The Auditor-General, Mr Peter Achterstraat, yesterday called for improvements in the management of Sydney metropolitan bus services. He stated: “Buses are vital for moving people and the public deserves good service. Sydney metropolitan bus services need to be improved.”<\/p>\n
There remains major performance issues with Sydney metropolitan buses although significant advances have been made as a result of the Unsworth review in 2004, with new bus contracts, a network improvement program, strategic corridors and uniform bus fares and concessions.<\/p>\n
According to the Auditor General, wide variations in service levels exist, with privately operated services less frequent and less accessible than publicly run services. For instance, a survey in 2009 showed that 1 in 4 bus users said they were left standing at the bus stop at least once a week and 1 in 3 wanted to catch a bus at times when the services had stopped operating.<\/p>\n
There is also a wide disparity in the costs of operating metropolitan bus services, with some regions costing just over $4 per kilometre compared with almost $10 per kilometre in other regions. The Auditor-General added: “With bus contracts worth $5.6 billion over seven years, the public is entitled to value for money. Contracts were directly negotiated with existing operators and not through an open competitive tender process. This may prove costly to the public.”<\/p>\n
The Auditor General outlined three key solutions to improve the performance of Sydney buses. “The transport department needs to benchmark performance, hold bus operators accountable, and introduce penalties for poor performance. Secondly, they need to strengthen controls on operator self-reporting to ensure that performance information is accurate. Thirdly, there has to be more frequent bus customer satisfaction and usage surveys.”<\/p>\n
Sydney’s metropolitan bus services play an essential role in helping people access work, education, shopping, health services, as well as social, cultural and recreational activities. They help to reduce traffic congestion and pollution in Sydney’s roads. Critical investment in bus services is needed in order to have an effective and efficient metropolitan transport plan for Sydney.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Auditor-General, Mr Peter Achterstraat, yesterday called for improvements in the management of Sydney metropolitan bus services. He stated: “Buses are vital for moving people and the public deserves good service. Sydney metropolitan bus services need to be improved.” There remains major performance issues with Sydney metropolitan buses although significant advances have been made as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-417832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}