“We hope both the new operators will do their best to provide Melbourne with a reliable public transport service, but we also know that many of the problems the network has fall squarely on the shoulders of the government.”

Mr Bowen said that if there was to be any tangible improvement on trains and trams, the government had to commit to, and deliver:

• centrally planned and managed services, with an independent passenger-focussed transport authority to ensure trains, trams and buses worked together as a cohesive network;
• duplicating single track bottlenecks on the rail network, which cause delays;
• upgrading signalling to allow trains to run more frequently and more reliably;
• genuine traffic light priority for trams (and buses) to ensure they moved more quickly through street intersections; and
• accelerating the sleeper replacement programme to reduce the incidents of track buckling during summer.

But Mr Bowen said there was scope for the new operators to lift performance.

“Cleanliness on the system, more staff, better maintenance to improve reliability, and better customer service and information are all essential, and are things that can and should be improved.”

Mr Bowen said the proposal for a new, and permanent, Melbourne-based name for the train network was logical, but shouldn’t distract from more pressing issues. “A Melbourne-based name makes sense, but passengers will be bitterly disappointed if the only change they see is yet another new set of logos on trains and trams.

“We don’t want to see the government turn Connex into its sacrificial lamb and then persist with the same lousy management arrangements. A new name must be backed up with genuine management reforms to deliver integrated planning and operations in the public interest.

“Like any big city, Melbourne needs a fast, frequent, safe, reliable public transport network. We hope that the government and the new operators will work harder to achieve it”, concluded Mr Bowen.

“Here we have this bizarre arrangement where Saturday buses run at mixed intervals of 15 minutes and half an hour,” said PTUA Outer East Convenor Jeremy Lunn. “So you might have buses at 12:00pm, 12:15pm, 12:30pm, then not another bus until 1:00pm. Then it repeats all over creating long waiting times, confusion and overcrowding on this otherwise successful service.”

Mr Lunn said that it is a hole in the timetable that needs to be fixed.

“We see this as acknowledgement that half hourly buses are not seen as adequate on Saturdays between Box Hill and Mordialloc. So they have thrown in one extra bus per an hour, in the worst possible way. It is not going to alleviate overcrowding and will only lead to chaos and confusion.”

“This is the most inadequate and illogical way to keep three buses an hour running on the route. When it ran as route 700, the buses ran every 15 to 20 minutes on
Saturdays, whereas now there are gaps of up to half an hour. More buses are needed on the route than half hourly, but the weird timing has been a failure.”

“It’s a joke really. It doesn’t take a genius to realise that scheduling buses in such a fashion is next to useless for passengers. We’re amazed that Public Transport Minister Lynne Kosky allowed this arrangement to go through without ridiculing it!”

Mr Lunn also called for uniform weekend timetable, operating on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays. Under this timetable, buses would operate every 15 minutes throughout the day.

“There is no reason to believe that people travel less on Sundays than they do on Saturdays or that they travel less on weekends than weekday off-peak. We’re seeing overcrowding especially at Holmesglen, Chadstone and Oakleigh and growing problems at Box Hill and Doncaster, so clearly a 15 minute service is justified.”

“Furthermore, simply try parking your car at Chadstone, Box Hill or Doncaster on weekends and you will realised that the current bus services are inadequate.”

“I call on Public Transport Minister Lynne Kosky to fix this ludicrous mistake by rolling out a uniform 15 minute weekend service. The sooner she can do that the better,” Mr Lunn concluded.

PTUA submission (PDF, 449Kb)

Summary:

The present inquiry has been prompted by an ongoing and widespread pattern of failure in Victoria’s train services, culminating in the near-total shutdown of the metropolitan system in extreme heat conditions in late January 2009. In keeping with the terms of reference, this submission does not aim to catalogue the failures that have occurred in Victorian train services in recent years, but to analyse the underlying factors.

It has frequently been observed that Melbourne scores near the bottom of the world’s large urban rail systems in its fitness for the purpose of transporting people. Yet at the same time, Melbourne is in no way short of rail infrastructure relative to other cities with higher rates of train travel. The conclusion to be drawn is that there are few technical justifications for the poor record of train operations in Victoria, and that the true factors underlying the state of our public transport system must be sought elsewhere.

In 2005, a team of experts from the University of Toronto reviewed the factors that contribute to ‘best practice’ in urban transport and concluded that the most critical requirement is effective governance—more important even than finance, infrastructure and urban land-use planning. When one investigates the management arrangements for public transport in all the cities that have been most successful in growing patronage and mode share in the past two decades, one finds in all cases that there is one body that bears ultimate responsibility for all aspects of the system: from the state of the infrastructure to the frequency and reliability of service, the cleanliness of vehicles and the level of crowding.

In Victoria, a passenger who is dissatisfied with their public transport service must take their complaint to a private operator. They quickly learn that under our franchising system, governments and franchisees are free to avoid any difficult issue by passing the buck, and only when an issue lasts long enough to cause real political damage, as with the train failures in January 2009, is a Minister forced to declare that “the buck stops here”. For the rest of the time, we have a system where passengers complain to the private operators and the operators dismiss the complaints. The litany of train system failures—whether acute as in January 2009, or chronic as in the overcrowding seen every day—is the natural consequence of this hands-off approach.

If we are to have a public transport system that is not set up to fail, there is a need to reform the management arrangements that perpetuate failure. Despite all the promise of ‘innovation’ that accompanied privatisation in 1999 (and re-privatisation in 2004), the only evident result was to perpetuate and entrench the old management practices under private owners. Now that the Minister has admitted that franchising is no cheaper for the taxpayer than simple retention of train and tram services in public ownership, there are no good reasons left for continuing the franchising experiment, and many good reasons to pursue an alternative model.

The timing of this inquiry is fortunate, in that not only is there is an opportunity this year for the government to pursue new management arrangements at minimal cost, but there is also a ready-made candidate in the Public Transport Authority of Western Australia, better known as TransPerth. In relative terms, Perth has in recent years been more successful in growing public transport patronage than any other capital city in Australia, Melbourne included. One of the key lessons from Perth is the need to recruit expertise from successful jurisdictions, including overseas. Given the similarities in legislative framework with WA, a similar Public Transport Authority may readily be established in Victoria. Its first task would be to make a decision on the re-tendering of contracts for Melbourne’s train and tram operations: this may be to re-tender to new private operators (under redrawn contracts) or to return to public ownership.

The specific problems that led to the catastrophic failure of the train system in Summer 2008-09 have a number of immediate causes, leaving aside the general neglect and planning failures for which we have proposed a competent Public Transport Authority as a remedy. These immediate causes relate primarily to track buckling, the fitout of the Comeng train fleet and other maintenance issues. In relation to these immediate issues we have made a number of recommendations, in particular the accelerated rollout of concrete sleepers and an upgrade to the Comeng air-conditioning units.

There are also numerous longer-term issues that affect the train system, in particular overcrowding, inadequate train services both within and outside peak hours, operating practices that waste rail capacity, and the lack of a proper multimodal network. Many of these issues would be tasks for a new Public Transport Authority to address in its initial years of operation. Our recommendations on these issues are intended as guidance, to highlight the actions that will help convert Victoria’s rail systems from failures to world-leading successes.

Note that V/Line and other regional issues are being covered in a separate submission from the PTUA Geelong branch.

PTUA President Daniel Bowen said that the introduction of trains every ten minutes on the Werribee line was a significant step forward.

“This is the first step towards a ‘metro’-style rail service in Melbourne. The next step is for the government to fund ten minute services right across the network, seven-days-a-week until late.

“That would give people a network that they can use at any time of day, without looking at a timetable. It would transform the rail system, cutting waiting times and boosting patronage across the day.

“Frequent trains all day also help relieve peak hour crowding, by giving more people the opportunity to travel outside peak hours without long waits for trains.”

Mr Bowen said that frequent trains all day is the key component of a ‘metro’, a vital part of most major cities.

“Metros are not about expensive tunnels, or underground stations. Metros are about running more trains, more often, right across the day. Trains every ten minutes, seven-days-a-week are possible now on most of Melbourne’s rail network, with the train fleet and the infrastructure we already have.”

NOTES

• Trains can run every ten minutes on most of Melbourne’s rail network, excluding some single-track sections in the outer-suburbs
• The PTUA has proposed trains running at least every ten minutes, seven-days-a-week until late, in the recent “Connecting To The Future” publication, which includes a proposal for services “Every 10 Minutes to Everywhere” to make public transport more attractive at all times of day.
  More information:
  http://www.ptua.org.au/publications/connecting
  http://www.ptua.org.au/campaigns/every10minutes

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