NSW Bus Observations 2022.

[Fleet Lists]

Basically they don't, would only came up if a bus went over a weighbridge as there are on the freeways at Mount White, Mount Boyce, Marulan etc, but not in the metro area. While coaches are obliged to head into these checking stations, can’t ever recall seeing one called in for inspection.

I have been on a coach at Mount White that got called in as being overweight. The problem was iirc that it was refueled just before the inspection station. It caused about a 20 minute delay but eventually no action was taken.

[tonyp]

They can assess the weight compliance of an urban electric bus by the number of passengers it's carrying.

[Linto63]

Not necessarily, if the average weight of 40 passengers is day 70kg or it is 90kg that will swing it 0.8 of a tonne.

Come to think of it, maybe there was an enforcement issue hence why the industry successfully lobbied to have the average weight of a person increased when calculating capacity.

[boronia]

What ever the "official capacity" might be, some drivers will continue to fit in as many passengers as they can to avoid leaving pax behind. Even the union imposed limit of 15 is regularly ignored. Full low floor buses would be good targets as they don't have the physical deterrent of steps to keep the numbers down.

I would have thought that there was more of an issue with drivers being fined, rather than merely upsetting the unions. I don't know how much TfNSW polices urban bus loads, compared to trucks and (I presume) long-distance buses. When we return to normal demand and service levels, under the present regulations, it takes 7 to 8 (12 metre) battery-electric buses to replace the passenger capacity of every 6 (12 metre) diesel buses. (That's apart from the issue of greater downtime of battery-electric buses.) We don't know the figures for high capacity buses yet, as no electric models have appeared locally. The manufacturers aren't unhappy about the situation as they get to sell more buses. The operators, on the other hand, have to find space for more buses and find more drivers. Taxpayers are hit for a greater number of more expensive buses.

There is a sign on the back of a bus stating how many seated/standing passengers it is "licenced to carry". These figures are limited by the difference in the weight of the empty bus and its total axle load capacity/GVM (and using some arbitrary assumption of average passenger weight); actual floor area may be a factor too. For most 12.5m diesel buses "standing" is in the mid 20s. I understand that the 15 limit was imposed by STA/RTBU for "safety reasons".

Back in the early 1980s, the DMR/DMT had a crackdown on bus/coach axle loadings and many two axle coaches were found to be overweight. This resulted in many/most 2-axle Denning Denairs having to get a tag axle fitted. The company I worked for had a couple of Volvo B58 coaches, and they had to have the two front rows of seats removed to ensure the front axle didn't get overweight.

Coaches generally don't have standees to worry about, but they can have problems with luggage underneath. One charter we did in the 90s had 4 full coach loads of Yanks and their accompanying baggage off a cruise ship going going down to Canberra. There were four 2-axle coaches, and they all got caught out going through Marulan. Hefty fines ensued, but the company figured it was a rare event, and cheaper than operating a fleet of 3-axle models "just in case".

[Glen]

When I worked at Hopkinsons a long time ago, we had a driver who used to tell the school groups that when they went over the weighbridge everybody had to lift their feet off the floor.

[boronia]

Basically they don't, would only came up if a bus went over a weighbridge as there are on the freeways at Mount White, Mount Boyce, Marulan etc, but not in the metro area. While coaches are obliged to head into these checking stations, can’t ever recall seeing one called in for inspection.

I have been on a coach at Mount White that got called in as being overweight. The problem was iirc that it was refueled just before the inspection station. It caused about a 20 minute delay but eventually no action was taken.

The weigh stations have detectors in the approach roads. Normally they will only call you in if you register over on those dtectors, or they want to do log book, RBT/RDT, or mechanical checks.

[tonyp]

When I worked at Hopkinsons a long time ago, we had a driver who used to tell the school groups that when they went over the weighbridge everybody had to lift their feet off the floor.

That's definitely worth considering as a solution to the electric bus weight issue Glen.

When the first Yutong E12 demonstrator appeared in 2019, its capacity imprinted on the rear was 40 seated and 10 standing! That bus must have had some serious weight built into it.

[ScaniaGrenda]

When I worked at Hopkinsons a long time ago, we had a driver who used to tell the school groups that when they went over the weighbridge everybody had to lift their feet off the floor.

That Hoppies driver must've been one I had as a child on a school charter, we were passing the Mt White Weighbridge heading towards Sydney and the driver jokingly got on the buses PA and told us we all had to lift our feet up, all the students myself included actually did it, then he laughed with us as the sign said return to Freeway.

[Stu]

Bus 389 from Pyrmont to the City (and onward to Bondi Junction via Darlinghurst back streets), on certain days recently has been cancelled for hours upon hours - I think one day recently, for around 2.5 hours there was no service at all with every single run in that time period cancelled. The excuse was given was "staff shortages" - but if true, it appears that rather than cancelling various services around the network, they have removed all drivers from the 389.

This is not a new problem and our MP Alex Greenwich actually asked about 389 reliability in question time (transcript: https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/la/pa ... x?pk=93571 )

The answer is full of obsfucation, but indicates that during the day, 389 (and presumably many other routes) is considered a "Turn up and go" service (despite timetables being clearly published in all the data sources), which apparently exempts them from tracking cancellations directly:

When the service is operated as a turn-up-and-go Headway service, it is measured by agreed service frequency and capacity between Transport for NSW and Transit Service West. Transport for NSW also collects data on service punctuality and cancellations when the service is operated as a timetabled service.

I can imagine that what's happening here is that due to driver shortages, Transit Systems is basically sacrificing 389 for the day, so they only miss one metric on service frequency/capacity for that route for the whole day, but keep most other services running. This looks like a business decision of sorts, rather than something that's actually helpful to passengers who might be able to stomach an occasionally cancelled service, but are instead faced with an entire afternoon of no service. Of course they make no announcements that the service is being cancelled and they should probably use alternate modes - and this route is used heavily by seniors on both the Pyrmont and Darlinghurst end, a cohort with less access to real time transport info, so they are left sitting at bus stops all day wondering what's going on.

Incidentally, despite the mostly useless answer, the issue doesn't seem to have reoccurred since the matter got aired in Question Time , but I wonder if they will just find a different route to execute a similar strategy upon, perhaps one in a region without an independent MP.

I've always been neutral on privatisation in the past, especially when the RTBU was spewing rubbish, but this kind of tactic is really quite shocking. TfNSW needs to rein in the operators for this kind of thing...something is wrong with the contract structure if the above is allowable.

You are looking into the situation to deeply. No single route is singled out to be ‘sacrificed’, operators attempt to cover as many trips as possible across the network and unfortunately some days some routes will have large gaps.

Everyday is different. There is a different amount of shifts that go down each day. There are a different amount of shifts down that end up being fulfilled each day. Various routes will be affected differently each day.

[jpp42]

You are looking into the situation to deeply. No single route is singled out to be ‘sacrificed’, operators attempt to cover as many trips as possible across the network and unfortunately some days some routes will have large gaps.

Everyday is different. There is a different amount of shifts that go down each day. There are a different amount of shifts down that end up being fulfilled each day. Various routes will be affected differently each day.

I find this incredibly difficult to believe in practice. Yes, that's how it should be, affecting different routes differently each day, but the data shows in practice that was not the case with the 389 (until the day it was aired in question time as I linked, funny enough it's been perfect since then). One route is having no service AT ALL for almost three hours in the afternoon, after also having no service for an hour in the morning that same day? That means 6 trips then 18 trips in a row, all cancelled. And you're trying to tell me this is totally and completely random? Come on, I'm not an idiot.

[Linto63]

Can't comment on the particular case mentioned, but when faced with having to cut services, there will be a priority list of which rosters are cut first. These will be those where there are parallel routes or those that are high frequency. Hence with Transit Systems usually it is routes like the 438X, 440, 470 etc that are cancelled first.

[Aurora]

That is right, all transport modes and operators would have a higher priority list of services to keep and those to cut to minimise the overall network impact.

Any patterns can be put down to those trips being a lower priority in the greater scheme of the network for reasons such as lower patronage, availability of other services nearby or the way the rosters are built in that timetable, which can make specific services more likely to be cut. So rather than cutting 12 trips across eight routes, they may be able to deliver with a cut of just 6 trips across two routes.

[Stu]

You are looking into the situation to deeply. No single route is singled out to be ‘sacrificed’, operators attempt to cover as many trips as possible across the network and unfortunately some days some routes will have large gaps.

Everyday is different. There is a different amount of shifts that go down each day. There are a different amount of shifts down that end up being fulfilled each day. Various routes will be affected differently each day.

I find this incredibly difficult to believe in practice. Yes, that's how it should be, affecting different routes differently each day, but the data shows in practice that was not the case with the 389 (until the day it was aired in question time as I linked, funny enough it's been perfect since then). One route is having no service AT ALL for almost three hours in the afternoon, after also having no service for an hour in the morning that same day? That means 6 trips then 18 trips in a row, all cancelled. And you're trying to tell me this is totally and completely random? Come on, I'm not an idiot.

I do not think that you are an idiot at all. I think that you are looking at this from a customer point of view. You may not be privy to viewing the current situation from an operations point of view - as you would already be aware of the industry driver shortage that is causing the high number of cancellations from an

As mentioned below, some trips on high frequency services are cancelled in order to redistribute resources to another service. The situation has reached a point which is sometimes extremely challenging to redistribute resources from high frequency services as these services have suddenly suffered a massive negative impact from the beginning of a particular day which leaves very little resources to redistribute and can sometimes cause high frequency services to suffer from service gaps.

The driver shortage situation kicked of in December 2021 and has continued on for 12 months now.

[pgt]

I'm sure there's a logic behind how they choose what services get cancelled - as to how much this impacts the commuter/customer is another thing.

As a regular on route 144, until the most recent shuffle that saw articulated buses used on weekdays on this route (plus 114), it was almost exclusively a North Sydney operated route, but noticing one bus every weekday leaving Chatswood at 0635 would be cancelled almost every day and was like that for over 3 months... until one day it ran, then I realised it was a Brookvale operated service.

Though this morning there were basically no route 144 buses leaving Chatswood between 0600 and 0700 (3 services in a row cancelled) - which is obviously annoying for the commuter.
Curiously, 2 of those services I normally notice are operated by articulated buses... and the two services that did run after 0700 were both articulated buses, but are normally regular buses which was useful given it did get close to full towards Neutral Bay Junction.
Operationally this made sense somehow.

In this scenario I'm sure it would have been better for those affected if the middle one of the 3 services could have run, but being morning I'd be guessing perhaps there just weren't enough drivers and since it is not school holidays, they may well have had to prioritise running school services (educated guess).

At least those services did show up as "cancelled" in the real time apps (eg. TripView) so one could at least figure out a plan B or C.

[Aurora]

And that is a key benefit of the real-time tech we have these days to check. Go back two decades and you would have to sit around until you got fed up, unless there were other services from your stop one could use.

[pgt]

And that is a key benefit of the real-time tech we have these days to check. Go back two decades and you would have to sit around until you got fed up, unless there were other services from your stop one could use.

... which still happens from time to time now when said real-time tech/info simply says "no real time information available" for a service which eventually doesn't show (has happened a couple of times in the last few weeks already, and plenty times before that).

Granted yes this is why often when plotting a route I look at different options where they exist.
Reminded of the renumbering of the old L88 to L90 inbound because people would let the L88 past purely to wait for the L90 not realising they were basically the same route from Avalon to the city.

[Ray]

Interesting observation about 144 ex Chatswood going MIA between 6 and 7am - students of this route will recall that a lot of these services were operated by M depot under the old regime. Coincidence?

Re the 389 being absent for 2.5 hours, is OP relying on an app for this information? Because quite often services will not appear on the app and annoyingly reappear with very little notice.

[booma]

Staff shortages are also affecting fleet maintainence as well. Along with a driver shortage, at some times of the day there is also a shortage of available buses ready for service.

[In Transit]

Interesting observation about 144 ex Chatswood going MIA between 6 and 7am - students of this route will recall that a lot of these services were operated by M depot under the old regime. Coincidence?

No relevance whatsoever. Willoughby is cancelling plenty of its services at the moment due to the same driver shortage, so would be unlikely to be any different if they still ran 144s.

[Linto63]

Punish the passengers off so they find another way to get around. Great way to grow public transport patronage.

[Glen]

Punish the passengers off so they find another way to get around. Great way to grow public transport patronage.

And your solution is..........?

[Swift]

Punish the passengers off so they find another way to get around. Great way to grow public transport patronage.

They'll soon be back if they implement proper bus priority measures. As a bonus, they'll behave!

[Campbelltown busboy]

Punish the passengers off so they find another way to get around. Great way to grow public transport patronage.

They'll soon be back if they implement proper bus priority measures. As a bonus, they'll behave!

The issue then would be young people that get onto a bus playing rap music with non PG lyrics blaring out of a Bluetooth speaker

[Swift]

They'll soon be back if they implement proper bus priority measures. As a bonus, they'll behave!

The issue then would be young people that get onto a bus playing rap music with non PG lyrics blaring out of a Bluetooth speaker

Call the police on those.

[Campbelltown busboy]

The issue then would be young people that get onto a bus playing rap music with non PG lyrics blaring out of a Bluetooth speaker

Call the police on those.

The non PG rap music that young people bring onto the bus via a Bluetooth speaker would be a non censored version of a song that needs to get heavily edited by the record label so it can bs played on a radio station