Can buses attract more passengers?

There is a persistent view among some politicians, policy-makers and members of the general public, that people won't use buses unless they absolutely have to. There is a not-insignificant (though shrinking) chunk of the population who think public transport as a whole is only for people who can't afford to drive a car, and that anyone who has the option of driving would be mad to do anything else. But there's a much larger group who see it as perfectly valid to take a train or a tram - and who may regularly do so themselves - but who would never take a bus if they could avoid it, and assume everyone else thinks the same way. I think this is worth examining, because it has a lot of implications for the policy - and the politics - that drives our transport systems. 

It's very important here to draw a distinction between the bus itself - the physical vehicle - and the level of service - how direct and fast the route is, how frequently it runs, how early it starts and how late it finishes, and whether or not it runs every day of the week. The characteristics of the physical vehicle are, to some degree, inherent - but the service levels are very, very malleable. 

Ballarat's Route 14's big deviation via Humffray Street makes it very indirect

Most Victorians are used to their local bus service being pretty crap. How fast and direct the routes are does vary a lot - there are certainly examples that are close to best practice in both Melbourne and the larger regional cities, but a ton of routes are much more slow and squiggly than they should be. There's also something of a trend of timetables being padded out with more time than they need, so that they'll be "on time" even in worst-case-scenario traffic, which means that for most trips the buses need to stop at timing points and wait for the timetable to catch up to them - this is a phenomenon I've identified since Ballarat's bus network was revamped a few years ago, but I've heard similar reports from other parts of the state. So in many cases, even if the routes travel fairly directly down main roads, they might take significantly longer than driving down those same roads. 

Then there's the frequencies. If you look at Melbourne's trams, many of them run in excess of every 10 minutes throughout the day. Some Metro train lines run every 10 minutes throughout the day, though most are more like 20 minutes; and both the trains and the trams tend to be supplemented by extra services during peak periods. But when you look at the buses, whether in Melbourne or elsewhere in the state, the vast majority run every 30 minutes or worse, with waits of an hour or more between services not being uncommon. The practice of running extra services in the peaks is also quite rare on buses. 

There certainly are a few notable examples of buses that run at decent frequencies - the 601 shuttle between Huntingdale and Monash runs about every four minutes through most of the day, and the handful of SmartBus routes mostly run every 15 minutes on weekdays - but for most routes, every 30 minutes is the absolute best-case scenario. 

Melbourne's SmartBuses mostly run to decent frequencies on weekdays (via Liamdavies)

And of course, there's the times when the buses aren't running at all. The SmartBuses run fairly late into the evenings and on weekends (albeit at lower frequencies) but this isn't the case for a lot of routes around the state. I will say that broadly the issue with routes failing to run at all on weekends is less of a problem than it used to be - in the rare cases that bus networks are improved, weekend services are often a key upgrade. However the issue with buses not running into the evenings is still a huge problem across much of the state - many routes in suburban Melbourne run till about 9pm, and around places like Ballarat it's more like 7:30pm. 

All of which means that, if you don't happen to live near the handful of good bus routes, you're used to a very poor level of service from your local bus. It's probably not surprising that this has contributed to people's poor impressions of buses - but again, this is not set in stone. If we can run buses with a good level of service, comparable with trains or trams, that will not only have a direct impact on their utility for the people who currently use them, it will make a big difference to people's perceptions of them - and make people who currently drive more likely to consider them a viable option. 

When it comes to the physical vehicle itself, the bus again suffers from poor perceptions. They are generally less comfortable than trains or trams, with harder, narrower seats and less legroom; I generally try to get one of the sideways-facing seats in the front section of the bus simply because I can use the aisle as legroom. Buses also tend to have a rougher ride; I am a big fan of reading while on the train, but if I try to read on the bus I get motion sickness. There's also the issue of buses often being dirty, broken or vandalised; this varies a lot around the network, and I have to say that the Ballarat buses rarely have any of these issues, but it's a common complaint in some parts of Melbourne. 

Some of these issues are very difficult to fix. It might be possible to make some tweaks to the seating arrangements on a bus, but it's a pretty constrained space, so any improvements to legroom will likely reduce the total number of seats available. Ditto making the seats wider or better-padded. The ride quality is clearly something that's improved over the decades, and that will continue to improve; and it's also in large part a consequence of how smooth the roads are, so if you had the money to spend you could probably improve this. But it's never going to be as smooth as steel wheels on steel rails. 

The issues with dirty, broken and vandalised buses are very easy to solve, though - as proven by the fact that most operators have solved it. It should be written into the contracts of all bus operators that they maintain their buses to an appropriate standard, and those contracts should be enforced - people who ride buses deserve the vehicles to be safe, clean, pleasant and reliable, and we'll never encourage mass adoption of buses while that's not the case. 

Not the most inviting place to sit (via @The_Rail_Life)

Switching from diesel to electric buses has obvious benefits from a climate perspective, but they also have much more positive associations in the minds of the public - not only does it give them the pleasant feeling of making a "greener" choice, but the reduced noise and smell makes the travelling experience more pleasant too. Plus they just seem more flashy and modern, which gives them a better image than the dirty old diesels. 

Then there's also what we might call "bells and whistles" - new features and perks that can be added to buses to make them more attractive to commuters. The main two that come to mind are USB charging ports and WiFi. I want to be really clear that on their own these would effectively be useless gimmicks - the promise of WiFi is not going to make anyone wait an hour for a bus, so we still need to get those fundamentals of speed, frequency and span of hours right if we want to attract people. But nonetheless these kinds of perks can provide that bit of added incentive, and when presented as part of an overall package of upgrades, they can help improve the bus network's image. 

The free WiFi features prominently in SkyBus' marketing (via Nick D)

When we talk about improvements to public transport, there's often a very defeatist response - our buses are crap, there's no way we're going to get more people onto them. And if we just fiddle around the edges while sticking with basically the status quo of indirect routes, infrequent services, and short span of hours, that's probably true. But we really need to draw the distinction between average buses - what we have now - and good buses - what we could have. 

People may not like the average buses we have now. But experience from around the world shows that when you invest in good buses, people use them. 

This post obviously speaks in generalities. The PTUA paper Connecting Ballarat outlines some specific ideas to improve Ballarat's bus network; and Peter Parker's blog has a bunch of specific ideas for Melbourne.