to use the road daily and drive at a snails pace.

Don’t forget the shift workers of the world. Way too hard to get buses on night/early morning shifts without having to leave 4 hours before you start.

PsydFX said :

PsydFX said :

The only way to make people catch busses in Canberra is to pay us all considerably less so that owning and running becomes financially impossible.

owning and running a car that is.

I would argue the opposite. You pretty much have to own a car – try catching the bus to Bunnings on the weekend via the kids soccer match, or doing the weekly shopping etc.

Owning a car currently involves a considerable fixed cost – registration, insurance, depreciation. The less it is driven, the more it costs per kilometre, or conversely the more it is used the lower the cost. It therefore doesn’t make sense to own a car (which is a necessity) and then not use it. If you want people to use buses instead of cars you need to reduce the cost of leaving the car in the garage.

It’s not the cost keeping people away it’s the sucky service.

Here’s a nice green policy for you all that could potentially annoy enough people forcing them to consider either car-pooling or public transport.

More Transit 2 Lanes.
Make a lane of the Parkway T2, a lane on Monaro Hwy T2, make another lane on Adelaide Ave T2 and then police it.

Make it so inconveniet for single car commuters that they are forced to reconsider their travel habits.

It’s interesting – I rode the bus on a regular basis back in 96 or so when there was a driver’s strike (which DIDN’T mean they didn’t drive – instead they just didn’t collect fares!)

However – at that point I was working in Civic. One bus trip only.

For any combination other than that… the bus is essentially useless/awkward/time-consuming. If you work in Civic and live on a bus route that can take you directly to civic … frankly, I dunno why you’re paying for carparking instead, you must be insane!

The intertown routes are more or less the onlt part of ACTION that make any money.

If light rail is implemented between the town centres (as is being spoken about), and the buses were to continue to operate as “feeders” into the town cente interchanges, you might actually have a situation where the buses would operate at a loss anyway. If that were to occur, you’d need to re-evaluate whether it’s worth collecting fares on buses given the overheads.

The cost isn’t the main reason people don’t use busses.
The gratuitous waste of time is the reason people don’t use busses.
Around the peak times it’s not unusual to have 3 or 4 busses (intertown route) drive straight past without stopping.
They’re almost always overcrowded.

What’s worse though is when you’re relying on non-intertown bus that’s coming once on the half hour or hour, and one of the following two things happens:
A: the bus is full (happened to me with the 30 from the city around 6pm – oh joy! Add half an hour onto what’s already a longer journey then by car)

B: arrives early
Busses running late are an annoyance, but the way busses run early is obscene.
It isn’t at all unusual for any bus after around 6:30pm to be running as much as 10 minutes early which means needing to waste yet more time by allowing for +/- 5-10 minutes for the time you need to be at the bus stop to catch the damn thing.

Going on the 30 to Belconnen, I remember a few times where the driver was speeding ridiculously, not only being 10 minutes early, but tearing along Baldwin Dr and down the hill across Gininderra Dr at what has to have been 100 km/h.

It isn’t usually the case that busses don’t arrive – when people complain of this it seems to usually be the case that the bus was running ahead of schedule and arrived before they did.

Now for me as a student at ANU, there isn’t much point to driving to uni as there’s no where to friggin park but for professionals working in and around city whose time is worth $30+ an hour, you’d need to be paying them to get them to take the bus.

ACTION needs to do some marketing..make its ticketing discounts more worthwile… give out 1 week free trial tickets…I started catching the bus 3 months ago..now to drive is an inconveniece…the 701 from Spence to the City is very social, great way to meet people..I have also read 2 novels and arrive home relaxed. Not to mention no hassles parking and watching what I drink and after work drinks.

Despite what people may think backed on some of my previous posts, I don’t think that a free bus is the answer. Getting buses to go frequently, come on time, and take a somewhat non scenic route is the answer. Not free buses.

Making parking in the city a nightmare is not the answer either.

PsydFX said :

The only way to make people catch busses in Canberra is to pay us all considerably less so that owning and running becomes financially impossible.

owning and running a car that is.

I think that makes no sense, why would you penalise the people who are incapable / can’t afford to get thier drivers licenses – i.e. the people who usually depend of busses?

The fact of the matter is, as I have said before, Canberrans on average are the best paid in Australia, and most of us prefer the convenience a car gives us regardless of fuel or parking prices. On top of that most of us don’t like catching busses because they are moving germ factories, and most us feel uncomforatble sitting next to smackies and space invaders.

The only way to make people catch busses in Canberra is to pay us all considerably less so that owning and running becomes financially impossible.

This is such a dead political issue.

Interesting idea. I’d support it but I don’t have a licence so I catch the bus anyways.

I think they should trial free rides for certain times of the day to increase numbers on quieter services (ie, before 7.30am, after 7pm) I could see a lot of people getting used to going to work for free and then paying the $3 to get home in a peak service.

A great idea, but it would eventually fail as pre paying for something will initially work, but over time with the assumed public interest the pre paid quotient would eventually run out causing fares to be raised. Added to this the costs of maintenance and whatever mysterious charges the transport union would come up with would undermine the program in about six months. Plus rising petrol costs, workers pay etc etc etc……..

so you pay a (small) fee to use the buses, AND you pay for your registration. Why wouldn’t you drive again? It would just be another useless tax. Include free buses in your car registration and maybe.

i would certainly catch the bus if it was free – if it went (more or less) when i needed it to… getting to work isn’t an issue, it’s getting home when i work later than core hours (like, almost always) from the parl triangle… but i’m guessing that increased use would likley increase services and it would snowball into a useful ‘service’ like it oughta be.

i’d be in that.

Interesting idea, but the cost isn’t what is keeping me from catching a bus. I need a car to visit clients during the day.

So as someone who hasn’t caught a bus since high school, I wouldn’t really be a fan of the idea.