How are we all going in the latest COVID lockdown? Hope you’re all managing okay.
The curfew is back in Melbourne, 9pm to 5am each night.
I personally hate curfew. It stops my very low risk after-dark walks (including to the supermarket, which is quiet at those times). But I’ll adapt – and I’m coming around to the view that last year the curfew got everybody to pay attention, and help kerb behaviour like sleepovers and parties.
Anyway. As part of the curfew, for the next two weeks at least, some public transport services are being cut. They are Night Network services, specifically between 1am and 5am on Saturdays, and between 1am and 6am on Sundays.
I don’t think they should have done this. In normal times, some essential workers use these services. Right now, with lockdown and a curfew, it’s probably far fewer. But any who are impacted will be impacted severely – and this is the time we should be doing all we can to support those people who have to work.
And if you’re wondering, it’s probably not saving any money. The Herald Sun (18/8/2021) reported: the RTBU said all members rostered to work night shifts will still be paid.
Comms
Making this worse is that the comms on this has been ridiculously bad.
You’d think in this age of short attention spans, they’d have figured out how to get the key information into the headline of an article, or into the text of a tweet. But no.
The DOT article’s original headline for instance, could easily be interpreted as the cancelling of all weekend services. The vital detail was in the second paragraph (with a typo which is still there days later).
It was also unclear if the V/Line Night Coach services are included in the cuts. The PTV web site was vague on this point, saying:
While the curfew is in place, all night public transport on Friday and Saturday nights will be paused. This means that trains, trams and buses will not run between 1am and 5am on Saturdays and between 1am and 6am on Sundays for two weeks from Friday 20 August.
It took until Wednesday afternoon for that to be clarified, with the above text modified to say: This means that trains, trams, buses and V/Line night coaches will not run…
Meanwhile, Public Transport Minister Ben Carroll’s tweets are usually well thought out, but on this occasion, it was vague enough that a lot of people got the wrong end of the stick, and it got ratioed to the max. The replies show a lot of people thought it affected normal (non-Night Network) services.
The reaction compared to last year’s cuts – which were far worse – is striking. Last year, almost nobody seemed to notice.
I’m not sure I can work it out, other than perhaps last year the focus was (rightly) on the unfolding COVID disaster rather than the curfew and related impacts.
But it’s good that it’s got some attention this time round.
Impact
In this Channel 9 story (below) the government said they expected “less than 600 people” to be affected.
How many people use Night Network normally? Well we don’t know, because most patronage data is secret in Victoria. But we do know the Night Buses are not well used – this has prompted a very welcome route revamp which will switch most Night Bus routes to be 24-hour versions of regular routes. It was was due to change on 27th August, but is now temporarily postponed due to the curfew cuts.
We also know that in 2016, shortly after NN started, patronage was at about 35,000 trips each weekend. This suggests that during lockdown, ridership is under 2% of normal, though the 600 may refer to just 1am to 5/6am when services will be cut – NN includes some services outside those times which will still run.
But it’s still around 600 people impacted, and most of those 600 are likely to be essential workers – the people who ensure the services we all rely on keep running during the lockdown. They’re authorised to travel, and it’s important that they can.
And in times of crisis, we should be standing by them.
11 replies on “PT cuts after 1am during curfew”
“But it’s still around 600 people impacted, and most of those 600 are likely to be essential workers…” As they’ll need a permit to be out and about during curfew, the government should have a reasonable idea of who some of them are. Give them free taxis/Ubers. It’s the least we could do for these heroes.
@Andrew P, I’m not sure that’s right. My understanding is the worker permit is essentially self-administered, it’s not submitted to government or approved by them.
https://www.coronavirus.vic.gov.au/authorised-provider-and-authorised-worker-permit
(There’s a more strict one related to workers coming from yellow or red zones)
“Late-night weekend public transport on pause for curfew” is the DoT’s headline.
Sounds clear to me. I’m not sure how this can be misinterpreted to mean that ALL weekend PT will be cancelled. Or have the DoT revised an earlier media release you’re referring to?
At least transport on weeknights hasn’t changed ?
Re: Night Coach – there are inbound trips on some regional lines too (around 10pm-11pm)
V/Line online TTs suggest these are cancelled too, despite being well before 1am
Regional Victoria is not in lockdown (pubs/restaurants open) so could affect a small few?
I also can’t find an article on VLine’s website
@Roger, the headline was changed. I showed the original headline in the post. “Weekend public transport on pause for curfew”
Maybe many assumed that the cuts would be like the cuts last year where they cut 50% of after dark services? One would think that cutting the peak hour services that run every few minutes to enable office workers to get to work at 9am would be a smarter move than cutting an already half hourly or hourly service that primarily enables shift workers in essential jobs to get home.
Anecdotally, I’ve also noticed since the curfew was introduced earlier in the week, there have been no PSOs stationed at many stations that would ordinarily have them despite passenger numbers being seemingly the same as before curfew.
I didn’t pay much attention and I assumed tram services after 8pm would be reduced as happened last year. How many hundreds of thousands of dollars does Yarra Trams and PTV spend on media and communication?
In respect to this lockdown announcement,
I dont care what anybody says, two hours, is quite frankly not long enough. And, I say who cares about the very tiny risk of a spread if we give at least 24 hours notice of this.
Further to that, is all the food waste, just thrown in the bin. Cant we do something to stop this waste, perhaps, to prep in case of another lockdown, see if a local supermarket may be able to sell some of the stock, and/or a quick access to a foodbank???
Perhaps, we could have it, that restaurants must stop letting in new customers at X oclock, they must be gone by X oclock + 2 hours, and, the shop can stay open for another two hours, for the exclusive purpose of getting their surplus stock to somebody like foodbank or another retailer etc??
We cant help as to what, Queensland seem to be doing right. Everytime they lock down, its only for a few weeks, and its all over back to normal. Id love to know why.
Most of the essential workers, like Police and nurses, should be able to get shifts of which do not require them to travel between 11pm and 6am
There is wisper that, some are pushing for the lockdowns to continu right up to new years day.
So Essential workers only matter on weekends, but not during the rest of the week? Seems arbitrary to worry about 600 people traveling on two days during a curfew
@thede3jay, huh?
Just because there’s no all-night service on weekdays doesn’t make it okay to remove it on weekends.