Weekend Transport

Sydney / New South Wales Transport Discussion
Liamena
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Re: Weekend Transport

Post by Liamena »

One place which I noticed was completely inaccessible on Sunday, is Berrima.
simonl
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Re: Weekend Transport

Post by simonl »

molybtek wrote:<sarcasm>This may be resolved after September when it's no longer free to travel on weekends for commuters</sarcasm>
Well if there is no discernible change in the weekend patronage those suggesting that the free travel was needed to promote weekend travel will be shown to either be wrong and/or lying.
Xplorer
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Re: Weekend Transport

Post by Xplorer »

Liamena wrote:One place which I noticed was completely inaccessible on Sunday, is Berrima.
Most rural operators don't operate on Sunday, many don't even operate on Saturday...
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GazzaOak
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Re: Weekend Transport

Post by GazzaOak »

Frosty wrote:If anyone tries to travel on weekends some may find its harder than it is during weekdays. There are multiple factors primarily that now we have become a 7 day society unfortunately our transport network fails to reflect that both Road & PT.

Look at it trains run a poor weekend service more than 50% less during weekday peak hour and a significant amount less than off-peak services. When patronage is similar for weekends and off-peak during the week. How come our trains don't reflect that when was the last time the weekend train timetable was looked at in a major way?

I say its even worse on weekends on the buses particularly Sunday its half of the Saturday service. Sunday is just as busy as Saturday now.

On the roads most roads on weekends have no clearways when traffic volumes are the same weekday peak-hour probably doesn't help PT runs a very skeleton service in some areas on weekends.
Funny that, the L90 seem to run a 15 minute service on weekends (both sat and sun), but during weekday off peak, the L90 only run a full city to palm beach service every half hour (run every 15 mins, but half terminate or start in Avalon)

So there are transport where weekends can run a lot better than off peak weekdays.

And also places like Dee Why need a full 6am-8pm (weekdays) and 9am-5pm (weekends) clearway on Pittwater Road.
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lunchbox
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Re: Weekend Transport

Post by lunchbox »

OVERLOADING ON MOUNTAINS TRAINS.
For the record, here's the result of an audit on 8.1.17 -
Following Commuter Council representations re. overcrowding, the 9.18 Mount Victoria train on Sundays was increased from 4 cars to 8 cars from 18.12.16.
The following loadings were noted on 8.1.17;-

Train departing Central at 9.18am - 8 cars - weather; fine -
Car 8 - 100% seats occupied
Car 7 - 100% " "
Car 6 - 100% " "
Car 5 - 95%
Car 4 - 90%
Car 3 - 90%
Car 2 - 50%
Car 1 - 20%

On-board announcements re which carriage(s) to travel in were indecipherable.

On departing Strathfield at 9.31;-
Car 8 - 100%
Car 7 - 100
Car 6 - 100
Car 5 - 100
Car 4 - 100
Car 3 - 90
Car 2 - 50
Car 1 - 30

The following Mountains train, departing Strathfield at 10.02 had 8 cars, with the following loadings;-
Car 8 - 70% seats occupied
Car 7 - 90
Car 6 - 70
Car 5 - 60
Car 4 - 50
Car 3 - 60
Car 2 - 40
Car 1 - 0
END.
Frosty
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Re: Weekend Transport

Post by Frosty »

Well no surprising since most travellers would be leisure/ non commmuters they would just board the first carriages from the Grand Concurse end. Maybe encourage users to board from the Devonshire St end.

Someone should do a survey on Airport Line Trains I would expect it to be similar in a sense that carriage 4 and 5 are over capacity.
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Re: Weekend Transport

Post by Fleet Lists »

Frosty wrote:Well no surprising since most travellers would be leisure/ non commmuters they would just board the first carriages from the Grand Concourse end. Maybe encourage users to board from the Devonshire St end.
How would you do that?
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simonl
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Re: Weekend Transport

Post by simonl »

It might help if they didn't have to walk all the way around to near the Chalmers St entrance to use the Devonshire St end concourse - assuming we are talking about platforms served by the pedestrian underpass/concourse near the Devonshire St end. Surely that is the reason this underpass was built.
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BroadGauge
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Re: Weekend Transport

Post by BroadGauge »

They'd be better off encouraging people traveling to specific stations to travel towards the front of the train, give that only six stations west of Penrith can take an 8-car set. Just encouraging passengers for Penrith, Springwood and Katoomba to travel in the front two cars would help spread out the load.
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boronia
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Re: Weekend Transport

Post by boronia »

Until fairly recently (maybe 20 years or so), there was no access to the country platforms from the Devonshire St concourse. Tunnels serving 1-15 were used purely for departmental purposes - mail, parcels, etc from the Post Office. The stairs at the southern ends of those platforms would have been added at that time.

But I agree there should be provision for passengers to get access to G concourse (at least) from the Lee St end of the tunnel, rather than having to walk up through the detrius in the park.
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pgt
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Re: Weekend Transport

Post by pgt »

Frosty wrote:If anyone tries to travel on weekends some may find its harder than it is during weekdays. There are multiple factors primarily that now we have become a 7 day society unfortunately our transport network fails to reflect that both Road & PT.
...
I say its even worse on weekends on the buses particularly Sunday its half of the Saturday service. Sunday is just as busy as Saturday now.

On the roads most roads on weekends have no clearways when traffic volumes are the same weekday peak-hour probably doesn't help PT runs a very skeleton service in some areas on weekends.
I've noticed this just trying to get up to Chatswood or the city of a weekend from the Pacific Highway.

For Chatswood, the off-peak service between St Leonards/RNSH and Chatswood is more frequent than peak periods (particularly PM peak), which sadly seems to reflect what happens on the weekends too (30 minutes between Chatswood services, yet the potential is there to spread the loadings out a bit when they can send an articulated bus to Chatswood, and it be >70% seated just leaving Chatswood on some weekend services).
Granted, the only time an artic gets seen on the 144 weekend services is during summer, and then it's unpredictable which service gets one (probably depends on driver rostering).

What doesn't help is there being no bus priority in the Chatswood direction (nor enough buses to use it...), and the constant late running since the bus has to come all the way from Manly.
(M20 to Chatswood anybody - sure those going to Bunnings at Artarmon might be put off, but that might be a pretty small minority).

As for the city bound direction, not helping at all since they diverted the 254 and "291" to McMahons Point (still shaking my head as to why McMahons Point... Milsons Point for one of the services would have been better even and switch one of the Miller St services [say, the 203] to McMahons Point for completeness?).
Apparently the powers that be think that everybody likes to change from bus to train at North Sydney (or St Leonards) - failing to recognise that North Sydney has the requisite stops split up across 2 streets (Blues Point Road and Blue St), and that nobody goes out at night (only direct bus from the city runs hourly after 8pm) - yes I've mentioned these elements to the feedback hotline and got their template reply 3 times now.

(Never mind the fact that they didn't quite get the actual walking time between train station and bus stop at North Sydney quite right, resulting in a mad dash up Blue St and across the lights at Blues Point Road to make a bus, which if you miss you then have to either walk back to Blue St or wait over a half hour for a bus).
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taptap23
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Re: Weekend Transport

Post by taptap23 »

There is currently build-ups on the blue mountains line on a weekend as part of the summer timetable. These build-ups were meant to continue permanently but this idea has recently been scrapped, most likely because they don't want to pay for a repeater.
Liamena
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Re: Weekend Transport

Post by Liamena »

Why don't they have the guard in the middle of the train.... oh wait.
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Re: Weekend Transport

Post by lunchbox »

Note that "8-car" sets are now advertised in the December 2017 Blue Mountains public timetable; a direct result of the public campaign against overcrowding of the 4-car Mountains trains around December 2016. Is this the first time "8 cars" has been used in a public timetable?
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boronia
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Re: Weekend Transport

Post by boronia »

Probably to do with the practice of terminating 8 car services at Blacktown when Sydney Yard is closed. Public is told that "8 car services terminate" there, and let passengers work out for themselves which ones they are.
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andy_centralcoast
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Re: Weekend Transport

Post by andy_centralcoast »

Also strange that they just leave the other services blank instead of saying 4 car.
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boronia
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Re: Weekend Transport

Post by boronia »

I guess passengers are expected to know that all other services are 4 cars?

I haven't got a timetable with me, but does the "8 car" notation only apply to weekend services, not weekday?
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andy_centralcoast
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Re: Weekend Transport

Post by andy_centralcoast »

Yes, only on weekend pages.

Looks like this:
bmtwkdtt.png
bmtwkdtt.png (298.02 KiB) Viewed 3703 times
Also interesting that the travel time between Central and Springwood is the exactly the same despite skipping 3 stops.
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boronia
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Re: Weekend Transport

Post by boronia »

No, 3 minutes quicker to Springwood, 8 mins to Katoomba
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Re: Weekend Transport

Post by Fleet Lists »

Also present in the Transport info timetable - link to copy taken 29th December 2017 https://web.archive.org/web/20171228220 ... 171126.pdf
Comments specifically relate to weekend services.
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