Public Transport Authority

Case Study: 950 Superbus

It’s a bird, it’s a plane... no it’s the Transperth 950 Superbus!

The introduction of the new route 950 has been a runaway success, with more than 17,000 people using the route on an average business day, 2000 more than Transperth expected.

Route 950 was introduced on January 27, 2014 and became the highest frequency bus route in Perth with peak period services operating every 3-4 minutes from Morley and every 1-2 minutes from the city to UWA.

Previously there were a lot of passengers who travelled from the northern corridor into the city and then had to change on to another bus in the CBD to get out to UWA. The 950 route continues through the city so passengers can stay on board the one bus.

Also known as the Superbus, the 950 route replaced routes 21 and 22 from Morley to Perth and the 78 and 79 from Perth to Nedlands to benefit all passengers, particularly university students and people visiting QEII.

This benefit was evidenced when route 950 achieved the highest passenger satisfaction levels ever recorded for a Transperth fare-paying service in the 2014 Passenger Satisfaction monitor (PSM) with 94 percent of surveyed passengers satisfied and only 1 per cent dissatisfied.

Not only are commuters extremely pleased with the service, overall boardings on the 950 are up 24 per cent on the number of passengers using the same four routes in the same period last year.

In addition the new route capitalises on existing bus priority lanes from Morley through to Inglewood and into the CBD and eight new buses have been dedicated to the route that is intended to an additional 500,000 kilometres a year.

A new timetable will be introduced in September 2014 consolidating the service based on feedback, patronage and running time data. Transperth is considering the consolidation of other strategic routes into through-routed services and looking to implement more bus priority as a result of 950’s success.