Fewer than one in five trains arriving at Newport and Yarraville stations connects with a bus, while only 22 per cent of bus arrivals at Altona station connect with trains, according to a damning Auditor-General’s report on Victoria’s public transport network.
In his Co-ordinating Public Transport report, tabled in State Parliament last week, Auditor-General John Doyle called for more cohesion between Victoria’s train, tram and bus schedules.
The report revealed weekend waiting for trains can be up to 40 minutes, which can be exacerbated when passengers require a connecting bus.
It found services remain poorly co-ordinated, with bus services across Hobsons Bay significantly more indirect compared with the metropolitan Melbourne average.
While the report found 80 per cent of scheduled bus arrivals connect with a train at Footscray, only 41 per cent connect at Newport, 37 per cent at Yarraville and a lowly 22 per cent at Altona. At Footscray, only 39 per cent of train arrivals connect with buses; it’s
38 per cent at Altona and an abysmal 19 and 17 per cent respectively at Newport and Yarraville.
Altona Loop Group spokeswoman Jennifer Williams said Altona suffered from a chronic lack of co-ordination between train services and between trains and buses. She said the poor performance of the system, identified by the Auditor-General, matched the experience of Altona’s train and bus commuters.
“The finding that Public Transport Victoria under-records late-running trains and trains that skip stations is proven time and time again by the real-time experience of Altona Loop commuters frustrated by Metro’s claims of ‘good service’ when cancellations have occurred,” Ms Williams said. “Hobsons Bay is an established middle-ring suburb that should have a much greater availability of services.”
Mr Doyle found more needed to be done by Public Transport Victoria, including better monitoring of whether services run on time.
Despite the poor findings, Public Transport Minister Terry Mulder said “public transport in the state is heading in the right direction”.
Mr Mulder said 10,000 extra public transport services had been added since the Coalition was elected in 2010, reducing “the amount of time public transport users wait connecting between trains and buses”.
