|
|
By Matt L, on May 23rd, 2012 There are not many people these days that would say the Northern Busway has been a bad investment with most people wanting to see it extended, both at the CBD end and also to Albany and eventually Silverdale in the North. The busway has become so popular that now about 30% of people crossing the bridge towards the city in the morning peak are doing so on a bus which is pretty impressive and for one thing has already helped to delay the need for an extremely expensive additional crossing. One question that I have been keen to get an answer to though is just how successful it has been and the NZTA as part of my OIA have kindly provided me with the the original business case for the project (1.1 MB) which makes for some interesting reading.
The business case was completed in 2004 and investigated three options, the busway, the busway but also with T3 vehicles and the busway with T3 vehicles initially but then changing to T2 from 2015 once other projects like VPT had been completed. It was estimated to cost $214.6 million although they note that the North Shore City council planned to spend some more money to improve the stations which would help build patronage. Here is a summary of the costs and benefits of each option:
The cost of the busway ended up being about $294m of which $210m was for the busway itself and $84m was for the stations. As you can see though, comparing the costs to the benefits the option for the busway actually came out with the lowest score with a benefit cost ratio (BCR) of only 1.2 which was much lower than I had expected. So the next question I had was what figures went into the business case to arrive at these benefits, one factor that would make quite a difference is the discount rate used. Our former admin has done a number of posts that explain discount rates and the impact they have on investments we make. The standard NZTA rate currently used is 8% however for the busway a figure of 10% was used (I assume that was the standard rate back then). Reviewing the business case using current NZTA methodology would most likely result in higher BCR numbers across all three scenarios.
The biggest impacts though come from the number of people using the busway as well as the benefits that accrue to other road users who aren’t using the busway. The results of the modelling for two years are included in the paper and these are 2011 and 2021 and this is where we can see how many people were expected to use the busway.
So they suggested that in 2011 we would have about 1630 people using the busway to head to town in the AM peak and in 2021 that would rise to 2174. Of course these are likely to have been fairly conservative numbers but how do they compare to what we actually had. We don’t have direct numbers for the busway but we do have numbers for the harbour bridge which would also include buses from Onewa Rd, Auckland Transports annual report for 2011 tells us that over 8600 people crossed the harbour bridge by public transport, while the report we saw last week shows that at the height of the peak about 5000 people cross the harbour by bus. Of course a decent chunk of these numbers will come from Onewa Rd but the majority have likely travelled along the busway meaning that we are already far exceeding the numbers forecast above.
What this means is that the busway has already delivered significantly greater than expected and will continue to do so. If we were to re-evaluate the the project with what we have learned so far the BCR would likely be considerably higher. Interestingly the NZTA might be doing just that right now, in responding to my request they advised me that they are just finalising a post implementation review of the Busway which should be out very soon, possibly by the end of the month. They have said they will send me a copy so I am looking forward to seeing what comes out.
I think there are also lessons we can learn from this when thinking about other PT projects, the main one is that it seems that our models consistently under estimate the demand for high quality PT services like the busway. I think it would be a good idea for politicians to keep that in mind when thinking about the CRL today as that is another project where I feel the patronage projections underestimate what will really happen.
By Matt L, on May 14th, 2012 An interesting report goes to the transport committee on Wednesday which looks at how the land use plans on the North Shore as identified in the Auckland Plan would be impacted by various options for improving rapid transit (RT) in the area. Over the next 30 years there are expected to be an extra 750k-1m people living in the Auckland region with 85-120k of those living in the area of the old North Shore City. To achieve that growth there are going to be a number of infrastructure investments, especially when it comes to transport or the set targets may not be achieved.
The report confirms that providing we improve how buses move around the city centre that there is sufficient capacity in the busway until around 2041. One of the improvements to the city centre that is listed as needed is the City Rail Link which will have the effect of removing a large number of buses from the South and West from the cities streets which will free up that space for additional buses from the North Shore. With the busway moving an increasing number of people over the harbour bridge each morning along with the completion of the western ring route in 4-5 years time, we should also see the need for another harbour crossing pushed out to a similar timeframe.
The report starts with the assumption that the busway has already been extended to Silverdale and that the city side improvements have been completed to allow for up to 250 buses per hour to feed into town. It then goes on to look at a number of different routes and technologies for futuredevelopment options but also notes that experience, particularly in Australia, shows that bus based RT systems don’t get same level of land use change as rail lines/stations do. The options range in cost from $1.5b all the way up to $15b and all options were put through an evaluation matrix and the heavy rail options came out with the best results. All of the options considered are listed below:
There are quite a few options there and I think we can all agree that the options costing $13b+ are simply not going to happen, even though they came out the highest in the evaluation criteria. The conversions of the busway to heavy rail still very highly and at $2.5b (which I assume includes the cost of the crossing) actually seems fairly reasonable, especially if we can hook it into the existing network with something like the X pattern we have discussed on here before.
The report to the council also includes an image from the Auckland Plan that we haven’t seen before, presumably it will be in the final version of document which is being worked on at the moment (the content has already been signed off). It seems to show that thinking is starting to shift within the council that any future rail connection interface with the existing rail network at Aotea rather than at Britomart.
There is quite a bit of detail in the report but in all it is good to see some thought going into when we will likely need to start making improvements, that is unless the good folk of the North Shore start to increase their usage of the busway at a faster rate than predicted which is something that could very possibly happen.
By Matt L, on May 11th, 2012 Some more new developments in the Snapper/Integrated ticketing saga emerged yesterday. The Herald reports:
Auckland’s main bus operator could lose at least $70 million in annual operating subsidies if it fails by November to install machines capable of reading new electronic transport tickets.
Transport Minister Gerry Brownlee said last night that although there was no suggestion yet that NZ Bus would miss that deadline, the firm and its sister company, Snapper Services, would know the consequences of being in breach of contract by failing to meet it.
Asked what those consequences would be, he told the Herald: “They’re off the run.”
And from later in the article:
Mr Brownlee said he was “quite happy” there was a process in place to achieve integrated ticketing “and all the contracted parties just need to understand that we’re not backing away from that”.
Asked what would happen if NZ Bus refused to replace its existing machine readers with equipment compatible with the final system, he said: “They will be in breach of their contract and we will look at getting someone else to pick those contracts up.”
While this blog is often very critical of the government and it’s policies we are also prepared to give credit when it is due and in this case it is good to see Gerry publicly affirming the consequences if the latest deadlines aren’t met. Hopefully it is something that he will keep and eye on to ensure that everything happens as promised. There were also a few comments from Phil Twyford and Mike Lee about the issue:
Mr Brownlee said he could not confirm a claim by Labour transport spokesman Phil Twyford that National put Auckland in a difficult situation by pushing for Snapper’s card to be introduced to the NZ Bus fleet, as he was not minister at the time.
But Auckland Council transport chairman Mike Lee said Infratil lobbied the Government to change specifications to allow the card to be introduced ahead of the wider scheme.
He said that made it the Government’s responsibility to “hold the line” and ensure a successful roll-out of an integrated transport ticket.
I actually think there may be an element of trying to score political points here. As I mentioned in a comment on the post the other day, we do know that Snapper lobbied the government after they lost the tender but the outcome of it was that the issue was handed over to the NZTA to reinvestigate the options. The outcome of that investigation was that the NZTA not only agreed that Thales had the best offer but that they would modify the contract and set up the system so that it could be used nationally. I am also aware that the ticketing system that NZ Bus had before Snapper was falling apart very quickly as it was very old and getting harder and harder to maintain. It needed to be replaced and while I won’t rule out political interference, I kind of wonder if Phil and Mike are blurring some of the events to their own advantage.
There is of course now going to be a 6 month wait before we find out if Snapper has met their targets. Perhaps during that time AT could start working on getting integrated fares sorted out so we don’t have to wait so long for that to happen, it is after all critical for our new bus network.
A note to all readers, this post is not to become a place to continue on the arguments from the other day around about the merits or otherwise of Snapper. Please keep the discussion limited to the content of this post.
By Peter M, on May 10th, 2012 In my previous post I looked at why Auckland should be focusing on Vancouver in Canada as a city to emulate, particularly when it comes to public transport. In this post I will look in a bit more detail at Vancouver’s PT patronage success before in future posts moving onto looking at how Vancouver has been so successful at encouraging people onto buses, trains and ferries.
We can recall from the previous post that, setting aside a 2001 drop that was due to a protracted transit worker strike, Vancouver’s PT patronage has grown very steady over the past 20 or so years whereas Auckland’s has bounced around quite a bit before a more recent prolonged upswing: There’s always a bit of statistical debate over whether we should be talking about percentages or actual numbers as being more important here. If we go off percentages then you can see that Vancouver still outperforms Auckland: A key distinction highlighted here is that it took until around 2002 for Auckland’s patronage to return to 1989 levels, thanks to the big dip in the early and mid 1990s. Since 2002 Vancouver has still outperformed Auckland though, with its patronage increasing by 57% compared to 33% in Auckland.
The other key matter to factor in is that Vancouver is a significantly bigger city than Auckland, so it’s important to look at ‘per capita’ patronage levels. Thankfully it seems as though censuses are taken in Canada in the same year as they’re taken in New Zealand, so we can make some comparisons. Note that for this information I’ve deliberately taken 2002 rather than 2001 data for Vancouver – because of the one-off impact of the transit strike in 2001 distracts from the broader trends: If we graph this, you can see that it took until recent years for Auckland to catch up to where it was in the early 1990s on a per capita basis, whereas Vancouver’s totals have increased steadily over the last 20 years: It seems to me that Vancouver’s key to performing well over the past 20 years, when compared to Auckland, is how Vancouver managed to perform pretty well during the 1990s whereas Auckland largely went backwards. Plus in more recent years when patronage has increased it has gone up hugely – very impressive when you’re already coming off a very high base.
The key question, obviously, is to look at how Vancouver has managed this. And also, perhaps most importantly, how Vancouver has benefited from this huge boost in PT patronage over the past 20 years because – after all – higher use of public transport is really a means to an ends, rather than an endpoint in and of itself. Answers to those questions will be the subject of future posts, although for those people who have commented on previous posts pointing out that they lived in Vancouver, I’m really keen for your take on how Vancouver has managed these pretty remarkable statistics.
By Matt L, on May 4th, 2012 Yesterday I posed the question of which piece of transport infrastructure carried the most people during the morning peak. The answer is that at the moment they both carry about the same number of people, the difference of course is that the Britomart tunnel has the ability in the future to carry many many more people in the same amount of space as I intend to show you shortly. I have mentioned before how hard it seems to be to show just how much benefit the CRL brings to the city and this post is another intended to try and show some of this information in a different way to make it easier to understand.
The data for this post came from a couple of sources, the current PT information came from the Screenline Study which counted the number of people on buses and trains that entered the CBD last year. The vehicle traffic numbers come from Auckland Transport’s vehicle counts from which there are AM peak hour counts for the roads the cross enter the CBD. I have then mixed this information together along with information we already know about the capacity of the CRL and the EMUs to put these maps together.
A quick explanation about the maps:
- The lines represent places where people enter the CBD from, Red lines are access points from the motorways, Blue from local streets, Yellow from the ferries and Green is the rail network. The size of the line represent the number of people (not vehicles) coming via that route.
- For the streets the bus and vehicle counts are merged into one arrow, bus patronage is worked out at approx 30 people per bus for the current map, 40 per bus for the 2017 map and 50 people per bus for the 2022 map. In reality we probably won’t see utilisation that high but I thought it would be useful to show the difference.
- For the rail network the current count only includes people entering Britomart so other heavily used stations like Grafton and Newmarket are not included which take up much of the reserve capacity. The final map only shows the network at 60% capacity with the assumption that people would still get off at stations like Newmarket. Also before getting accused of accused of having a CBD only focus, the lines represent capacity to the Aotea station for visual purposes only.
First up here is what we have currently. The rail network is small but it is actually the 4th largest source of arrivals into the CBD when compared against each individual streets. You can also see the massive impact that buses from the North Shore and from the Isthmus and down Symonds St make, over 70% of people coming along these two corridors do so on a bus.
Next we see the what things might look like in 2017. By this time we should have all of our new EMUs running which will boost capacity as well as attractiveness of rail network. There are likely to also be significant increases in the bus network following the implementation of the planned improvements to it. In here I have assumed that only about half of the capacity of the EMUs arriving into Britomart is being used yet that line is already the single biggest on the map.
Lastly we see the impact once the CRL is opened, as mentioned the lines only represent about 60% of the available capacity as not everyone will want to head to the CBD. The capacity of the CRL absolutely dwarfs every other entry point to the CBD and it does so without impact to the surrounding streets once it has been built. It is also worth pointing out that the usage of the bus network has been greatly increased, probably more that we can expect in this time as combined it is around 65% higher than the bus patronage is now.
Going back to yesterdays post, to get the same amount of extra capacity we would need probably another 15 general traffic lanes into the CBD, around an extra 400 buses per hour or some combination of the two.
By Matt L, on May 2nd, 2012 Some interesting insight into the thinking of NZ Bus is in the latest issue of Infratil’s investor update which came out last week.
NZ Bus was acquired by infratil in 2005 at a price which was a discount to the value of the assets of the business. A transaction at such a price is saying “if you were starting again with these assets, you wouldn’t put them together in this way”. the subsequent six years has involved changing the way the company operates so that capital invested in new systems, staff, buses and depots does not represent $0.90 coming out for $1.00 going in.
This has meant developing stronger relations with the regional transport agencies and a more efficient business. Government has also done its bit by developing a regulatory and contracting regime based on commercial incentives and clearly differentiated roles for transport agencies and private operators.
2012 will be a watershed year for bus public transport, especially in Auckland, as new contracts are offered to operators through a mixture of tenders and private negotiations. The contracts will provide operators with the certainty necessary for investment in services, and with the opportunity to position for longer term growth.
NZ Bus currently provides about half of all Auckland’s public transport passenger trips. It aims to win its share of the new contracts, but achieving this will depend on NZ Bus being both relatively efficient and able to earn a fair return on the capital required. If a normal contract entailing 20 new buses means investing up to $10 million the returns have to justify the allocation of funds.
At the time of its acquisition in 2005 it was hoped that NZ Bus would be able to expand by competing on a level playing field with private cars and trains. It was believed that if Government (central and local) allocated funding to where it would create the greatest urban transport benefit for Auckland and Wellington, then that funding would favour an expansion of bus public transport. The cost of additional roadways or rail services was an order of magnitude greater than expanding and improving bus public transport. In fact transport decisions were made on political rather than economic grounds and the bus share of the urban transport funding pie shrank. The more open contracting regime, greater government focus on value-formoney, and high fuel prices all auger well for bus public transport in the future.
I certainly get the feeling from that last part that they aren’t happy about the investment that has happened in rail over the last decade, regardless of how justified it might be but I guess that is understandable as they would want more money invested with them.
In 2012 NZ Bus expects to agree new long-term contracts with Auckland Transport. These contracts have evolved through a prolonged consultation between regulators and service operators and they should result in better public transport at a lower cost. In anticipation NZ Bus has been improving its efficiency and its ability to deliver services people want to use.
There is also a series of graphs which are probably the most interesting bit of the update. The first graph shows just how poor patronage is compared to a number of other cities but it isn’t something we didn’t already now. The targets set by the council as part of the Auckland plan should have us at about 70 trips per person per year in a decade which would put us near where Wellington is today and the long term goal is to have 100 trips per person in 30 years. The second graph is probably the most concerning for NZ Bus, over the last 7 or 8 years their share of PT trips has continued to drop, this is largely due to growth on the rail network and on the North Shore with the NEX which is run by Ritchies.
Over the last five years NZ Bus’s costs per passenger have been almost flat which has allowed a 12% fall in the real level of contract subsidies and a less than 3% increase in real passenger charges.
In this second series of graphs, the first one is quite interesting as it focuses on patronage on Mt Eden which is one of the ‘B Line’ routes. They were introduced in early 2010 and you can see that since then there has been almost consistently solid growth, as they say, this has come largely from increased frequencies and reliability which are two critical factors for customers. It will also be really interesting to see what happens to that last graph once PTOM comes in fully.
By Matt L, on April 30th, 2012 Thinking of buying a new smart phone, it might be a good idea to get one with an NFC chip in it because AT and Thales are trialling using NFC with the final (real) hop. That would mean you wouldn’t need a separate Hop card and would just need to swipe your mobile phone to pay for your PT trip. It’s also a world first for Thales meaning we could actually be leading the world on something PT related. Here is the press release:
Auckland Transport, Telecom and Westpac to trial Mobile Wallet
Paying for services through your mobile phone is closer to reality after Telecom, Auckland Transport and Westpac have announced plans to start trialling a mobile wallet system from May in collaboration with Gemalto, Thales and Paymark.
In a major milestone for the development of mobile payments technology, the trial will involve some 30 staff from the six organisations. Trial participants will be able to use a mobile phone to make “tap and go” payments to access public transport inAucklandand make purchases at a small selection of retailers.
In a world first, Thales will be using its near-field communication (NFC) application throughout Auckland Transport’s final smart card ticketing system, HOP, before deploying it globally across all networks and banks. The trial, which utilises Telecom’s XT network, is expected to enable participants to pay forAuckland’s buses, trains and ferries through their mobile phones. The phone will communicate with the HOP terminal to complete the transaction without having to swipe or insert a card.
Auckland Transport’s Chief Executive, Dr David Warburton said:
“Mobile phone technology makes the option of paying for transport services using a device the majority of New Zealanders carry with them every day, a natural choice reducing the number of cards customers have to carry. We look forward to working with our technology and service partners in this trial.”
And in aNew Zealandfirst, the trial will also use a Westpac credit card to top up a Telecom XT Prepaid account, using Paymark’s infrastructure. This will make it easier for customers to add credit to a prepaid card without having to go online or pay in a store.
Telecom CEO, Paul Reynolds, said that the days of people having to use multiple plastic cards to pay for goods and services were quickly becoming numbered.
“As we have seen with developments in mobile phone technology, people quite rightly expect their phones to offer more versatility and functionality and simplify their lifestyles. And we’re absolutely committed to developing the mobile wallet through our investment in building a common trusted services manager forNew Zealand.
“The information gained from this trial will be invaluable for developing a mobile wallet with the kinds of innovative products and services that our customers can expect on the XT network.”
Westpac General Manager Customer Technology and Services, Jim Stabback, said the trial is a step toward Kiwis joining the growing global trend of banking via mobile phone.
“This is an important part of Westpac’s innovation pipeline and it’s an excellent opportunity to build further capability in this area as theNew Zealandbanking industry moves toward a mobile future,” Mr Stabback said.
For the trial, Gemalto will provide the essential network infrastructure required for near-field communications including its Trusted Service Management platform (TSM).
“Gemalto is excited to be the technology partner in this strategic trial. Our goal is to provide an open, interoperable and neutral NFC ecosystem for operators, banks, service providers and merchants. This allows them to provide not just secure mobile contactless payments, but also a variety of new services such as loyalty and e-couponing in a fast, secure and convenient manner,” said Tan Teck Lee, Chief Innovation and Technology Officer & Asia President.
“Having been involved in over 50 NFC projects, we look forward to sharing our knowledge and experience withNew Zealandas it transforms its payment environment.”
Earlier this month Telecom, Vodafone, 2Degrees and Paymark announced a joint venture to launch a TSM which will provide a common solution for theNew Zealandmarket to encourage consumer uptake and avoid confusion. The technology and solutions prototyped in this trial will ultimately be available to all New Zealanders, across all mobile operators, via the TSM.
I’m very please with this announcement, well done AT and Thales and if we could just get the real hop rolled out we can start living in the future. I guess it also means I will have to start working on a business case to convince the wife that I need a new phone soon.
By Matt L, on April 23rd, 2012 On Wednesday is one of the most important days of the year, ANZAC day. One of the key parts of the day is the dawn service and in Auckland thousands of people get up early to take part in the ceremony that takes place at the museum. Unfortunately because AZNAC day day is a public holiday it also means that all public transport is operated to a special timetable, a timetable which for trains at least, doesn’t start running till about 7am. That means it is simply impossible for anyone wanting to attend the dawn service to get there by train and I suspect that buses aren’t much better.
I put my address into the MAXX journey planner with a goal of getting to the museum by 5am and as well as no trains running there are also no buses either. That means the only option I have is to drive and to battle with the thousands of others for a car park if I want to attend.
Now I can understand why AT put on minimal services on normal public holidays, I don’t agree but I understand. ANZAC day is something different though and is unique in that there are large numbers of people getting up early to go to one part of the city, surely that should justify some special services so that people can pay their respects.
By Matt L, on April 22nd, 2012 Over the last week or so some of my fellow bloggers have put up their suggestions for how to develop the rail network in the future, I have taken some of their ideas and thrown in a few of my own. One thing that is common across these suggestions is that largely we aren’t trying to add a whole heap of lines to places that haven’t been discussed before but are just trying to optimise the network once the projects are built, the projects largely consist of the CRL, rail to the Airport and rail to the Shore.
You will see that there are a lot of similarities between all of the designs presented with the main one being the ‘cross’ at Aotea station which links the North/South services and the East/West services. I think that there are a few advantages to this, the key ones being that from one central station you can get almost everywhere on the rail network with a ‘one seat journey’. Of course it would mean that the station would be extremely busy but part of the reason for discussing it now is so that we can hopefully influence the design to avoid issues. The station would have some great potential access options and I suspect that many of the neighbouring business would be keen to have direct access to the station, something which could help to spread out the people using the station rather than funnelling them through a couple of entrances. These neighbouring businesses would also likely see huge financial benefit to having a direct connection to the busiest station in the city so would quite likely be prepared to pay for access, this could help to pay for the station and/or its operating costs.
So here is my plan including operating patterns that would run.
Here are the key differences.
- Unlike Patrick I don’t envisage a University station, I think that it is simply too close to the Aotea Station to work well operationally.
- There is no rail connection from Manukau to the Airport. There are a couple of reasons for this:
- There is also no catchment between these two locations that would warrant having a station so any trains between these two locations would travelling an extra 9km each way for not a lot of gain.
- Without embarking on building a rail line through to Botany it doesn’t seem to make much sense to have the planned busway terminate at Manukau, extending the busway services to the Airport provides a direct connection for those that live in the east. The line at station at the airport could be designed in a way to allow extension later on.
- There is no direct connection between the West and Newmarket. The reason for this is there are not any simple operating patterns that easily allow for this connection to work without impacting frequencies on the lines. To counter this slightly a station at Dominion Rd (to replace Mt Eden) with an extra platform or two would allow for a shuttle to run between the two stations providing a connection to Grafton and a faster journey to Newmarket vs going through Aotea. At Newmarket it would use the current platform 1 so wouldn’t impact on the services using the other two lines. It would also help to take some of the pressure off Aotea.
There are a few other issues worth pointing out:
- Ideally the yellow line would continue on to Onehunga, getting there from Mt Roskill is difficult due to the terrain and the currently designated route which was designed with freight trains winds its way through the area but bypasses the town centre. I imagine it will be extremely expensive to build that section due to this so I feel the focus should be on other areas first.
- At the moment there is still plenty of capacity left in the busway however that won’t always be the case. The blue line north of Akoranga would be the last piece of this design to be built and the rest is likely to take up a few decades worth of work anyway.
- My preference isn’t for a spur at Takapuna however the town centre is a bit like St Lukes or Manukau in that it is not easy to reach directly with the existing infrastructure patterns and doing so would add a few Km’s to every journey of anyone travelling to/from north of there.
- The network is still very CBD centric, a lot of effort will need to be made to make it easy to transfer at key locations to high frequency cross town bus services.
- There are still a lot of services that use the section between Westfield and Wiri. As frequencies increase this would become a key bottleneck which would likely require additional tracks beyond the 3rd main already proposed.
- The Green and Yellow services are quite long at close to 50km, this means that we would need a lot of trains to run the network at high frequencies. The red and blue lines are shorter at around 37km (by comparison it is 31km from Papakura to Britomart).
By Matt L, on April 18th, 2012 It’s known as March Madness due to all of the extra people that use the PT network however this March appears not to have been much madder than previous years. Auckland Transport has released their patronage stats for the month which show that PT trips increased by only 0.9% compared to the same month last year. Here are the highlights according to Auckland transport:
- Auckland public transport patronage totalled 70,287,931 passengers for the 12 months to March 2012 an increase of 5,720,694 boardings or +8.9%.
- March monthly patronage was 7,128,167 an increase of 65,882 boardings or +0.9% on March 2011.
- Northern Express bus service carried 2,275,442 passenger trips for the 12 months with a growth in March 2012 compared to March 2011 of +14.3%.
Most interesting about the the report was that rail patronage dropped compared to March 2011 by 6.3%. It has been quite a long time since this happened and Auckland transport has given the following explanation for the decrease.
- There was one less business day during March this year compared to last year. This is equivalent to approximately 4.5% of monthly patronage;
- There were fewer trips on special event services this year – one free travel with an event ticket this year compared to two for the same month last year (equivalent to approximately 1.6% of monthly patronage);
- The comparative weekend block of lines impacted on a greater proportion of services in 2012 compared to the previous year (equivalent to approximately 1.5% of monthly patronage);
- A fare increase occurred during the same month last year and it is likely that advance ticket purchases prior to the increase boosted the reported patronage during that month
I like that they have quantified it and the one less business day would also explain the general weakness across all the figures with the exception of the ferry network which is perhaps due to the extra weekend trips. Also interestingly March next year has another day less again so we could see something similar happen.
Even local buses were fairly quiet, the isthmus services which had been seeing double digit growth since the new link services were introduced in August last year slowing down.
Oh and there has also been no increase in state highway volumes either. Traffic over the Harbour bridge is down 5% on March last year and down 8% on 2 years ago.
|
Recent Comments