Transport Canberra has briefed PTCBR about its improvements to the Term 4 timetable.
This is part of a $17m package announced in the 2023-24 ACT budget to hire more drivers and improve services, after some pretty disappointing cuts earlier this year.
The main changes are:
- Buses every 30 minutes or better on every route during the day on weekdays. This is very positive, and makes public transport a much more realistic transport option for getting around during the day.
- Route 59 (Woden-Barton-Russell-City) now runs every 15 minutes all day. This is a really important route for connecting southsiders to Barton and Russell, so it’s good to see this getting some attention.
There are also a few tweaks to times and school services, as is usual with every new timetable.
However, there’s still a lot more work to do to get the services our growing city needs. To its credit, Transport Canberra acknowledges this, and it has told PTCBR that it’s committed to improving services as it hires more drivers. As a first priority this means:
- restoring late night services that were cut earlier this year
- restoring some peak services that were cut on a number of local routes
- finally getting hourly weekend services back, 4 years after they were cut
But really, we want Transport Canberra to keep aiming higher than that. Which is why our 5 point plan calls for rapid buses every 10 minutes, and local peak services every 15 minutes, along with better timed connections to make for easy transfers between the two.
You can view the new timetable at the following link:
https://www.transport.act.gov.au/news/news-and-events-items/september-2023/new-timetable
How has it affected your journeys? Let us know!