Although passengers dislike transferring between routes, quality transit systems need to facilitate easy transfers to provide competitive city wide access to the private car. This paper reviews bus transfer behaviour in Melbourne, Australia and aims to understand factors which enable transfer behaviour with a particular focus on buses. The research also explores if high transfer rates can be associated with "network effects" and high ridership associated with frequent services/simple (grid) networks. Analysis of very high bus transfer sub-networks showed a concentration of transfers around a grid network with high frequency service near the CBD. A comparative analysis found that this area has high service frequency, network density and residential density. The analysis concluded that this transfer behaviour was highly consistent with the ônetwork effectö but this cannot act as conclusive proof the effect exists since high transfer rates can also be explained by the nature of travel patterns in this area. In simple terms the ônetwork effectö though intriguing remains an unsubstantiated theory which informs good practice but should be treated with caution when applied in the real world. (a) For the covering record of the conference, please refer to ITRD abstract no. E218380.
Samenvatting