Re: My trip to Adelaide
M.B. and C.M.McDonald (Michael.and.Colleen.Mcdonald@xtra.co.nz)
27 Apr 1998 10:56:52 GMT
David Penna <djpenna@one.net.au> wrote in article
<3543E0A6.4C27@one.net.au>...
> I'm not going into the whole thread, but willing to point out an error in
the argument
> that peter didn't pick up!
>
> peter berrett wrote:
> >
> > Yyuri wrote
> >
> > > 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 (accurate
answers
> > > welcomed) This means that on average, there could potentially be a
bus
> > > leaving almost every hour.
>
> I'm not sure of the number of buses going to Adelaide either, but I'm
sure that 20 buses
> a day does not equal one bus an hour. It probably means 10 buses
leaving at the same
> time, twice a day; or at best 7 buses leaving at the same time three
times a day. I
> remember a bus trip I took from Melbourne to Sydney some years ago (the
train was booked
> out), and distinctly remember a refreshment stop at Albury, we arrived
and there was
> one bus there also stopped for refreshments. Within 10 minutes I counted
13 buses - all
> going to Sydney. Those 13 buses did not represent a 2 hourly frequency of
buses, but the
> equivalent of probably one 10 ten carriage train travelling on the Hume
rather than rail
> tracks. Food for thought .
>
> 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. Convenience is
still
> > > weighted in favour of the bus service. Plus even if you attracted
more
> > > people, the train service frequency wouldn't improve unless you then
decided
I posted earlier (a couple of months ago) re me experiences of buses from
Sydney to Brisbane to go to Expo, when the train was fully booked. Any
company you liked, but they all left about the same time!
That was an aside .. another problem with the argument is that the train
necessarily has to be 10 carriages. More frequent services can be run with
shorter trains. The knack is to get your combination of service frequency
and price right.
A further flaw of the argument has been the assumption that travel is a
"fixed" market. Comfortable and efficient services can persuade people to
travel more or when they would have previously just stayed home. This is
what has been happening in the Telecommunications industry.
Michael McDonald