Sydney Bus Schemes — Unsworth Review

The Bureau of Transport Statistics (formerly the TDC) is the custodian of the Sydney Strategic Model (STM). We have worked with the STM even prior to the Emme Modelling Panels being established. For this wide-ranging study, the Sydney bus system was partitioned into Contract Regions, amalgamating private bus operations into larger areas. Our modelling aimed to enable a smooth transition to implementation by ensuring that bus operators maintained the same bus kilometres and hours after the new Contract Regions were introduced, and that government achieved a better mode split, with more passenger kilometres and fewer transfers.

The STM was used to model existing operator services and proposed areas of operation, extracting data for each bus operator and regenerating statistics as proposed areas changed. For each region, many bus route and frequency policy options were trialled, including feeder express services to rail, servicing on parallel streets, servicing centres, servicing the region including trunk routes, commercial centre to commercial centre schemes, and herringbone schemes where buses feed the main bus line.