WHEN Keolis Downer was bidding to run Newcastle’s public transport system, it was happy to promise the travelling public a noticeable improvement in services.
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One of the first things it did after winning the 10-year contract was to embark on a top-to-bottom overhaul of bus routes, using a team of Keolis experts brought out from France to oversee the redesign.
The aim, according to Keolis Downer, was to best match bus routes with population densities. The company presumably believed it was doing the right thing with its initial overhaul but the public reaction was anything but positive. Given Labor’s opposition to the privatisation, some of the criticism of Keolis Downer was always likely to have a political aspect.
But if the new bus services had been a true improvement on the old, Labor would have found it harder than it has to prosecute its arguments. Instead, it became steadily clearer that the new routes would need their own overhaul, leading to this week’s unveiling of an amended set of routes and timetables that the company hopes will blunten the criticism it’s received since taking over.
Time will tell whether the new offering has the intended effect.
The splitting of the Swansea to Newcastle run into two services may have fitted in with Keolis’s philosophy of feeding passengers into main “frequent” routes but it proved unpopular with commuters, who resented having to change buses mid-journey. After complaints led by Swansea MP Yasmin Catley, the single journey has been reinstated, but the new buses go through Kotara rather than Broadmeadow, and are still mostly slower than the old 350 that ran before Keolis Downer took over.
What these changes – and others, including fewer Stockton ferries – show is that public transport will always involve a balancing of competing interests. The headlines surrounding Keolis Downer’s arrival in Newcastle were mostly about the CBD light rail, but the joint venture was well aware that most of its passengers – and most of its revenue – lay with the buses. Details of its $450-million contract are confidential, but the onus is on Keolis Downer to lift the number of Newcastle commuters using public transport. And to provide the improved bus and ferry service it promised when it bid for the job.
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