In the third installment, I’ll compare the development of “bicycle culture” in NZ and the US.
Many may be thinking with the National Cycleway we may have the leg up on the Americans in this category but as we’ll see many cities in the US are at the beginning of their own bicycling booms.
Here in NZ generally small amounts of money are allocated to bicycling infrastructure from Central Government or Local Councils via the NLTP. Talking to the NZTA recently about the SH16 widening project I got chatting about bicycling and it was brought to my attention that often the meager funds allocated to bicycling or not fully spent. While the National Cycleway is a good start it will not create a fully NZ wide corridor as many of us had hoped at it’s announcement. Bicycle lanes are developing in our cities though at a snail’s pace, in Auckland mainly as part of state highway projects.
Bicycle parking in New York
Looking at some specific examples in the US we can see a culture growing in selected cities, mainly major centres but also some smaller centres that have focused on bicycling such as Boulder, Colorado (one of three cities to receive Platinum awards by The League of American Bicyclists, the others are Davis, California and Portland, Oregon). In New York a large move is happening to increase the bicycle friendliness in the city. The New York Department of Transport has to increased bicycle lanes from 260 kms to 360 kms in just three years. Bicycles are allowed on all subways and most commuter railways and provision for bicycle parking around the city is growing exponentially.
Here is a video from Street Films, an excellent alternate transport info source, about the changes in New York:
Chicago is also seeing a large increase in ridership under the current Mayor, this has been achieved in small part by introducing an organised monthly ride known as Critical Mass which attracts thousands of riders.
Riders in Daley Plaza meeting for Critical Mass
Portland is the only large “Platinum” bicycling city in the US, here is another video from Street Films showing just one of the many, many initiatives in that city that has raised bicycle commuting mode share from a similar amount as Auckland (0.8%) up to 8%:
If you want to learn more about US cycling and what good ideas we can copy have a look at what they are doing in Chicago, New York, Portland, Davis and Boulder. If we can get similar numbers of people commuting to work as the best of these centres (around 10%) by copying the great ideas, we will be able to relieve congestion for cents on the dollar compared to large heavy rail and state highway projects.
Over 40,000 buses in the US have these racks capable of holding two bicycles
It’s interesting to see that the NZTA board has recommended that the “Tauranga Eastern Link” road of National significance be “sped up” by having a toll applied. Here’s the press release in full:
The NZ Transport Agency Board has recommended that tolling be progressed as a funding option for the Tauranga Eastern Link project.
The Board’s recommendation means that a formal proposal to bring forward the start of construction on the $455 million project by tolling one section of the road can now be submitted to the Minister of Transport. After discussions with Cabinet, the Minister will then decide whether to recommend to the Governor General that an Order in Council (OIC) be established to toll the road.
The Tauranga Eastern Link will be a four-lane motorway from Te Maunga to Paengaroa – without travelling through Te Puke. It comprises two sections – an upgrade of the existing State Highway 2 between Te Maunga and Domain Road at Papamoa and a new motorway from Domain Road to Paengaroa. Only the completely new section of the road is proposed to be tolled.
NZTA Board Chair Brian Roche said over 80 percent of more than 3,500 submissions received during public consultation earlier this year supported advancing the project through tolling. Tolling the road would allow construction to start in 2010 with completion by 2016 – five to ten years earlier than without tolling.
Mr Roche said the Tauranga Eastern Link would bring significant benefits to the region.
“As a road of national significance it is a key piece of infrastructure that will improve connections between the Bay of Plenty, Tauranga and its port. It will allow people and freight to move more efficiently through the region, reducing transport costs and improving economic productivity.”
Mr Roche said the project would also make travel safer in the region. “The new road will be four lanes with a median barrier which will reduce the number of serious and fatal crashes. It is also expected to remove much of the heavy traffic from the main streets of Te Puke and Waitangi, and significantly improve safety on this section of State Highway 2.”
Mr Roche said the NZTA had worked closely with Environment BOP, Western Bay of Plenty District Council and Tauranga City Council to progress the project.
It is interesting to see how keen the government seems to be to apply tolling to these roads of national significance, as we heard just a few days ago that a toll is very likely for the Transmission Gully Motorway in Wellington. I imagine that if the Puhoi-Wellsford Motorway ever gets built it’s pretty likely that this route will be tolled too, and this offer some insights into why these projects are the main focus of transport spending at the moment.
Insight number one – it’s all about trucks. Trucking companies love toll roads, as the amount of toll is pretty negligible compared to the cost on them of congestion or or longer routes. If a few minutes can be saved off a trip, then that is well worth a trucking company paying $5-$10, as they can simply build that into the cost of transportation. What really matters is the ability to avoid congestion and the significant delays that can involve. So really, this really is largely about making life better for trucks.
Insight number two – the tolling system set up for the Orewa-Puhoi road really needs more toll roads for it to make economic sense. It was indicated a few months ago that administration costs eat up over half the $2 toll for that road. With more toll roads, the complex system would become much more economically ‘profitable’.
I must say I do find it interesting that even though there has been an enormous shift towards putting money into these seven “roads of national significance”, there is still not enough money to build these roads quick enough without applying a toll. I’m not absolutely opposed to the idea of road tolling, and in fact I think that putting a clear and obvious cost on the use of a road is probably a very good idea – so that people are aware of the cost to provide the infrastructure and so that there’s a bit of a dis-incentive to use it unless you feel that the benefits of your trip really do outweigh the cost of the toll. In other words, they’re fairly decent demand management tools – particularly as more modern systems have the ability to vary the toll (potentially at peak times) so that congestion can be managed more cleverly than what we see at the moment.
However, we must still remember that most of the cost of projects such as Transmission Gully and the Tauranga Eastern Link will be paid for through typical measures – where our “money from roads should be spent on roads” blinkered ideology continues to reinforce our auto-dependency.
A few months ago I analysed the proposed widening to State Highway 16 in Auckland, from a rather critical aspects – as in my opinion it is a rather pointless task spending $860 million to widen a motorway when, over the course of just a few years, I think it’s quite likely the motorway will end up just as congested as it is now – due to the effects of “induced demand“.
December’s meeting of the Auckland City Council Transport Committee includes a report into the State Highway 16 widening project. That report has some interesting, and fairly complex, recommendations. These give an idea about the concerns that Auckland City Council has about this project, although it is interesting to note that the council does still – in general – support the project:
There is also a series of maps that show potential property and open space effects of the proposed widening. It is important to remember that the is an Auckland City Council report, so it doesn’t consider any of the project’s potential effects on areas within Waitakere City – that is, anywhere to the west of the bridge just west of the Rosebank peninsula. Here are the maps, in sequence from east (the city end) to west:
I must say, it would certainly be nice for the St Lukes Road overbridge to have a footpath on both sides of it – so at least it is likely there would be some improvement to the area from the motorway widening!
I must say it’s a bit disappointing to realise that the Chamberlain Park Golf Course will be further impacted by state highway 16. When this motorway way put through in around 1980 the golf course was highly impacts – and in fact was split off from its original clubhouse on Great North Road – and its linkage with other areas of public open space such as Western Springs Park and the Zoo. A pedestrian overbridge in this vicinity would be a small, but useful compensation for the enormous effect the motorway has had on splitting in half what would be one of the larger areas of open space within this part of the Auckland isthmus.
This seems to be the area where much of the impact on private properties will be (as well as around Waterview just to the west). The further widening of a motorway that cuts off Pt Chevalier from the area to the south of it will need to be managed carefully to ensure it does not create further severance. It will be interesting to see if that can ensure things don’t get worse, or hopefully somehow reduce this sense of severance.
From the maps above, it would appear to me as though the causeway will be significantly widened. That will have quite a big effect on our harbour – of course that effect might well be outweighed by the benefits the road is supposed to bring, but it must surely be realised that the new causeway might well be close to twice the width of the current causeway. Ironically, even though its width is going to be widened so massively, there’s apparently still not enough room for a “proper busway”.
It’s good to see, in this image, that there won’t be further impacts in this area on the seaward side of the motorway.
Overall, I think it will be interesting to see how this project will fare during a consenting process. It appears to me as though the benefits of it, which I think are very minor due to induced demand, are unlikely to “outweigh” its environmental (and fiscal for that matter) costs.
ARTA seem to finally be getting the message that public transport might be useful for more than just workers in the CBD going about their commuting (last Sunday’s experience notwithstanding), with their announcement that there are going to be extra trains running on the Eastern Line to provide good access to Sylvia Park shopping mall – during its extended opening hours. Here’s the announcement in full:
ARTA adds additional evening trains to wrap up Christmas shopping
16 Dec 2009
Additional evening train services will run to and from popular shopping destination Sylvia Park in the week leading up to Christmas for those taking advantage of late night shopping.
ARTA’s General Manager Customer Services, Mark Lambert says ”Taking the train is just one of the convenient public transport options people have to do their Christmas shopping, saving the cost and hassle of parking.
“Late night shopping in the week leading up to Christmas is always a busy time and by running additional services to Sylvia Park we hope to make life a little easier for our customers.”
The additional train services will run on the Eastern line from Sunday 20 December, running up to and including Wednesday 23 December.
Normal train fares apply.
For more information about public transport services to do your Christmas shopping call MAXX on (09) 366 6400 or visit maxx.co.nz.
Whilst this is a reasonably small measure, it is a good sign that ARTA are starting to realise that people will use public transport to get to and from shopping centres – if you can provide a good enough service. Let’s just hope that this realisation carries through to providing decent enough frequencies on the Onehunga Line at weekends once it opens next year.
Not to focus too much on Wellington as this is an Auckland Transport Blog, however decisions made around the country give an insight into what we can expect in Auckland.
Yup, that’s the good old Basin Reserve cricket ground (heritage listed by the way), with a flyover right next to it. I’d hope if anything like this was proposed for Auckland all readers of this blog would put on their activist hats. The time for flyovers through downtown areas has passed.
The long-awaited Transmission Gully route is to go ahead as part of a $2.2 billion upgrade of State Highway 1 from Wellington to Levin.
Transport Minister Steven Joyce this morning confirmed the project would go ahead as one of the Government’s roads of national significance.
Also announced was a NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) plan to upgrade SH1 between Wellington and Levin to reduce congestion, improve safety and support economic growth.
The upgraded route from Wellington Airport to Levin was expected to save drivers between 23 and 33 minutes during peak times and between 17 and 23 minutes during the day.
Mr Joyce said Transmission Gully had been debated for decades, but now a decision and funding plan had been made.
“The Government’s decision to invest nearly $11 billion in new state highway infrastructure over the next 10 years will ensure funding is available for the gully project.”
Tolling may be used to bring construction forward.
“The gully route is the best long-term option for the State Highway 1 road of national significance between Wellington and Levin in terms of route security, journey time savings and minimising impact both during construction and in the longer term,” Mr Joyce said.
“Proponents of the coastal route generally support it because of perceived lower costs. However the latest cost estimates show a similar cost profile between the two options with bypasses at Pukerua Bay, Plimmerton and Paremata being particularly costly because of the built-up nature of those areas, and the widening of Centennial Highway also being problematic.”
Mr Joyce said an important factor in NZTA decision-making was the need to minimise the impact on existing communities.
“Transmission Gully will bring benefits to the coastal communities of Mana, Plimmerton, Pukerua Bay and Paekakariki through reduced community severance and traffic noise, as well as improved air quality.”
Transmission Gully would also provide an improved east/west connection, with a better and more direct link to State Highway 58, the Hutt Valley and the Wairarapa.
The Gully option also provided an alternative route out of Wellington in the event of a major earthquake or other disaster.
“Progressing the Coastal Route would have meant putting all our eggs in one basket.
“Make no mistake, at about a billion dollars this is a very expensive project, so the project is likely to need both the government funding and tolling. The geography of the area means that there are no cheap or easy options.”
What I find most interesting in this matter is the fact that basically, because the Wellington to Levin route has been identified as a “Road of National Significance” it no longer has its funding dependent on whether NZTA’s detailed evaluation of the project’s costs and benefits shows that it will be “worth the investment”. As outlined above, back in June Steven Joyce conceded that the project’s cost-benefit ratio was around 0.3-0.5, which means that for the whole $2.2 billion of investment we’re unlikely to see any more than $1 billion of economic return.
In other words, we just flushed around a billion dollars down the toilet. The precedent this sets for other Roads of National Significance is quite extraordinary.
The first of these two matters is a complex one, that I will need to put quite a lot of research into writing about (although this article last week gives a reasonable overview of the implications of the GPS changes) so I will save that one for later. For this post I am going to focus on the second matter – the possible changes to the Public Transport Management Act (PTMA), or more specifically I plan to outline what that Act is, why it was necessary, why it was introduced and what the implications of messing with it might be.
Reading through the legislation itself is quite a challenge for this particular Act (although to be honest legislation is always pretty difficult to make sense out of) as a lot of it is very technical, and very procedural. The purpose of the Act is a reasonably good place to start in terms of making sense out of it:
As we will find out later, it’s sub-section (c) which is particularly controversial.
To make a little bit more sense out of what this all means, I guess it’s necessary to look at how the public transport system worked before this came along (which actually is generally still in effect as the PTMA hasn’t really had much impact yet as contracts largely haven’t come up for renewal). Basically, as far as I know, under the old system all public transport services fitted into one of the following two options: either commercial services or contracted services. Commercial services are those the operator (such as NZ Bus) considers that they can run at a profit – so they don’t need subsidising. Contracted services, on the other hand, are those which do receive a subsidy – from the Regional Councils and the national land transport fund (NLTF). Generally what would happen is that the different operators would choose the best and most profitable routes, and then operate them as commercial services, with the remainder of public transport route being subsidised contracted services.
Now if that sounds complicated enough, what made this situation even messier was the fact that a ‘route’ didn’t actually constitute a service, in fact by the sounds of it every single different ‘run’ made by a bus, train or ferry was a distinct ‘service’. Therefore, you could have bizarre situations where the 8.20am Sandringham Road bus would be a commercial service, whereas that 8.30am Sandringham Road bus would be a contracted service – one that ‘filled in the gaps’ in a sense. Once a particular operator had registered commercial services along a route, it generally made sense for them to be awarded the contract to run the contracted services – as (without integrated ticketing) the last thing we wanted were two different bus companies operating the same route. This led to rather bizarre situations where operators would register every second service as a commercial service, or all the services going one way as commercial services – so they’d have their ‘foot in the door’.
This situation, and the lack of controls over commercial services, led to a wide variety of negative effects on public transport since the split between commercial and contracted services was established by the 1989 Transport Licensing Act. These problems are outlined below:
The ‘cherry-picking’ of high patronage routes. Of course, commercial services ended up being those with the highest levels of patronage or those where profit could be best made. This made it not possible for the regional councils and ARTA to use these routes to help cross-subsidise less profitable routes. In general, this has increased the amount of subsidies that need to be contributed to running public transport.
Operators never had to provide any information on their commercial services. This meant that transport planners have found themselves playing rather crude guessing games in terms of patronage on these routes, while the level of profitability of these routes is also generally not known.
Once a route no longer became profitable for operation as a commercial service, the operator could give fairly short notice of cancelling that service unless ARTA or the regional councils stepped in to ‘contract’ it. Effectively that resulted in a ‘privatise the profits, socialise the losses’ situation where the private operators enjoyed all the benefits of the good times, but as soon as things started to go wrong for them they could simply abandon that route as a commercial service and then start enjoying having it propped up with subsidies. Furthermore, the operators were not even required to prove that the service was no longer profitable – they effectively had the ability to beg for subsidies without having to prove they were necessary.
The lack of control over commercial routes made it impossible for an integrated ticket to be implemented. As we’re seeing now with the acrimonious Snapper/Thales debate, different operators are incredibly jealous in their guarding of having to share information, ticketing and the redistribution of revenue. It is my understanding that ARTA could have forced the contracted services to accept an integrated ticket, but what’s the point when there’s the possibility that the 8.30am bus along Sandringham Road would accept your integrated pass, but the 8.20am bus wouldn’t? That would have been an even more infuriating outcome than having no integrated ticketing at all. So in that respect, the PTMA was essential for integrated ticketing to happen.
The dichotomy between commercial and contracted services meant that they often ended up competing with each other, or you had buses competing against trains, or different routes from different companies competing against each other – all the while structuring which routes they declared as commercial and which ones as contracted to extract the maximum profit out of the system (which generally included a significant subsidy). The fact that we have many bus routes completely following train routes (such as the 135/136 buses following the Western Line quite closely) seems to me like an incredible waste of scarce resources.
Probably the biggest problem with the old system was simply that it actually didn’t encourage people to use public transport at all. The lack of co-ordination, the messy dichotomy between commercial and contracted services, the inability to get integrated ticketing up and running, the extraordinary waste of resources in duplicating services and the inability for higher patronage services to cross-subsidise lower patronage services very much contributed to the massive decline in per capita public transport use we saw in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. Although undoubtedly things have improved since that time, that is really only the result of a very strong political and financial commitment from the ARC to public transport – and even then it is arguable the results have been relatively disappointing compared to the amount of money invested. So I think it’s fair to say that it was clear the old system wasn’t working. It wasn’t providing good value for money in terms of ratepayer and NLTF contributions, and it certainly wasn’t helping to provide anything like a world-class public transport system for Auckland. The old legislation was alsoactively preventing integrated ticketing from happening. So it had to go.
In terms of developing a replacement for the old system, it was clear that the main necessity was to give regional councils and ARTA some level of control over commercial services – so that they could be integrated into a co-ordinated system and so that we could actually achieve many of the things the old system had prevented from happening.
Three options were looked at when developing the PTMA – known as Options A, B and C. These are detailed further below:
Option A: preserving the status quo. Obviously this would have been an incredibly stupid option to pursue, but somewhat unsurprisingly most (although not all) of the public transport operators were keen on this particular option.
Option B: empowering regional councils to achieve their objectives mainly through two planning mechanisms —regional public transport plans, and controls imposed by councils on commercial services to implement these plans—and a compliance and enforcement regime.
Option C: enabling regional councils to require all services to be contracted (should they choose to do so).
Throughout the select committee process Option B was generally favoured by the politicians – although somewhat unsurprisingly it left nobody being particularly happy. ARTA was incredibly keen on Option C – as it was really the only option that could eliminate the dichotomy between contracted and commercial services that created all the problems detailed further back in this post. The select committee’s report detailed that: “ARTA asked the committee to recommend a redrafting of the bill in favour of Option C, which would have given ARTA the option of a fully contracted public transport system.” Labour members of the select committee were also generally in favour of Option C, although they couldn’t get a majority to vote for it.
However, as the parliamentary process for enacting a piece of legislation has a rather large number of steps, eventually ARTA did manage to convince enough MPs that Option C was in fact the best way to go – and interestingly enough that is the piece of legislation that we now find ourselves with. Of course, Infratil (owners of NZ Bus) bitterly opposed the legislation – particularly the final decision to go with Option C – and eventually managed to convince the Minister of Transport to look into changing this piece of legislation.
The general feeling is that the PTMA will change back to “Option B”, which wouldn’t be a complete and utter disaster, as regional councils would still have some ways to impose controls on commercial services through their regional public transport plans and the controls that the Act allows them to have. However, Option B still results in a dichotomy between commercial and contracted services. It still means that we’ll have cherry picking of routes, it still means that we’ll find it very difficult to ensure co-ordination of services so that your feeder bus arrives at the train station just before, rather than just after, the train leaves. It also means that we’ll probably still have stupid and pointless duplication of services where buses effectively follow train route – competing for passengers instead of working together to encourage more people onto public transport.
While Option C sounds harsh, in that it effectively prohibits commercial services, in reality if we want a properly co-ordinated public transport system history tells us that that’s really the only path that is likely to work (the alternative certainly hasn’t worked). While one would imagine that Option B would still ensure integrated ticketing takes place, in my opinion Option B would not provide for the most efficient use of resources and will probably result in a continuation of the same process we’ve seen over the past decade of heaps of money being shovelled into public transport, but with rather disappointing results.
That is why I think the PTMA shouldn’t be changed. Unfortunately, we are yet to see the real benefits of what Option C would provide, as there are only a few routes in Auckland whose contracts have “ticked over” recently enough for them to be caught by the PTMA (such as Mt Eden Road services), so I do worry that it’s a situation of us not knowing what “might have been”, as the benefits of Option C will perhaps never eventuate before such a time as it is repealed in favour of the less effective (in my opinion at least) Option B.
An interesting article by Brian Rudman on the Snapper/Thales integrated ticketing fiasco in today’s Herald:
After the big spin, Infratil’s a loser
I hadn’t thought of veteran Auckland public relations man Cedric Allan as the Grand Old Duke of York. Not until he took on his latest campaign to try to persuade Aucklanders that Infratil’s Snapper smartcard had won the battle to bring integrated public transport ticketing to the region.
For his sake, I hope he hasn’t staked his pension plan on it, because even if he gets 10,000 Aucklanders marching up and down the steps of Infratil’s buses waving their Snapper cards, rival French electronic giant Thales has won the fight.
A week ago it signed an $87 million contract with the Auckland Regional Transport Authority, with Government blessing, to provide integrated electronic ticketing for city buses, trains and ferries.
Mr Allan’s client, Snapper Services, was part of that tender process and lost the fight. It then challenged the decision legally and politically. Despite these rearguard actions, it still lost.
But like a punch-drunk boxer, Infratil has risen to its knees, pulled out the cellphone and called in Grand Old Cedric to save the day. On the eve of its rival signing the contract, he pumped out a press statement declaring, “Snapper Services Ltd moved today to clear up apparent confusion about emerging competition to introduce electronic ticketing for public transport in Auckland, with the objective of having integrated ticketing on most Auckland public transport by the Rugby World Cup in 2011.
As Jeremy talked about in his post yesterday,clearly Snapper/Infratil are in a pretty sticky situation having lost out of the integrated ticketing contract for Auckland. By the sounds of this article, Snapper over-extended themselves when rolling out in Wellington and needed to get the Auckland contract to make the investment worthwhile. I guess that explains why Snapper has been so persistent in trying to get the contract, and has tried pretty much every trick in the book to get ARTA or NZTA to change their minds.
It will be interesting to see where things go to from here. The “next step” we’re all really waiting for is NZTA to finalise its standards for integrated ticketing system, as I think that will determine what role – if any – Snapper has in Auckland’s future ticketing. If, as is indicated above, all operators will have to use the Thales system, then all I can really see Snapper doing is offering a “card option”. Perhaps that is fine for them, as they will be able to focus on using Snapper for retail sales, as that’s supposedly where the profit is. However, if people aren’t using their Snapper Cards on public transport then there might not be too many reasons for them to have yet another card in their pockets for small retail purchases.
I suppose I was asking for it, hoping to take public transport from Herne Bay to Sylvia Park on a Sunday and expecting it to not be complete and utter rubbish. Although, on the other hand past experiences haven’t been too bad. Although the bus route from here into town, and train from Britomart to Sylvia Park only run at half-hour intervals on Sundays (does anyone actually know why Sunday timetables have to be different to Saturdays, the patronage never seems hugely different?) usually in the past they have aligned reasonably. Well today proved everything wrong, and to me really showed in perfect clarity everything that is wrong with public transport in Auckland.
For a start, after leaving house (at a random time, I know, I probably should live my life to a timetable) my daughter Amalia and I reached the top of our street to see a damn 017 bus sitting at the bus stop. We ran like crazy towards it, and it didn’t move – until we reached it and discovered that it wasn’t our bus, but rather a broken down bus waiting for assistance. It would have been nice for the driver to change his sign to read “Not in Service” rather than leaving it showing the route and its destination. As the next bus was around 20 minutes away (and possibly not guaranteed to arrive in any case) we decided to walk to Ponsonby (only about 5-10 minutes away) so that we could catch the Link Bus, which runs every 15 minutes on a Sunday.
While waiting for the Link Bus, not one but two 017 buses decided to come along, but of course since we were at the bus stop for the Link Bus and not the 017, they didn’t stop for us – even with much vigorous arm-waving to try to encourage a driver to take pity on a guy with his 5 year old daughter – but to no avail. Eventually, our Link Bus did come along – and I think it had been quite a long gap since the last one as the people we were waiting at the bus stop with had got the point of making pointed loud comments wondering whether the bus would ever show up. Then the trip on the Link Bus into town seemed to take an age – perhaps we were just unlucky with the lights but I’m sure that my usual 005 bus trip doesn’t take as long as this Link trip did – even though they basically follow the same route.
Eventually we made it to Britomart, and were reasonably in luck to find out that our train was “only” 8 minutes away. I bought tickets (bloody annoying that my bus pass can’t be used on trains, perhaps that can be the first part of integrated ticketing to be sorted out) and we went down to the platforms to wait for the train. Oddly enough, even though the train we were due to catch was the next one departing from Britomart, platform 2 (the platform for our train) was the only one without a train at it. As the time our train meant to depart came and went, there was a platform announcement that it was running 5 minutes late. Goodness knows how you can stuff up running trains on-time on a Sunday, but I’m amazed at the depths Auckland’s system can plumb so I wasn’t surprised. Eventually the train did show up in the Britomart tunnel (around 5 minutes after scheduled departure time) – but then bizarrely sat there for a couple of minute doing nothing. I imagined at first it was waiting for a train within the station to leave, but as none was due to leave until after us, I really don’t know what was going on – I can perhaps imagine something along the lines of the following conversation between the train driver and whoever runs the signalling/trackwork:
Driver: Ah yeah, I’m in the tunnel, can I proceed to platform 2. Britomart station person: Sorry, the guy who’s meant to be doing the points is just finishing his lunch, can you hold on for a couple of minutes. Driver: Yeah sure, no worries. Britomart station person: OK he’s back, now let’s go through a 14,894 step procedure to do this.
Perhaps I am being a bit uncharitable, but it does seem as though the whole organisation of getting trains in and out of Britomart is run on 19th century pen-and-paper technology, and there is an enormous lack of urgency about everything. Yes sure, it’s a Sunday, but still if your train is getting towards 10 minutes late a little bit of effort to get the train into the platform, and then out again ASAP wouldn’t go amiss. Eventually we were on our way again – and the trip between Britomart and Sylvia Park passed by fairly quickly. Somewhat annoyingly, even though we were on a four-car ADK set two of the carriages were closed off so everyone had to crowd together into two carriages rather than being able to spread ourselves out throughout the whole train. Hopefully that becomes a thing of the past once we have automated ticketing on our trains! Below is a photo of our train as we got off it at Sylvia Park:
By this stage it had probably been well over an hour since we originally left home. But anyway, we did our shopping – which was reasonably successful now as I am about halfway through all my Xmas shopping – and then left the mall to catch a train at around 2.15pm. Unfortunately that meant we had just missed the previous train, but I figured the wait wouldn’t be too long, as we reached the station at around 2.20pm – meaning around a 20 minute wait until the next train was due to come along. By this time I was starting to get a bit tired, as was Amalia – although she’d done pretty well so far to walk all the way to the bus stop, then walk around the shopping centre for a couple of hours. At around 2.44pm, when the next train was supposed to arrive a train did come along but it just barrelled straight through the station at around 100kph – a bit freaky when you’re expecting it to stop. I figured that perhaps it was just running as something of a support train to provide greater frequencies out of the city, and that our one would come along fairly shortly. But no, it took until 3.10pm – almost 50 minutes since first arriving at the station – until our train finally came along and whisked us back to the city. Certainly spent a long time staring at this view:
Fortunately from there it didn’t take too long for the 017 bus to come along, and although that bus took forever to get us home (thanks to the million sets of traffic lights on Queen Street that give no prioritisation to buses) we eventually made it – only around two hours after first leaving the mall. Overall, it was quite depressing to realise the incredibly sorry state of Auckland’s public transport on a Sunday. The terribly frequencies, the train that just decided it didn’t feel like stopping for us at Sylvia Park, the general lack of urgency from all involved in trying to keep things to the timetable – and the general amateurish feeling I got. I heard at least four of five people throughout the day commenting on how terrible Auckland’s public transport system is, and those were only the ones within earshot.
I must say I thought we’d got beyond the point of Auckland’s public transport being a complete embarrassment. Perhaps today was just a bit of a bad day, or are all Sundays like this?
This is the last in an arc of Snapper stories we’ve done regarding the announcement that Snapper would be introduced in Auckland, firstly we looked at what they were doing, why they were doing it and now finally what they (Snapper, Infratil and NZ Bus) should do next.
Step 1: Now that the contract with Thales has been signed, Snapper should hold off on the Auckland roll out, there is a few reasons for this:
- NZTA has not released the system requirements that will be enforced NZ wide, given that ARTA chairman Rabin Rabindran has said:
“Talking about Auckland, all the operators if they have any other system, they have to ensure that they are able to tie in with our system, that is a requirement that we have from our operators… You can have different machines but you won’t have any more than one [type of] machine on any one transport vehicle… ARTA will require all operators to comply”
I’d be very worried if I was a board member in the Infratil group, a Snapper machine roll out will not be cheap and ARTA can force them to remove these machines if they deem it is needed, I don’t think this will happen but it is a risk.
- Why spend the money if you don’t have to? NZTA/ARTA is going to spend tens of millions rolling out Thales machines and put them on Infratil assets, they will most likely be Snapper compatible so why not wait 18 months or so months (by which time I would hope we’ll be looking to have a Thales bus roll out for the RWC at least) and then introduce Snapper? I can only think of a few reasons:
One, Infratil group has been saying that the Go-Rider system is in need of replacement (all of sudden) and that is what is driving the Snapper announcement, not losing the tender, to say I don’t believe this is an understatement but this what they are saying. Go-Rider can hang in till the RWC.
Two, it’s an effort to add value to NZ Bus before it is sold to raise capital for Infratil’s desired Shell NZ purchase.
Thirdly to give Snapper a foot hold in the Auckland market and potentially “crowd out” Thales before it gets a chance to establish itself, this is required as NZTA/ARTA will be providing a 10 year, $65 million $40 million dollar subsidy that covers Thales’ back room costs and top up fees that Snapper has to charge it’s users to cover. Snapper can’t compete with a card with no top up fees when they have a 25c a top up fee.
So my advice would be simply to wait, step back from the roll out, see what NZTA’s requirements are and then re-assess. It isn’t in the best interest of the transport system and is inherently risky, nothing could be worse than rolling out expensive machines for another card’s benefit that has a subsidy advantage or rolling out machines that you are forced to remove one year later.
Soon to get the Snapper treatment?
Step 2: Restore the relationship with ARC/ARTA and the other councils moving forward to the Supercity. Whether we like it or not, the relationship between the owners of these Auckland bus assets and the new Supercity Council will go a long way to determining the strength of public transport in Auckland. Following Step 1 would be an excellent first step as the announcement has annoyed a lot of people, as well as the bus lockout and Public Transport Management Act (PTMA) interference.
Step 3: Focus on Wellington while reassessing Auckland, Snapper’s number one priority in my opinion should engaging with the Greater Wellington Regional Council to roll out Snapper on TranzMetro as soon as possible and retailers around the region’s train system. Infratil should be using their influence to ensure the Valley Flyer routes are realigned as feeder services when the rail upgrades are complete, increasing NZ Bus patronage and Snapper transactions. The expansion into the ferry is good progress and getting all taxi companies equipped should be another aim. Expansion in Whangarei into retail and taxis is, I’m sure, a goal.
GO Wellington - Snapper installed
Step 4: Change tack with the PTMA. Infratil lobbied hard against the PTMA in it’s current form when passed by the previous government and has managed to get our Transport Minister Steven Joyce to announce the current government will amend it next year. This amendment will give Infratil control over commercial routes again. What this fails to understand is how public transportation systems work best and I guess is a result of having people with business degrees running transport companies. While markets increase competition and effectiveness in many sectors of our democracy, best practice from around the world shows time and time again public transport doesn’t work unless a single public body controls all modes, routes, timetables and fares. Two cases in point; New York where the city owns and operates the public transport and London where Transport for London (TfL) has power co-ordinating private operators (they can even insist a certain type of bus on a certain run), if the two centres of world capitalism adhere to this set up why does Infratil fight so hard against it? The really frustrating part for public transport advocates is that Infratil is costing themselves (potentially very large sums of) money over the long term to try and increase short term gain. It seems counter intuative but the more power Infratil hands over to ARTA the more money the company will make.
So I believe Infratil should drop it’s request to the Minister to change the PTMA in it’s current form and instead ask for an amendment for a timetable our 6 largest cities (Wellington and Auckland are in the pipe line, also Hamilton, Tauranga, Dunedin and Christchurch) must have a competitive integrated system in place by, this should give Snapper plenty of opportunity.
Link - Hybrid Bus
Step 5: Announce a timetable for having a fully hybrid fleet, paticularly in Auckland where diesel fumes in the city are terrible. Announce this with a PR campaign and publicly call for trolley buses to be reintroduced into Auckland, an environmentally friendly corporate profile is a valueable thing.
Overall I think the Infratil group needs to take a transport planning and a long term view into account if they want the support of our local government workers and elected officials, public transport advocates and ultimately the people of Auckland and Wellington.
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