Northern bus network – 19 January 2020

A new general access bus network for Northern Tasmania commenced on 19 January 2020. This includes Launceston and surrounding towns and regions.

Buses now provide better access to employment, education and other services.

The changes follow an extensive community consultation period from April to June 2019.

Change summary

The changes include more direct routes, more frequent services, and new Sunday services.

New timetables provide more consistent departure times, improved reliability and minimised transfer times.

In a big win for commuters across the broader Launceston city area. A new high frequency cross-city route links the university and Kings Meadows. It travels via Mowbray, Invermay, Inveresk, the city, Launceston General Hospital and Six Ways.

Across the region, there are now more services more often to major towns, including Legana, Exeter, George Town, Perth and Bridport. There are better links for the West Tamar, north east, east coast and Northern Midlands areas.

There are trial services to address concerns raised during consultation in Riverside/Trevallyn and Waverley/Ravenswood.

Consultation

An extensive public consultation process was undertaken from April to June 2019. This invited feedback on the Metro urban Launceston network and the Northern regional network.

During the consultation process we received a total of 388 responses. Of these, 181 related to the urban Launceston network, and 207 related to the Northern regional network.

As a result of this feedback, we changed some routes and timetables.

For example we added more Coles Bay services, and maintained the Blackstone Heights route through Neptune Drive and Glover Avenue.

After we released the consultation report, we made some more minor changes to make timetables accurate.

See the Northern public consultation report.