Evaluating Minimum Service Levels for Bus Services - Using Geographical Information Systems

Abstract

Under the New South Wales Passenger Transport Act 1990, each commercial contract for providing a bus service must stipulate a scale of minimum service levels. It is a means for the Government to ensure that all the residents of communities which have similar population densities receive an appropriate minimum level of services from the bus operator. It can also be viewed as a marketing tool that can be used by bus operators to increase patronage and revenue. The minimum service levels policy is based on population level, car ownership and the competing passenger transport services. The key requirement in the minimum service levels estimation procedure is to measure the spatial relationship between residential areas and transport modes under consideration. Conventionally, the approach has been to visually inspect a paper map to extract population and car ownership statistics affected by different transport modes. Today, with GIS, this procedure can be automated and dealt with on a much larger scale, enabling results to be more accessible to end users. This paper describes the process of enabling GIS analysis in a case study for a regional New South Wales town.