This headline is contradictory as later in the story it says that the bus services which meet the trains have seen growth while other services have seen the decline.

One reason for the bus decline in the Gold Coast region is the passengers abandoning buses in favour of trams to Helensvale station.

Regards,

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/twenty-per-cent-of-south-east-queensland-commuters-abandon-bus-links-to-trains-20181019-p50auf.html

Twenty per cent of south-east Queensland commuters abandon bus links to trains
Tony Moore21 October 2018 — 10:35pm
More than 20 per cent of bus passengers have abandoned Brisbane’s regional bus companies and returned to their cars, new figures show.

The figures are significant because these bus lines feed passengers from the outer suburbs into train stations and into regional shopping centres.

Outer-suburban and regional bus services, such as Brisbane Bus Lines, have lost patronage.Wikimedia Commons
An RTI search by public transport lobby group, Rail Back on Track revealed the 20.3 per cent drop in passengers on the private bus lines operating on the edge of Brisbane.

Rail Back on Track said the drop shows passengers were shunning out-of-date connections between regional bus lines and outer-edge train stations because they "did not begin earlier enough or run late enough."

By contrast Brisbane City Council’s bus lines show an overall passenger drop of 3.8 per cent and ferry traffic has dropped 6.1 per cent.

Rail Back on Track has now five years of figures for all forms of public transport – including bus, rail and ferries – in the Greater Brisbane area.

It includes Brisbane’s regional bus lines, which are co-ordinated by Translink.

The figures show:

Hornibrook Buslines – 63 per cent drop since 2013
Brisbane Bus Lines – 35.8 per cent drop since 2013 (one route)
Laidley Buslines – 43.3 per cent drop since 2013 (one route)
Caboolture Bus Lines – 26.8 per cent drop since 2013
Veolia Transport Brisbane (regional) – 10.4 per cent drop since 2013
Surfside Buslines – a 15.9 per cent drop since 2013
Westside Bus Company – a 5.5 per cent drop since 2013
Only Thompson Bus Services, based in Strathpine and running in Brisbane’s northern suburbs, shows any growth in passengers over the past five years.

Thompson, which provides services to Lawnton, Petrie and Strathpine rail stations, has increased its passengers by 4.9 per cent.

These rail stations are on both the Sunshine Coast line and the new Redcliffe (Petrie to Kippa Ring) line. Petrie is also a stop on the Caboolture line.

Some other bus companies show some passenger growth in the last 12 months, but are still well down on passenger numbers from 2013-14.

Robert Dow, from Rail Back on Track, said the regional bus figures were revealing.

“People have abandoned the system,” Mr Dow said.

“We have a 20.3 per cent drop in passengers over the five years,” he said.

Mr Dow said the figures showed passengers deserted buses as fares increased too quickly bewteen 2013-16 and it was only a fare review in December 2016 that some return in passengers was noted.

“It took a while but in 2017-18 we are starting to see some return in passengers,” he said.

Mr Dow said road traffic congestion was beginning to bite.

Mr Dow said Ipswich’s Westside Buslines had a 10.26 per cent increase in passengers in 2017-18.

“Now part of that is people returning to rail,” he said.

“Basically the buses that are running to rail stations primarily are seeing a good increase in patronage. The ones that do not, are seeing their patronage slump.

“For the first time in five years we have seen a small increase in patronage on the Ipswich (rail) line, so people are starting to go back to rail.”

The Ipswich line through Brisbane’s western suburbs showed a 0.84 per cent growth in passenger in 2017-18, the figures show.

The Gold Coast (11.85 per cent) and Sunshine Coast (9.94 per cent) rail lines, plus the newer Springfield (8.13 per cent) and Redcliffe (first year) rail lines show passenger growth.

Mr Dow accused Translink of trying to hide the poor bus results.

A Translink spokesman said the 2017-18 financial year had a record number of trips cross south-east Queensland.

"We recorded 182.83 million trips, an increase of 5.4 million or 3.1 per cent higher than the previous financial year," the spokesman said.

"There was a previous patronage dip on buses. This was never a secret as TransLink regularly publishes transport data via monthly Open Data, quarterly Tracker reports as well as in the TMR annual report.

"There are many reasons for patronage changes, however, the government has responded and invested in areas such as Fairer Fares and the introduction of a number of concession and discount schemes, including Asylum Seeker and Job Seeker concessions, frequent travel incentives and off-peak discounts.

"The drop in bus patronage can be attributed to a number of factors, including some customers switching to Gold Coast Light Rail services and some bus passengers in northern Brisbane and Moreton Bay switching to the Redcliffe Peninsula rail line.

"We are seeing signs of recovery. Growth in public transport use has been building since the introduction of Fairer Fares in late 2016, which has provided more than $123 million for everyday families.

"The Queensland government is continuing to invest in public transport in south-east Queensland, including new services and infrastructure, the Cross River Rail project and our new ticketing system, which will encourage even greater public transport use."