Re: re: My trip to Adelaide

David Proctor (daproc@spamsux.bigfoot.com)
Mon, 27 Apr 1998 00:40:02 +1000

peter berrett wrote in message <3542CD21.4067@tbsa.com.au>...
>> To a point. Lets say 50 people on a bus (roughly). Lets say a 20 car
>> Overland as you suggest carries 1000 people (roughly 50 per carriage).
Thus
>> to run another train you would need to attract 1000 people off other
modes.
>> Even a seeding service with 5 cars would need to attract 250 people with
>> more to stay viable. Hence to compare the frequencies of service, I would
>> GUESS there would be around 20 buses a day to Adelaide

A huge error in your guess - ordinarily, Greyhound-Pioneer have two buses a
day (one day, one overnight) McCafferty's have one bus (overnight) and
Firefly have one service (also overnight) - total four buses a day. During
school holiday periods, they do run extra buses, but to the same schedules
as at the moment.

>> This means that on average, there could potentially be a bus
>> leaving almost every hour.

You're kidding aren't you? Even if there were 20 buses a day, do you think
anybody would run them hourly? It is a 10 hour bus trip, and a bus leaving
at 5pm would arrive at 3am - very attractive arrival time - similarly, could
you imagine any demand for buses leaving at 2am or 3am? The only possibilty
for any route of this length is morning and evening departures.

> If a train attracts 250 passengers somehow to run
>> 1 extra train whose service frequency is now 12 hours, the buses
frequency
>> now goes down to 24/15 or 1 hr 20 minutes on average.

I can't be bothered replying to any more of the fallacious arguments
espoused by somebody who obviously knows NOTHING about the coach industry -
as somebody who used to work for Deluxe, Bus Australia and Greyhound, and
then for a travel agency with a heavy emphasis on coach travel, I do know a
little bit about the industry - unfortunately Peter, and don't take this
personally, you do not.

Regards

David "The Doctor" Proctor
daproc@spamsux.bigfoot.com

(remove the "spamsux" to reply)