Alistair Coe MLA, Shadow Minister for Transport Services, said the RedEx service starting today is poorly planned and is an abysmal allocation of resources. For a person catching a bus within a Gungahlin suburb to the city, RedEx will only offer a time saving in 8% of occasions during peak times. For the other 92%, commuters are best using their normal route bus.

“Of the 50 services between Gungahlin suburbs and the city at the peak times, RedEx will be faster for only four of them,” Mr Coe said.

“With no park and ride facilities in Gungahlin, passengers of RedEx services will either take up retailers’ parking spaces in the town centre, or have to use a suburban route bus as a connection between the Market Place and their suburb.

A higher frequency of buses will be on offer between Gungahlin and the City. However, there is often a delay between route buses arriving and the next available REDEX bus.

“This analysis proves that the RedEx service in the vast majority of cases will not improve travelling times for people living in Gungahlin suburbs. This further confirms this trial is all about spin, and not about service delivery.

“RedEx in its current form is ill-conceived and is a poor allocation of precious public transport resources. The RedEx trial started with a hollow announcement, then a downgrading of the overall trial, just to tick off part of the Greens-Labor Agreement.

“The service is not going to live up to its “Rapid Express Direct” name,” Mr Coe concluded.

Key finding from the analysis are:

• Each day, there are 50 route services that run between Gungahlin suburbs, and the City through the Gungahlin Marketplace. For 46 of them, RedEx offers no time-savings;
• The RedEx-Route Bus combination runs an average of six mins longer than just using a Route Bus;
• Route Buses are faster than the RedEx for all 28 City-Gungahlin afternoon journeys; and
• The RedEx service is up to 21 minutes slower in the morning and up to 16 minutes slower in the afternoon.