This guest post by Darren Davis originally appeared on his excellent blog, Adventures in Transitland, and is republished here by kind permission.
A while ago, I wrote about Perth’s public transport journey, outlining how Perth got to where it is now. I recommend reading that piece if you haven’t already, as it sets the context for this one, which drills into some of the key ways Perth makes public transport work in a city that has many of the prerequisites to create a public transport desert.
1. Public transport for everyone
One way to see how well public transport works for a city is to look at who is making most use of it. Cities that have coverage focused base accessibility networks at low frequencies tend to have a public transport customer base of people who have to use public transport, not people who choose to use public transport.
In Perth’s case, it’s clear that the public transport demographic is unusually broad for a very car-oriented city. Passengers at all sorts at different times of day and days of the week make use of the network as in the image below.
2. Accessible public transport
It’s a simple truth that making public transport fully accessible both maximises the number of people who can use public transport as well as making public transport easier to use for everyone, including those with accessibility challenges. Accessibility is a win-win for everyone, not a “nice to have” for those who have accessibility challenges.
All trains on the Perth rail network have full level boarding for the whole length of train. Equally, all train station platforms are entirely flush with the level of the train doors. All buses are accessible as are nearly all bus stops. In Australia, this is legally mandated through the Disability Discrimination Act, noting that every state is behind on meeting the deadline for fully accessible surface public transport.
While this is interesting and worthy in its own right, what is more important is what it enables. Which is independent, dignified access to trains for people who use a wheelchair. The situation with buses is similar to analogous cities where the bus driver needs to deploy a manual ramp in order for people using a mobility device to be able to board. While this means a fully accessible bus system, it lacks the added dignity provided by trains which can be boarded independently.
3. A focus on simplicity and legibility
A basic principle of public transport planning is simplicity, legibility and consistency. Perth does this well through simple, consistent clock face timetables (where services operate at the same time each hour) and consistent service spans. The KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principle applies here. The mental load needed to use public transport should not be a mental drain.
4. A focus on frequency
To repeat Jarrett Walker’s off-repeated refrain, “frequency is freedom.” A measure of this freedom is how much of a city you can reach within a reasonable travel time, rather than an obsession on point to point travel at peak times to the urban core. And in frequency, Perth generally does a pretty good job.
For example, entire Perth rail network runs at least every 15 minutes all day, every day of the week and at a significant number of stations on the legacy lines served by two lines, this further improves to a train every 7.5 minutes, all day every day of the week.
And it’s not only trains but buses that deliver frequency in Perth. The high-frequency bus network does a lot of frequent heavy lifting in non-rail served parts of Perth. There are 15 high-frequency 900 series bus routes in Perth. These services run at least every 15 minutes between 7am and 7pm on weekdays, 8am and 7pm on Saturdays, and 9am and 7pm on Sundays. While this is good, it’s not great. Auckland, which is smaller than Perth, has just implemented its 40th frequent bus route running at least every 15 minutes, 7am to 7pm, 7 days a week, with more frequent routes in the pipeline.
While there are frequent trains, these often connect to less frequent feeder buses at stations. While services are time-integrated between bus and rail, any delay to either bus or rail journey can mean a missed connection and long waits.
5. A focus on speed
Visible public transport speed, particularly speed visible to car drivers stuck on congested barely moving motorways, is some of the best free self-marketing for public transport around. And Perth has this with the Yanchep Line running in the median of the Mitchell Freeway and the Mandurah Line running in the median of the Kwinana Freeway.
This is supported by high speeds on the newer lines on the Perth rail network – the Airport, Yanchep and Mandurah lines – which each have a top speed of 130 kilometres per hour and wide station spacing. The legacy lines – Armadale, Thornlie and Midland – have a top speed of 100 kilometres per hour while the Fremantle line has a top speed of 90 kilometres per hour.
Good travel speeds are matched by excellent dwell-time management at stations, which in itself is abetted by level boarding the entire length of the train and platform. Overall, the sense you get as a passenger is that your time is not being wasted on trains in Perth. The same applies for those (few) bus routes in Perth where there is bus priority, but noting that this is an area where Perth could do much better.
6. A focus on safety
Like elsewhere in Australia and the world, anti-social behaviour on public transport in Perth is an emerging issue, especially at night. But unlike most jurisdictions, Transperth tracks perceptions of public transport at night and actively works to improve passenger safety.
Part of this is focusing presence of authorised officers on all trains and bus routes with known behavioural issues from 7:30pm, subject to staff availability. But another part of this is the high usage of public transport at all times along with well-presented buses and trains in themselves acting as a deterrent to anti-social behaviour.
7. A focus on presentation
The presentation of the entire public transport network is nothing short of spotless. And, incredibly, this includes a rail network that is completely clear of graffiti, even along the rail corridors. Buses and depots are owned by Transperth and strict contract condition enforcement means that buses and trains keep that “new train” and “new bus” look long after entering service. The overall impression this leaves is of good stewardship of the network that residents and visitors to Perth alike can be proud of.
8. An integrated network
Perth’s public transport operates as a network, not a collection of modes and services. This is particularly evident at train stations where bus interchanges are an integral part of the stations and bus interchanges are future-proofed with future network development in mind.
In the photo of the High Wycombe Station bus interchange looks deserted, the area around is only just starting to develop and the interchange is designed with the future bus network in mind. On top of this, buses pulse around the 15-minute train frequency so the station looks (and is) deserted between these pulses.
9. No irritating train announcements
Possibly not the most important element, but a particular bugbear of mine is repetitive, redundant, infantilising and plain irritating on-board automated train announcements. With a particularly intense disdain for “train etiquette” announcements telling people stuff they already know, and some choose to ignore.
Perth keeps train announcements to the bare minimum of next station and station arrival announcements, making for journeys not frequently interrupted by superfluous and often self-evident announcements.
Final thoughts
Perth has transitioned from a poor public transport performer three decades ago to third place in Australia in public transport patronage per capita.
This is because it has acknowledged that it is working with a very sprawly, low-density, car-oriented city to make public transport work for that context. And in doing so, it has avoid the trap of what I call CAT (Car Oriented Transit), the sort of public transport that requires a car to access it, focused on park and ride as the privileged and prioritised access mode. This works to reinforce rather than relieve car dependency. While it does have this usual strong Australian focus on park and ride, it also provides good feeder bus networks (that admittedly could do with more frequency in outer areas) to bus interchanges well-integrated with rail stations, which prioritise feeder bus access over park and ride access.
And most importantly Perth understands that accessibility, frequency, simplicity, frequency, speed, safety and presentation are all key elements that need to work together as a whole to make public transport work as a whole.
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The Western Line in Auckland is one long Berlin Wall with graffiti, inane train announcements and loooong dwelling times.
I attempted to get kiwirail to plant some trees in the huge chunk of land near west coast road. The answer was no, we would rather this looks like an eroading rubbish tip and we will spray all the poison we feel like. Such a good SOE.
The dwelling times are looooooonger than that. An embarrassment. The dwelling times on the Sydney double deckers are half Aucklands.
The best part of our public transport is the ART. You can call it graffiti, but it is what makes our network ours, and it is not a public nuisance.
On all the other points I agree, but removing art from train journeys would be negative for our happiness indicators.
bah humbug
Keep the ART, but get rid of the mindless scribbled tags. Painting your three symbol id on every pole and structure between Britomart and Henderson is certainly not ART, neither is anything tagged on the Morningside apartment wall since it was last painted over. Perhaps the tagout trust crew should include an art critic to decide which pieces merit preservation as examples for the eyesore creators to aspire to.
I go to Perth often as have family there. The Train and Bus system is brilliant we use it all the time and also cheap to use and always on time. Feel safe even using it in the evening. Just get an all day ticket then hop on hop of ,for train and buses. Brilliant during peak hour. No need to hire a car I’ve got the train from the airport to the city changed then gone up north of the city. Also can go from Butler north of the city to Mandurah down South without changing trains. So good. Auckland needs to learn from them
How nice it would be to have buses which meet the trains. Panmure station is particularly bad at this when the buses get stuck in the traffic light before the station so everyone mises the train. This becomes worse when the frequency of the trains is reduced (which it often is on the Eastern line) and you have to wait 20 minutes for the next train. Experiences like this will make people ditch public transport because they know that they can reduce their travel time by car by up to 10/15 minutes from waiting at Panmure alone (more over their entire journey). These issues really show the disconnect between the different modes within AT. Whilst they will obviously work separately in different departments, they should at least cooperate more to improve the overall service for the passengers.
This issue is obviously not exclusive to Panmure train station as these issues are also found at Waiheke with the buses and ferries and I’m sure that it exists in many other places and it should be solves by AT quickly as it significantly impacts the experience of using public transport. Clearly Perth is a city that we should look to for more transport ideas and concepts into the future as well as other Australian cities which have far better transport compared to Auckland.
Our train frequency is too slow off peak. If it were 10 mins you would only wait on average 5 mins for a train. It’s meant to be the backbone of our frequent hub and spoke based system so it’s letting us down big time. Buses can’t be timed for all stations.
Ummm has the author been to Perth? There is plenty of graffiti on the train lines there. Graffiti exists in every city in the world and will never be eradicated. Cheers
Surely the main lesson is you need a massive mining industry damaging the environment and destroying heritage sites so you can raise enough money to pay for expensive public transport.
too easy, and a red herring.
Aucklands once massive tram network with huge usage suggests no uranium or gold mines are needed.
Expensive public transport – vs cheap single occupant vehicles…
In Perth? I thought the mining happened in the outback, at Broken Hill, not on the west coast in Perth?
Mining is a huge driver of the Western Australian state economy.
Western Australia earns in over 4 times the mining revenue that New South Wales does where Broken Hill is ($12 billion vs $3.7 billion in 2022). So it’s not even close.
And most mine workers will “Fly In / Fly Out” from their nearest capital city (usually 2 weeks on, 1 week off). So Perth being the mining hub for Western Australia, is flushed with mining income and state mining royalties.
Most mining operations in Australia take place in the state of Western Australia which is synonymous with the mining industry. Perth, the capital and largest city of the state, is a major resources hub not just in Australia but on a global scale. Many large mining/gas companies are either headquartered or have some kind of operations there.
No. The standard joke here is that Western Australia is Australia’s quarry – followed by Queensland, NSW and South Australia.
Given transport costs less in cities that have good public transport systems than those who are heavily road focussed I’m not sure this would matter too much.
Hamilton is surrounding by a massive dairy industry screwing the environment and yet its hard to spot a bus there.
Hamilton isn’t a State capital. The Hamilton City Council would love to get some of that dairy cash but they can’t.
What a load bollocks!
Was in Perth in 95 for a 4 wk Army Ex. The Sand Gropers were building train & bus interchanges while extending rail lines out to proposed suburban areas while updating existing lines & Infrastructure before the mining boom took off in the 2000’s.
Compared to the Eastern States & NZ, Perth’s Public Transport System kicks ass!
Would Darren David perhaps be able to talk about funding for their system? Is there central Gov funding, or local? What is the fare structure like? Is there an organisation like AT, or is it all directly run by Perth Council? How do they pay for all this stuff?Is it, as Miffy suggests, funded by taxes on vast mining corporations?
It would likely be State government, although federal funding was likely available for capital work.
Western Australia is the wealthiest state in Australia and the Western Australian Government raises a huge sum of money from the mining industry and from people employed on high salaries in the mining industry. Perth is a state capital and receives a big chunk of the state budget transport. Auckland is neither a capital city nor does it have ready access to funds like that.
Perfect – and Auckland doesn’t really need ‘massive’ investment to get most of the benefits that Perth seems to have.
Auckland could easily install bus lanes on all frequent service routes. AT chooses not to and insists big infrastructure projects are the only answer.
The entire PT system of Auckland would be changed, and for a fraction of the cost required to do a dedicated ‘busway’.
I think that is one of the two lessons we can learn. 1/ Big public transport projects only work where a government can take huge sums from one sector of the economy and spend it for the benefit of a few winners elsewhere. 2/ We have to improve public transport by doing the cheap stuff first rather than looking for big projects that the consultants and construction companies want.
Thanks Miffy, I didn’t know that. I always thought of Perth as the poor cousin stuck out west – how wrong I am ! Never been there myself – bloody long way to go and no good reason to go, or so I thought…
Now I realise that we are actually the poor cousin instead – out East !
Remember the Western Australian economy is propped up by companies like Rio Tinto who destroyed caves that had been inhabited for 46,000 years. By comparison the Lascaux cave paintings that are protected in the Dordogne in France are only 17,000 years old.
Yes we have lots to thank Rio Tinto for. Remember the fascinating challenge in Oz a couple of years ago? Find the lump of radio active material that they dropped somewhere. And then the chemical dump on the banks of the Clutha.
We are so lucky that NZ will soon have its own collection of mining polluters. Shane Jones wants to turn a large portion of NZ into a tailings dump.
Surprised you didn’t include Newcastle in this report. It’s not a capital, but with a population of 500k has a comparable public transit system equal to any other large Australian city. This city is bigger than Hobart (another state capital not included) and Darwin put together. It’s also larger than Canberra.
State Govt funded, Councils don’t do much in Australia outside Queensland
Fare structure is a flat 2 zone fare for any journey of two or more zones (AUD 5.20 at most with cash)
The current massive expansion of the Perth Network was actually started in the midst of a local recession in the face of a huge collapse in mining revenue and industry downturn, overseen by the previous govt which had also massively blown out the state’s debt. The decision to fund these projects was done deliberately in order to provide some construction stimulus at the nadir of the local recession. Originally it was derided as unnaffordable by the opposition and received minimal central govt support. Since then, the situation has inverted over covid with more tacit central govt support and a significant increase in mining revenue, however the WA govt hasn’t used that to fund infrastructure like the current transit expansion in order to constrain construction inflation, instead it’s gone into managing govt debt.
Tl;dr – The Transit projects in particular were deliberately funded inspite of a collapse in mining income.
It also props up the local rail industry it’s amazing no?
We lived in Brisbane in the late 1980s and traveled a lot on the rail network It was great because we could walk to the nearest station or catch a bus from the stop just down the road .These busses arrived at the station 5 minutes before the train so you could get tickets and board the train .It was great because I lived 30 km from work but could travel by train with just a short walk at each end .No flash tunnels just great trains that arrived on time .Nz needs to send some of our planners over to have a look and learn .
Wonder where Auckland and Wellington would fit it on that per capita table?
I recall seeing some charts a few years ago but I think per capita pretty high, especially Wellington.
There’s probably errors in my rather crude methodology but for 2022/23, I calculated Auckland at 40.9 (not that far below Brisbane) while Wellington came to around 60.3 (Between Melbourne and Perth)
For 2023/24, Auckland has now risen to around 50, while Wellington has now risen to around 68.
Perth is at around 63 as of the 2023/24 FY (July 23-June 24), but with all the recent and upcoming works, it’ll probably grow a bunch over the coming years when the projects have all settled.
Our daughter’s family and our mokopuna moved to Perth 14 years ago following the Key govts austerity moves and their kicking people in social/health service work out of the country – the same process being carried out again by this administration. As a result we have been frequent visitors to Perth and use the Public Transport system regularly. It is as good as this post says, the new Airport line is a great new addition – previously a bus into Elizabeth Quay was the other option. Now a few mins walk from exiting border control and you are on the train heading into the city. The only other airport I have come across with this is Vancover. I haven’t flown into Heathrow since 1984 preferring the smaller airport is UK such as Edinburgh or Newcastle.
The roads in WA are something to behold. There is now a 4 lane highway from Perth to Margaret River. Over the past few years 5000 km of new roading has been built. But it is not just roading infrastructure that is being built – In Baldivis a new subdivision of 10’s of thousands – about a 40 min train ride from the city centre and strictly a suburb of Rockingham in just a year a massive sport centre was built. Something that would be eons in the making here in NZ. A magnificent facility with cafe and playground sporting fields and massive indoor sport arena.
https://rockingham.wa.gov.au/facilities-and-recreation/facilities/baldivis-indoor-sports-complex
Live in Perth,use public transport all of the time,Can get from northern sub to Perth airport.bus .train 50min ..cost5 dollars about 130km s
Me too .. but not as far out as you live. I can get anywhere in the Perth region quickly and being a defence veteran get travel for 50% concession. We as a family never drive to the city these days – being on a 900 series high frequency fast route that runs past our place is perfect – every 4 minutes in peak and 10 minutes frequency off-peak. They’ve done a great job in Perth on trains, but especially buses as well. Apparently trackless trams will be introduced on 7 routes in 2025 on their own busways meant to be connectors to the uni’s, hospitals and major bus-train interchanges (saving the cost of building railed track). These vehicles will be electric with guided electronic navigation embedded just below the roadway surface and have dedicated “stations” and travel at 70kph.
My pet bugbear for Auckland PT is the piss-poor quality of the bus “interchanges” – Botany Town Centre is a disaster zone, with insufficient and uncomfortable seating that is entirely open to Auckland’s frequent downpours and no shelter between the two sides or to the shops; Panmure has no shelter from the city-bound side to the station, and awkwardly enough, neither has the east-bound side which is right next to the train station; Pakuranga has Williams Ave as a useful transfer point – except it’s nowhere near Pakuranga Plaza and there is a 200m walk in the rain on a miserable day between the two directions if one does actually transfer. Papatoetoe has bus stops close to the station, but I’d not dignify it as an “interchange”; Manurewa has a poorly signed covered overbridge between buses and trains, but its not sheltered all the way; Manukau should have had an underpass from the train station to the bus station (the bus station is superb BTW) instead of a pretty but useless something that is too high to actually shelter anyone crossing the road between the two. Speaking of underpasses – why was an underpass not built from Waitemata Station to Commercial Bay?
That’s just the transfer points I use frequently, I’m sure there are other poor examples out there.
Compared to overseas cities I’ve lived in (Tokyo, Taipei, Shenzhen, Hong Kong), AT’s wayfaring leaves a lot to be desired, especially in making connections between the stations and stops and their surrounding area – almost all stations in those cities’ networks had maps in the stations of the surrounding area and landmarks. AT really should not assume everyone uses (or understands) its app. That said the AT app is much better than Wellington’s Metlink or Christchurch’s Metro.
Oh, and AT, could you please orient your maps based on the surrounding environment instead of always North-South ? Not everyone can mentally rotate a map in their head to orient themselves – and while we are at it, is there a way to orient the AT app maps to the direction one is travelling once on foot?
The writer has missed the Perth CAT bus network. This is a network of free buses circulating through both CBD, City Fringe, and select inner suburbs. Further, each CAT bus stand indicates the time till the next bus, in real time
WA economy was based on a boom and bust of the mining sector. Contratry to many comments here, the HUGE Metronet expansion was introduced during the 2017 State Election while WA was still stuck in a State downturn. The government didnt have as much money to splash around as they do now back then, but they decided to push through with this huge investment to help prop up the construction industry, as well as improve Perth public transport.
So the big takeway from this is that the recent mining boom has got nothing to do with the currently rail expansion, rather a government that support and actually build public transport improvement.
Also key update, the state government is also looking to expanding the ferry network (which is intergrated to train-bus) and calling it ‘Metronet on Swan [River]’, which hopefully be up and running by 2025/6.
Never on a Sunday. It’s very difficult living on the western line atm. No trains on Sundays and irrelevant announcements on the train go on interminably. It’s simply not a proper train system. The main thing is funding uncertainty, worse than poor strategic direction from successive regimes, I can’t call them governments they’re simply not. The system looks as though it was designed by car drivers.
In Perth, your ticket is valid for 2 hours, If you board another bus/train for return/connection within 2 hours of buying your ticket no new ticket needed. Also tickets are capped at 2 zone. So Max ticket you pay is $5.20 or $ 4.16 if you have a smart rider. This makes it an economical option too.
Queensland has indicated a standard 50-cent fare across all metropolitan transit systems in that state. Victoria has initiated a $5.00 standard fare across the whole state of Victoria. That’s all their long distance trains and buses to regional Victoria. It’s been so successful that there’s been issues of overcrowding on many services.
And…now, all public transport in this great city, Perth, is completely free of charge on Sundays.
Regarding the point concerning preserving the new appearance of public transport , I recently travelled on the Manly ferry in Sydney and found it difficult to believe that this vessel was around FORTY YEARS old , such was the immaculate condition and presentation ! I actually asked a crew member to confirm the age . Even some ladies from America sitting nearby were impressed ! It is unbelievable to contemplate that the previous state government was prepared to scuttle these ferries ! As for excessive on -board train announcements , two in particular annoy me: ” Please mind the gap between the train and the platform ” . This should be reserved for only those stations where such a hazard actually exists , not EVERY stop ! Fortunately these announcements do not occur on all trips , but seem to be the result of over enthusiastic guards . The other example of an unnecessary comment is on the Sydney Metro : “Train doors opening on the right/left ” . This depends on which direction the passenger is facing , not necessarily the direction of travel .