I used to live on the 959 loop route and agree with what burrumbus is saying.burrumbus wrote:The 959 Bald Face loop is actually quite well patronised,especially at peak hour.It deserves its place as a separate and distinct service.Campbelltown busboy wrote:Cut the 959 and run the Bald Face loop as a part of the 970 in both directions
By combining it with 970/971 would considerably lengthen trip times .12-14 minutes on average.Although the vast bulk of the 970/971 patronage is generated from Hurstville-Tom Ugly's Bridge.
In days gone by when John O'Nains operated the 959 under the Carss Park Bus Service trading name the 959 generated peak hour loadings of 25-40 pax per trip.Very impressive figures for a short route.He operated it on 30 minute peak/60 minute peak frequencies.He had very friendly ,customer focussed drivers which were key in the pax figures.
Under Southtrans/Veolia/Transdev ownership it has dropped away from those figures but it is still well patronised.15-20 pax average.
When the operator was branded Connex (a name not mentioned yet), they tried merging the off peak and Saturday services with the then-hourly 971 (which ran in the reverse direction through the loop), and oddly tried to introduce Sunday service through Bald Face loop by merging it with route 970 [as they had that short-lived "Connextor" route which basically merged the 971, the then 948 and 962] - don't recall it doing that well overall [especially for running times], as they split it back into individual routes and dropped the Sunday service through Bald Face since then.
I believe another issue with trying to merge the 959 was at the Blakehurst Shops end - when running the route clockwise, there would be stops that are missed which the normal 959 route would stop at, plus the missed stops on the Princes Highway (they were trying to keep a consistent 15 minute frequency Sylvania Southgate to Hurstville, and diverting even one of the two 970 or 971 buses would throw this out quite badly).
