Smart Passengers

As some of you may have gathered from Railpage I'm a frequent traveler on the Geelong line. Now in my honest opinion peak travel is adequate. Frequency is around 20-30 minutes and the trip time is generally around an hour. The only problem I have is with some of the rollingstock, which are currently being refurbished anyway, so it's a non-issue.

The problem with Geelong is it's apparent dependence on park-and-ride. Not necessarily a bad thing. Park-and-ride works for me. I drive to Geelong Main and catch the train in.

The other week I was running short of cash and could not afford fuel. So I took the bus for the first time since early 2007. The bus frequency is terrible. My local bus has a frequency of 2 hours, and does not meet the train. The other week I had to quite literally sprint for the train (which I really shouldn't do) and board the train ticketless (which I also shouldn't do). On the way back, I had to wait over half-an-hour for my interconnecting service in the rain. I subsequently decided I would not do that again in a hurry.

So what's Smart Passengers policy on regional cities? Park-and-ride? Or provide us with a decent bus service.

As it currently stands, Smart Passengers Inc. is a purely Melbourne group, and we only considere reigonal services when they require a path into Southern Cross. The Geelong Line doesn't fit that category due to the RRL.

However, I don't see a reason why we couldn't have a Geelong Branch or similar. Paging Meej?

We do have a standard guideline (I don't think its legally a policy yet) on bus services - minimum 30" frequency 0600-2200, half of that the rest of the day.

Dave, the frequency will do you no good if it isn't pulsed. Especially in the Geelong case.

As Steamy said we're Melbourne-based at the moment (that's enough to be going on with!) but I have no objection to starting up a Geelong branch if anyone wants to head it up.

In this case, the answer is obvious - as Ricc said, pulsed timetables with buses running at the same frequency as trains or an exact divisor of that, and pulsed to provide a good connection. The only issue would be the number of routes, and whether the bus bay could handle that many buses arriving and departing in the space of (say) 5-10 minutes.

Interesting to note that just like Melbourne, Geelong has a good quality rail service but is let down by the feeder buses - which should (theoretically) be the easiest thing to upgrade.

Through ticketing, which we now have, is a big step toward building an integrated transport system, but better connections (either TUAG or pulsed) would be better.