3 months ago
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Some Brisbane buses are no longer getting stuck in traffic, and are instead turning up too early, since a recent network shake-up cut congestion on key routes through the city.
That means timetables might be tweaked again, weeks after they were overhauled for the launch of the Metro route M1 service, introducing more two-seat journeys and different pick-up and drop-off locations for some services.
Brisbane bus punctuality was worse at the beginning of this year than it was before the COVID pandemic.
The council says buses are hitting less congestion on their route between the city and the Cultural Centre.Credit: Tammy Law
Asked if he thought the network changes would allow on-time running to hit 90 per cent or above, Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner said some buses were actually running ahead of the timetable now because of less congestion on the road.
“We’re going to have to continue to tweak the timetables to make sure that they’re as accurate as possible,” he said.
“We’re certainly seeing improvements in reliability in the past month.
“We expect that to continue to be the case, and that will involve us potentially updating timetables as well, because if the congestion is lower on the network, and we can run services faster, then we’ll have to tweak the timetable to actually reflect that.”
Schrinner said buses arriving early was “not ideal because we don’t want people to miss the services”, but he said it illustrated improvements in reliability.
Buses can run two minutes early or six minutes late and still be considered on time.
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Bus congestion on the Victoria Bridge – previously a notorious bottleneck – was cut by 30 per cent under the new bus network, Schrinner announced on Tuesday, while more than 2.6 million trips had been taken on the M1 and M2 Metro lines.
Since launching on June 30, the M1 between Eight Mile Plains and Roma Street had recorded a 12.5 per cent increase in weekday patronage compared with the 111 and 160 bus routes it replaced.
The M2 between UQ Lakes and the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital had recorded a 3.5 per cent increase in weekday patronage compared with the 66 bus route it replaced.
Some commuters were upset by the network changes, but Schrinner said it was normal in cities such as London or Paris to have a two or three-seat journey.
“This is transitioning to the type of system that people are used to overseas,” he said.
“Obviously Brisbane will take a little bit of getting used to that. But so far, the feedback has been great.
“There’s always some people that might have preferred to have a one-seat journey, I understand that, but we need to grow up as a city, and we need to move to multi-seat journeys, because that allows us to service more destinations and allows us to have a more reliable system as well.”
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