What's the Ballarat bus review looking at?

The Ballarat Bus Network is up for review (via DTP)

This year's Victorian budget included funds for a review of Ballarat's bus network, and I gave some high-level thoughts on what I think they should do in a previous post. 

Now the initial public consultation has started, so I want to dive into the ideas they're putting forward and the questions they're asking.

The survey starts by asking about your current travel patterns, and asking if you would use the bus more often if there were more buses - to which I have to assume the answer will be a pretty resounding "yes". 

It then asks you to prioritise when you'd like those extra buses to run - picking your top five from brackets like "Weekday mornings (6am-10am)", "Saturday afternoon and evening (3pm-8pm)", etc. Broadly I'd want to see increased frequencies at pretty much every time - but also, the answer varies from route to route. For example, weekend buses recently got a timetable upgrade, with some routes seeing 20 minute frequencies on Saturdays, making them a low priority for further upgrades - but most routes are still every 40 minutes. So I ended up including Saturday afternoons in my top five, and I just have to hope they understand I mean the 40 minute ones. 

The survey then asks which improvements would encourage you to use the bus more, again a "pick your top five" scenario. As you might expect, I focused on the fundamentals - frequent, fast, direct, connected - but there was a pretty good spread of options here, and I suspect the feedback will vary a lot based on people's differing circumstances (not just their differing perceptions about what makes a bus good). For example, I didn't pick the one about making it easier to cross the road near the bus stop, since my walk to the stops in central Ballarat has always been pretty good - but I know this has been a huge issue for people who live along big arterial roads in suburban areas. 

Sectors of Ballarat's CBD (via DTP)

The survey then asked a question about which bits of the CBD we travel to. I suspect these questions are designed to test the ideas of "What if not every bus went via the station?" and "What if not every bus went via Bridge Mall?" that I discussed in my last post. What's not clear to me is what answer they want, if any; you sometimes get a sense with these consultations that the government has a preference they're trying to manufacture consent for, but if that's the case here I can't pick it. 

In any case, I would be against rerouting buses away from these destinations, as I always have been - buses should generally call at both destinations, but in a more sensible way than they do now. So I hope the results bear that out. 

Interestingly, the final question on this page relates to transfer times - asking when transferring from a train to a bus, and vice versa, how long should the gap be - 5-10 minutes, 10-15 minutes, or 15-20 minutes. I'd be fascinated to see the results of these questions, to understand people's perceptions of delays/reliability, their risk tolerance for missing a connection, etc - particularly since they've separated out the train-bus and bus-train connections, so the results might differ slightly based on perceptions that, say, the buses are punctual but the trains aren't. 

(I doubt the government will voluntarily release the results, of course, but hey - they were forced to release the results of similar consultations in Melbourne and Mildura, so who knows)

The next page of questions breaks the routes down into four parts of town - North, East, South & Southwest, and West - and asks questions based on what they're currently thinking about doing with each sector. 

Potential cross-town connections from Ballarat East (via DTP)

In the East, one potential initiative is to have straighter routes spaced further apart, meaning some people would have to walk further, but they'd get a straighter and more direct route (which means a quicker journey) - and they've asked whether people would be happy with that tradeoff, and how far they'd be willing to walk. 

This bodes well, I think. The routes in the East are extremely squiggly, and I'd love to see them straightened out. Melbourne consultation respondents were fairly happy to walk further for better service, although Mildura respondents were less so; hopefully Ballaratians are closer to Melburnians on this one. 

They also raise the possibility of introducing a cross-town connection from the east to the hospital precinct, which is in the CBD but west of the Mall and the Station. The survey text only talks about the hospital precinct, but the arrow on the map seems to indicate the route would then head north and west to Wendouree. 

A cross-town connection from the east to the hospital precinct would be fantastic - not least since this would also mean a connection to a bunch of other shops and jobs along Sturt Street. But the idea that it would then hang a right and go to Wendouree is a bit strange to me. It may indicate that they already have an approach in mind - hooking an eastern route up to Route 11, which goes to Wendouree via Sturt Street and the hospital precinct. But in my view, the best way to provide cross-town connections on this axis would be to hook it up to Route 26, which continues west to Alfredton. 

Potential cross-town connections from Ballarat South & Southwest (via DTP)

The other three areas all ask pretty similar questions, and suggest the same potential cross-town connections - one route from Delacombe Town Centre to Stockland Wendouree, and one from FedUni Mt Helen to Wendouree. 

The Delacombe-Wendouree connection is a great idea - no notes. 

But the Mt Helen-Wendouree connection is a bit more iffy. It's left deliberately vague at this early stage, but the arrow goes from Wendouree to the hospital precinct, then down to Sebastopol and across to FedUni - a bit like a merger of Routes 11 and 22, except without going via the CBD and the train station.

By contrast, I'd always envisioned a Wendouree-FedUni cross-town route essentially joining Route 11 (or 12, or a hybrid of the two) with Route 21, providing a path via the CBD and station (and Sovereign Hill). 

I'm very open to the possibility of DTP coming up with a better way of doing things, but in this case I don't think they have. The route they've chosen might be a bit less susceptible to traffic delays at peak times, but it's longer, so time savings would be minimal at best. And the tradeoff for that is a route that doesn't serve the station, Bridge Mall, or most of Sturt Street, which are pretty key trip generators. 

I wouldn't like to demand that any cross-town route went via the station & CBD - sometimes tradeoffs are necessary. But when there is such a clear alternative, that would (as far as I can tell) gain all of the benefits with none of the downsides, the choice seems pretty clear to me. 

A potential southern cross-town connection (my arrow on DTP's map)

A notable absence from the map is a southern cross-town connection from Delacombe to FedUni. I admit this is probably a lower priority than the other cross-town connections, but I still think it's worth throwing into the mix for consideration - it could be a pretty useful connection, particularly if you consider onward connections to other routes at DTC. 

Buses at Wendouree Station

The survey also asks about the timetable for a Wendouree-FedUni route, and whether we'd prioritise connecting to trains at Wendouree (ie every 40 minutes) over "A consistent and easy-to-understand timetable, for example a bus every 30 minutes" (ie one that aligns with class times at FedUni). 

I can understand why they have to ask this - they will have a limited bucket of funds, so they probably can't implement the optimal solution to this question (which, for the record, is "Just run the bus every 10 minutes and you won't have to tear your hair out trying to synchronise several mutually-incompatible connections!"). 

So being unable to do both, they'll have to pick one - although to be honest, a 20 minute frequency (with every second bus meeting a train) would probably be the best compromise position, and not out of the question funding-wise. 

But this is yet another reason why the government's grand plan of setting public transport services to a 40, 20 or 10-minute frequency is foolish; nothing in the real world operates to a 40 minute frequency. 

Potential cross-town connections for Ballarat West (via DTP)

Lastly, it's worth noting that the Ballarat West map doesn't show any new connections to Lucas or Bunkers Hill, and in fact none of the maps give any indication of how the updated network might serve new suburbs. The survey text does mention "connecting more homes to buses in growing areas" several times, so clearly the issue is on their radar - but it's unclear whether they will try to achieve this solely through extending existing routes, or if they acknowledge they need to add new routes as well. I think it's worth highlighting the need for new routes in the text boxes provided throughout the survey. 

Anyway - the feedback process is a nice and easy one, so make sure you get yours in. The survey closes on 07 December.