After a bit of negative publicity, the Queensland Government and TransLink have finally released the extremely belated TransLink Tracker for 2011/12 Q4 (April to June 2012). Here is BrizCommuter's review:
Page 4/5 - As expected with the world's 3rd highest public transport fares, patronage has generally declined. Overall patronage for Q4 has declined by 1.08%. Q4 bus patronage has fallen by approx. 3%. Q4 train patronage however has increased by 1.7%, which is still below population growth. BrizCommuter would be interested to know if this a response to the improved peak services on the Caboolture and Ipswich Line from June 2011? Q4 Ferry Patronage has increased by 29%, but last years figures were a flood affected anomaly.
Page 5 - Again, due to the failed ALP policy of 15% fare rises driving public transport users back to using cars, the subsidy per trip has increased from $6.57 per trip to $6.72. It will be interesting to see if the "9 journeys then free" policy increases the subsidy even more in the next TransLink tracker (2012/13 Q1). It is time for a complete review of the fare structure to stop the rot.
Page 6 - Queensland Rail failed to meet reliability targets of 93.77%, with an on-time running statistic of 92.39%. Bus reliability figures continue to be inaccurate due to a laughable methodology. The totally unrealistic bus on-time running figure was 96.06%. Note: April Fools Day was indeed in Q4!
Page 7 - Customer complaints increased since the previous Q4. This is despite complaining to TransLink being a futile process. For example, BrizCommuter sent a text from TransLink to call back a customer service officer, but the number provided to call (TransLink call centre) couldn't be transferred to said person. Thus a message had to be left with the customer service officer by the call centre, to give BrizCommuter a call back, which was never received. Are TransLink taking the piss?
Page 8 - The percentage of trips using the go card trip increased marginally to 83%. Thus 17% of public transport users are still paying for hyper-inflated paper tickets. TransLink need to kill off paper tickets, which has already been achieved in Melbourne.
Page 9 - go card fixed fares have reduced significantly in the last year, but are still at an unacceptable level of 2.1% - that's more than 1 in 50 trips resulting in a $5 or $10 fixed fare! Fixed fare adjustments are at only 0.11% of journeys. This discrepancy is very concerning, meaning that a considerable number of fixed fares are not being claimed or refunded.
Page 13 - Part of the Customer Satisfaction section (please leave a comment if you have ever actually taken part in one of these surveys) is the now infamous "Affordability" statistic. This is now hovering around the 50% mark, which BrizCommuter thinks is quite generous.
Page 15 - There was an increase in train service km of 7.5% in the last year, attributed to the improved peak services on the Ipswich and Caboolture Line from June 2011. Bus service km improved by 5.8%, attributed to more high frequency routes. However, these service improvements still lag behind what would be expected from a 15% fare increase.
The 2011/12 tracker is available here:
http://translink.com.au/resources/about-translink/reporting-and-publications/2011-12-quarterly-report-apr-to-jun.pdf
Now, where is the 2012/13 TransLink Network Plan?
Probably does not make sense to release a Network Plan until the bus review comes back
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone still actually work at translink? Perhaps the reason why fixed fare adjustments are so low is that despite numerous attempts to email & telephone translink they either ignore you, or day they will adjust it but simply never do.
ReplyDelete