Just before Christmas 2020 TfNSW introduced sweeping changes to bus services in the most bus dependent part of Sydney, the Northern Beaches. Rather than just tinkering around the edges, or dropping a new flashy service, these changes are a big step towards building a genuinely useful network.
The last big shake up to bus services in the Beaches came with the introduction of the not-quite-BRT B-Line in 2017. The B-Line was a step in the right direction towards best practice bus service design, but pulled up short of being all that it could be. It had great branding, solid bus stops and new vehicles, but lacked anything much in the way of traffic priority. Like the buses it replaced the B-Line spends a lot of time crawling along in traffic.
Unlike the vast majority of Sydney, the Northern Beaches lack public transport service running on its own right of way. There’s no trains, no metro, no light rail and no t-way. There are a handful of dedicated bus lanes, but mostly only one directional in peak hour and very much placed where there’s room for them, rather than where they are most useful.
Beaches Link and the B-Line
There are plans underway for a brand new, fully grade separated transport corridor to the Northern Beaches, but at this stage it looks like Beaches Link will be for cars and trucks and, if Sydney’s existing motorway network is anything to go by, probably won’t end up being used to any great extent for public transport. From the day this was announced it was clear that a new right of way for public transport into the Northern Beaches was not going to be forthcoming.
And so in 2017, enter: The B-Line. The B-Line was introduced to provide high capacity, high frequency, limited stops service between the CBD and key hubs along the Beaches. A classic bus we choose to catch. It included new park and ride car parks, bike parking, decent bus stop infrastructure and some minor road redesign. In peak hour, much of the B-Line route runs in transit lanes (AKA HOV lanes) or bus lanes, at least in the peak direction. Out of peak most of the route is in general mixed traffic. These arrangements chop and change constantly as the bus makes its way between Mona Vale and Wynyard.
The Beaches Pre B-Line
By the 2010s Sydney was crisscrossed by an absolute mess of a bus network that had evolved erratically in the 60 odd years since the collapse of the tram network it replaced. It was confusing, difficult to navigate and lacked any underlying logic or coherence.
A 2013 plan produced by the State Government optimistically called ‘Sydney’s Bus Future’ outlined a pathway out of that mess and the B-Line was the first real indication that this plan, unlike most of Sydney’s other transport blueprints, might amount to something. Alas, 4 years on and we are still only up to B1 of 13.
Nowhere was this mess more apparent than the Northern Beaches. The area had grown up and out since the bones of the bus network had been laid years earlier. Outdated ideas about CBD-centric workplaces meant that almost all buses went to Wynyard, never mind the burgeoning business parks and retail centres in and around the area. Out of peak public transport was lacklustre and almost everyone who could (unless they were Wynyard bound) chose to drive. This furthered the perception that the Northern Beaches was, errr, not a place that those living elsewhere could easily visit.
An Underwhelming Success
For the first time, the B-Line provided a clear, legible, frequent and fast-ish bus service to the Northern Beaches. Infact the B-Line was so successful at altering the perception of the Beaches as inaccessible, that the State Government’s plan to extend the B-Line to Newport shortly after it opened was quashed by the NRA (Newport Residents Association) citing concerns that a B-Line stop “threatens to increase traffic congestion, threatens our local and beach parking, threatens our trees and threatens our village life”. Must be quite a powerful bus route to achieve all that.
Andrew Constance tells us that in its first year the B-Line carried more passengers than the population of greater Sydney. This fact is definitely cute, but quite meaningless, since I suspect the services it replaced achieved the same feat. And so, without deep diving into data that is probably not readily publicly accessible anyway, it’s difficult to quantitatively say how the B-Line has changed public transport on the beaches. Qualitatively, I can say that the difference is huge. As an occasional visitor it is now simple to understand how to get to any point on the Beaches, at least as far as Mona Vale. Never again will I have to beg the driver of an L90 to let me off at Spit Junction, lost somewhere in the miasma of different express bus stopping patterns.
What the B-Line definitely didn’t do, however, was provide a transport service separate from the woes of the Beaches over capacity road network. What it also didn’t do particularly well was reduce the complexity of the local bus network in the area. When implemented, the B-Line was basically just superimposed over the existing network. A few routes were removed, but it felt like TfNSW were hedging their bets on the success of the program. The network was still designed to give commuters from far flung suburbs a peak hour one seat ride to Wynyard (or occasionally Manly Wharf or North Sydney) and provide a more basic coverage service throughout the rest of the day.
It was hoped (by me), at the time, that the high frequency, high capacity B-Line would function more like a rail service, supplemented by frequent local bus routes connecting to B-Line stops and other local destinations.
Into 2021
3 years later and it seems like those changes are finally being made now. Whether this is because the obvious success of the B-Line has increased the appetite for more radical (and potentially alienating) change, because Covid has shown us that bold policy change can and should occur once in awhile or because it was always the plan but a slowly, slowly approach was considered necessary to avoid revolt.
I suspect it’s a combination of all 3, but regardless, it’s a win for everyone on the Beaches, whether they use public transport or not.
What’s Fresh
The B-Line continues to run every 3-10 minutes all day, every day, but now runs every 30 minutes throughout the night.
The 199 from Manly to Palm Beach and the 144 from Manly to Chatswood (with that tedious deviation to Royal North Shore removed) are now high frequency services with a 10 minute service all day, 7 days. The 160x, previously the peak hour only L60/E60) has been injected with steroids and is now a high frequency, limited stops service between Dee Why and Chatswood, no longer extending to Mona Vale (change for the B-Line).
Alas, it’s not quite the B2 that residents of the area and anyone interested in good transport planning had been hoping for, but it’s a huge step up for accessibility. Key beneficiaries will be those wanting easy beach access from the North Shore, anyone trying to get by public transport to the new hospital at French’s Forest, and Beaches residents commuting to the Lower North Shore and Macquarie Park area.
Now they just need to paint the buses yellow, give the stops useful names (I’m thinking rename the very catchy ‘Frenchs Forest Rd near Bantry Bay Rd’ to the more helpful ‘Northern Beaches Hospital’), build a few shiny new bus stops with next service screens, throw in a bus lane along Babbage/Warringah/Frenchs Forest Road and viola, the B2. Maybe in another couple of years…
Untangling the Mess
The most remarkable thing about the incremental changes that have been made to the Northern Beaches bus network since 2017 has been the way an outdated and inefficient mess has slowly morphed into a system that actually makes use of best practice network planning strategy.
Take a look at a section of the pre-B-Line network map around the Spit Bridge.
It’s a cacophony of colour and endlessly complex route intermingling. I’m actually kind of impressed that so much information could be synthesised onto a map like this. Of course, unless bus maps are your fetish *ahem*, it’s probably totally unusable to you.
Now compare to that same section, now.
Okay, it’s still a lot, and there’s room for improvement. But after a few seconds, your eyes start to focus in on key information. You think, ‘maybe I can actually use this map to help me get somewhere!’
Two main things have changed.
1. Map legibility.
Colours and line thicknesses have been chosen to reflect the information that is useful to a prospective passenger. Thick Yellow Line = B-Line. Thick dark blue = high frequency. Thin blue = all day local service. Dashed pink = Peak only. Dotted pink = infrequent. ‘X’ designation = express service. Suddenly a casual user can immediately synthesise which routes might be useful for their trip.
2. Route legibility.
Pre B-Line world just had way too many different bus routes. It was a soup that made it extremely difficult to trip plan and almost impossible to find a bus (and get in the right queue) at Wynyard or to flag the right bus anywhere along Military Road. No amount of beautiful map design can make up for the fact that there were just too many bus routes. Pre B-Line there were 45 different bus routes crossing the Spit Bridge. By looking at the map I cannot tell how many of these are peak only or how often they might run. With a quick glance at the Dec 2020 network map I can see that there are now only 14 bus routes that cross the Spit Bridge and that only 4 of them run outside of peak hour. Further, I can see that the B-Line only stops at Neutral Bay Junction and Spit Junction and that the 100 and 144 are all stops frequent services. Amazing!
Incremental Improvements
The importance of change like this should not be understated. Politicians and the public love to obsess over huge shiny glamour projects, but well funded and executed network redesigns can make just as big a change to the wellbeing and productivity of residents.
Thankfully, the Northern Beaches are largely distracted at the moment. With most network restructures like this it’s those that lose out that speak with the loudest voice. Expect complaints from the parts of the Northern Beaches that have lost their twice daily express service to Wynyard, even if they now have an all day service that connects to the high frequency B-Line.
There is, of course, still room for improvement with the network, and thus also the map. The amount of clutter the 229 adds to the map, for a service that runs 5 times a day is frustrating, but leaving this in feels typical of an agency looking to make steady, incremental change. Most routes of this nature have been purged, consolidated into more frequent routes or replaced with on-demand service.
Mosman is still home to far too many low frequency niche bus routes, although these have been reduced slightly since the B-Line. I can’t help but wonder if the door to door one seat ride mentality lingers on in one of Sydney’s most prestigious neighbourhoods, despite being all but dead everywhere else. You could axe the 228, 229, 230, 238 and 246 entirely and not leave anyone stranded without a frequent reliable service a short walk away. In other parts of Sydney a transport agency wouldn’t even consider running so many buses in streets so near to one another. Perhaps a more optimistic reading of these oversights might be that Mosman’s time is soon to come, and those bus routes’ days are numbered.
