10 years ago, the ACT Government received a report from transport consultants MRCagney on the state of Canberra’s bus network.
The report painted a grim picture – passenger satisfaction was at an all-time low, with patronage growth falling well behind population growth, and on-time running below even the government’s modest target. Despite this, the network was also expensive to run, with per-kilometre costs substantially higher than bus operations, both public and private, in other Australian and New Zealand cities.
For a city that had big ambitions for public transport, and a history which proved better things were possible, this situation was untenable. Something had to change.
The promise of a better future
Media coverage of the government’s subsequent response to the 2015 ACTION Expenditure Review focused on its decision to not “privatise” ACTION buses, which went against one of the report’s key recommendations:
“All the evidence indicates that adoption of an outsourcing policy is highly likely to be more effective than other plausible policy options in improving the cost efficiency and enhancing the attractiveness of [ACTION bus] services, and hence increasing patronage and fare revenue.”
— 2015 ACTION Expenditure Review, page 21
Instead, the government embarked on what it called a “Reformed Public Operator” model. This would ultimately see ACTION and the Territory and Municipal Services directorate merge with the Capital Metro agency, which was the government body responsible for planning and delivering the first stage of Canberra’s light rail network. The first and only Director-General of Capital Metro, Emma Thomas, would become the inaugural head of this new “Transport Canberra and City Services” (TCCS) directorate.
The government response and subsequent commentary from Transport and Municipal Services Minister Meegan Fitzharris spoke in glowing terms about the new directorate, and how its new corporate structure would “improve opportunities” to address ACTION’s poor performance. TCCS would “focus on the customer experience” and “deliver high quality local and transport services with a focus on business improvement.” The new directorate came into being on 1 July 2016, guided by a public transport improvement plan promising a convenient, efficient, affordable, reliable and integrated system.
So, how did it go?
The decade of failure
On 1 July 2025, exactly 9 years after it was established, TCCS was itself dissolved and merged into the new City and Environment Directorate (CED).
This neatly bookends the TCCS era of public transport in Canberra, and allows us to examine how successful it was at fixing the problems of ACTION that led to the directorate being formed in the first place.
Using data from the official Statements of Performance for TCCS and its predecessors, let’s look at each of the key failings identified in the 2015 MRCagney report, and how they’ve been tracking over the intervening 10 years.
Finding #1: Passenger satisfaction cratered with Network 19 and isn’t recovering
To describe Network 19 as a polarising affair is to dabble in the realm of criminal understatement. Unlike most previous updates, where new bus routes were layered on top of the existing network structure, this was the first wholesale refresh of Canberra’s public transport since 1999. Every route was built from the ground up to minimise duplication and improve the simplicity and legibility of the network.
Like TCCS itself, Network 19 was a product of the government’s 2015 Public Transport Improvement Plan. The document contained a commitment to deliver “more buses, more services, more often” through a range of network reallocations and efficiencies made possible by the replacement of the “Red Rapid” bus service with light rail. Exactly how these service kilometres would be redistributed was to be informed by consultation with the community.
Consultation undertaken in 2016 revealed that the top three public transport improvements Canberrans wanted were more direct routes (54%), more frequent and reliable services (42%), and increased off-peak services (41%). This first round of public consultation led to the announcement of a new network of nine “rapid” bus routes, supplemented by an array of less-frequent local and school bus routes. This is what ultimately became, following additional two rounds of consultation, Network 19 as we know it today.
A direct consequence of the government’s decision to rebuild the bus network from scratch with a focus on more frequent and direct services was that some areas saw service improvements, while other areas saw closures of long-standing bus stops. PTCBR covered the “winners and losers” issue at the time (this analysis remains one of the few articles that attempted to understand the motivation and reasoning behind these changes). Suffice to say, there was always going to be a cohort of people who were disadvantaged by Network 19.
One of the other selling points of Network 19 was the promise of a seven-day network. Under previous timetables, weekend services operated across a special reduced ‘weekend’ network, so passengers had to remember a different bus route which was often longer and more circuitous. Expectations were high that Network 19 would significantly improve legibility of the network and make it easier to use public transport on the weekend.
Unfortunately, the launch of Network 19 was a perfect storm, where complaints from people who lost their bus route combined with TCCS’s inability to secure enough drivers to cover all the weekend routes, resulting in cancelled services that left passengers stranded at bus stops in the middle of winter. Transport Canberra responded by issuing an “interim” weekend timetable, which reduced all local weekend services to every 2 hours. As reported at the time and visible in the chart above, customer satisfaction levels plummeted.
Unfortunately, not a lot has happened since the launch of Network 19 that would merit substantial improvements to these figures. Incremental uplifts to weekend bus frequencies have been undermined by service cuts elsewhere in the network, and procurement delays resulted in buses long past retirement age being kept in regular service. We don’t yet have the data for 2024-25, but the botched rollout of Canberra’s new ticketing system is unlikely to have bolstered TCCS’s already-battered reputation.
Unfortunately, the bad news doesn’t end there.
Finding #2: COVID-19 destroyed the patronage gains from Network 19 – and the recovery appears to have stalled
Despite the drop in customer satisfaction, Network 19 did boost public transport patronage, with a 10% increase in the number of journeys taken across the ACT compared with the same period under the previous network. While the uplift was unevenly distributed, it vindicated TCCS’s approach of rebuilding the bus network with simple, legible, seven day routes. Following years of declining per-capita ridership, the figures provided a spark of hope that things were finally turning around.
Then, along came COVID-19.
The first COVID case was detected in Canberra on 12 March 2020. On 16 March, a public health emergency was declared by the ACT Government, leading to a prolonged period of social distancing, remote learning and a significant uptick in the number of people working from home. While Canberra was to avoid the worst of the pandemic lockdowns seen in other Australian cities, it did experience one lasting several months from August 2021 to October 2021. The final COVID restriction in the ACT wouldn’t be lifted until February 2023.
The effect of COVID-19 on public transport patronage across Australia and around the world was catastrophic. Canberra was no exception – as seen in the chart above, patronage plummeted from a high of 20.1 million boardings in 2018-19 to a low of 11.9 million boardings in 2021-22. This was followed by sharp increases in 2022-23 (17.7 million boardings) and 2023-24 (19.9 million boardings) after restrictions were lifted. Similar patterns can be seen in patronage data for other Australian capital cities.
Concerningly, the preliminary data suggests a recent reversal of this trend towards pre-COVID levels of patronage, with an estimated 17.3 million boardings in 2024-25. In the absence of other explicable factors, this is likely a combined consequence of the nine week fare-free period from September 2024 to November 2024 during the transition between MyWay and MyWay+ ticketing systems, the “teething problems” that continue to dog this new ticketing system, as well as ongoing confusion over the misleadingly-named “Fare Free Fridays” (you still need to tap on and off, unless you have a paper ticket from a working ticket vending machine) introduced in December 2024.
Even if the 2024-25 figures can be attributed to poor data collection, it is still a remarkable low point for the TCCS era of public transport to end on.
It doesn’t need to stay this way – if MyWay+ eventually reaches a workable state (a big if), the ill-advised “Fare Free Fridays” aren’t extended beyond the initial 12-month trial, and the government delivers on its commitments for new rapid bus routes and more frequent local buses on weekdays and weekends, CED could get patronage growth back on track.
To do that, they will also need to do something to address the rot at the heart of Canberra’s bus network that TCCS never came close to fixing.
Finding #3: Bus punctuality is still atrocious
*
Defined as a service that departs a stop that is a designated timing point between one minute earlier and four minutes later than the scheduled time. Light rail punctuality has not dropped below 98% in any reporting period.
As the chart above shows, TCCS did nothing to meaningfully address the persistently poor punctuality of Canberra’s buses. This is especially concerning given the blunt feedback contained in the 2015 MRCagney report:
“Punctuality (the proportion of operated services that depart from designated timing points within a window between 1:00 minutes early and 4:00 minutes late) has been around 70% for years 2011/12 – 2013/14… We consider that the 32% that were not punctual in 2012/13 and the relatively large proportion of these (over 40%) that operated early (rather than late) constitute sub-standard performance (relative to other urban bus systems and reasonable expectations for Canberra).”
— 2015 ACTION Expenditure Review, page 211
The comment about early running buses will be familiar to any frequent user of Canberra’s bus network. Even today, that number remains basically unchanged. How this has continued to be a problem defies rational explanation – there is no factor unique to Canberra that should result in such a high proportion of buses running early.
Rather than delivering any business improvements to lift its performance, TCCS instead persisted with a lowered punctuality target of 75% – a figure substantially below the punctuality achieved by buses operating in Victoria (89.8%) South-East Queensland (93.44%), Tasmania (84%), Auckland (90.4%) and Wellington (93.9%).
Even accounting for differences in performance standards and monitoring methods, the consistently poor punctuality of Canberra’s buses stands out by a considerable margin.
It is inexcusable that a directorate which prided itself on “the customer experience” let this issue fester throughout its almost decade-long existence without so much as an apology, let alone a commitment to meet the benchmarks set by comparable operators. If CED want to turn things around, finding ways to lift bus punctuality rates would be a very good place to start.
In fact, it’s exactly the sort of low-cost service improvement we’ll need to see more of.
Finding #4: The bus network is getting more expensive to run
Perhaps unsurprisingly for a document with “Expenditure Review” in the title, the 2015 MRCagney report also had a lot to say about ACTION’s cost effectiveness compared to other operators, both public and private. None of it was complimentary.
ACTION’s unit costs were 40% higher than the industry average. Funding per passenger was twice that of other operators. Farebox recovery was the lowest of all operations assessed. No matter how you sliced it, ACTION was costing more than the average public transport operator to deliver service levels that were, at best, broadly in line with those in other major cities in Australia and New Zealand.
The report recommended a target cost of $4.85 ($6.22 in 2023/24 dollars) per bus network kilometre, based on benchmarking comparisons in equivalent operating environments. This represented a 20% reduction on ACTION’s 2014-15 per network kilometre cost, a target the report considered readily achievable given ACTION’s historical performance.
While TCCS was never able to wrangle its per-kilometre costs down to the inflation-adjusted target of $6.22, it did manage to arrest the steep increase in these costs – at least initially. As discussed earlier, the COVID-induced collapse in patronage had an equally consequential effect on farebox revenue, which fell by $9.3 million in 2020-21. When combined with the government’s initial decision to retain public transport services at their pre-COVID levels, the result was a predicable spike in per-kilometre costs to an inflation-adjusted high of $7.68.
Runaway costs in times of crisis are, if not ideal, at the very least explicable. Far more worrying is the continued rise in per-kilometre costs following the conclusion of the public health emergency and the subsequent return of passengers to the bus network.
The TCCS annual reports contain a range of explanations for these rises, including:
- the impact of the reduced bus timetable resulting from construction-related delays
- the introduction of a zero-emissions bus fleet
- increases in employee expenses and consumables unit prices
No doubt these factors all contribute to the unwelcome move away from pre-COVID cost stability. What this means practically, however, is that the ACT Government now delivers fewer bus service kilometres per dollar it spends. The negative consequence of this trend on the government’s ability to deliver future service improvements – including its commitment for 20-minute all-day frequencies – should be equal parts obvious and concerning.
To have any chance of success, CED will need to find a way to get the per-kilometre costs of the bus network under control. To let these costs spiral is to consign Canberra to a more expensive, but less extensive, public transport network.
WHERE TO FROM HERE?
TCCS promised a renewed focus on the “customer experience”, but ultimately oversaw a collapse in passenger satisfaction and the delivery of an increasingly expensive bus network that carries fewer passengers than before. While Network 19 provided a brief glimmer of hope for patronage, its gains were erased by COVID-19, and the recovery has seemingly stalled due to a variety of own goals by TCCS. Despite a decade of reviews, restructures and redesigns, the core issues of abysmal punctuality and spiralling costs remain unresolved.
CED must take immediate and decisive action to avoid repeating the failures of the TCCS era. PTCBR offer the following recommendations as a clear path forward:
Prioritise customer trust and transparency
TCCS oversaw a dramatic fall in customer satisfaction following the launch of Network 19. To rebuild trust, CED must be transparent about its service performance, acknowledging its persistent failings and clearly communicating a plan to rectify them. Ending the inexcusable silence on issues like poor punctuality would be a crucial and long overdue first step.
Make punctuality a top priority
The embarrassingly poor punctuality of Canberra’s buses is a critical failure that erodes passenger trust. CED must lift the target of 75% on-time running set by TCCS and aim for punctuality that is comparable to other Australian and New Zealand cities. This would suggest an on-time running target set at or above 90%. A thorough investigation into why so many buses continue to run early is required, as this problem has no rational explanation and should not take another ten years to fix.
Get operating costs under control
The continuous rise in per-kilometre costs is making the bus network increasingly expensive to run and threatens the future delivery of sorely needed service improvements. CED must conduct an audit of operational expenses to get these costs under control. The directorate should re-examine the 2015 MRCagney report’s inflation-adjusted target of $6.22 per bus kilometre and establish a clear strategy to achieve it.
Focus on core service delivery
The botched rollout of MyWay+ seriously damaged both TCCS’s already-tarnished reputation and the post-COVID recovery of public transport patronage. CED should focus its resources on fixing the ticketing system and ensuring the core network is reliable and easy to use. This includes delivering on the commitment for more frequent local bus services on both weekdays and weekends to rebuild passenger confidence.