Journey Planning & Service Confusion in Regional Victoria
Alan Thomas has recently published an excellent map that shows all the various "bus" and coach routes that connect regional Victoria's various cities and towns. An impressive feast considering how difficult it can be to find information about these services.
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| Map showing regional public transport services in Victoria [Alan Thomas] |
It's really disappointing that it takes the will of an independent and passionate advocate to produce such things as the Department of Transport and Planning (DTP) should really step up and do it officially.
Aside from V/Line train services, journey planning can get very complicated in Regional Victoria. This is due to the multitude of planning tools that exist in the V/Line and PTV silos of information. Those not familiar could think we have two isolated networks as opposed to one integrated one.
Many problems could be solved by better integrating V/Line information into existing PTV tools. Currently, the majority of V/Line tools provide a better level of service information but to fully utilise the entire state public transport system you are required to use a combination of sources. This undoubtedly creates an unnecessary barrier for new passengers.
As part of the next gen myki project, It is expected that account based smart ticketing will replace V/Line paper tickets so now is a perfect oppurtinity to review regional planning tools and get it right.
Regional Journey Planning Tools
PTV Journey Planner, App and Website
Within metropolitan areas, the PTV journey planner is often your best bet for train, tram and bus information it gives you exactly what you need and provides a lot of filters to plan a journey that suits most passengers' needs.
Once you leave the Melbourne area however things can get pretty weird. It's not a good sign when parts of the PTV app and website can't even differentiate V/Line train and coach services often displaying the latter as train services. It seems to be less common to use the journey planner than it once was but is still problematic when accessing service information from the map, timetable or search functions.
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| Coach stops show as train stations when using the PTV search function. |
Further, the maps associated with coach services are more often than not just displayed as arbitrary point-to-point lines, defeating the purpose of the interactive map design of both the app and website.
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| The PTV interactive map shows V/Line services as point-to-point rather than showing the path taken along roads. |
It's also not uncommon for changes between coach and train services to be poorly displayed or ignored completely. Leading to confused passengers who think they have a single-seat coach trip when in fact there might be a couple of interchanges required.
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| Service to Geelong or Southern Cross station? The sidebar and map show conflicting infomation. |
And the timetables, well they are more often than not useless. Showing only day-by-day services and needlessly showing irrelevant information.
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| Day-by-day election when downloading a timetable on the "Ouyen - Melbourne via Warracknabeal & Ballarat" route. |
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| The majority of the timetable will only get you to Ballarat, not Ouyen, Warracknabeal or anywhere in between as was selected. |
The PTV sources however become essential when a non-coach intertown regional bus service comes into play, often being the only place to find out about these services.
V/Line journey planner
Situations, where the PTV journey planner is just a confusing mess, are often when the V/Line journey planner shines. Although a little more clunky than its metro-focused equivalent it does at least show coach and train interchanges reliably with clarity, You can also pre-purchase tickets through this planner making it the obvious choice for regional coach users. However, it falls down when it comes to trains as there is no way to search by departure or arrival time. leaving you scrolling through a long list to find the service you need.
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| Finding the right trip using the V/Line journey planner can be difficult on commuter train lines where services are more frequent. |
Paper & PDF Timetables
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| Paper and PDF timetables show a good overview of service and connections, but they aren't available for all coach lines. |
V/Line App
A note on regional "intertown" bus services
Most of these services are almost impossible to find information on unless you already know about the service. I question the logic of the DTP here, as they do such a poor job of acknowledging these services' existence let alone promoting them. The PTUA committee discovered one such service between Ballan and Hepburn Springs during our planning weekend prompting Daniel Bowen to create our first TikTok highlighting the woeful service patterns.
@ptuavic #publictransport #buses #moreservicesplease #morebusesplease #ballan #ruralvictoria ♬ original sound - PTUA
On Alan's map, we can see that there is a "bus" service that runs from Horsham to Mildura although looking at the operators' website confirms that it is a coach. This is the case for the vast majority of the bus services on the map. So it would seem logical to brand them as coaches and add them to the coach network map. Mind you the coach maps need some work too as Alan points out in his accompanying blog post.
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