Here’s an interesting article I stumbled upon yesterday from 2016. Did this just fizzle out?
Using 2 digit route numbers with colour coding seems like an even worse way of doing things (as suggested in the article). If anything, I’d prefer to see a letter prefix to support any colour coding which makes the purpose of the route clear. E.g. X for express, N for nightlink, L for loop, H for high frequency.
At the very least, moving to such a system would require a significant simplification of the network, which I think is dramatically needed personally.
Whilst I have very real concerns with the M1 and M2 the concept of a key set of cross-city bus routes with simple numbers aka B1,B2… that may one day become M1 or L2 make the network 1000% more legible. Whilst people learn their patch making a trip across the city is difficult at best. Apps may help but when there are delays or you arrive early… it all falls down to become confusing/chaotic choice making.
Network review and route consolidating/optimisation is the way to go.
Having over simplified codes such as M1, M2, B1 etc are meaningless to a city with around 500 separate bus routes.
They should retain the 66, and 111 services codes as they are meaningful, as opposed to calling to ‘metro-1’ or ‘bus-1’.
As for colour-coding services, well no one cares about the colour as long as you know its service number, where it stops, and its frequency. Coloured service only work to identify them on network maps.
A city that has 500 bus routes, has its own BRT network, and yet only ~7% of its people use it, is a city with a very very broken PT system.
What’s Brisbane’s solution? - add 60 more overpriced buses that are slightly longer, on a corridor (the busway), on services that only needed to have higher frequencies, which was achievable with existing bus types.
