I caught a post-peak 480 bus to Railway Sq. this morning, about 9.45, from Hawthorn Pde, next to the Taverners Hill tram stop. Traffic was moderately bad and it took about 45 minutes. It’s sometimes a lot longer, sometimes less, depending on the vagaries of Parramatta Rd traffic.
That unreliability of the bus journey time will favour the tram even at current trip times.
Tony G
On 24 Mar 2014, at 8:48 pm, prescottt@...> prescottt@...> wrote:
> The running times are now up on the TfNSW journey planner if you select a date after Thursday.
>
>
> http://tp.transportnsw.info/nsw/XSLT_TRIP_REQUEST2?language=en
>
> In a 2009 technical paper, I predicted a journey time of 39.1 minutes under the present operational style and I wasn't far out - 38 minutes, with some early morning and late night journeys at 35 minutes. The Central-Lilyfield section is improved again to 23 minutes and 22 in the small hours. They still need to get it under 30 minutes to take over the job of some of those buses, but at least there is a tiny progress. It goes to show that if (as Dudley puts it) you din a message into them for long enough it will get through. TDU has unwittingly played a part in this - take note Mal!
>
> I'm told that the operator is not entire ly to blame for the slow running, something that Greg S has alluded to over the years. And there is talk of getting rid of the ATP to help things move along better.
>
> Despite the times in the journey planner, there is no published timetable, so you need to work through the planner to assemble the whole timetable for yourself. They have a note that times are "approximate" and there is that variation of 3 mins in journey times, in spite of the line being in its own ROW and grade-separated for all but 0.5 km of its length. That's pretty slack and I suspect a consequence of too few doors in the trams, which means dwells blow out when there's a crowd. This mistake has been perpetuated in the new CAF order.
>
> It's getting there. The average speed has been lifted to 20.2 km/h on the 38 minute run and 21.9 km/h on the 35 minute run. Still well-short of the comparable European "light rail" segments that Wol fgang and I have described recently that average in the 25-30 km/h range under the same parameters, or even the Port Melbourne and St Kilda lines that are (iirc) in the 24-25 km/h range.
>
> For comparison, Adelaide's average ranges from 16.07 to 18.75 km/h (again varying journey times in spite of being all in its own lanes bar 0.8 km) and the overall Melbourne system average, according to Prof Currie, is 16.3 km/h.
>
> I will be getting a few observations on the operation (and will make some myself when I get to Sydney), but any comments from folk on TDU would be most welcome.
>
> Tony P
>
>
>
>