ACTION will change its bus times and routes on May 18, including new times and stops for school buses, with six new dedicated school buses.
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Dedicated services will be run for Merici and Daramalan in the inner north, and for St Anthony's primary, Trinity Christian and Wanniassa High in Wanniassa.
Most of the school-bus changes involve buses leaving up to 10 minutes earlier or later than they do at the moment - with new start times for 68 services. Directions and stops have changed for 21 school buses.
One school bus has been scrapped - a bus that ran Merici to Nicholls and Palmerston in Gungahlin. Students who caught that bus have other options serving the same areas. A new service from Merici and Daramalan will take children home to Amaroo and Ngunnawal.
The government introduced its "Network 14" in September last year, and has now reviewed the network and made changes, to take effect on May 18.
Territories and Municipal Services Minister Shane Rattenbury said the "tweaks" were based on feedback from bus patrons, and data from the MyWay ticketing system and NXTBUS tracking system where commuters can find buses online.
Changes included more evenly timed breaks between buses from town centres such as Erindale, where buses had been bunched together. From Erindale to Woden there had been six buses an hour, with a wait of up to 22 minutes between some. From May 18 there would be eight buses an hour, with a wait of no more than 12 minutes.
New "Xpresso" services could be added and some would be run later, after feedback they were running too early in the morning.
More buses would run from Gungahlin.
Route times have been increased on Red Rapid buses in the north to take into account the roadworks on Constitution Avenue.
There would be no changes to night or weekend services.
"There has been a mixed reaction to Network 14 but what this tweak to the network is about is continuous improvement and some of that is from customer feedback," Mr Rattenbury said.
The changes were to "ground-truth between what's in the timetable and what the actual performance is on the road".
"When you plan the network you go in and map it as best you can and you print those timetables, but when you put it on the ground there are some problems or there'll be things that don't quite match and so this tweak is about improving that," he said.
The government is reviewing the future of the buses in public hands, with Chief Minister Andrew Barr demanding reform from the drivers to rein in costs, and suggesting private operators could run parts of the network.
Mr Rattenbury said he hadn't formed a final view.
"The Greens have made it clear that we're not attracted to the idea of selling off the bus network holus bolus, but there's a spectrum of possibilities and they're certainly things that I will discuss with my party as we start to refine some of the options," he said. "We already see around the country contestability in all sorts of bus networks, and for me the bottom line is how you get the best possible bus network."
