Changes will be made to Canberra's weekend bus network following mass cancellation of services due to driver shortages, leading to commuter frustration.
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The new weekend timetable is expected to come into effect on September 28.
The timetable will see rapid services running on the same frequencies, while the number of local bus services will be reduced to up to one every two hours along some routes.
Weekend services will continue to run on the same routes as weekday services.
Transport Minister Chris Steel said the reliability of the bus network on weekends did not live up to the expectations of the government and commuters.
"What we're looking at doing is we're proposing to retain the most popular elements of the network, like services running earlier and later on the same route and making sure we're retaining the frequency of rapid services that make up 70 per cent of travel," Mr Steel said.
"What we've heard from the community is that they want to see reliability in that buses show up and they have the certainty to plan their trip."
Bus driver shortages have led to thousands of weekend buses being cancelled since the new timetable was introduced earlier this year.
Between April 29 and July 7, 2842 weekend buses were cancelled.
Talks are set to take place between Canberra transport officials and the Transport Workers Unions to determine new bus driver shifts as part of the new weekend timetable.
Mr Steel said the shortage of bus drivers on weekends had led to a larger campaign to recruit bus drivers on Canberra's network.
An extra eight bus drivers joined the Canberra fleet of buses from Friday after graduating from their training, with a further 12 recently starting.
While Mr Steel said a larger recruitment campaign would be held to get more bus drivers out on the road, he did not say other moves to incentivise weekend working such as penalty rates would be added to fix the weekend cancellation levels.
"We want to have more bus drivers make themselves available on weekends," he said.
"We just need more bus drivers to deliver more services."
Canberra Liberals' transport spokeswoman Candice Burch said the new timetable was 'incredibly disappointing'.
Ms Burch said that more incentives such as penalty rates were needed for weekend bus drivers.
"The government promised more weekend services under the new network," Ms Burch said.
"Instead, people relying on public transport over the weekend have been forced to wait for long periods, sometimes without knowing if their bus will ever show up.
"Now, rather than fixing driver shortages, the Minister has decided to just cut the weekend services that Canberrans were promised."
Government figures have shown a 27 per cent increase in the number of journeys on public transport on the weekend compared to the same time last year.
The government earlier this week agreed to a motion moved by the Canberra Liberals in the ACT Legislative Assembly to release an action plan within one month about how more timely cancellation data could be provided to passengers.
ACT Greens transport spokeswoman Caroline Le Couteur said she was shocked and disappointed over the timetable.
"We had a motion in the Assembly [about weekend buses] less than 48 hours ago, and the timetable change was not discussed," Ms Le Couteur said.
"It's just disrespectful to the public.
"I fear the changes to the timetable will be part of the solution [to stop cancellations] but without working out a way to incentivise drivers to work on the weekend."
Ms Le Couteur said cutting the number of buses was not an adequate solution to weekend bus issues."
Chair of the Public Transport Association of Canberra, Damien Haas, said a more sustainable solution was needed.
"People need to have confidence that they can catch a bus to their destination, and that it will be there when they need to return home," Mr Haas said.
"The current enterprise bargaining agreement [for bus drivers] is clearly not fit for purpose.
"The composite hourly rate that drivers are paid should ease a move to a shift system where adequate numbers of drivers can be allocated to bus services on a seven day a week basis."
The Transport Minister said the government would look at its options if the revised weekend timetable still saw large cancellations.
"We'll monitor examples of the timetable to see how we're operating with reliability, but we're getting on with an action plan to recruit more bus drivers on an ongoing basis, and there's a range of other options after that."