Session coverage by guest blogger Yvonne Kirk
Session Details
- Presented by Andrew Herrington
- Location: Room Four
- Time: Session #4 (1:40pm - 2:15pm)
- Number of Attendees: 11
- Format: Presentation and discussion
Key Session Points:
How can we achieve 200 million trips on public transport?
First we need to ask how can we achieve 100 million trips
buy more trains
more Smartbus routes
more local buses
maximise peak hour capacity
Increase off peak frequency to 10 mins on most lines
Increase occupancy rates/minimise crowding
100m trips = 5% pa growth
Achievable by 2018?
10 minutes wait time is becoming an accepted community expectation. DoT has been focused on peak hour demand - run as few trains as you can get away with. But this is changing - you can get a train at 9.30 at night and not get a seat on some lines. Need to look at how we are utilising our trains.
How do you get beyond that and go to 200m trips
Complete separation of lines/build metro
Signalling etc to achieve 24+ trains per peak hour
Build line extensiosn to all growth corridors
Achievable by 2022?
Capacity - ball park estimates (from slide)
Deliver capacity
Trains - Currently 232 total trips, 290 by 2018, 350 by 2022
Trams - 176.9 total trips, 200 by 2018, 220 by 2022 (+24)
Bus - 127.6 total trips, 160 by 2018, 180 by 2022 (+40%)
total trips 536.5 total trips, 650 by 2018, 750 by 2022 (+40%)
Discussion
Efforts to produced activity centres have not produced polycentric cities. Need to include other factors such as giving trams priority, bicycles, demand management
Andrew hasn’t emphasised extensions etc as we can get more capacity out of existing trams, trains and tracks.
Why can’t we push occupancy rate of cars back up? Car sharing in Sydney - successful? What we have now is unsustainable. Need to transition back to higher occupancy rates in cars.
200 million trips by PT - but only buses can be changed overnight. How are they going to do it because rail and tram can’t be adapted. Need to invest in tram and train. Have 8 years.
Why don’t we just have SmartBuses which have predictable, circular routes? Melburnians anti buses. People with poor PT in past have lapped up these orbital routes. Bus Tracker is absolutely critical.
To achieve signalling improvements - very complicated. Can’t be done line-by-line because of branching lines. Definitely a long-term solution.