Doubling patronage (without peak hour pain)
Metro Trains boss Andrew Lezala remarked on Tuesday at the Parliamentary Select Committee on Train Services that he hoped to see rail patronage double by 2020.
“Our overall plan is to double patronage on the railway during the life of the franchise, which requires a major increase in the system’s capacity.”
I think there’s two important points to make here:
Not peak
It does not mean piling double the number of people into trains at peak hour, going into the CBD.
Travel into the CBD at peak hour is already dominated by public transport. It’s just the last hold-out rev-heads who fight their way through traffic to their employer-paid $16+ per day parking spots, as well as those whose lack of access to decent PT dictates that they drive. (They might change their minds if they get a train to Doncaster, for instance.)
(Source: Central City Users Survey 2008, page 62, weekday figures)
Peak hour is all about 9-5 workers and students. Melbourne City Council estimates show by 2020 these segments will grow from 431,000 per day to 520,000 — about 20% growth. (That’s entire City of Melbourne, not just the CBD.)
About half of all people come in by train now, so if every single one of those extra people was also coming by train in peak hour (unlikely), that’s at most a 40% increase in peak train passenger numbers — a long way from the 100% growth Metro is aiming for.
Other groups such as visitors will increase too, but they are less likely to be travelling in peak hour.
By far the biggest potential growth market (and Lezala realises this) is in off-peak travel: daytime, weekend, evening, and to destinations other than the city centre. Plenty of people are moving around Melbourne outside peak times, but because train (and other PT) services are pretty poor, most of them are moving by road — in fact some roads are now clogged seven days-a-week.
It’s all about providing more frequent services right across the week, which not only grows patronage at a time when there are heaps of spare trains and spare track capacity, it also helps spread the peak load.
And of course you also need frequent supporting bus/tram feeder services so people can get to the trains all day, given the car parks fill up by 8am, and so many people live beyond walking distance to stations, or are going to places not served by trains.
Timetabling in the peak
Secondly, he made the point that the timetables need a shake-up. One of the reasons peak hour trains are so packed (and conversely some have plenty of space) is we’re running a mid-90s train timetable with lots of bolt-ons added over the years. The extra services added have been slotted in wherever they could fit, and so the stopping patterns are all over the place, and the frequencies are uneven on many lines.
Take for example the times of AM peak hour trains leaving Carnegie, one of the busiest suburban stations on the Dandenong line:
…7:06, 7:10, 7:26, 7:30, 7:40, 7:43, 7:47, 7:57, 8:05, 8:11, 8:22, 8:27, 8:30…
They have different origin points, and serve different stations before getting to Carnegie, but in many cases they trail each other through the same stations.
I confess I haven’t checked these myself, but I’d lay odds that the 7:10 may be close to empty while the 7:26 will be packed, and the 7:40 is going to be much more crowded than the 7:47.
So you can see what he’s getting at when Lezala says the timetables need simplifying, with more regular stopping patterns and frequencies.
Expresses
And yes, I suspect some zone 1 stations will lose their odd occasional express services: at my station Bentleigh I’m betting the 8:06 and 8:17 Bent-Caul-S.Yarra expresses may well disappear.
But if it means more services overall, with more even frequencies (none of the 16 minute gaps you sometimes see now), I think that more than makes up for it.
Tags: Metro, public transport, trains
18 comments
One month of Myki
COMMUTERS are ignoring Government advice and are using myki cards on trams as well as trains.
…
(Jean Ker Walsh said) ”Myki equipment on trams is turned on for use by testers and system auditors,” she said. ”Everyone else on the tram should have a valid Metcard.”– The Age, Caution urged for travellers who take the myki on trams
The Myki scanners on the trams (those that work, anyway; I saw lots yesterday that aren’t) are sitting there like everything’s fully functioning, asking you to touch your card.
How about if they said “Testing only” or “Valid for authorised testers only”? How else are people meant to know? Or even notices on the trams that say so? Would that be so hard?
MYKI has been in operation for a month and the verdict is to keep using Metcard for as long as you can.
The Public Transport Users Association has advised commuters to stick with the old system until all myki’s bugs are ironed out.
Too right.
I know some people are using it and like it. And I think on trains, it’s probably 90% there.
But there are enough problems with station gates being slow or unresponsive that it would cause utter chaos if everybody was using it.
Not to mention the problems with over-charging, or most seriously, payments through the web site just completely going missing.
One of my neighbours summed it up best when he said to me that he paid money in and it just vanished. He rang the call centre.
“Yes, we’ve heard of a lot of problems like this.”
“… And? What are you going to do about it?”
They didn’t know.
Apart from the system faults, even basic stuff, like putting a Myki machine in every station, hasn’t been done.
I was at Frankston station on Monday. One of the busiest suburban stations, it has five Metcard machines, and NO Myki machine. Even if space was a problem, why on earth couldn’t they have taken a single Metcard machine out so there was at least one Myki machine?
“We are continuing to advise passengers not to use Myki, but to stick to Metcard instead. By all means get a Myki card while they’re offered for free, but stick it in the drawer for a few months until the system works properly”
That page has a long list of problems found in just the first month of operation in Melbourne.
Like I’ve said before: Don’t use it unless you’re looking for trouble. And whatever you do, do NOT pay any money into the web site.
Tags: Myki, public transport
21 comments
Secret identity
It seems my secret identity has been revealed…
Tags: Ted Ballieu
13 comments
The Metcard mess, and what Metlink does
I was going to write a blog post about yesterday’s Metcard kerfuffle, in particular pointing out that despite my initial speculation, the Transport Act only requires passengers to make a reasonable attempt to buy and validate your ticket.
It doesn’t require you to buy another ticket if yours doesn’t work, carry spare change, plead with passengers for change, and finally get off the tram if no alternative is available. That appears to be bad advice given to both the Authorised Officers (inspectors) and Metlink staff in this case. It is well beyond what is “reasonable”. It’s also illogical; nobody would have the expectation that, having bought the ticket and tried it unsuccessfully in two validators, they might get fined.
In the case of this punter, it appears his ticket may have been faulty, and was taken away for investigation, and he was told twice, separately, completely the wrong thing about what he should have done to avoid a fine. Messy.
What Metlink does
Rather than rant some more about that case, instead I’m just going to point this out this little factoid which often escapes peoples attention:
Metlink is a marketing body. It provides information. That’s all they do.
It doesn’t run services. It doesn’t plan timetables*. It doesn’t manage Authorised Officers. It doesn’t issue fines. It doesn’t review or revoke fines. It doesn’t run the ticketing system. It doesn’t handle complaints against operators.
You could be forgiven for thinking they do more — the arrangements are quite confusing. In this case alone, you’ve got Yarra Trams (who run the service and employ the Authorised Officers), the state government (who authorise the Authorised Officers, write the legislation they act under, and review the Reports Of Non-Compliance that the AOs write, and decide if they’ll result in fines), OneLink (who operates the Metcard system), Metlink (to whom the passenger made enquiries about it).
I wish I could explain all this with a diagram, but I don’t have the time to draw one up. Instead, here’s an official (though obscure) diagram of how the trains are managed. (And this one is more about operations and maintenance, so it excludes most of the other bodies above.)
No wonder people are confused, and why some are calling for reform of how PT is managed.
*Actually, it appears that nobody co-ordinates timetables across modes, which is why trams and buses and trains connect so badly. Well, apart from a handful of bus/train and bus/tram connections that are so rare they have a special name.
Call me Bruce
My name’s really Daniel, but if you like you can call me Bruce.
More fun with Google translations of a Chinese media article:
…
Victorian government has not yet determined when to start full operation ultra-budget Myki ticketing system, it was originally promised in 2007 and spent 130 million on the operation of the system, will begin before Christmas on buses, trains and trams on the use of .…
Myki ticketing system, a spokesman for Wal-Mart (Jean Ker Walsh) told reporters Tuesday that if the passengers forget that credit card, they will pay the Myki ticketing system to automatically set the fare. She added that the system will save commuters a lot of transportation costs, and believe that it soon will Myki ticketing system handy.Public Transport Users Association president Bruce Bowen (Daniel Bowen) that are subject to credit card on the off, especially in the trams, the traffic peak period may be extended travel time, will inevitably increase the tram and bus delays.
…– Australia, Victoria’s controversial e-ticketing system — Epoch Times
Apart from the obvious stuff with the translation back to English mixing-up names and affiliations, I also like the way they appear to have got the cost of the system wrong by a factor of ten.
Tags: Google translation, Myki, PTUA
4 comments
Fining lots of people is not the solution to fare evasion
Melbourne’s tram operator also set a target of catching more than 60,000 commuters over a nine-month period.
– Herald Sun, 11/9/2009, “Tram inspectors pushed to meet their quotas“
See, after all these years, they’re still going about it the wrong way.
I don’t think the deterrent of fines is really working. The measure of success or failure in revenue protection should be the occurrence of fare evasion, not the number of fines issued.
Success is found by making it easy for people to buy a ticket, and hard for them to avoid it. To a certain extent you can see this in these Metlink fare evasion stats (from August 2009, and which include concession fraud):
- Train 7.6% — most people use a staffed station at least one end of their trip, and the biggest patronage growth is based around trips to/from a handful of gated CBD stations
- Bus 6.2% — traditionally low because people have to pass the driver when boarding
- Tram 13.0% — higher in part due to the fact that passengers are unlikely to get their tickets checked at all on most trips
If there’s a large number of fines being issued year after year, it probably means there are still lots of people evading, as you can bet only a fraction of them are being caught.
Simple things like can help a lot, like consistent staffing.
Here’s an example of where, for all the bluster about fare evasion, sometimes the operators just don’t take it seriously:
Back in 2006 I noticed the Degraves St subway gates weren’t being staffed most of the time. I took notes for about a month, and found no staff were present most of the time, even in peak hour. And I started to see people who were obviously looking around to find an open gate into Flinders Street to catch trains for free.
So I did what any fare-paying customer who is sick of seeing others having a free ride would do: I issued a press release and organised a Herald Sun story!
WHILE the Government subsidises a $1 million advertising blitz to shame fare evaders, tens of thousands of commuters are flowing through open barriers at Melbourne’s busiest train station.
– Herald Sun, 25/8/2006 — “Fare evaders find the gaps”
A Connex spokesperson blamed reduced staff numbers due to illness, but miraculously following that, everybody got better, and staffing of that exit jumped to 100%.
The operators shouldn’t need to be told this stuff via the newspapers. It should be obvious.
Random patrols and over-zealous fines haven’t worked. Put staff back on the system, make it easy to pay, and hard not to, and evasion will drop.
By the way: technically Inspectors are Authorised Officers, who are employees of the private operators who are authorised by the government with powers under Transport Act. And they don’t issue fines directly, they write out a Record Of Non-Compliance (RONC) which goes to the Department of Transport, which then decides whether or not to issue the fine. The operating company gets $30 from the fine.
Why is this even a problem?
The issue of new trams being too long for some tram platform stops was highlighted in The Age the other day, and on ABC Radio’s AM.
But having got all the information about it now, I don’t see why it’s a problem.
From the document specifying the new order of trams:
Optimal operation of the new trams will require modifications to be made to selected tram stops. The vehicles will be about 32m in length which will become the standard for Melbourne’s trams. Some short platform (below 30m standard) stops will need lengthening by a few metres to allow optimal boarding and alighting. Until all platforms are extended, trams will need to isolate the rear door to prevent passengers alighting where there is no safe refuge or platform.
and:
Manufacture and Delivery Phase
First tram acceptance Third Quarter 2012
Fifth tram acceptance First Quarter 2013
Sixth tram acceptance Third Quarter 2013
Ongoing deliverable at 10 trams per annum
What the Age reporter was not told, and also wasn’t revealed (at least to me) until the AM story aired was that only 20 stops (out of 300) are too short.
Presumably none of them are on route 96, where the existing five 32m long Bumblebee trams already run. The Bumblebees will return to France in 2011.
So the question is why bother with the expense and time (and passenger confusion, causing delays) of fiddling with the rear door on the new trams, when the first five can just run on route 96 initially. That gives them until Q3/2013 to fix these 20 stops. That’s four years away — surely that’s plenty of time to get it done?
No, the real issue is that the last of these 50 trams won’t be running for about 8 years!
PS. The platform stop pictured above is in Bourke Street, and is not one of the short ones. But it suddenly occurs to me that this is the kind of photo that gets New Urbanism fans all excited, as it shows public transport integrated into its surroundings. See, sometimes we can get things right in Melbourne.
Tags: public transport, trams
9 comments
Something for your Pod
I don’t have a post for you this morning, so here’s something I prepared earlier.
This morning I had a chat to the people at 3CR about PT issues, and it reminded me of this recording from Joy FM back in April. I think they’d been intending to post the podcast themselves, but haven’t… so I’ll do it myself.
- Public transport — Joy FM “Heating Up” 6/4/2009 (MP3 — 8 mins 39 secs, 8Mb)
There’s a couple of spots where it seems to skip very slightly (though nothing that really causes an issue listening) — sorry about that, it was recorded off a slightly dodgy stream. When recording it I rabbited on and on… they’ve chopped it down to just over 8 minutes.
By the way, to clarify on the anecdote of Frank Casey, he wasn’t a disruptive passenger — he got cranky because the train he was on was said to be out of service and terminated, then once all the passengers had alighted, it left and continued on its journey, empty.
Hope it’s not too boring — happy listening!
Tags: PTUA, public transport, radio
3 comments
