Kangaroo Bus Lines, or KBL, has been delivering urban and private bus and coach services in Queensland since 1978. The family-owned business has grown from a small fleet of nine vehicles, to more than 160 low-floor urban, premium coach and charter buses today. 

From its three depots – one in Burpengary, 20 kilometres from the Brisbane CBD, one on the Sunshine Coast, and a new depot at Banyo in Brisbane’s north – KBL delivers contracted urban and school bus services on behalf of the Queensland Government. 

Innovation has been a cornerstone of KBL’s growth and success. A desire to improve efficiency and the customer experience has led its Planning and Performance team to seek new ways of working, with a focus on diving deeper into its data. 

Performance improvement and innovation comes from a previously untapped resource – data 

KBL adopted netBI in 2021, utilising the software-as-a-service platform to monitor on-time and route performance, manage its contractual requirements, and drive improvements across its urban fleet. 

Usage of the platform has steadily grown as the organisation has deepened its understanding of its data, and how it can be applied to generate business value. The insights extracted from the platform are driving data-led decision-making at the company, enabling a more targeted investment of team effort and resources. 

“We continue to look for opportunities to improve, so that we can stay ahead of the game. Before netBI, data was an untapped resource for us, as the sheer volume and complexity of it made it too difficult and time consuming to gain real insight. “ 

Darren Webster, CEO, Kangaroo Bus Lines. 

“We took a two-pronged approach to working better with data. We employed specialist analyst team members who could take the problems we wanted to solve, translate these into questions we could ask of our data, and then find ways to deliver evidence upon which we could base decisions. Then we adopted the right kind of specialist technology to enable our team to work with our data and bring out its hidden value. 

Our ability to fully view and analyse our data through netBI is helping to unlock opportunities for route, service and driver improvements, and allow us to continually meet customer expectations. Ultimately this is empowering KBL to provide an industry-leading service backed by data-driven decisions we can rely on,” Darren adds. 

Faster and more detailed reporting 

Servicing around 9,300 stops across 390 trips on any given weekday means that accurate, reliable and timely reporting is critical for KBL to maintain excellence in its service delivery. Traditionally, collating and aggregating different data sources has been a manual, time consuming, labour intensive and risky task, with limited insights that are often available too long after the fact to be useful. 

Using netBI, KBL can quickly and easily visualise their route and service performance. The platform offers customisable dashboards and reporting that not only presents their data in an easy-to-understand manner, but also highlights anomalies and ‘outliers’ for quick analysis, saving time and labour costs. 

“In the past it may have taken us several weeks to compile reporting or route analysis, whereas now, through netBI, it can be done in a matter of minutes to hours, enabling us to focus our efforts on delivering solutions rather than running out of time while searching for the problem.” 

Darren Webster, CEO, Kangaroo Bus Lines. 

The time savings have helped to make things easier for Andrew Fawcett and his colleagues in KBL’s Planning and Performance team. 

“For example, with customer feedback, it used to take days to investigate a single service issue, but with netBI it now only takes us 10 minutes – which frees our team to focus on the improvements to our service, rather than endlessly wrangling data the old way,” Andrew explains. 

“Having comprehensive data from netBI on hand means we can spend more time working with drivers and our maintenance team to investigate the root cause of issues and use feedback to actually improve our business” he adds. 

Improving performance to meet contract targets 

In new contracts, more public transport authorities (PTAs) are setting increased performance targets where operators need to continually improve over the life of the contract. With increased pressure to meet targets, KBL is using business insights from their data to track their daily performance. 

Readily available data through netBI has allowed KBL to more quickly identify route and network issues before they end up impacting contracted performance targets. When issues do arise, insights from the platform have allowed them to have more informed discussions with their PTA so that together they can activate the improvements needed to provide a better service. 

The intelligent data platform has helped KBL to identify issues that are impacting their contracted performance results. For example, it highlights where mobile network blackspots and / or canyoning in built up areas result in data wander or loss. 

This often impacts the accuracy of trip completion and on time running reporting, which meant the company was at risk of not meeting their contracted performance targets. netBI assisted KBL in automatically identifying these issues to bring additional fault tolerance to its data architecture by fusing multiple data sources. Insights from netBI helped the company to get to the root cause of the issue and avoid performance penalties. 

Delivering a better network 

Improved insights have been key to delivering ongoing improvements to KBL’s network. The in-depth route and stop analysis available through netBI have helped the company to continually improve their timetables and rosters. 

“Through the netBI platform we are able to drill down to a very granular level and see what may be causing a service or route to be running early or late.” 

Andrew Fawcett, Network Planning and Performance Manager, Kangaroo Bus Lines 

“Our route data can be overlayed with variables like traffic congestion, weather, and planned roadworks to increase the accuracy of the insights, and we can more easily identify the adjustments needed to ensure our services run on time. The granularity of the data we can instantly access is incredible – we can follow the data trail from stop-to-stop, and we know that any insights we derive can be 100% relied on for our decision making,” Andrew says. 

To improve network reliability, KBL has used netBI to make changes for when buses are travelling between routes, a practice known as dead running. Dead running is an unavoidable cost to any operator as vehicles are re-positioned without paying passengers. Minimising dead running immediately minimises costs. 

Route analysis through the netBI platform has led to the company identifying new, more reliable, and cost-effective ways to minimise dead running across its fleet.

“While it may seem minimal, the fuel, wear and tear, wages costs, and unnecessary emissions caused by dead running really do add up, which is why we try to avoid it as much as we can,” Andrew says. 

“Contrary to our initial assumptions, netBI allowed us to identify that in some situations it was cheaper and more cost effective for us to use toll roads to move fleet around, where previously we tried to avoid them. These incremental ‘small wins’ add up over time to make a significant difference in our operational efficiency and financial performance,” he adds. 

Passenger comfort and safety

Safe and reliable transport remains a key priority for every public transport network and is a fundamental focus for both the PTA and Operator. Using netBI, KBL have been able to identify and validate instances of passenger overcrowding that were not reliably recorded through anecdotal sources. Following feedback from drivers and customers, KBL used the netBI data platform to analyse specific load profiles down to the route, trip and stop level.

Andrew Fawcett explains. “We had a situation where, according to driver feedback, one of our school runs was at risk of overcrowding at the start of a new term, and more students expected than previous terms. I analysed the data in netBI which showed that overcrowding was commencing. This information became the basis of a request to the PTA for additional services on this route – something that costs them more money and needs irrefutable proof in order to be approved.”

“The reports I gave to the PTA came from netBI; a system they know and use themselves. Upon seeing the data-based evidence from a trusted system, they agreed that the issue existed and we were able to quickly rectify the situation, which was a great outcome.” 

Andrew Fawcett, Network Planning and Performance Manager, Kangaroo Bus Lines 

Being able to easily examine multiple data points from different systems enabled KBL to flag specific stops, times and conditions where overcrowding occurred. Based on the insights from netBI, the company, together with its PTA, have made changes to their network and timetable to provide customers with a more comfortable experience. 

Having vehicle speed, traffic data and other variables available through netBI has also enabled KBL and their PTA to improve stop locations, making it safer for passenger boarding and alighting. KBL was able to identify stop locations that were difficult or unsafe to service due to speed or road conditions. 

By fusing vehicle location data from several sources, including telematics, the platform has allowed KBL to detect and resolve issues where geo-fencing used by smartcard ticketing didn’t exactly align to physical stop locations. 

By ensuring alignment between stops, routes and ticketing, KBL has been able to provide a smoother, more seamless touch-on/off experience for customers.

Having a clean and reliable fleet helps to improve passenger comfort and safety. To ensure their fleet remains on the road, KBL uses route and vehicle data available through the platform to help track fleet performance and inform maintenance schedules. 

By utilising a combined view of onboard telematics, netBI has helped the company to make data-driven decisions on maintenance, fuelling, and charging, as they have been more easily able to track vehicle odometer readings, fuel usage, battery, and general performance of their fleet.

Recently, netBI has developed a new tool that can help customers to monitor and report on vehicle emissions, supporting their EV fleet transitions. 

The tool is in use by netBI customers to automate the previously laborious process of collating emissions data and sustainability impacts from bus operations, while supporting decision making for where electric vehicles should be first deployed so as to minimise emissions and improve customer experience.

Enabling a high performing culture

Having access to more comprehensive performance data and visualisations through netBI has helped Kangaroo Bus Lines to recognise high performing drivers and identify those needing further training. “We can now more easily identify instances where driver behaviour impacts our service reliability or on-time running,” Darren Webster says. 

Having this data has helped to drive a change in culture at KBL. “We’ve seen a whole group of drivers take ownership over their performance and who are now motivated to improve on the service they provide, led by the example of our highest performers,” he adds. 

Similarly, analysis from netBI is being used by the KBL’s Management Team and other functions to assist in identifying areas to improve driver behaviour and provide further training and support as needed. 

“Through the platform it is much easier to identify sudden drops in a driver’s performance. And, once we know this we can sit down with the driver and work out how best to support them. Moving beyond our driver teams, there’s been a real shift across the company as we start to use data to drive more informed and accurate decision making. 

We pride ourselves on ongoing innovation and high performance, and through netBI we have been able to make our business more efficient while still providing safe and reliable services for customers,” Darren concludes.