The Public Transport Users Association (PTUA) has congratulated the RACV for supporting the PTUA’s call for more buses and recognising the importance of bus lanes on Stud Road.
“The State Government now needs to do its part of the deal by upgrading the 901 Smartbus to operate at least every 10 minutes, from 6am to midnight, seven days-a-week,” said Jeremy Lunn, the PTUA’s Outer East Convenor. “Upgrading the bus service would help to take traffic off the road by providing a more convenient service,” he said.
Peter Daly, the RACV’s chief engineer traffic and transport was reported as saying Stud Road users are fed up with seeing empty bus lanes and that more frequent bus services would help the problem.
“This is exactly what we’ve been saying all along,” Mr Lunn said. “We certainly welcome the fact that the RACV has come on board with us over the bus lane issue.”
“It doesn’t make sense to have part time bus lanes because at off-peak times the road should be less congested. However, if congestion is occurring then its a sign that we need more buses.”
Mr Lunn said that while they didn’t always see eye-to-eye with them, the PTUA was pleased the RACV supporting is public transport on this issue, rather than just encouraging more car use.
“The 901 Smartbus on Stud Road is a highly patronised route. It’s so busy that the government has had to put on extra buses on the Dandenong section of the route to alleviate overcrowding, and it also gets heavy use in the Knox City area,” Mr Lunn said.
Mr Lunn added that other popular routes that overlap with Stud Road need to be upgraded.
“It comes down to providing a good network of frequent buses and not just one frequent route like the 901.”
“This is about creating a bus network suitable for the 21st century. If we don’t act now, we’ll be forever stuck in gridlock with no recourse,” Mr Lunn concluded.