Re: Bus Privatization

["Peter Parker" <parkerp@alphalink.com.au>]

C. P. Zilliacus <patrick.zilliacus@mix.cpcug.org> wrote in message
8vbids$gai$1@nnrp1.deja.com">news:8vbids$gai$1@nnrp1.deja.com...
> In article

>
> What is wrong with buses competing with rail?  In Washington (D.C.),
> as the rail system has opened, the transit authority has turned-back
> bus routes at the rail stations.  In many cases, this has led to
> LONGER travel times for patrons, which might be OK with a "captive"
> group of riders, but is not good if the idea is to lure people from
> the private automobiles onto transit.

It's inefficient and wasteful.

Consider a system where there is a fixed number of route kilometres
can be travelled (due to lack of vehicles, drivers and cost constraints).
Consider an
outer suburban route that went into the city that duplicates a rail line.
Let's say it
runs every 30 min and is 45 kilometres long, 30 km of this duplicating the
train.
 Let's eliminate the duplication but leave the route kilomeres
constant (ie reduce route to 15km, serving only those areas away from the
rail station).
  What do we get?  A bus every 10 minutes.  The gain may even be greater
than this
as the bus is not held up in congested inner-city streets, and providing
more kilometres of
service to outer suburbs, where it's needed.

Provided that it was co-ordinated with an equally frequent train service,
that sort of service
is more likely to lure people from their cars.  Another bonus is that the
frequency of the
route makes transfers to cris-crossing bus routes along the line more
convenient, and thus
makes it easier for public transport to serve many local and cross-suburban
trips.

A city such as Toronto has a grid network based on the above.  If you look
at the route
kilometres of service provided, it is not much more than Melbourne.  However
their patronage is
2 to 3 times us, and a much greater percentage of their population has
access to frequent public
transport than us.   Why?