Finally, a review of Ballarat's bus network

This year's Victorian budget included some funds for a review of Ballarat's bus network. This is something the people of Ballarat have been campaigning for since the network was last changed, in 2016-17, and was a core focus of my advocacy back when I was Convener of the Ballarat Branch of the PTUA. It's been a real uphill battle to get this review, so now we've finally got it, what do we want it to do? 

Back in 2018, the PTUA published Connecting Ballarat, a paper on the problems with Ballarat's bus network and some suggested solutions. If you're not familiar with the network and its foibles, that's still a good place to start - although some things have changed in the intervening years, and there are certainly things I'd do differently if I had my time again. 

The proposed route map in the Connecting Ballarat paper

When we wrote that paper we talked about general principles, but also included a detailed proposal for what the network could look like. The idea was never "the government must implement exactly this network", it was intended as a conversation-starter - one example of what a review could do, to justify doing one. Which is why, now a review has been committed to, I have (so far) resisted the urge to do an updated proposal map. 

Instead I want to make some more general points that I think will be important in shaping the public debate and consultation - reflecting both changes on the ground (like housing developments that weren't built) and the way the public debate has evolved since 2018. 

The path through the CBD 

Currently, all routes (bar one) start and finish at Ballarat Railway Station. Outbound buses all go from the station to Little Bridge Street before heading out to the suburbs, while inbound buses all stop at Curtis Street immediately before the station - regardless of which suburb that route is going to or coming from. 

Twisty paths through Ballarat CBD (via PTV)

This means that many routes take a long, circuitous and illogical path through the CBD - with routes from northeastern suburbs going effectively past the station to hit Curtis Street, before bending back on themselves to backtrack to the station. This adds unnecessary distance and time to every journey, and is confusing to potential passengers. 

This has been recognised since day one as by far the biggest systemic problem with Ballarat's bus network, and this has not changed. I mention it here because it's essential context - it remains the highest priority to fix, and informs a lot of other discussions. 

A "focus" on Ballarat Station

A common talking point that has arisen in recent years is that the network shouldn't be so "focused" on Ballarat Station, because most bus passengers are not connecting with trains - they're just using the network to get around Ballarat itself. 

Firstly I think it's important to point out a bit of a red herring - a majority of people aren't connecting with trains, but you wouldn't expect them to. The bus network quite rightly serves a wide range of destinations, and there is no single destination that attracts a majority of passengers - but I am nonetheless confident the station would be in the top five destinations. (Not to mention, for many people it'll be the closest stop to other destinations in that part of the CBD, like GovHub and the library). 

A bus at the Ballarat station interchange

Secondly, it is true that not enough people take the bus to connect with the trains, but that's partly because we keep spending huge sums on building more free car parking, and partly because the bus network (and especially the timetables) are not good enough to attract people out of their cars. That can be fixed, and must be - we can't just keep building more parking forever. 

But overall, I would argue that this whole discussion is a symptom of the problem with paths through the CBD - it's not that the buses all go to the station, it's that they go there in a stupid and inefficient way. If people just passed by the station on their way to wherever they were going, without it being a whole rigmarole of diversion, nobody would mind. 

A "radial" network emanating from the CBD

A related talking point to the "station focus" thing is the idea that the system is too "radial" - it emanates out from the station and the CBD to the suburbs, and does not cater very well to cross-suburb trips. There is a nugget of truth there, but we need to be careful not to overcorrect. 

I have found that a good rule of thumb to determine latent public transport demand is to look at the road network. Obviously it's only a starting point, but looking at where the arterial roads go within a city can be helpful in understanding where there's the most travel demand, which is a good first approximation for where your buses should go [1]. If we look at Ballarat, it's pretty clear that most arterial roads do kind of fan out from the CBD, and so a bus network that broadly centres around the CBD does make sense. 

Ballarat, with its arterial roads (in yellow) mostly fanning out from the CBD (via Google Maps)

However, not all arterial roads point to the CBD. Notably, there's one that goes from Delacombe Town Centre to Stockland Wendouree (and ultimately onto the freeway) and passes right by Wendouree Station. A bus route along here would make a huge amount of sense. There's also a short arterial that connects Sebastopol to Mount Clear, which could form part of a longer route from the western suburbs to the University. 

The broad idea, then, is that a radial network that largely passes through the CBD actually does make a lot of sense. But at the time time, it shouldn't only go through the CBD - there should also be a few orbital routes layered over the top of this. 

Safety at Little Bridge Street 

There has been a longstanding issue with perceptions of safety at the Little Bridge Street bus stop, which seems to have escalated in recent years. It's now gotten to the point where bus drivers refuse to serve the stop after 3pm on weekdays, for fear of being attacked - and this has worked, in the sense that the troublemakers no longer hang around there (although of course if the buses returned, they might too). 

The City of Ballarat are doing a lot of work to revamp the broader Bridge Mall precinct, and this will include Little Bridge Street and the bus stop, and hopefully this (combined with the temporary break with no buses) will put an end to the antisocial behaviour there. Still, there have been calls for many years to move the bus stop, and those calls have not completely abated since buses stopped serving it. 

Buses could stop on Peel St and Main Rd, as well as Curtis St and Little Bridge St (via Google Maps)

I do think the existing measures will help, but if we're considering further steps, I think the best approach is not to move the stop, exactly, but to break it up. 

As above, currently every outbound bus stops at Little Bridge Street, regardless of which direction they're heading. If different routes called at different stops around the Mall precinct within walking distance of each other - including on Little Bridge and Curtis Streets, but also perhaps Peel Street and Main Road - this would not only be more efficient for routing buses, it would mean there's no single 'gathering point' for troublemakers. 

New housing estates

Since the last network review in 2016-17, a lot of new houses have been built on the fringes of Ballarat, and most are not served by the bus network as it was designed. During the consultation, PTV were keen to emphasise that they'd designed routes to easily extend when the time came - but to be blunt, it's clear this wasn't enough. 

Route 25 to Delacombe was designed with some extra padding in the timetable between two key stops, to allow future buses to go into the Delacombe Town Centre shopping precinct (which was being built at the time), without even requiring any additional funding. It still took over three years after the shopping centre opened before the bus was diverted. 

A Route 25 bus to Delacombe in Ballarat Central

Meanwhile, the suburb of Lucas was already partially built, and had people living in it, on the day the new network commenced in 2017 - the Catholic primary school opened that year, too. By 2020 the state school had opened and probably about half the houses were built; but Route 10 never got extended into Lucas till February 2025. 

And of course, whole other estates have been conceived and built since 2017, which haven't even had the belated treatment of these two examples - to this day they have no bus coverage. 

Clearly the network review will need to provide bus routes to cover these new suburbs. And designing with an eye to future extension is always a good idea. But given how painfully slow bus reforms are in this state, they need to go further - future-proofing the routes by extending them beyond where the houses are today, to where they are anticipated to be 5-10 years from now. 

New housing estates along Ballarat-Carngham Rd, currently with no bus (via Google Maps)

For example, obviously there needs to be a route along La Trobe Street/Ballarat-Carngham Road to serve the new housing estates that have been built there. But they shouldn't terminate this route at Dyson Drive, where the houses currently end, with a view to extending the route later. They should extend the route from day one - to, say, do a little loop around Finchs Road and Prospect Drive, before heading back into town.

It may seem like serving a bunch of paddocks is a waste of resources, but the point is those paddocks have already been gazetted as growth areas by the council - they will be construction sites very soon, and people's homes soon after. By extending a little bit further now, you ensure those people have a bus available from the day they move in - not maybe, possibly, one day, when we get around to it, five years after they've moved in and locked themselves into car-dependent travel habits. 

Making sure people have access to a bus at that crucial time when they're moving house and forming new travel habits is worth every penny. 

Putting it all together 

So let's try to knit all these points together into a single, coherent narrative:

• The Ballarat bus network should largely consist of long, cross-town routes that meet in the CBD. The existing network is mostly quite straight and direct outside the CBD, and while route details may be changed, this principle of 'straight and direct' should be retained.
• Most of these routes should serve Ballarat Station and the Bridge Mall precinct, but they should serve each of them in the order that makes the most sense for that route - flowing in one side of the city and out the other, in a relatively straight line. 
• When serving the Bridge Mall precinct, routes should adhere to this principle of travelling in a relatively straight line, so they may stop at Curtis Street, Little Bridge Street, Peel Street or anywhere else that makes sense. It is necessary that these stops be within a short walk of each other, but not necessary for all routes to stop at the exact same place. 
• In addition to the radial cross-town routes through the CBD, there should be some orbital routes that cater to direct suburb-to-suburb travel. 
• The network should be extended to cover new growth areas of Ballarat, and extend beyond current building progress to future-proof growth areas, and ensure that a bus is available from the first day people move in. 

If we end up with a network that does all these things, I'll be pretty happy. 

1. I also think looking at where M-freeways and A-highways go within a state is a good way to understand where railways should go, but that's a post for another time.