This came up several times recently on social media, so I thought I’d work my answers into a blog post.
Who decides how often the trains (and other public transport services) run?
It’s not the private operator MTM (Metro Trains Melbourne), it’s the State Government.
If you want to read the grisly details, it’s in the Public Transport partnership agreements.
The web site says the train contract expired on 1st December 2024, but it was extended by 18 months to cover the Metro tunnel opening. The latest tram contract took effect from 1st December – a new operator (“Yarra Journey Makers”) just took over, though the change has flown somewhat under the radar.
When looking at train services, you want the Franchise Agreement – Train -> Operations Module
The State Government (via PTV, which is now part of the Department of Transport and Planning) specifies requirements for a Master Timetable (see section 7.3), including the number of services to be run. They also specify variations for special events (section 5).
MTM, the operator/franchisee, designs the train timetable to meet those requirements, and then runs the service.
It’s basically the same for tram and bus. The State Government determines the service frequencies and overall service kilometres, and funds them as they see fit. Then the operators write the timetable and implement it.
This is why when advocates talk about service hours and frequency, they don’t whinge about the public transport operators. They’re not the decision-makers on this. The decision-makers are our State Government politicians.
They determine the budget for public transport, which determines the service levels.
The State Government also determines the fares (and how much they rise by), and what infrastructure gets upgraded, and how the train and tram fleets get renewed and upgraded.
Travel patterns are changing. The Age reported recently on CBD activity:
“There’s more weekend trade, for example, where historically there wasn’t. There’s more late-night trade, at Emporium [in the city] in particular.”
— David Jackson from Peter Jackson
Public transport has been lagging on weekend service provision for years. Infrequent services continue to discourage people from using the service.
Post-lockdown travel patterns (fewer people working in the CBD fulltime, but more coming in for non-work activities) have exacerbated the issue.
Despite what some candidates for Lord Mayor said during the council elections, I don’t think full-time on-site work is coming back for white collar workers. The benefits of not commuting every day are too great.
But there’s plenty of travel demand for non-work trips. PT needs to adapt.
Weekend hourly buses and 20, 30, 40 minute train frequencies don’t cut it.
It’s high time our politicians took notice and took action.
11 replies on “Who decides how often the trains run?”
The continued farce and illusion put on Victorians by successive State Governments of both persuasions is breathtaking.
If private operators are paid by the State Government, they’re not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, they’re making a profit. So, let’s assume (I’m sure Daniel can provide the accurate figures) the rail operator is paid $1b per annum to operate the service, and from that pockets $250m which it sends to its shareholders. Doesn’t it then follow, that if nothing in the way the private operator ran the business changes (same management, same CEO, same operational staffing) then the state government could save $250m by taking it back?
This whole privatisation scam has gone on long enough and cost Victorians billions of our taxpayer dollars going to overseas multinationals.
It’s time it ended and it’s time WE forced it to end. Voting either ALP or Liberal at the next State election won’t change anything. Vote for someone, anyone, else!
@Dave, those numbers are a bit hard to come by, but this Age opinion piece from then-RTBU Victoria State Secretary Luba Grigorovitch reckoned MTR was making about $50-60m per year in profits from Metro.
Yarra Trams was $78m 2009-2017 (so about $11m/year)
https://www.theage.com.au/opinion/the-real-cost-of-our-metro-public-transport-system-20170131-gu2b4j.html
Those numbers will be different now, especially for Metro, as fare revenue has dropped, and they get a share of it.
But what I want to make clear from the blog post is this: privatisation is not a blocker to more services. That’s completely the government’s choice to make.
Yesterday we experienced 20 minute frequency on the Geelong line for the first time. We were in Lara and literally left where we were visiting to walk to the station without even looking, as we turned the corner and saw the station a train came in which we missed, but by the time we fiddled around and got there we only had to wait another 14 minutes for the next one (where we had no problems getting a seat). Granted 20 minutes isn’t the best but it’s way better than 40.
Here in Croydon we get a 20 minute service at weekends but only a 30 minute weekday service off peak. I do remember getting a train to Flinders St on a Saturday morning which arrived by about 8.30 am. By Box Hill all seats were taken and only standing room available and by Glenferrie were packed in like sardines with doorways blocked. There was nothing special happening in the city and most of the people seemed to be on the way to work. Vline make frequent changes to their timetables such as the doubling of services at weekends on the Geelong line!!
@Dave. No, privatisation doesn’t cost taxpayers. The reason for it is to introduce savings for taxpayers, as well as greater efficiencies than can be provided by government operators. Profits are not always large. Some operators have margins as low as 3% as a result of a low bid, in order to stay in the game. Sometimes they bid too low. I suspect that was the case with Transdev buses in Melbourne where maintenance suffered as a result of blow-out in costs.
A rare and interesting reversal that is very instructive happened in Adelaide recently when the new Labor government came to office. The railways operated under contract by KD were running very efficiently and were saving taxpayers $10 million a year. Labor, on the urging of the RTBU (which had been running a campaign of industrial sabotage to undermine KD’s KPAs), made an ideological decision to re-nationalise the operation, which of course is now costing taxpayers more again.
I think it’s more helpful to analyse the actual outcomes rather than be blinded by ideology. Public transport is a drain on taxpayers as it stands. We should be aiming to reduce that impact, not worsen it. Apart from this, I appreciate Daniel’s effort to explain that service standards, fares etc are set by the government and it’s irrational to blame operators for any deficiencies in these. Contracts have ample provisions for penalties and termination should the operator fall short on performance. Finally, it should be pointed out that governments have contracted out operations of various types for generations. It’s not some new fad, as some people seem to think.
Will be interesting to see what service uplift eventuates when the Metro tunnel opens. Might be very modest given the State Governments debt issues and problems negotiating new pay deals with the public sector unions.
Another way the government haven’t adapted timetables to travel patterns is in the lack of provision of express trains on weekends and off-peak. It’s nice the Frankston line is every 10 minutes 7 days a week but despite the third track the only express services are up in the AM peak and down in the PM. This is actually worse than the 1960s, when there was a ”shopper express” to the city mid-morning.
I would have thought with people working from home there would be a demand for people to go in for half a day for a meeting.
Also, at the moment, if you go to the city for a long lunch the trip in is never an express. Likewise, shoppers can’t just pop in on a midday express and catch the peak express back. It seems ridiculous for the CBD boosters to go on about reinventing the city as a leisure destination without addressing this.
I do remember catching a late night express home for one of the special events; it might have been White Night or New Year’s Eve.
Francis E I would have thought those who have time for a long lunch would also have time to stop every station. You can’t have it all.
@David Stuart: or they’ll simply drive to somewhere more convenient in the suburbs, which would account for how packed some of those latte strips are. Just because someone has allocated an afternoon off doesn’t mean they want to lose half a productive morning.
This is how public transport lost out to cars in the last 60 years. If you want to make a journey by public transport you rely on some planner having decided your journey is worthwhile, whereas you can drive your car anywhere anytime. albeit causing congestion as you go. Then politicians respond to the very visible congestion and build bigger roads.
@Francis E Sydney Metro has made the need for express trains obsolete as it covers long distances faster stopping at all stops than the suburban system can with expresses. Perhaps Metro Trains Melbourne can aspire to this, since it has metro-like rolling stock, without the disadvantages of Sydney’s slower double deck trains? It’s better for both commuters and urban development in general to have trains stopping at all stations rather than missing some.
@Allan Collyer: Our time will come, we’ll just happen to be 80 or dead by then. Belgrave’s lack of duplication is the only thing holding Lilydale, Glen Waverley and Alamein back. The government won’t just step in and duplicate the Ferntree Gully twins and truncate every second Belgrave train at Upper Ferntree Gully just to make the trains faster for the rest of the network, it has higher priorities like funding Christian schools and (federally) stacking the ABC with cookers (also, Foxtel just got sold off, so a bunch of poor laid-off multimillionaires will need somewhere to fall up on besides Sky News Australia).
Lilydale can already run trains every 10 minutes even with the current track layout, especially when (I don’t want to say ‘if’) Cave Hill station opens (which will be built as a cheap crossing loop like Upwey, because we’re not the Mernda line which got completely rebuilt as two tracks all the way from Keon Park, ***looks at paddocks immediately north of quarry*** “There is clearly not a high enough population east of Camberwell to warrant any significant rail or timetable upgrades” – random inner-city career politician, probably).
Mooroolbark is still waiting for something as novel as a bus that actually runs on the weekend (FlexiRide isn’t a bus service, it’s a daytime-only 6-day-a-week maxi taxi that only accepts myki fares). It’s a long walk up Manchester Rd to find the once-an-hour 664 on a Sunday.