Customer Satisfaction

Following a poor response to the 2004 survey, a passenger satisfaction survey was not conducted during 2004/05.

Revenue/Expenditure

The total cost of operating the regional town bus services in 2004/05 was $10.071 million compared with $8.861 million in the previous year, an increase of 24.3 per cent.The cost increase was primarily due to a change in reporting gross, not net, expenditure. Fare revenue increased by 2.9 per cent from $1.395 million to $1.436 million.

In the Future

In the coming year(s), RTBS will:

• Complete the signing of the remaining formal regional contracts;
• Conduct or complete operational reviews for the public bus services in Broome, Busselton, Dunsborough, Esperance and Geraldton. In addition, the trial bus services introduced in 2004/05 will be evaluated for their success;
• Develop a regional bus replacement program with a view to reducing the average age of the bus fleets in country areas and introducing accessible buses on regional services;
• Introduce the Wayfarer MultiRider system in all regional towns that currently have an inadequate ticketing system. MultiRider equipment will become available with the introduction of the SmartRider ticketing system on the Transperth network during 2005/06;
• Investigate the capacity of Transperth to take over the remaining few RPT services that are currently operated in the Perth metropolitan area by RTBS-contracted operators; and
• Complete work already commenced to define Public Transport Areas around regional townships and clarify where fares will be paid by service users. Also, RTBS will continue to assess the ability of contracted public school bus services to pick up fare-paying passengers in order to bring about efficiencies on the combined contract and public school bus network.