What was the rationale for splitting the PM peak hour services to E and SE suburbs between Elizabeth St and Castlereagh Streets? All departing PM express services now operate on Castlereagh St - not Elizabeth St - and the remaining E and SE all-stops services are located in Elizabeth St.
Over the decades the number of bus routes and overall bus services travelling directly into and out of the Sydney CBD had grown so much that the Sydney CBD was constantly in a state of mass traffic congestion, services would sometimes operate inbound and outbound on the same street whilst other services would operate inbound along a particular street and outbound on a different street.
TfNSW wanted Elizabeth St to become the main bus corridor in the Sydney CBD, The massive reduction of Region 9 bus services travelling to and from the Sydney CBD has allowed for more room on Elizabeth St to cater for the Region 6 buses heading outbound. It would not be feasible to have the Region 9 outbound PM peak express buses to operate via Elizabeth St and use Martin Pl as a major bus stop or terminus because the Martin Pl bus stop is already so full with Region 6 buses. Even the handful of Region 9 routes (304, 333, 343 & 396) that continue to operate via Elizabeth St are all day high frequency services and often use articulated buses.
The Region 9 outbound PM peak express buses operating via Castlereagh St have a minimal impact on the traffic in the Sydney CBD.
Why have “loop” routes been introduced? What are the implications for passenger information systems with these suburban style loop routes? What are the implications for service quality and on-time running with loop routes compared to the previous operating patterns.
The new flavour that TfNSW seem to be enjoying is 'loop services', long cross-regional services and through-routing services are no longer in vogue, the latter can be discussed at another time.
- Loop services are well utilised for when there is little to no room for laying over in the Sydney CBD. Examples: routes 308, 441 & 442 (Region 6), route 120 (Region 7) and route 100 (Region
and more recently route 373 (Region 9).
- Because there is no lay over area/time, service frequency can be increased without having congestion at a terminus.
- Efficient scheduling, increase frequency of timetabled services whilst reducing the amount of buses and drivers required to fulfill the timetable.
- One negative point relates to fact of having no layover and recovery time at the midpoint for the trip (potential terminus), if the service is late heading inbound towards the midpoint of the route, then the trip will be late heading outbound from the midpoint back the terminus or origin.