Page 829 - Week 02 - Thursday, 23 February 2012

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2. Drivers, field transport officers and passengers provide the majority of feedback regarding capacity issues. MyWay data is now also able to be used to confirm capacity issues. Issues are investigated and considered by ACTION’s scheduling team, and changes are implemented where it is possible to do so or put forward in budget submissions.

3. The Government uses strategic transport planning models to forecast peak demands for the short, medium and long term. The transport models take into account spatial distribution and the growth of population, employment, retail activity; and students (both at schools and tertiary institutions).

	Patronage per vehicle kms	Patronage per vehicle km hour	Cost per vehicle kms	Average network speed
2006-07	0.79	20.80	3.95	26.48
2007-08	0.81	21.63	4.42	26.62
2008-09	0.80	20.62	4.50	25.74
2009-10	*0.70	*18.25	4.31	25.98
2010-11	*0.64	*16.21	4.44	25.52

*The lower patronage figures per vehicle kilometre and vehicle hour from 2009-10 onwards is largely due to an annual increase of around 9% in both vehicle kilometres and vehicle hours due to the introduction of Redex services and Network 10.

In the context of these figures, since Redex services commenced in November 2009, patronage on these services for the months of November and December for the years 2009 to 2011 show significant increases:

	2009	2010	2011	Increase from 2009 to 2011
November	15,345	39,717	62,072	46,727 or 304.5%
December	25,906	36,785	49,336	23,439 or 90.4%

It should be noted that the five-year patronage figures were impacted significantly by a reduction in recorded patronage data in 2009-10 and 2010 11 as the result of faulty ticketing machines (as reported by the Auditor-General, August 2010).

5. TAMS uses a fare elasticity of -0.3 in its fare modelling, that is, every 10% increase in fares results in an expected 3% drop in patronage.

6. To avoid ‘bus bunching’ ACTION schedules bus arrival and departure times based on the frequency and running time requirements of each route.

‘Bus bunching’ may occur during peak travel time and is more likely to affect high frequency services such as the Blue Rapid, which operates every 5 to 8 minutes in the peaks.

ACTION encourages feedback on “bus bunching” and can confirm that where a service is identified as continually experiencing “bus bunching” due to early/late running, the route is assessed and the run time amended to ensure the scheduled time can be met.

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