Red Cat changes 28th October 2012

On Sunday 28th October there will be some small changes to the Red CAT bus service. This does not concern frequency, but stop location. The Freeway stop (currently 20), will be removed, and instead of stop 1 being at Murray St (corner Pier St), it will be renumbered, and 1 will be at the WACA.
What do I have to say about this? Well, the Freeway stop is relatively quiet due to proximity to the freeway (lack of patronage generators, deterrence to walking across it) and the QV1 stop. But then again, the CATs are designed for fine-grained city circulation, and I don't think that this stop removal would free much time in the schedule (not that the Red CAT even has a timetable). Renumbering to start in East Perth may be logical, as the residential population make sit a good starting point. But these changes are relatively inconsequential.

Second thoughts on Park n' Rides

Previously I said that Park n' Rides, or car parks at stations were a bad idea, but the reality is we need them now and in the near future. People use them. My family uses them. Most of them are at freeway stations that are hard to walk to and offer little redevelopment opportunity anyway. But they can be improved.
For one, the concept of partly free parking and partly paid parking is a good one. However the paid bays are at the back, so those who paid are further inconvenienced by walking further, while those who got free parking also get parking close to the station, so the only way to get convenient parking is, well, to arrive early. Or at least this is the set up at Stirling train station; I haven't seen the other stations but I suspect the situation is the same. It would be better to have paid parking at the front and free parking at the back, so people can pay for the convenience of parking near the station.

Why free public transport isn't the answer

An idea often suggested in light of rising fares and inadequate public transport is to make it free. This is thought to increase public transport usage and make it better, fighting problems such as global warming.

While free public transport will certainly increase public transport, this will only make it more crowded, and with no revenue from it, public transport will become very expensive for the government. It is also claimed that fare collection costs a large percentage of fare revenue, so by doing away with fares we wouldn’t lose much money. However as I said before, free public transport means that more people will use it increasing costs.

Also, since free travel is not valued, some of these trips may be unnecessary and not taking cars off the road. Night services may become rolling homeless shelters, discouraging use by drivers.

In the end, the only reason why public transport needs to be free to compete with cars is because cars are heavily subsidised and our cities are optimised for them. By raising the cost of travel by car to cost-recovery, public transport-friendly suburbs will develop, allowing high-quality public transport that breaks even or even makes a profit.
However, free public transport in selected areas may be useful, as in Perth with our Free Transit Zone and CAT buses. In following with the second paragraph, the CAT buses are very useful but they can also get quite crowded, and are run from City of Perth's parking money.