How would Steve Wozniak design an urban transit ferry network?

I had the good fortune to hear Steve Wozniak speak at this week's NSW Future Transport Summit.

He didn't say much about public transport. When asked for insights on its future, he candidly replied that he didn't actually know much about the subject. He liked the wind blowing through his hair on the Manly Ferry. And he remembered queuing for buses when he was a college student. 

But most of us know Steve's philosophy on technology, which is to make it simple and human. I may be presumptuous, but I think he would agree that a ferry network should be simple and human too.

But what does a simple and human ferry network look like? It can be reduced to three things - legibility, speed and reliability. These can be applied to any mode of transit, but with awareness of what is peculiar to water transport.

Legibility

If a customer, even an infrequent user, can easily create a mental picture of what the network looks like, and how to navigate through it, then it probably is a good one. 

If a customer looks at a network map and thinks they can see a pathway to get to where they want to go, then don't disappoint them. Ideally this means every line sticks to the same stopping pattern all day. If the customer's origin point is a stop on the "red line", say, and their destination is also a stop on the "red line", then they will expect the ferry to stop to pick them up and stop again at where they need to get off. 

This sounds so obvious, but you may be surprised how often this doesn't happen.  

If a route has an an express or limited stop service, as well as an all stop service, then delineate them to the customer by describing them as different lines.

Connections should also be intuitive. Regardless of frequency, if two lines intersect at one terminal, or many lines meet at a hub, it is a reasonable expectation of the customer that they can transfer with only a short wait - no more than about 10 minutes. 

Departure times are clockface, regular intervals. If there are two sailings each hour, then they are exactly 30 minutes apart and the departure times are the same in every hour. If more services are needed in the peaks, these supplement the off peak timetable - they don't disturb the underlying pattern. The schedule below shows what this might look like:

Note that no attempt has been made to round up the sailing time to a multiple of five minutes, as many timetables do. Let the minute fall where it falls.

What's good about Happy Bay is you don't have to look at a timetable or check an app. A ferry always departs at 17 and 47 minutes past the hour in the direction of Downtown between 0647 and 2047, and at 47 past the hour after then. You also know that when you reach a hub, you can transfer to another ferry or another mode with a wait of just 5-10 minutes.

That's what legibility looks like.

Speed

Speed is not just about the speed of the vessel across open water. It is everything that affects how long the customer takes to get to where they need to go. 

A fast ferry route is as close as possible to a straight line. It is best if a bay terminal is at the end of a route, not an intermediate stop, because bays can be like a cul de sac for a bus - an annoying diversion for passengers who boarded earlier. Mosman and Neutral Bay routes in the Sydney Ferry network are perfect examples of this principle. In each case the terminus is at the top of a bay and intermediate stops are at points along the way, keeping the journey direct.

And there is a myriad of other issues affecting speed which need to be managed. Are berthing conflicts built into the timetable, forcing vessels to be held off? Does the location of the wharf or the angle of the berthing face give the ferry skipper an efficient line of approach? Does the line of approach generate too much wash, so it takes a long time for the vessel to be secured? Are wharves and vessels designed for fast passenger exchange? How far does a transferring passenger need to walk to reach their connecting ferry/bus/train/tram? How long do they have to wait for their connection? 

I could go on. But getting them right speeds up the customer's journey and creates a more convenient experience.

Reliability

Ferries are usually very reliable and punctual when they're not carrying many passengers. Many ferry networks lose punctuality when at capacity because the loading speed is too slow. 

Should you add more time in the schedule for the dwell in case of heavy loadings? 

No! Use engineering solutions to eliminate the slow loading problem, so the variation in loading time between a big crowd and a handful is minimised. 

The solutions are many and include physical barriers at heavy loading terminals to separate disembarking passengers from passengers waiting to board; using multiple wide gangways (or even better, none!); and clear thoroughfares on board the vessel so passengers can move quickly to their seats without impeding those coming behind them.

So there you have a simple and human ferry network - easy to use, takes you quickly to where you need to go and it is reliable.

But for the ferry planner, simple isn't the easy option. As Steve Jobs said, "Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple".

IPART needs more than time to improve its Opal fare report

The NSW Government has done us all a favour by giving the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal more time to complete its final report on Opal public transport fares.

Let’s face it, the draft report needs work.

To be fair to IPART, their objectives are generally sound. Among other things, the Tribunal says it wants to encourage greater use of public transport and increase cost recovery.

Sydney currently scores poorly against both these objectives.  The draft report estimates that just 21% of the costs of public transport in NSW will be recovered from fares in 2015-16. That means the contribution by taxpayers to public transport this year is nearly $4.4 billion. As very little of the Government’s expenditure on public transport is made outside Sydney, the level of cost recovery in the metropolitan area is not much higher – about 22%.

The report omits the other side of the equation, which is how much we use public transport. Bureau of Transport Statistics data show that only 12% of all journeys made in Sydney are by public transport and 69% are by car. By international standards, we are low users of public transport. Over the entire Canton of Zurich, Switzerland, including rural areas, 32% of journeys are made by public transport, nearly three times the rate in Sydney. And the high use of trains, trams and buses in Zurich comes at a lower cost to taxpayers, with 65% of public transport costs recovered from fares.

There are some who dismiss these comparisons by saying that sprawling Sydney cannot be compared with Europe where city population density is much higher. They may be surprised to learn that Sydney’s population density (not including the Illawarra, Hunter, Central Coast or the Blue Mountains) is not much different from the Canton of Zurich. So if low density is used as an excuse for poor public transport, then it’s a pretty feeble one.

If we accept that Sydney’s public transport does not perform well in either cost recovery from fares or patronage, then what can be done about it? Does the draft IPART report offer a solution?

Unfortunately, IPART’s approach was to do what mainstream economists do when unencumbered with expertise in public transport operations. They reached into their kitbag of economic theories and selected the one that seemed most relevant to the problem at hand. In this case it was the theory of socially optimal consumption. As applied to public transport, this means setting fares which are neither too high (or we will use private cars too much and cause congestion, high emissions and road accidents) nor too low (or we will underutilise road capacity and unnecessarily increase the burden on taxpayers).

Underpinning all of this is the notion that public transport is a scarce resource, which needs to be rationed efficiently using the price mechanism. Setting fares appropriately for each mode, says IPART, will lead to a more efficient use of public transport because users will make rational choices about which mode to select based on price.

Only econometricians would understand how IPART arrived at these “socially optimal” fare levels and even they would find the underpinning assumptions absent or dubious. It is obvious to users of public transport, whether they are economists or not, that IPART’s implicit assumption that we have choices about which mode to use is unrealistic. For the vast majority of Sydneysiders, we only have one mode available and it’s probably a bus. 

Most concerning is IPART’s belief that frequent users of public transport don’t pay enough in fares compared to infrequent users. Perhaps they think infrequent users are careful rationers. The Tribunal recommends increasing in the weekly cap to $75 in July 2018, a 25% jump on the current rate. By comparison, the average single journey will rise by just 8%.

More than this, the wastrels who travel frequently will need to deal with a complicated credit scheme in order to redeem fares paid in excess of the weekly cap.

If we are serious about increasing the mode share of public transport in Sydney, frequent users should not be punished. Instead of rationing public transport, the fare structure should encourage us to travel as much as possible by public transport. This is done in continental Europe by offering heavily discounted zone based periodical tickets (monthly, quarterly and annual travel passes) and having a simple fare structure which does not differentiate between modes. Even Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth manage to do this.

But fare structures alone do not increase patronage or efficiency.  High quality network design along the lines of the Swiss taktfahrplan model shows that multi-destinational public transport is achievable at low cost to the taxpayer, in combination with a sensible fare structure. And a small dose of demand management for car use also helps.

IPART’s objectives for NSW public transport may be well intended, but arcane economic modelling won’t get us there. 

Small Can be Beautiful in Ferry Operations

In a world where we all need to be more agile and innovative,  it is sometimes the small ferry operators that lead the way in creativity.

Is it a flatter management structure, more freedom from Government bureaucracy or just good luck? I'm not sure.

Take the Manly Fast Ferry for example.

The Manly Fast Ferry came into being after a less than distinguished moment in Sydney's transport history - the sudden cessation of Sydney Ferries' JetCat service to Manly in December 2008. Capacity on the regular Manly Ferry was not really adequate to accommodate the extra demand from former JetCat riders, leading to a jump in complaints and a difficult political situation.

In stepped local family run business Bass and Flinders Cruises and offered to operate a fast ferry without subsidy, departing from the eastern side of Manly Wharf. Sailings started in February 2009 and its customer friendly service immediately became very popular with Manly residents.

Other companies expressed interest in operating the run, so the NSW Government put the fast ferry service out to tender. To the dismay of many loyal customers, the Manly Fast Ferry lost out to a rival bidder, Sydney Fast Ferries, who started operations from 1 April 2010.

But the Manly Fast Ferry wasn't going quietly. It made its own arrangements to operate from the Manly Hotel jetty and the eastern pontoon at Circular Quay. There was apparently no action the Government could take to stop this unwelcome competitor to Sydney Fast Ferries.

After five years of co-existence, the NSW Government brought some sanity into the situation and undertook another competitive tender process to select a single fast ferry operator for the Manly run. This time, Manly Fast Ferry was successful and started its new contract from April 2015. 

As public transport networks go, you couldn't get much simpler than the Manly run. No intermediate stops, just a direct trip from Manly to Circular Quay and back. But there is still a lot to like about the way the Manly Fast Ferry operates. It's not just the faster speed over water (18 minutes from Manly to Circular Quay compared 30 minutes on the regular Sydney Ferry service). There is also an attention to detail that is welcome. 

The new vessels it has recently purchased can use four gangplanks, allowing a full load of 365 passengers to disembark in just over two minutes. Two gangway gates are   

positioned at the stern of the vessel, with the rear gate mainly used by passengers seated on the upper deck or the stern and the forward gate used by passengers seated inside on the main deck. This allows faster movement of boarding and disembarking passengers. 

Sydney Ferries' First Fleet vessels also have two gangway gates - midships and stern - but their distance apart makes them more difficult to use simultaneously, especially if there is only one deckhand available. The stern gangway gate is hardly ever used at Darling Harbour, even when crowding suggests it is sorely needed.

More importantly, access between gangways and seating on the First Fleeters is quite constricted, adding significantly to the dwell time at busy terminals, because movement through gangways is blocked by passengers ahead trying to reach their seats.   

Where the Fast Ferry berths at Manly, ramp design ensures excellent and safe separation of disembarking passengers from boarding passengers, another vital ingredient for fast and safe passenger exchange.

Another strong point is the nice cadence in the Fast Ferry timetable. Service intervals are 10 minutes in the peaks and 30 minutes off peak. As there is only one berth at either terminal, vessels must tie up, load and unload, untie and clear the wharf in less than 10 minutes during the peaks. They seem to do this effortlessly, with the arriving and departing vessels crossing in open water.

I spoke to a Manly Fast Ferry deckhand yesterday about their new vessels. He spoke enthusiastically about plans to change the glass gates on the pontoon at Wharf 6 so that gang planks could be better positioned to speed up loading even further. I was impressed. People with direct experience of operations seem to be actively engaged in process improvement.

I hope the various Government employees and contractors working on the design of the new ferry terminals at Circular Quay and Barangaroo, as well as the new "Heritage" fleet due to come into service in early 2017, are paying close attention to Manly Fast Ferry operations. They could learn quite a bit. 

I have no doubt that checklists are being ticked, risk assessments completed and formal consultations conducted. But does anyone in Transport for NSW have skin in the game to the same extent as the management team at Manly Fast Ferry when preparing specifications for a new ferry? Are the consultants employed by Roads and Maritime Services as passionate about reducing the dwell at ferry terminals by 30 seconds, as the Manly Fast Ferry deckhand I spoke to yesterday clearly was? 

Let's all hope so.

Does NSW transport need a big new idea or just clearer purpose?

NSW Minister for Transport and Infrastructure, Andrew Constance, announced yesterday he was "calling on the world's brightest tech minds to find the next big idea that would shake up transport in NSW".

It is good to seek ideas from elsewhere - I've done it myself - but technology is not a substitute for purpose. If you don't know what port you're sailing to, no wind is favourable.

Building new infrastructure, introducing smartcards or changing the fare structure do not of themselves constitute a purpose. They may be beneficial in some way, but what precisely are they directed towards achieving? Australian public transport planning has long failed to articulate a purpose or set of guiding principles for achieving it. 

This shortcoming is puzzling. There is an established "science" of public transport which is taught in tertiary institutions across Australia, often assisted by funding from transport departments.  Many overseas countries practice this science assiduously (the Swiss do it best). But strangely, in this country, the science rarely seems to percolate to the surface of public policy. More often than not, a public transport "solution" is proposed in the context of individual urban developments. The bigger picture of providing better mobility for city and suburbs as a whole seems to fall below the radar. 

One particular mode - say a Metro or Light Rail - are frequently advocated as "solutions". Often the proponents are urban planners or architects who practice the art of professional imperialism - extending the reach of their particular discipline to subjects about which they have no real expertise.

Economists are the great masters of professional imperialism, but a kit bag of arcane econometric models is a poor substitute for in depth operational knowledge of transport systems. This has not stopped the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART), an agency blissfully unencumbered by knowledge of the complex science of public transport, from being given the task of redesigning NSW's public transport fare structure. 

So what are the main features of the science of "good" public transport, which seems so curiously hidden and poorly understood? This blog post can't do it justice, but here are a few pointers.

Public Transport objective

To be effective, public transport must compete with the private car, not just for travel to work or travel to the central business district, but for all journeys - shopping, social and recreational travel. Public transport can only compete with the car if it enables the user to:

• get from wherever they are 
• to wherever they need to go
• at a time that suits them.

In other words, a city's public transport network must be multi-destinational. As only 15% of all journeys in Sydney, for example, are trips to and from work, a public transport network which focuses primarily on moving commuters to work will fail to compete with the private car. It won't accomplish its purpose.

How to achieve this objective

1. Good network design

If people are to get from wherever they are to wherever they need to go, it is not practical or efficient for the network to connect all origin-destination pairs with single, direct trips. The best public transport networks are high frequency grids, where users can make transfers at connecting nodes with short waiting times - like the London Underground or the Tokyo Metro.  But it doesn't have to be a metro system. It may be a combination of modes, including suburban trains, buses, light rail and ferries.

The key is quality network design. The mode selected for individual corridors is based on technical, geographic and cost considerations, which are contextual and pragmatic. So no one mode can be said to be better than any other. 

In areas of lower demand, where high frequency services can't be justified, the network should be designed as a pulse timetable, so waiting times are short at nodes even if service intervals are 30 or 60 minutes.

Well designed networks are also highly legible - stopping patterns are consistent and timetables are clockfaced. It is easy for passengers to figure out how to use the system.     

2. Network design guides infrastructure

The Swiss Federal Railways design timetables 20 years in advance. This allows them to prioritise infrastructure projects needed to achieve improvements in the timetable. This is the most efficient way of planning and building infrastructure because it ensures that what is built - and the technology used - is only what is necessary.

Technology has a role to play, but it should never lead. Technology should be the servant of network design. 

3. Fare structures that encourage public transport travel

The fare structure needed for successful public transport systems is the opposite of what mainstream economists think we should have. Economists like "pay as you go" fares, because then users have the tendency to ration their use of taxpayer subsidised services. Many users also like the idea of only paying for what they use.

But if our objective is for public transport to compete effectively with the car, the fare structure should provide an incentive to people to use public transport for as many trips as possible, including shopping, social and recreational trips. This is best achieved with highly discounted periodical fares (weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual travel passes), so every additional trip taken appears to the user to be free. 

Public transport fares: do we need more than economics to make them efficient?

There are some recommendations in this week's draft report on public transport fares from the NSW Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) which make a lot of good sense.

But then there are the weird bits.

Let's be positive and start with the good recommendations.

The first is the proposal that journeys made with two or more modes should be priced as a single journey based on distance travelled. Most observers were scratching their heads when the Opal card was introduced with penalties for passengers who need to transfer between modes to complete a journey. Good on IPART for recommending a fix to this.

Changes to policy on week-end fares and seniors discounts are also fair and logical. 

By replacing the Sunday cap of $2.50 with a week-end daily cap of $7.20, the perverse incentive to delay a week-end ferry ride until Sunday will be removed. And let's face it, $2.50 for travel anywhere on a Sunday is overly generous and distorts demand with very detrimental effects on service, especially for ferries.

The changes to eligibility for the Gold Opal card, which mean Seniors who are not pensioners will need to pay fares at the regular concession rate, is another dose of common sense.

Recommendations I place in the category of Weird City mostly stem from IPART's understanding of the word "efficiency". The name of IPART's report "More efficient, more integrated Opal fares" is significant. Early on at university, economics students are taught a new meaning of the word "efficiency". "Economics", students are instructed, "is about the efficient allocation of scarce resources". The instruction must be effective, because when graduates find roles in cloistered academia, consulting firms and Government agencies (like IPART), they seem compelled to look for anything that looks remotely like a scarce resource which is in need of efficient allocation, preferably by a price mechanism. 

When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

This is why IPART is so fond of "pay as you go" fare structures, because if a user pays for each individual trip, they will feel inclined to "ration" their use of public transport. It explains their recommendation to lift weekly Opal card weekly caps from $60 to $75 in 2018 and to reduce the number of "free" trips for frequent users. And there is no recommendation to re-introduce a periodical or travelpass style of ticket.

Economics is not of course the only set of ideas relevant to efficiency in business or the business of government. There is another quite different tradition of operations research and systems science, with a lineage going back to the American philosophers CS Peirce and CI Lewis, the statisticians Walter Shewart and Ed Deming and notable advocates like Stafford Beer, Gregory Bateson, C West Churchman, Russell Ackoff and Fred Emery. Their understanding of efficiency is a practical one which sits more comfortably with the average business owner. Efficiency in business (or public transport) is about making process improvements to the system to provide better products and services to customers, at lower cost. 

This tradition is mostly concerned with the way a business (or system) operates as a whole, and less about its component parts, because the whole is not the sum of the parts. 


For a public transport operator, efficiency improvement can be achieved by many practical activities, including minimising the time the fleet is lying idle and maximising the time in their rosters when crews are driving boats (trains/buses). These should also be concerns of government, because efficient use of assets and labour by operators leads ultimately to lower costs to the taxpayer.   This is what real world efficiency is all about. 

An economist's idea of efficiency is more abstract. You need look no further than this week's IPART report to see how abstract and remote from the real world this can be. Here is a quote from page 36:

"In theory, a certain number of journeys on a public transport service will maximise the welfare (or net benefits to individuals and the wider community) generated by the service. In economics, this is known as the socially optimal level of consumption. Fares set to achieve this level of consumption are known as the ‘socially optimal fares’. Socially optimal fares encourage both efficient use of public transport and efficient delivery of public transport – our two ‘efficiency’ criteria.

At the socially optimal number of journeys, the cost of providing the service to the last passenger is equal to the benefit of the service to that passenger and to the wider community. This last passenger is known as the ‘marginal’ passenger, and the costs and benefits associated with serving the marginal passenger are known as the ‘marginal costs’ and ‘marginal benefits’. 

At the socially optimal number of journeys, the costs to society of any additional journeys would outweigh the benefits to society associated with those additional journeys"

Further on page 37: 

"We developed a mathematical optimisation model that we used to estimate the socially optimal fares for single journeys on each mode...

It aims to identify the fares that will balance the following two effects: 
1. Setting fares above the socially optimal level would lead to excessive use of private cars and underutilisation of existing and planned public transport capacity, leading to higher external costs associated with road congestion, emissions and road accidents. 
2. Setting fares below the socially optimal level would lead to excessive crowding on public transport, underutilisation of existing and planned road capacity, and excessive public transport operating losses which must be funded from taxation." 

In short, IPART believes there is an optimal number of public transport trips in Sydney - not too many and not too few - and by pulling the right leavers on fares, this optimal level of trips will be reached.  After all, according to IPART, we really don't want people travelling too much by public transport or else there could be "underutilisation of existing and planned road capacity". 

What the heck?

This is the first time I have heard anyone say that the existing or planned capacity of Sydney roads may be underutilised if too many people use public transport. When did that become a problem? The thrust of the NSW Transport Masterplan (which doesn't rate a single mention in IPART's 106 page report) is to promote a mode shift away from private cars to public transport so Sydney becomes a more vibrant, liveable and better connected city. 

The report doesn't state explicitly what IPART thinks the socially optimal number of public transport trips should be in Sydney, but it appears to be not too different from what it is now - about 120 per resident per year. By comparison with most European cities, this is woefully low.  It's about 400 in Zurich and 500 in Vienna. 

IPART needs to forget the idea that public transport can be made more efficient by rationing trips via the price mechanism. What actually needs to happen is the opposite of this. Sydney needs to have a fare structure which discourages rationing of public transport travel. This is achieved by offering heavily discounted periodical fares (weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual travel passes). If you already have a periodical ticket, you are more likely to use public transport for non work commuting travel - like going shopping or meeting friends. 

Travel for purposes other than commuting to work make up more than 80% of all trips by Sydney residents! Public transport must be made a more attractive option for these types of trips if a substantial mode shift is to be achieved. Unfortunately, IPART disparagingly refers to them as "discretionary" travel (as if we would all be better off staying behind closed doors at home when not at work).

What really matters is increasing patronage and lowering taxpayer subsidies. Most European cities achieve far higher levels of real world efficiency in their public transport systems because their utilisation of assets is higher.  This can be done by drawing on the fine practical traditions of operations research and systems science, not the abstract, "mind experiment" concepts of efficiency so loved by economists. 

Fares are not everything. If average public transport trips per resident were to lift to a modest 250 trips per year, then capacity would have to increase and networks designed better to provide for multi-destinational travel, not just commuting to work in the CBD. 

But fare structures are part of the overall public transport jigsaw puzzle that we need to get right in Sydney. Unfortunately IPART is leading us down the wrong path.
   

Why are ferry work commuter numbers declining?

Every six months, a week long census is conducted by Harbour City Ferries to count passengers boarding and disembarking by individual wharf and route. The data has a high level of granularity as it includes details such as time of boarding and disembarkation.

Thanks to the good work of the Bureau of Transport Statistics, the information is publicly available on its website .

Caution should be exercised in using the data - the census covers just seven days and there may be special circumstances affecting the count in a particular week. For example, services might have been cancelled due to fog or industrial action or a wharf may have been closed for upgrade. The May 2013 count was particularly affected by fog cancellations.

Notwithstanding these cautionary notes, the data does enable the ferry enthusiast to delve a little more deeply into customer demand trends. While total ferry patronage has grown since 2010, one trend that is clear is a shift in ferry patronage away from work commuters to so called off peak periods, especially week-ends.

A proxy measure of work commuters is the count of passengers disembarking at Circular Quay, Darling Harbour, McMahons Point and Milsons Point between 7.00 am and 9.00 am on week-days. This has dropped from a high of 6,600 in November 2010 to just 5,249 in the May 2015 survey. Disembarkations at these times and at these locations include very few leisure travellers. The vast majority are people travelling by ferry to work.

Derived from BTS data set, Ferry Load Census Data May 2010 - May 2015

The decline in commuter numbers has happened despite an increase in numbers of daily AM peak services of around 12 per cent since May 2010.

So what is behind the drop?

There are probably many contributing reasons, but some stand out as leading candidates:

• Competition from the Manly Fast Ferry. Frequency of the Manly Fast Ferry has increased to six per hour in the AM peak and fares are now very competitive with the Opal Card. Disembarkations at Circular Quay between 7:00 am and 9:00 am from the iconic, regular Manly Ferry services has declined from a high of 1,765 in November 2010 to 1,230 in May 2015.

• Changes in fare structures. If you are commuting to work by ferry, you may need to catch a bus to your local wharf, or take a train from Circular Quay to reach your office. Changes in fares structures have made these intermodal transfers less attractive. My Multi ticket rules (the periodical travel pass ticket product) changed in September 2013 by moving Manly Ferry passengers from the cheapest MyZone 1 category to the most expensive MyZone 3. Inner Harbour passengers were moved to MyZone 2. Monthly, Quarterly and Annual My Multi tickets ceased to be available from August 2014.

More importantly, Opal card users, now the majority of passengers, are required to pay an extra fare if they need to transfer to a different mode as part of their journey.      

Let's hope the current IPART review into public transport fares will start a process to remove disincentives for intermodal transfers. Without such changes, the role of ferries in Sydney commuter travel will continue to decline.

The myth that ferries don't compete on cost with other public transport modes

There is a common assumption that urban transit ferries cost more to operate per passenger journey - and attract greater taxpayer subsidies - than other modes of public transport. 

Often this is true, but it is not always the case. 

A previous post on this blog debunks the myth that Sydney Ferries attract much higher subsidies than buses or trains. 

But the misunderstanding persists and often leads to  
rhetorical questions like "why should battlers in the western suburbs subsidise rich ferry riders from the north shore or eastern suburbs?" I have even heard it raised at IPART hearings. 

So it's time to restate the facts.

The NSW Auditor-General's Financial Audit Report - Volume Seven 2014 - provides a helpful table showing the operating costs and revenue per passenger of three modes of public transport in NSW (trains, buses and ferries) in the 12 months ending June 2014. A graphical version is shown below:

Source: NSW Auditor-General's Financial Audit Report Volume 7 2014, p. 17

Net cost per passenger journey, after deducting farebox revenue, is $10.61 for rail, $6.24 for ferries and $5.88 for buses. This means the subsidy per passenger for rail is more than $4 higher than ferries. The difference between buses and ferries is almost negligible. 

Now there will be arguments about what the Audit Office includes as a cost. And the average rail journey is longer than either ferry or bus journeys (this raises another question - why aren't train fares commensurately higher for longer trips?). 

All of this does muddy the water, but the difference in operating costs are really not that great.  

When other issues come into play, such as the impact on CBD congestion caused by conga lines of buses entering and leaving the city, the argument for ferries becomes more compelling. Ferries certainly have a competitive advantage over buses in near city suburbs with good waterway connections.