>Perhaps Perth's train service is in fact a light rail service? I note
>that there are some differences between their system and ours here in
>Melbourne. The fist difference is that most trains are two carriages
>long. The other main difference is the frequency of service namely every
>15 minutes or sooner.
>
That's correct on Monday - Saturdays. Frequency on the Northern suburbs
line can reach 7.5 minutes the last time I looked at the timetable.
However Sunday and evening frequencies are mostly 30 minutes.
>Having used the service I must say that it is one of the best suburban
>train systems I have used in Australia.
As a railway system in isolation it is good, but one of the difficulties
is that Perth grew faster than any other large Australian city after WW2.
During this time the city essentially turned its back on the suburban
rail system, and many (maybe most) large shopping centres have no rail
service, or it's a fair walk to the station. The frequencies of many of
the feeder buses to the stations is not great either. The relative
ineffectiveness of the rail system for many trips is not because of the
service, but because of settlement patterns.
Canberra is an interesting example of a city that is planned on a spine
of high frequency limited-stop buses. All four of the major town centres
that have been developed so far are on this spine. Bus frequencies are 10
min Monday - Friday and 15 min weekends and evenings, but frequency is
likely to increase to 5 min Mondays-Fridays after July 1998. From the
point of view of access to a large proportion of community, retail and
other facilities, I think Canberra does better than Perth, particularly
when extra stops are added to the Intertown service in July. Even though
the ample freeways are testament to the period when the car's dominance
was unquestioned, I still think the town centres (which were planned in
the 1960s-1980s period) are more transit-friendly than the shopping
centres of (say) Perth.
The point is that land use and frequency are more important determinants
of a transport system than if the technology serving the corridor is
bus-based or rail-based. However, in a city the size of Perth, heavy
rail was probably the best option for the Northern suburbs, and
considerably better than the buses it replaced. The main challenge now
is starting to turn development back towards the railway by encouraging
mixed intensive land uses around stations - in the longer term this will
mean a greater proportion of trips will be able to be made by rail than
the low proportion in Perth at the moment. Also, the development of new
suburbs to favour transit (there's a link on my home page on this) is
crucial.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Parker parkerp@pcug.org.au
---------------------------------------------------------------------
URL: http://www.pcug.org.au/~parkerp/
Proudly hosting the following web pages:
* Novice Notes Online
* Australian QRP Home Page
* ACT Sustainable Transport Working Group Home Page
---------------------------------------------------------------------