Transport—Effective Public Transport

Public transport is increasingly called on to serve diverse objectives – ranging from providing mobility to the disadvantaged through to alleviating traffic congestion – while making efficient use of financial resources. The challenge for public transport seems daunting. It must cater for travellers with very different needs, ranging from peak-period access to the CBD to all-day access to local shops and community centres. It also needs to provide attractive service frequencies and operating hours for multiple destinations, while maintaining high occupancy rates. One approach to diverse travel patterns is to provide separate services for different markets: express buses and trains for peak commuters; regular buses for local trips along busy corridors; paratransit for low-demand corridors and times. The problem with this approach is that the more public transport becomes tailor-made, the more it surrenders its environmental and economic advantages. A public transport system offering a direct service between every origin and destination would have low frequencies, low occupancies, high costs and high greenhouse emissions per passenger.

The alternative is networks. This approach enables ‘anywhere-to-anywhere’ travel while keeping occupancy rates high, by carrying different kinds of travellers on the same services. Transfers are integral to a public transport system that offers access to a large number of potential destinations at an affordable cost to the operator. Traditional public transport planning has treated transfers as an inconvenience to be avoided at all costs, but the network approach makes them the building blocks of a mult-idestinational system. While transfers present many new travel opportunities, they also impose inconvenience. Creating effective transfer-based public transport systems requires careful planning to ensure that the inconvenience is reduced to the minimum possible. Four key elements underpin the creation of high-quality, transfer-based networks:

1. A simple line structure: simplicity makes the network easier for passengers to understand, and it reduces the resources that an operator must provide.

2. Stable line and operating patterns: a network must also be stable. The idea is to provide a consistent, high-quality service across the network all day, rather than operating different service types in peak, off-peak, night and weekend time periods.

3. Convenient transfers: easy transferring requires attention to timetables and physical facilities. ‘Random’ transfers are possible when all lines serving an interchange point operate frequently, generally every 10 minutes or better. ‘Timed’ transfers are needed when services are less frequent, and the timetables for connecting lines must be coordinated.

4. Appropriate institutions and fare systems: fare systems must allow free transfers. The pooling of fare revenues is essential for this; and to allow cross subsidies. Planning on a whole-of-system basis seems to require a single responsible regional agency.