History of Perth Bus Train & Ferry Routes

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Traklink
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History of Perth Bus Train & Ferry Routes

Post by Traklink »

Borrowing a thread title from the Adelaide section since this doesn't really fit in the Obscure Routes thread.

Over on Flickr someone has uploaded a Midland Line timetable from 1990 - the year before electric trains started:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/167863685@N05/52947277964
https://www.flickr.com/photos/167863685@N05/52947277969

Key points:
  • Peak frequency every 7-8 minutes, split between two stopping patterns similar to the A and B patterns used until 2019. Most intermediate stations therefore saw a 15 minute frequency.
  • Contra-peak services were somewhat inconsistent and generally had fewer trips than the peak direction. Morning trips ran all stops except for one trip on each express pattern, while afternoon trips typically used the peak stopping patterns.
  • Weekday off-peak and Saturday daytime services every 20 minutes.
  • Mon-Sat evening and Sunday daytime services every 40 minutes.
  • Sunday evening services finished at 7:30pm ex-Perth - consistent with almost every bus route at the time. Also no early morning services on weekends.
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Re: History of Perth Bus Train & Ferry Routes

Post by Traklink »

With the recent news that the Fremantle CAT will be withdrawn at the end of this month, here's a look at the history of this service:

The Fremantle CAT was introduced on 26 August 2000, replacing the Fremantle Clipper service and running in a figure-8 loop between James Street to the north and South Street to the south. The initial timetable was ambitious by the standards of the time: an 8-minute frequency at peak times (3pm to 10pm Thursday/Friday and 10am to 10pm weekends) and a 10-minute frequency otherwise (7am to 7pm Monday to Wednesday, and 7am to 3pm Thursday/Friday). This compared well to the former Clipper, which only provided a 15 minute daytime service on weekends and no service at all on weekdays.
FreCAT2000.png
FreCAT2000.png (281.24 KiB) Viewed 1653 times
While the increased frequency was welcome, the evening services were generally underused and so an earlier finish time of 6:30pm was introduced throughout the week on the CAT's first birthday on 26 August 2001. Weekday morning services were also cut to start half an hour later.

The next major change occurred on 3 February 2002, when the route was extended south to Douro Road. In order to run the service with the same bus fleet, the frequency of the extended route was standardised to every 10 minutes at all times - however this still provided a high frequency weekend service in South Fremantle for the first time. It also compensated for the reduction in weekday frequencies from every 20 minutes on former routes 151 and 152 to every 30 minutes (and later every hour) on route 141.
FreCAT2002.png
The final extension to the CAT route was introduced on 14 December 2003, taking it to the Maritime Museum that had opened in Fremantle Harbour. The service then saw relatively few changes over the next few years, with the only noteworthy improvement being the reintroduction of a Friday evening service from 30 November 2007. This initially ran until 9pm, but was revised to an earlier 8pm finish from 8 March 2009.
FreoCAT2003.jpg
2011 saw a major change to the Fremantle CAT service, with the original figure-8 design split into two separate loops to make the service more legible, accompanied by a reduction to a 15 minute frequency on the James Street route in an attempt to improve reliability. During the public consultation phase, these routes were referred to simply as the "North Loop" and "South Loop", however the final implementation saw the "Red CAT" and "Blue CAT" convention copied from the Perth CBD (all while the buses themselves retained their distinctive orange livery).
FreCAT2011.jpg
This form of the service operated nearly unchanged until the end of the decade, only picking up services on Boxing Day from 2016 onwards. However this wasn't to last, and from 16 August 2020 the Red CAT was "temporarily" suspended and the Blue CAT service frequency halved to an unpleasant 20 minute frequency in response to the Covid-19 pandemic - before the City of Fremantle puled their funding entirely three years later.
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Re: History of Perth Bus Train & Ferry Routes

Post by Merc1107 »

Thanks for the history lesson on the CAT. I'll add that it seemed like the service had its own pool of drivers - in fact a friend has indicated to me they knew some of the drivers operating the CAT back in the 2000s :shock: To call that incredible dedication, is a gross understatement.

Did the former Fremantle Clipper observe the same route as the original CAT service, or were there some minor differences?
Traklink wrote: Sun Sep 10, 2023 4:04 pm2011 saw a major change to the Fremantle CAT service, with the original figure-8 design split into two separate loops to make the service more legible, accompanied by a reduction to a 15 minute frequency on the James Street route in an attempt to improve reliability.
I would say that the 15min frequency (handled by one bus) on the former Red CAT loop is one of the great fictional works of our time; there was no way on this Earth a bus could traverse the full loop, and return in time to complete another loop 15mins later even though this was the quieter portion of the route. Google Maps yields an estimated journey time of 12mins, with the nice little caveat "without traffic"... Of course, this estimate does not account for making up to 14 stops along the way, or the disruption a passing freight train could cause.

Even for a Blue CAT, having one bus starting each trip 20mins after the last (particularly in Summer) seemed overly optimistic. The middle of the University Semester, a nice Summer's day, maybe some events happening around Fremantle, any of those things could throw the 10min frequency completely out of whack. Personally, I think transitioning to a timetabled service, where there are rather exacting specifications for punctuality and penalties for non-compliance, will be an overall improvement for passengers, as will the change to a bidirectional service, which should alleviate some of the peculiar overcrowding situations the one-way loop seemed to cause.

It will be interesting to see how the additional trips are rostered - if the short 532s will just be treated as any other service (which I would expect), or if they'll still be somewhat isolated from the rest of the network like the 555?
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Re: History of Perth Bus Train & Ferry Routes

Post by Enviro 500 »

Fremantle Blue CAT has other bus routes nearby so it makes little difference if it gets cut.

Previously I had mentioned making Fremantle CBD another free transit zone. The Fremantle CAT getting defunded means only Perth, Midland and Joondalup have free public buses.
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Re: History of Perth Bus Train & Ferry Routes

Post by Guy_Arab »

if required i have all early bus fleet records
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Re: History of Perth Bus Train & Ferry Routes

Post by Traklink »

Merc1107 wrote: Sun Sep 10, 2023 4:53 pm Did the former Fremantle Clipper observe the same route as the original CAT service, or were there some minor differences?
This was the original Clipper route, as sourced from the City of Fremantle's recent review of the CAT service:
Fremantle Clipper.JPG
Fremantle Clipper.JPG (54.68 KiB) Viewed 1511 times
The figure-8 route was introduced in November 1998 but I haven't found a map of that version of the service.
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