The PT stats for August are out ahead of next weeks board meeting (thanks AT, please keep this up). The numbers over the coming months in particular are going to very interesting to see just what impact was made by the RWC last year but more on that shortly. First up, following on from the post this morning, cycling numbers continue to grow strongly with the total number of trips recorded in August up about 7% on the same time last year with the morning peak movements up about 9% indicating that a higher percentage of the growth is coming from people ditching their cars for commuting. Of course these numbers are only from a few monitoring sites but still it is great to see. I’m not a big fan of the way AT shows their cycling graph so I have made my own based on data that they have been providing in their recent reports. There is still a few months from last year missing but they will be filled in over the next few months but to me this better shows the changes.
The version I whipped up quickly and will add to over time
Once we get those last few months of data we will also be able to start seeing a 12 month rolling figure which will be good (AT if you read this please feel free to email me the missing data).
Moving on to the actual PT stuff, here are what AT say are the highlights:
- Auckland public transport patronage totalled 71,602,296 passengers for the 12-months to August 2012 an increase of 4,900,509 boardings or +7.3%.
- August monthly patronage was 6,557,832 a decrease of -32,251 boardings or -0.5% on August 2011. Adjusting for estimated additional patronage for Rugby World Cup (RWC2011), patronage growth was +5.7%
- Rail patronage totalled 10,932,819 passengers for the 12-months to August 2012, an increase of 838,776 boardings or +8.3%.
- Rail monthly patronage for August is 987,526 a decrease of -45,681 boardings or -4.4% on August 2011. Adjusting for estimated additional patronage for RWC2011, rail patronage growth between August 2011 was +7.5%
- Northern Express bus service carried 2,281,389 passenger trips for the 12-months with a growth to August 2012, an increase of 165,622 boardings or +7.8%
- Northern Express bus service patronage for August is 217,945, a decrease of -5,631 boardings or -2.5% in August 2011. Adjusting for estimated RWC2011, patronage growth was +6.6%.
And the normal tables and graphs
And here is that table adjusted for the RWC patronage
Now I must say, I’m a bit sceptical of the claim that RWC patronage was the cause here as the tournament didn’t start till the 9th of September so some more light shed on how it impacted PT stats a month earlier that would be good. Despite the impact the RWC will have on the numbers, I’m particularly looking forward to seeing what happens with the rail numbers over the coming months as integrated ticketing rolls out. I really suspect we could see a bit of a jump purely from the fact we are counting things better.
Yes AT deserves a pat on the back for publishing this data; it’s very refreshing. The cycling statistics are amazing, given the historical under investment in this mode.
Also good to see the recent growth in ferry patronage continuing through the winter; I think that’s attributable to off-peak frequency improvements.
Rail is close to 11 million passenger mark, which is another milestone. Remember we want to hit 16 million by 2016 to keep pace with the original core network upgrade predictions. Given that the major projects (i.e. electrification, integrated ticketing) have all been delayed it’ll be a great achievement to get there in the same time.
I seem to recall an old ARTA strategy suggesting that they would only achieve 80 million annual PT trips by 2016, so the numbers suggest things are ahead schedule.
Careful with AT’s cycling stats, Stu. Their measurements, reporting and analysis have been thoroughly opaque (for those of us not in the loop) and difficult to vet and verify.
As an example, recently they reported the annual CBD travel survey which contained basic mistakes that significantly inflated the numbers in favour of cycling — fortunately those shallow errors happened to be possible to spot due to enough detail being given, which is rare, and certainly not the case for the monthly counts.
I appreciate these data being published, but they are nearly useless without accompanying statistical and methodological information and metadata. Otherwise questions remain about which observation sites were operational, and when, and were there false positives/negatives and how much, and what inputs were discarded and why or why not … all of which are especially significant given the small values involved with cycling.
Yes, although even if there’s methodological errors in the way that the data is collected, you can still derive trends so long as the methodological errors are constant over time. But of course to know whether that’s the case you have to have details on the methodology
.
Precisely, Stu. What I’m after is documentation on potentially inconsistent changes such as with methodology.
In the case of the recent CBD report, they added a couple of observation sites — backdated by a year — but did not factor them out of the 5-year trend which was previously based on fewer sites. This led to anything from a 21% to 46% inflation in the stated growth rate, by my estimates (depending on whether you adjust for population growth too). And by backdating it to last year, it made 2011 look like a net positive when the original report from the same year showed it was actually a net negative.
Openness and transparency is the key. Or else we’re left with just lies, damned lies and statistics.
The long term trend is probably positive, but my intuition (informed by critically analysing the regional, CBD, household travel and monthly surveys) is that it isn’t as high as is often reported, and quite shaky and seemingly leveling off in the last few years. It’s not clear that we’re retaining new cycle users, or that we’re keeping convincingly ahead of regional population growth, or accounting for local demographic changes (which may skew sampling meaningfulness) — nevermind identifying causation. I’d advise caution in using these statistics; but by all means let us be optimistic and bold with a vision for the future!
I don’t think there should be much adjustment at all for the NEX Matt, even during the RWC time, simply because most people that travelled to and from the games from cityside did so on RWC Ltd organised buses, not the NEX, which from memory also did not go through to Albany from within two hours to kickoff. For some reason The RWC organisers and Ritchies who with the NEX would’ve been the most likely service to use couldn’t come to an agreement. Also I suspect most of the North Shore probably wasn’t a drawcard for most tourists outside match-days. I suspect most of them did Waiheke, Waitakeres n west Auckland Coast, and Central city stuff as well as a lot of day/two-day trips to Waitomo, Rotorua, Coromandel etc. I think the adjustment figures for the NEX are far too charitable.
Interesting how the massively expensive expansion of the Albany Park and Ride has had a negligible effect on NEX patronage.
Well, at 220,000 passengers per month that’s about 10,000 per weekday. So adding 500 car-parks at Albany is at most going to add 1,000 trips per day. But probably much less, because some of the passengers who start using the P&R will already be using the NEX, just:
1. Parking informally in surrounding areas; or
2. Using other means to get there.
So at the margin I would not be surprised if those 500 car-parks (at a cost of about $11,000 per car-park) are generating only about 500 extra trips per day, or an increase of ~5%. Hardly revolutionary is it? I would have thought that money would have been better spent on feeder buses, especially with the Silverdale P&R opening up.
Thanks for the link. Those bus on-time stats look very dodgy – will be interesting if they change once self reporting stops….
if mike lee is right, rail patronage could jump by up to 20%. sceptical it Will be that much but wdnt be surprised if quite a few people avoid paying in current system