In his Friday column last week, Brian Rudman raises the excellent point – one that I’ve really tried to push – that if we want to improve Auckland’s public transport network quickly and relatively cheaply, we need to focus most of our efforts on improving the bus system. Rudman notes:
My suggestion to Mr Brown is that before ordering new ferries for Takapuna or musing about the wonders of the new electric train services, he should, as his first priority, sort out the workhorses of Auckland public transport, the buses...
…Auckland ratepayers and taxpayers pay $143 million in public transport subsidies a year. Private bus operators get more than half that. If that isn’t the mayor’s business, what is?
In my post on Len Brown’s plans to achieve 150 million PT trips by 2021 I suggested a number of possible ways to improve the bus system. Most of them are pretty cheap – like painting more bus lanes around town and simplifying the bus network: a process which could actually potentially save money for redistribution to where it’s really needed.
Taking a few specific examples it seems clear to me that for almost zero cost we could improve the bus network greatly – simply by improving efficiency. If you think about running a bus system, the most expensive trip to ever operate is going to be that maximum “peak of the peak” service. For the rest of the day you might only run 8 buses along a route to keep it to 20 minute frequencies, but during that peak of the peak you might need to have more than twice that number of buses on the road: not only to provide higher frequencies but also to ensure those frequencies can be met by buses running pretty slow: often stuck in congestion. After all, the longer it takes a bus to complete its run, the more physical buses you need to keep it to a certain frequency.
So if we’re looking to improve the efficiency of the network, what we need to ensure is that we’re making good use of our buses at the peak time, that we’re doing whatever we can to speed buses up and enable high frequencies with a minimum of physical buses and – if possible – we’re trying to encourage a few of our riders that could travel slightly before or after the “peak of the peak” to do so. After all, many buses travelling between 9am and 10am already have spare capacity – and extra passengers on those services is effectively pure profit. This is why I’m an advocate of creating a split in peak and off-peak pricing.
So are we making good efficient use of our buses during the peak time? Are we squeezing the most that we possibly can out of the buses running around town between 7.30am and 8.30am? Are they travelling along routes nice and quickly, so that we can offer high frequencies without requiring a million physical buses for that route? Are we giving them priority over general traffic so that patronage soars because it’s faster for people to bus than drive? Generally, the answer to all these questions (except for certain areas) is no. For particular routes, the answer is massively no.
Let’s take an example of bizarre inefficiency and a big missed opportunity to provide a better service for close to zero cost: the “North Shore to Newmarket” 962 and 966 buses. Here are their timetables:
While it’s not ideal for these services to only operate at peak times, I can understand if there’s no off-peak demand (though how would you ever know without any services) the resources could be better allocated elsewhere. But what I don’t understand at all is why the services only operate in one direction at peak times. Sure, there’s probably more demand for trips from the North Shore to Newmarket in the morning than would be the case in the opposite direction – but I imagine that there might be some demand for people who live in Ponsonby (the bus travels all the way along Ponsonby Road) and work on the North Shore for a service like this. But because all these services are “one way”, instead we have a whole pile of empty “not in service buses” travelling from Newmarket back to the North Shore in the ‘peak of the peak’ to start another run. Why not have those runs as proper routes? It improves connectivity for almost no cost at all.
Another improvement to the bus system that could come at pretty much no cost is straightening out some of the longer distance routes. A classic example is the 130 route – which must be close to Auckland’s longest (particularly time-wise in how long it takes) as it travels between New Lynn and Takapuna: via Upper Harbour. You’d have to be pretty mad to catch it the whole way, but it provides a useful connection for people living in West Auckland but working around Albany, or in Takapuna (and the vice-versa of course). But it’s a long-distance route (normally the kind of route I would suggest should be stopped, but in this case as there’s no train it provides an essential connection that isn’t duplicative) and therefore speed is of utmost importance.
But the route doesn’t take anywhere near a direct path. As you can see below (route highlighted in yellow), within west Auckland it meanders around many back streets, even in West Harbour it doesn’t shoot along Hobsonville Road like you’d expect of a long-haul bus service, it turns and twists its way through every little back street you can think of.
This means that the trip takes forever (and the scary thing is that this route was simplified relatively recently by ARTA, it was even more complicated before then!). You can see this in the timetable below:
By comparison, a trip from Constellation Station to Henderson during off-peak times is estimated by Google Maps to take around 21 minutes. That same trip by bus, if we take the 2:22 service at Constellation Drive, will take an hour and a quarter to get there. That’s just complete and utter rubbish. Who is going to catch a bus that takes three and a half times longer to complete its trip than driving – only those who don’t own cars of course.
The strange thing is that parts of the route are pretty quick. It’s only 20 minutes on the bus from Takapuna to Greenhithe. The same trip takes 14 minutes by car, without any traffic problems – so the bus is pretty competitive. But then all those gains from the fast route through the North Shore are thrown away in West Auckland. From Greenhithe to Henderson – a 17 minute trip by car – takes an hour and five minute by bus! Heck you could probably almost walk from Greenhithe to Henderson in that length of time! This is because the route is so extremely higgledy-piggledy through the back streets of West Auckland. Shorten and straighten the route and you not only can provide the same level of frequency with far fewer buses (and hopefully you’d use the resources to boost frequency), you would also attract a massive number of new passengers because catching the bus would come close to competing against the car for travel time: instead of taking three and a half times as long.
There are countless further examples of crazy inefficiencies in Auckland’s bus network. Some are obviously necessary – to provide a basic level of accessibility and mobility for dependent bus users – though we must question whether it would be cheaper and better to look at providing for those trips by a more flexible, demand responsive, method of public transport. Rather than sending so many buses on such completely indirect and lengthy routes.
Maybe Len Brown should have a word to Auckland Transport and get them to fill up the remaining 48 projects to be completed in his “first 100 days” with bus improvements. There are certainly enough problems out there that need urgent fixing, and as Brian Rudman’s article notes – if you want to make public transport better for the greatest number of people in the quickest timeframes and for the least cost – you simply have to focus on the buses.
It’s quite funny waiting for the bus at busway stations, the passengers of the 962 are those that can’t get on the first bus that comes along and instead wait 10-20 minutes hoping that there will be space to stand let alone sit.Pretty sure this means there is additional demand for the 962 considering how full they are each morning.
Today for example there were so many people on the bus that it felt like a game of sardeens.
Presently, a peak service means you cant go home to pick up kids or stay late for a drink, without getting slightly strandard (unless you walk to town). Although with no bus priority on the route, reliability is an issue. One day last year the 4:30pm bus came at 6pm.
The 881 and 962 are also very similar except their route through town (881 serves the uni).
If you merged the 962 and 881 (and maybe even the 891X for good measure) to go down Ponsonby Road, it would double the available bus hours to use on that route and provide a North Shore to Newmarket bus corridor.
PS: Sorry for the Rant
The 312 would be another candidate. Rather than meandering through the back streets of One Tree Hill and Te Papapa as it runs between Midtown and Onehunga, it could be turned into a rail feeder service that runs between Onehunga and Ellerslie rail stations along many of the same back streets but with much shorter return-trip times and with passengers being delivered to the RTN instead of having to deal with congestion all the way into the city.
The 312 can take an hour or more to get from A to B, and one memorable night I caught it from Manukau/Mt St John and took 35 minutes to get into Onehunga centre. I could have walked most of the way in that length of time, cutting through One Tree Hill and going down Onehunga Mall.
Maybe once we get beyond a system that discourages transfer this kind of improvement can be implemented.
I’m with you on this, if we had feeder buses going to trunk lines (rail and busways etc) the system could be much more efficient. The thing is transfers, they need to be sorted out.
Extending the B-line frequencies to include frequent travel on Weekends, and increase the scope of hours from 6am-11.30pm would be one suggestion.
Do the same for trains.
B-line and trains should be running from 5am to 2am as a minimum with 10 minute frequencies max from 6am to 8pm and 15 minute frequencies max at all other times and peaks should be less than 5 minute frequencies. Frequencies need to be increased for evenings and weekends. The network and thinking seems to have come out of the 1950s at the latest. There are poor services Saturday and useless services on Sunday, why because once upon a time all the stores were closed from Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday and everyone went to church on Sunday. I believe that society has moved on. Unfortunately because the services are so bad outside of work commuting, it is not feasible to not own a car in most of Auckland unless you like doing a lot of waiting. I believe the key to getting more people on public transport is that it offers a viable alternative to owning a car for most of the time. If you make it difficult most of the time then you train people not to even consider PT as an option.
Here, here
Here is the proof —> http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/2123/6058/1/thredbo10-themeA-Warren.pdf
100 % increases generally, even higher in the off-peak.
Sunday patronage now even higher than weekday patronage, pre-improvement (this is why you need frequent weekend and Sunday services, don’t just assume nobody will catch it!)
Brisbane is even lower density than Auckland, WAY lower density.
Good luck Auckland!
Thanks for posting this. Useful information for a future blog post.
Thanks, it should work for trains too!
with 20km plus long suburban routes how does the timing hold up at mid-points?
my worry with long services like this (with limited bus priority) is that even with 15min frequencies buses become very unreliable at mid-points.
My friends from Chch always talk about the Orbiter circular service (10min freq) saying that its terribly unreliable and they wont catch it anymore. Many stories with no buses for 20min then 2 at once.
Totally agreed. Other than the CBD for work, my most-common destination is Onehunga for community theatre. The theatre is five minutes’ walk from Onehunga train station, and I live five minutes from Ellerslie. Trains would be perfect, except that they stop long before most of my night-time meetings or performances do. Last night I left the theatre just after 10. Show nights it can be more like 11. Train? What train? My choices are bicycle or drive, and I’m not hugely keen on biking late at night.
The 130 is one of those routes that tries to be all things to all people, and ends up being useless to all but the most desperate. Should be cut up into several different routes.
Lincoln – Westgate section should be express via motorway and this residential section served by a more regular service.
The Greenhithe part certainly needs to be a different service, and this should run to Albany.
There is also the issue that Albany, not Takapuna anymore is the major destination in the north west of the city.
Therefore there needs to be a debate as to whether Albany or Takapuna is the destination, and is should be advertised that people can easily change at Constellation for services going the other way.
These changes make the service a decent way for those in West Harbour/ Hobsonville to go visit a wide range of destinations.
Not sure that it needs to go to New Lynn as well, so maybe if New Lynn is cut out this frees up a bit more money for increased frequencies.
Eventually I would expect a separate service is required that runs express from Westgate to the Northern busway via motorway for those living in the west and working on the shore.
I would like the 130 to be an express service from Constellation (change here for Albany, Auckland Central etc.) all the way to Henderson (change here for the train). The route west of Greenhithe should of course be straightened as suggested in the original post. This service should include some late night buses, at least every two hours up to about midnight (connecting with the last Northern Express buses to Constellation Station).
For the West Auckland route mentioned, firstly why have it go all the way to New Lynn, a train can do that route in 11 minutes any time of the day compared to 15-20 minutes listed in the timetable above, that is an easy way to save some time and help to allow higher frequencies. Second, I agree, why have it as such a circutous route, either use the motorway for parts of it or at least have it a more direct route e.g. have it run as normal from Henderson to Triangle Rd, have it follow the route of the 090 to Royal Rd then up Westgate Dr which is a new Rd (not sure if its open yet) to the shopping centre, after going through there keep it on Hobsonville Rd all the way to the Shore.
It would be immensely quicker yet still take in a lot of local destinations like Lincoln North and Westgate, for those areas like Massey and West Harbour where it takes big detours, they could put on an LCN service to connect a lot of the routes together.
Regarding the Newmarket to North Shore Buses. I tried to get on one of the 891X buses today at Newmarket and was planning on getting off at Fanshawe St to get on a Birkenhead bus. (I was going to do this because the electronic sign was making no mention of the the 966). However I was told that I was not allowed to get off at Fanshawe St as it was express. I can understand the bus not wanting to stop every stop, but I thought the whole point of the Northern Pass was to enable a network effect. Surely a stop at Fanshawe would allow for connections for people going to other parts of the shore. I imagine most buses would stop at the last Fanshawe St stop anyway as it is a popular stop. There are only a few north shore buses going to/from newmarket in any case so this significantly reduces the service available, and makes the northern pass a lot less useful than I thought it was going to be. To me this is purely a lack of thought and is another example of a costless way to improve the system.
Another cost effective way to improve the system is to actually enforce the bus lanes! As I stood on Park Rd outside the Grafton Train Station, I could see the central-connector bus lanes on both sides of the road being completely disregarded by cars holding up a number of buses. Worst of all a cop on a motorbike was stopped on the side of the road and didn’t do anything at all – effectively condoning the behaviour.
Buses are can be extremely unreliable. This is seriously frustrating considering the high prices providers charge for a such a poor service.