Last Sunday the 660 new bus services announced by Minister of Active and Public Transport Gabrielle Williams following the recent boost of V/Line train services on the Ballarat, Ararat, Warrnambool and Bendigo Lines were officially introduced across Melbourne's Western suburbs, with most bus services that connected to the Ballarat Line running every 40 minutes on weekends.
While the boost of bus services is welcoming news, there is no detail on how these extra services would be allocated, which is critical in determining the popularity of those services and their potential impacts on residents.
Reliability, speed and frequency are essential for making public transport easy and attractive to use. While adding extra services and timing them with train services help rationalise a better bus network, unreliable, circuitous and infrequent services have undermined buses from becoming an attractive choice for residents to access different destinations, which can only be achieved by running them in a grid-like network with frequent and reliable services.
"Western suburbs residents can't afford further delay on enjoying the ease of accessing school, work, shops or essential services with reliable and efficient bus services," said Sustainable Cities Spokesperson Caleb Li. "It is now time for the government to demonstrate its commitment on reforming its broken bus network and delivering better bus services as addressed in the Victoria Bus Plan," said Mr Li
"Running bus services that cannot address residents' needs is simply a waste of public resources. Apart from adding more bus services, what the government should do is to uphold transparency on the distribution of those new services and run them in a way that meets residents' needs," said Mr Li
