Well said.Aidan wrote:Bus services become unreliable when they're overloaded.
A bus that can't fit any more passengers on is as useless as one that's cancelled. Where bus stops have Countdown, it's actually worse because it deceives passengers into thinking they can catch a bus soon.
Which leads back to the main point:
When our buses run full, the government fail to provide more.
It's not a case of chicken and egg - the chicken's stopped laying.
This is my primary issue with PT: any council making decisions on parking and roads infrastructure is relying on the good faith of someone else to deliver and efficient and effective service, at their expense. Strictly from the State Governments point of view, since they don't make any money (in the budget anyway) from buses they'd be better off with fewer buses. If the council is relying on the State to provide more buses to encourage people to use them, they're a very optimistic bunch.
(I'd also point out that if you increased the number of buses from the current number, the increased number of buses at the margin would probably have fewer passengers per bus. This means that increasing the number of services would reduce the average return per bus - or in other words, make an even greater loss than is currently the case.)
It seems awfully similar to a free rider problem (similar to pricing carbon on a global scale). Everyone would be better off if everywhere was large scale PT, but in a world of large scale PT any one town has an incentive to offer lots of free parking to attract visitors. It's for that reason that large scale PT in my mind never actually eventuates in places where car ownership is cheap; because all the separate councils will pay lip service to PT while continuing to build free car parks and car oriented developments. I think in this case the ACC is being hamstrung by its own idealism and its stubborn faith that the State government will deliver, and an Adelaide with far more cheap parking would be a busier, wealthier but nevertheless have much more traffic than it has now.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Traffic isn't the worst sin that a city can commit. If there is heaps of traffic there is at least heaps of activity - the worse sin is a lack of economic and social activity because the city wont allow it (lest it ruin the serenity).