It is said to be designed to support travel that is increasingly "not conforming to the traditional nine to five lifestyle ... with more frequent services running seven days a week that continues to grow along with our city."

Although light rail is new here, most people will still need to catch a bus at some point, and many will remain on buses entirely.

How does this network change stack up? There are two perspectives: the operator's and the user's.

Operators love high-capacity corridor routes. These relatively straight, direct, high-traffic routes, which serve major centres, and use high-capacity and high-speed vehicles are cheaper and can generate nice statistics on average travel time.

This is the new network's main selling point according to Transport Canberra - average travel times will be shorter across the offered routes.

There are also significant expansions in weekend service, and a bit of expansion to the weekday schedule too. The number of bus services will rise from 3600 to 4200. For peak hour corridor travel, frequency of service has been increased. And, of course, there is now light rail.

Transit users want service that is frequent, reliable, fast, and, most importantly, gets them to and from their desired origins and destinations at the times they need to travel. Is this what they are getting from the new transit network? On the surface it might seem to be so.

Assuming Transport Canberra crunched its numbers correctly, and operations pan out as planned (for example, getting enough drivers to work the new weekend routes may not be easy), transit rides will be faster, sometimes more frequent, and running more often. What's not to like?

Here is where the operator fallacy comes in. Transport Canberra is measuring frequency and speed over the routes it offers. This is not necessarily the same as the routes users want. It could be like offering an all-you-can-eat meat dish buffet to vegetarians.

One major issue has been around the fact that to get faster average route travel times, many people are now funneled to the light rail corridor where they have to switch from a bus at least once.

Light rail runs faster, on average, than buses, so this reduces average travel time on a route. But users do not like transfers, especially if coordination is poor and connections may be missed - something quite common. Some will lose direct bus only services.

Another way to cut average travel time is to cut the number of stops, but this means transit is only taking people to and from where the operator wants to go, rather than where users want to be.

Some will stop taking public transport because of this while others will find they have to walk more to get to stops - an increase for their travel time, despite a fall in the average.

Much has been made of about using MyWay data to cut low patronage services. However networks need to offer enough to give users the option of getting where they need to go.

Expressos have been cut because of low ridership at times. These are fullest in the morning, because some will take regular services home after hours. Users look at the whole package to plan trips. If you cut Expressos entirely, you may lose bus riders to cars because they don't want to get stranded.

Transport Canberra has a nice network from its perspective. We'll find out soon how enough how much users like it.

Cameron Gordon is an adjunct associate professor of economics at UC and ANU.