Re: SOT - Solution to Westbus Problem?

[Santosh Bhat <santosh@student.unsw.edu.au>]

Buses in Sydney should only serve as feeders to the railway system.
We've got a good enough rail network, and a bad enough road network to
stop buses travelling from one end of the city to another.


Erk wrote:
> 
> According to the cover of The Daily Cynic, Westbus have a plan to solve the
> problems that have been reported. They are:
> 
> 40 new high capacity buses
> 25 new midibuses
> $8 million to rebuild Northmead and Bonnyrigg Depots
> Service review starting 1/1/2001
> Extra supervisory staff to monitor and respond to service complaints
> Improved mangement training.

So that's just more people to ignore customers then? There needs to be a
serious investigation made into the bus industry in Sydney, god knows
what might get revealed. They must be possible one of the few protected
transport services in Australia!

> <cynic> I'm sure that will do the trick. That is like CityRail buying 40 new
> 4GT trains, rebuilding Flemo MC and having an internal talkfest between
> managers. </cynic>
> 
> Methinks that Westbus is trying to compete (albeit unsuccessfully and with
> at least half of the services) with CityRail on selected routes. Routes
> where this occurs IMHO include:
> 
> Hills - City (competing Epping - City)
> Penrith - St Marys
> St Marys - Mt Druitt
> Penrith - Liverpool
> Liverpool - Parramatta
> Parramatta - Blacktown

The hills area covers more the area around Castle Hill and goes along
the M2 motorway into the city. I don't think that many people from the
Epping area would use this service.

> I have seen over time many of these services running empty over long
> distances. They should concentrate on serving areas not well served by rail
> and let CityRail do the station-station stuff. So to use the examples above,
> none of these services would operate as listed. Instead:
> 
> Hills - City would operate Hills - Epping or Parramatta only

My opinion (with no statistics to prove it) - this is a good service
actually as the Hills area has a high residential population but nothing
to move them about other than roads. Isn't there plans for a rail line
out to Castle Hill at some point?
 
> Penrith - St Marys would operate to Penrith to suburbs like Werrington
> County, Claremont Meadows, Kingswood South etc etc
> 
> St Marys - Mt Druitt would operate to suburbs like Tregear, Wilmott,
> Lethbridge Park etc (there seems to be duplication between Westbus and
> Busways which doesn't seem to make a difference to service levels)
> 
> Penrith - Liverpool - services operate in the local area/suburbs only
> 
> Liverpool - Parramatta - - services operate in the local area/suburbs only
> 
> Parramatta - Blacktown  - services operate in the local area/suburbs only

I can't speak for the others above, but I notice that on the Parramatta
- Blacktown service, the bus basically goes to every second station and
doesn't cover much of the local area really, and even then the headways
of the services are so bad its not worth waiting for a bus.

Westbus don't accept State Transit student concessions either. That
annoys me to no end. I can walk in 20mins what they want to charge me
almost $2 for! And that way I don't play the Westbus Lottery of "how
long will I have to wait given the next scheduled bus wont show up!"


Santosh

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