We don't make endorsements, but beware politicians' promises about individual bus routes.
Melbourne transit guru Daniel Bowen confirms that nobody is threatening to cancel the 822. The other team's plan involves removing some twists and turns on neighborhood streets, so that the route runs faster and is useful to more people. As usual, that plan asks some people to walk further to a more useful service, as virtually any access-improving network design will do.
Those changes are fair game for debate, but remember: If you want to "save" every existing bus route exactly as it is, forever, then you're against almost any coherent plan and cost-effective plan to update and improve your transit network. This and this, for example, would have been impossible!
Without looking at a map of this route and its geography, I wonder how many of these diversions could be rectified with a better connected street grid, thus allowing for intersecting lines to cover these areas rather than diverting the main through route.
At least it’s an issue at all. It shows that the transit riders in Bentleigh (Australia?) have political representation, unlike in the us, despite the recent slew of neat little streetcar lines being built.
This is a standard problem in politics. People seem to be absolutely hard-wired to never consider opportunity costs. I’ve seen it happen time and again, and I swear that you have to put a revolver to the side of most people’s heads, pull back on the hammer and start tightening the trigger before they will hear you talk about opportunity costs. 🙁
Many deviations are there because the streets in the street grid that do connect are, for varying reasons, not conducive to transit service.