What's the BUZ?
One of the things I noticed on my recent trip to Brisbane was a number of buses and bus stops that featured BUZ on the sign. For example, the bus that I took from my hotel to the city was 199 West End BUZ.
I assumed this was something to do with making this inner city route (it serves inner city areas from West End through to Fortitude Valley) seem somehow 'hip' and attractive.
Then I saw other buses that went to non-interesting areas (sorry any locals offended) also labelled BUZ. The Brisbane Translink website didn't help very much, but a few more internet searches did come up with interesting results:
BUZ is a neat abbreviation of Bus Upgrade Zones (or perhaps there is back-formation at work here.
In the case of the 199, there was an overlap with other routes that ran not-quite as frequently (e.g. 15 mins during the day, down to 45 mins at night), meaning that during the day I never had to wait more than 7 minutes (and usually less) for a bus, and even at 11 o'clock on a wet weeknight never more than 15 minutes. There was also an hourly overnight service (although I am not sure whether that was only weekends or every night).All BUZ services run at least every fifteen minutes in each direction from 6:00am to 11:00pm seven days a week. BUZ routes also run at least every ten minutes during peak hours from Monday to Friday.
Nearly all BUZ routes are express services, with stops sometimes separated by quite lengthy distances. Often, these BUZ services are duplicated by all-stops services (e.g. Route 200 closely parallels the route of the Route 204 all-stops service to Carindale). Route 199 is the only BUZ that is an all-stops service with bus stops within short walking distances of each other.
In other words, this is one of the few true 'A' class public transport services run in Australia, and is certainly a positive step forward for Brisbane.
As for the other BUZ routes, they are better than the average 'B' service found elsewhere in Australia (in my classification, half hourly at night is enough to get a B classification) and they deserve to do well.
Also, like the 900 series buses in Perth these high-quality services are providing a backbone service above and beyond the local route network. Something perhaps for Melbourne to look at, where, as far as I know, they are still talking about joining up 'all stops' services to make them 'Smart'.
posted by HDZ @ 12:24 PM
1 Comments:
A comparison between Brisbane's BUZ, Adelaide's Go Zones, Perth's 900s and Melbourne's SmartBus programs would be worth doing since they seem to have pretty much the same objectives.
To this might be added some STA services in Sydney, though like Melbourne's best bus route (220) they might be more a case of old routes that haven't been cut back as much as the others as opposed to a deliberate program.
Of all these, BUZ seems to offer the best frequency but Adelaide excels in coverage of the inner 10km ring.
Melbourne's Smartbus routes offer better rail-feeder and cross-suburban routes (unlike Adelaide & Perth which are radial) but connections are terrible, even where frequencies are harmonised.
And even where headways are harmonised, it's done poorly. I think I've already mentioned that the best place for a timed bus/train transfer point is (a) a major activity centre (b) where up and down trains cross, and (c) a location midway along the bus route since the number of transfers can be doubled.
Oakleigh meets all these, Box Hill just one. Of course Route 700 would have to be co-ordinated at Box Hill with routine 28 min waits at Oakleigh!
Getting back to Brisbane, I'd wonder about stop spacing. I rather like the Perth Circle Route approach of every second. Where it's more than this and you need two duplicating routes, then surely operating economies and frequencies are compromised.
Though I don't know the area concerned, to me it would seem overkill to have an express service every 15 min and a stopper every 45 min. If the express stopped at more stops so the 45 min stopper could be scrapped, then the saved resources could be used to upgrade a swag of local routes from (say) hourly to 30 min at night.
Also express operating probably isn't necessary at night. Melbourne trams are quite fast at night and stop spacing is not altered.
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