Doncaster Park and Ride is one of the busiest bus interchanges in the north-eastern suburbs of Melbourne with eight routes serving the stop. This includes local routes and the 907 and 908 Smartbuses.

This major interchange will now be closed until 2028 by the Victorian Government’s massive $20 billion North East Link, which includes widening the Eastern Freeway from eight to 20 lanes.

I don’t have accurate or up-to-date patronage figures because PTV does not release them but you only have to stand there in morning peak to see how busy it gets.

Reasons for and information about the closure

The ‘Big Build’ website published this release on 12 December 2024 announcing that Doncaster Park and Ride will close from 12 January 2025. The document states that this is due to the rebuild of Park and Ride with a new multi-storey carpark and needing the space to widen the Eastern Freeway.

Firstly the quality and availability of information – especially online – is not very good.

For a start there is no information or disruption alert on the PTV website for either the Doncaster Park and Ride stop or any of the eight bus routes that service it.

There is also no mention on the ‘News‘ webpage or ‘Major works happening this summer‘ page (nor any other disruptions bus either).

The only information available from PTV is buried under this hierarchy with no direct link from the front page or ‘Disruptions’ menu: Footer –> About PTV –> Improvements and projects –> Bus and coach –> Doncaster Park and Ride timetable changes here: https://www.ptv.vic.gov.au/footer/about-ptv/improvements-and-projects/bus-and-coach/doncaster-park-and-ride-timetable-changes/

Let’s take a look at this.

The headline is poorly phrased. “Doncaster Park and Ride timetable changes” does not directly communicate the most important information – that the entire stop will be closing for three years. This is done properly on the Big Build website as we saw above.

There is also no date provided for when the interchange will reopen online. All that the online release gives is a start date. But for some reason when I went to Doncaster Park and Ride last week I found that the on-site posters and brochures do give an end date of 2028, as you can see in the photos below.

This on-site information also explains the reason why it is closed for such a long period of time: to maintain access for car drivers and other people using the freeway.

The poster inside the waiting room states: “This site will be used to construct a temporary Ringwood-bound entry ramp to the Eastern Freeway, to maintain access for freeway users while we build the new Doncaster Road bridge. Once the bridge has been constructed, we’ll start building the new Doncaster Park and Ride facility“.

Again, this explanation does not seem to be anywhere online.

Frankly this is an unacceptably long time to cause such significant inconvenience by closing what is one of the most important transport interchanges in the area.

Alternative transport

So what are the alternative arrangements? Unfortunately this is also not made clear.

The earlier online release from Big Build only offers this information:

After 12 January, bus stops will be available on Doncaster Road between High Street and Harcourt Street.

Bus users also have the option to join the network closer to home and explore other bus routes or train lines that will be operational during this period.

The PTV website gives us more but is still not nearly as helpful as it should be.

PTV lists the routes that will be using temporary bus stops, which it describes as being “…on Doncaster Road, about 250 metres away from the Doncaster Park and Ride site“. But this is very vague and provides no further details, let alone a map. The timetable pages for the new routes exist (e.g. the 303 here) but don’t have any information.

If the current bus stop at Harcourt Street is being used then it isn’t a really suitable as a substitute for Doncaster Park and Ride. Not only is there no facility for buses to terminate or turn around but only one bus can really stop here at a time. Moreover, there are limited facilities for passengers with only a single standard shelter and the stop not DDA-compliant on account of the gradient of the road.

There is no crossing of the busy Doncaster Road here either. The nearest is about 250 metres away, making it an eight minute walk just to cross the road.

Perhaps there are some temporarily facilities being built somewhere or this stop is being upgraded. But this is not stated anywhere and I can’t see how this could happen to the extent required due to the very limited space in this location.

If you’re looking for other options the information provided appears to assume that Doncaster Park and Ride is only used by people driving cars. This is evident both in the release above and on-site information which gives this as alternative travel information: “Bulleen Park and Ride is around an 8–10 minute drive from Doncaster Park and Ride via High Street, Manningham Road and Thompsons Road.”

The reference to “other bus routes or train lines that will be operational during this period” in the following sentence is also misleading. Not only is there famously no railway to Doncaster or the entire City of Manningham but this also coincides with long-term disruptions to the Hurstbridge Line (the nearest available railway) – with more almost certain to come.

Perhaps most importantly this limited information does not explain how passengers will change between different bus routes – if they’ll be able to at all. This is essential to know for Doncaster Park and Ride where many routes start and end. Indeed, many of the 2014 route changes in the area specifically rely on an easy interchange at Doncaster Park and Ride. For example the truncation of the route 285 from Doncaster Shoppingtown to Park and Ride.

Finally, this closure further reduces public transport access for people living on the south / east side of the freeway to access bus services, after already having endured months of increasing disruption to walking, cycling and public transport routes. Now that the Park and Ride and the Greythorn Road / Gardenia Road bus stops are all closed, it will be a much longer walk for anyone in this area of North Balwyn to catch most buses in the area.

Timetable changes

In amongst all of this there are changes and timetable improvements to bus routes in the area.

I won’t go into a lot of detail here but overall these are very welcome. There are more services being added to routes that need them, and Sunday service finally being introduced for the 284 and 285. The service span of the very successful introduction of 15 minute headways on the 907 is also being expanded on Saturdays and Sundays.

In one sign of coordination the 905 is getting a frequency boost. This will increase capacity for any extra passengers who may realise that they can catch this bus into the CBD instead of travelling to Doncaster Park and Ride. Otherwise it will also add capacity for anyone who will now drive to Bulleen Park and Ride.

Summary

Despite being one of the most successful public transport projects of the past few decades, this might just be the final nail in the coffin of the Doncaster Area Rapid Transit (DART) project. The slow decline began in about 2014 when the ‘Smartbus’ brand was basically ignored by previous bus operator and for all intents and purposes no longer exists.

A major, long-term disruption like this is often enough for passengers to just stop using public transport altogether. This is a well-documented phenomenon but can be mitigated through good communication, providing a high-quality alternative and careful planning. Unfortunately this does not seem to have happened.

While there are some examples of coordination here I think that there are many missed opportunities. Most importantly, as I mentioned earlier, degrading service and convenience over a long period of time for thousands of public transport passengers will have major implications not only over the next three years but also for many years to come.