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By admin, on September 1st, 2010
ARTA’s monthly business report for July 2010 has been uploaded to their website, and once again it makes good reading for public transport – in terms of patronage growth, improving service reliability and significant progress being made on capital works projects. Here’s a summary of what’s been going on:
 Starting with patronage, the “Rapid Transit Network” (rail and the Northern Busway) once again shows fantastic growth, with the 20% growth on the Northern Express services being pretty amazing. I wonder when that’s going to hit a ceiling in terms of peak time capacity. It’s also positive seeing ferry patronage go up again, as it has been a bit all over the place in recent times. While bus patronage is increasing, the rate of increase is much slower than rail or the Northern Express. With many of the large rail projects now nearing completion (aside from electrification which is just kicking off) I think we have a real opportunity and need over the next few years to focus most strongly on ways to improve the bus system and get more people off the roads and onto our buses – after all that’s where 80% of our public transport patronage is.
Here’s the patronage trends over the past few years – you can really see from around March 2008 there has been a steady but unrelenting climb in the “12 month rolling average” patronage – to over 5 million trips a month (hence breaking 60 million trips a year): Some service refinements have been made for buses, or are due to be made in the next short while (for which consultation has recently concluded). Of particular interest to me is this extract on upcoming bus route changes:
City Circuit, The Link & Western Bays Services
Work is progressing on proposed service changes to the City Circuit, Link and Western Bays services, all operated by NZ Bus. This includes proposals to change the route of almost all services listed and improve the running times on services around the CBD. Further consultation is to take place in the near future before proposals can be finalised.
This would include my regular bus routes, so it’ll be interesting to see what ARTA comes up with. I’ve previously blogged about my thoughts on how Western Bays routes could be simplified. I’m not sure what changes would benefit the Link Bus though – perhaps sending it along Fanshawe Street rather than Victoria Street to provide better access to Wynyard Quarter?
In terms of other points of interest in the monthly report, it’s useful to see that progress is being made on the implementation of real-time information signs at various railway stations across the network. Hopefully in the not too distant future we will all know exactly when our train is due to arrive: Looking through the report, it seems as though a lot will be happening on September 19th. Not only does the Onehunga Line open and the new rail timetables take effect, but other changes to various bus services (those consulted recently) will also happen on that day. It’s shaping up to be an important step forwards in improving Auckland’s public transport system.
By admin, on August 31st, 2010
Next time you catch the bus, especially a bus like the Link which stops frequently, have a think about the amount of time the bus spends between stops and the amount of time the bus spends halted, waiting for passengers to hop on and off. Actually measuring the percentage of a trip spent still is something I’ve been meaning to get around to for ages, but I am pretty sure it would be significant.
Let’s say each passenger takes about five seconds to load, and that’s assuming they don’t dig around in their bags for change or hand the driver a $20 note – even for 12 people that would be a minute in total spent waiting at the stop. A full bus load of people could take more than five minutes to load – once again assuming that everyone actually loads quite quickly. There are a number of reasons why loading is so slow:
- A relatively high proportion of people pay with cash. A contributing factor to this is that using your “pass” is generally only 10% cheaper, plus with a number of different operators around Auckland and the passes only being valid on some of the buses, probably results in more people using cash than need be.
- Even those who do pay with their bus passes require interaction with the driver. For my stored value card the driver needs to wait a second or two for it to load up on his screen, and then press three different buttons before the ticket is issued. Multiply that level of interaction up by a large number of passengers and you have the source of a great number of delays.
- Because everyone needs the driver to issue them with a ticket, if someone does take ages, through loading up their stored value passes (like I often do $40 at a time), digging through their bag to find the last 10 cents to make up their fare, giving the driver a $20 note and therefore forcing him or her to dig through their change or even asking for directions – everyone else is held up.
- Yet again due to the need to interact with the driver, everyone needs to load through the front door – which is a bottleneck in itself and slows down loadings.
Long loading times mean that, unless you have a bus lane or some other form of priority measures, it is literally impossible for travelling on the bus to be anywhere near as fast as driving the same distance. The bus will still get caught in traffic, and if it spends half its time stopped – while passengers are loading – then catching the bus will take twice as long as driving (plus time spent waiting for the bus in the first place of course). Add all this up and it’s reasonably easy to see why most people shun using Auckland’s bus system – it’s just so damn slow most of the time.
Furthermore, and in some ways this is even worse than the slowness caused by loading times, when passengers take forever to load this horribly impacts on the reliability of the service. If your bus is late, chances are either it got stuck in traffic or unusually high demand meant that loading times were slow. This problem is compounded because late buses are usually incredibly busy, as they collect both passengers waiting for that bus and the next – and the slow loading times compounds the problem making the service later and later. This inevitably means that the bus behind starts catching it (as the first bus has taken all the passengers so the second one can zip along without having to stop) – with the result being the dreaded “bunching” of buses.
While this all sounds like bad news, in actual fact it’s extremely good news for one simple reason – all these problem are exceedingly simple to fix: just speed up boarding times. In comparison to building busways or even putting in bus lanes (where it’s not cost, but politics which tend to be the biggest hurdle) speeding up boarding times should be enormously simple and easy to implement. And think of the benefits – all trips being up to 20% quicker, reliability improved dramatically and frequencies able to be higher while using the same resources because speeds are faster (it takes 6 buses to keep a 10 minute frequency along a route that take 60 minute, if they can do the route in 40 minutes then those 6 buses can now deliver 7 minute frequencies).
So how could we go about making boarding times faster? Well perhaps the biggest step is underway already in terms of implementing integrated smart-card ticketing. The new tickets will not require interaction with the driver, so you’ll be able to board even while someone is stuffing around digging out the last 10 cents for their fare. Furthermore, smart-card boarding is incredibly fast. So a lot of improvements are already in the works – and I don’t think it has quite been appreciated the level of difference this will make for those catching the bus.
However, being the hopeful person that I am – I actually think there are a few further steps that we should take to make boardings even faster, particularly at points where a lot of people get on the bus (such as the CBD stops for Northern Express and Dominion Road services). Recently I took this photo of the queue of people waiting to catch the Northern Express outside Britomart:
 In these locations I think we need to allow travellers to board through both front and rear doors, and also potentially ‘pre-pay’ their tickets before shifting into a fenced off area – which they could then just pile onto the bus from once it arrived. It seems reasonable to think that such a system could load 60 people onto a bus in around half a minute – massively faster than the current system.
Something like the diagram I’ve drawn below could do the trick:
This is a bit of a “bells and whistles” example, and it could be much simpler with just some ticket ‘posts’ for you to swipe over (fare evasion would be tracked by people on board reading whether you had swiped your card).
Thinking about the impact of such a system a bit more, it could do wonders in reducing bus congestion around points such as Britomart and the busy bus stop for Dominion Road services. I have often seen Northern Express buses blocking up Customs Street waiting for a place to move into – because there bus stop is full of Northern Express buses that are slowly loading up. Eliminating this mess would hugely improve the efficiency of our bus system and also probably eliminate quite a bit of general congestion too.
Let’s hope we start to see some of these sorts of improvements, so we can squeeze the most out of our bus system, so that we can make catching the bus significantly faster and so that we can make buses more reliable. It’s relatively cheap and easy to achieve pretty massive benefits.
By admin, on August 30th, 2010
Auckland City Council’s Transport Committee is having what should end up being a pretty fiery meeting this coming Thursday at 9.30am. The big topic of debate will be the proposed amendments to Dominion Road that have caused such consternation with various parties over the past few months: annoying local business through proposing to remove on-street parking and annoying public transport users by proposing to ruin the highly successful bus lanes.
The meeting should be quite interesting as there’s a large number of presentations by members of the public, as well as some seriously panicked responses from the various councillors who previously voted for the idea back in June. Transport Committee Chairman Ken Baguley proposes some interesting amendments to the proposal that his committee came up with at June’s meeting:
 Fellow councillor Mark Donnelly, who’s not on the transport committee, has also prepared a ‘notice of motion‘ on the issue.
Looking at Cr Baguley’s proposals, it seems as though they involve the following:
- The T2/bus lane debate will go to further consultation. Goodness knows why this is really necessary as I’m yet to actually find anyone arguing in favour of changing the bus lane into a T2 lane. Hopefully ARTA tell Auckland City Council in no uncertain terms how utterly stupid the T2 idea would be, and we can put that whole issue to rest and actually focus on the main issue at hand: how to improve public transport along the road in a way that works for both travellers and the local community.
- Applying the bus/T2 lane for three hours a day each way (up from 2 hours a day each way) rather than the 24 hour lanes originally proposed. In a way this is a shame, as having 24 hour bus lanes along Dominion Road would have been fantastic for public transport. However, as I noted in a recent post I can recognise the concerns of the locals – and with the whole debate so clouded by the fear of a four-lane highway (thanks to the T2 lanes) this is probably a fairly decent outcome. Having the lanes operate four hours a day each way could be even better though.
- Continuing the T2/bus lanes through intersections. This is a really big gain, particularly if the lanes stay as bus lanes. Many of the current delays are focused around the main intersections, so fully extending the lanes through intersections should help eliminate the problem. It might make left-turns at main intersections a little dicey though.
- Reversing previous proposal to ban a number of right-turns. This is probably a debate between safety and access – and I’m not sure whether the Council has done the research to make the correct call on this balance yet.
- Not progressing the cycle lanes for now. This is probably the biggest loss compared to what was originally proposed, and highlights the difficulties of trying to please everyone I suppose. Perhaps the council could look at providing cycle lanes between the footpath and the parked cars – as I think this is done overseas in a number of cities.
As long as on Thursday the council completely removes any further mention of T2 lanes from this whole proposal, while also extending the bus lanes’ hours of operation to around four hours each way, then I think this could be an acceptable short-to-medium term outcome. If we do go with this option then I don’t see why the road will need widening at all, which means that we can save the money proposed to be spent on this project and – at some point in the future – put it towards creating a high-quality long-term solution.
By admin, on August 27th, 2010
There’s some good news and some not-so-good news in a NZ Herald article on the Dominion Road bus/T2 debacle that I have written a number of blog posts about in the last few months.
It seems as though the proposed changes to the road – including the removal of on-street parking, the creation of lengthy cycle lanes down both sides of the road and the bus versus T2 issue has created a lot of controversy and anger in the area. The article outlines this:
Auckland City leaders, including Mayor John Banks, are backing away from radical changes to Dominion Rd which have had the local community in an uproar.
Mr Banks has confirmed that he will today accept a Save Dominion Rd petition – which organisers say has been signed by more than 5000 people – and that he intends supporting the petitioners.
The petition calls for the city council to abandon plans to remove all street parking along 4.5km of Dominion Rd outside peak hours. Neither do the petitioners want the road widened for cycle-only lanes, nor the introduction of restrictions against right turns.
The changes have been listed in an $83 million package of proposals on which the council has received 1250 submissions in a consultation round due to close on Sunday.
While I don’t agree with many of the things the petitioners are asking for, I think it’s positive to see so many people getting involved in the issue. It would have been interesting to see if the opposition had been quite so overwhelming if the council had stuck with the initial idea of making the lanes for buses only, rather than T2 lanes. The idea of a four-lane highway with no on-street parking to slow vehicles down is pretty scary and I’m not surprised the community has risen up against that.
The article continues, with the organiser of the petition confirming that the biggest fear is that Dominion Road would be turned into a soulless highway:
Petition organiser Penny Hickey said yesterday that the community would be happy with some simple changes, such as a possible minor extension of hours for existing bus lanes, and running these through intersections where general traffic is allowed to occupy two lanes each way.
But she said local residents and business owners had been horrified by a council proposal to turn them into 24-hour lanes, and to open them to any vehicle with two or more occupants, while banning all parking.
“This road has been blighted for 20 years by designation and held back from investment,” said Ms Hickey, a resident of a side street off Dominion Rd who teaches English to migrants.
I think that Ms Hickey’s suggestion of extending (perhaps to 7-11am and 3-7pm?) the hours of bus lane operation would be a useful first step – encouraging more people to use the excellent bus service that is provided along Dominion Road. Extending bus lanes through intersections is also a great idea, as it is intersections where buses often experience the most significant delays.
But I also think it’s worth recognising that these measures are a bit of a “stop-gap” and delay – rather than resolve – finding a longer term public transport solution for Dominion Road. Personally, I think that solution should be the placement of a modern light-rail tram line down the middle of the street – providing a significant boost in capacity and also benefitting the local businesses and residents in the same ways that light-rail systems around the world have proven to be fantastic tools in encouraging intensification, redevelopment and greater economic activity along their routes. I think it must be recognised that removing street parking from Dominion Road will always be difficult – and rightly so in many respects as local shops depend on it (or at the very least think they depend on it). In order for the parking removal to be accepted I think there will need to be something pretty significant given in return that will help these people out.
Something like this should do the trick.
By admin, on August 25th, 2010
A few weeks ago I had a rather annoying bus experience, with at least a couple of buses not turning up or being exceedingly late. Usually that would be just somewhat annoying, but on this particular occasion my daughter’s parent-teacher interviews were set down for 6.10pm and because of the exceedingly late bus I was only able to make it there for the last couple of minutes of our alloted time. So I did what everyone should do when they have a poor public transport experience, and complained on the MAXX website.
The feedback I got from NZ Bus is very apologetic, but offers nothing in terms of “we’re going to try to make things better by doing this”.
Thank you for your email about the apparent late running of the 17:15 pm 004 service on the 5th August 2010. We would like to apologise for the very late reply.
NZ Bus aim to be the way the people of our communities choose to travel.
We aim to deliver a service that is reliable for our passengers and are always looking at ways to improve this. Feedback such as yours is very welcome as it allows us to identify areas that may need improvement.
We conducted GPS reports which confirm that the trip did run but was running 20 minutes late..
Further investigation at the depot confirms that the reason for this is, it is that the previous trip ran late due to heavy traffic.
Please accept our sincerest apologies for any inconvenience caused and I hope that the next time you travel with us, we are able to provide the kind of travel experience that meets your expectations.
I (finally) got a reply from ARTA today that is a little bit more constructive:
We are sorry to hear about your experience with the bus services on August 5th.
ARTA acknowledges your comments on the use of Hobson Street for buses and are currently considering a number of options as part of the work we are doing with Auckland City Council on bus routings in and around the CBD.
In regards the specific incident, the bus operator has confirmed the 004 trip started between 10 and 15 minutes late due to traffic, this is most probably the bus service that called your stop at around 5.40pm. As a consequence to the late start, the real time system would have been initially transmitting the ‘scheduled’ times and then ‘drop’ the service from the screen after the system failed to recognise any signal from the service starting.
In other words, if the real time system does not receive a receive a message within about 10 minutes after the trip was due to start – it will send out a message to all the GPS units asking which vehicle is running the trip. If no reply is received, it will initially display “DLY” in the screen. If no reply is received after a few attempts, it will drop the service from the sign -this tends to happen with the signs which are within about 10 minutes of the start of the route.
ARTA plans to enhance the real time system with a new lay out that will display both ‘scheduled’ and ‘real’ times. This is expected to be completed in April next year and will provide our customers with a clearer picture of what is happening.
We hope this helps you clarify the way the real time system operates. More importantly, please accept our apologies for a service experience that clearly fell short from the standard we aim to provide.
It’s interesting that NZ Bus said the bus ran 20 minutes late while ARTA said the bus ran 10-15 minutes late. But putting aside that discrepancy for a minute, I must say that I’m fairly impressed by this response (I wonder if I would have got something so thorough had I not been a transport blogger…. but that’s another story). It recognises that there’s a fundamental problem with running 004/005 buses up Hobson Street, it recognises that there’s a fundamental problem with the way the real-time information signs work and it says that efforts will be made in the future to remedy these issues.
I must say I’m impressed. Good job ARTA – now let’s make sure you follow through on those improvements.
By admin, on August 23rd, 2010
There are just a few days left for people to make submissions on Auckland City Council’s proposed changes to Dominion Road – submissions close this Sunday (August 29th). To give a brief history, back in June the Council’s Transport Committee considered a report on Dominion Road – which largely focused on changes to the long-standing designation. These changes generally related to a change in approach for the proposed bus improvements: instead of taking the buses around the back of the Balmoral and Valley Road shops the new approach was to put the buses through the town centres, which involved shared cycle and bus lanes.
Interestingly, the recommendations of the staff report mentioned nothing at all relating to T2 lanes. In fact, the staff recommendations were these:
 To be fair to the Council, there was always going to be some controversy about this proposal in terms of the way it reduces on-street parking. If there’s anything that will rark up local businesses and residents it is removing on-street parking. I’m mixed on the matter, in that I can see the huge gains from having a continuous cycle lane and from having the bus lanes operating for longer hours than the 7-9am and 4-6pm timeslots they currently have; but at the same time I think on-street parking can bring a calming influence to busy streets, as they narrow down the street, provide more “friction” between the moving traffic and the side of the road – which slows down the traffic.
While I imagine the Council were aware of this potentially difficult issue, they then went on to compound the problem by suggesting that the bus lanes not actually be bus only lanes – but instead become “T2 lanes”, allowing vehicles with two or more occupants to use them. Those worried about the removal of on-street parking now had to worry about all four lanes of traffic potentially being full of cars, rather than two of the lanes being dedicated to buses only, and therefore being fairly empty of vehicles (though critically, not empty of passengers as each bus carries a lot of people).
It actually took me a while to register that the Council had done something this stupid, as I blogged a couple of times on the proposed changes before finally realising the crazy decision on T2 lanes.
A good question is “what’s wrong with T2 lanes for Dominion Road?” and the answer to that question is fairly complex. For a start, I think it’s certainly useful to recognise that in some situations T2 lanes would make a lot of sense. For example, along the section of Great North Road that passes through Waterview (one of Auckland’s busiest arterial routes) a lot could be gained from turning one of the lanes into a T2 lane during the peak hours. Many buses are held up in the congestion along this route, but the sheer number of cars that have little choice other than to drive along here (and it’s one of the great ironies of life that the Waterview Connection motorway won’t actually make a difference) mean that a bus lane is probably not feasible. A T2 lane could be a great compromise, making priority for buses possible while also encouraging people to carpool and make more efficient use of the roadspace that is clearly in high demand.
North Shore City has similarly created a number of T2 lanes that seem highly successful – largely because they operate along roads with a relatively small number of buses. But that is not the case for Dominion Road – where there are around 38 buses arriving in the CBD between 8am and 9am that travel along this route. That’s a bus every 90 seconds roughly. Allowing a number of cars to enter into this lane would hold up the buses – and also potentially mess with cars in the general lane as those vehicles using the T2 lane are likely to have to pull out into the general lane to get past a bus every time it stops to pick up passengers.
Looking first at the “saturation issue” of simply ending up with too many cars in the T2 lane, research by North Shore City Council into the impact of turning the Onewa Road T3 lane into a T2 lane suggested some pretty staggering results:
 The most significant result of the modelling done on Onewa Road is the revelation that if the T3 lane was turned into a T2 lane, you could actually end up with more vehicles using that T2 lane than would be using the general lane. That would mean the T2 lane would be more congested than the main lane – entirely defeating the purpose of the exercise and meaning that we have two congested lanes rather than one congested lane and one free-flowing lane.
Such an outcome seems likely for Dominion Road as it has many similarities to Onewa Road. For a start, both roads have a large number of buses at peak times. Secondly, both roads suffer from severe congestion in the general lane – giving people a strong incentive to use the ‘priority lane’ – whether it be bus or T3. Therefore, if Dominion Road’s bus lanes were to become T2 lanes, it seems logical to expect that we would end up with two lanes of congestion and everyone would be worse off.
The other study that is very insightful into the effects of turning a bus lane into a T2 lane comes from Tamaki Drive, where such a change was made earlier this year. Now Tamaki Drive is very different to Dominion Road – as it has far fewer buses travelling along it and – quite crucially in my opinion – the buses that do travel along it tend to stop far less frequently than they do along Dominion Road, particularly in the Mission Bay to CBD section as the bus route doesn’t really have much of a residential catchment. The council’s analysis of the change makes for interesting reading, particularly the following bits:   The big winners in the change were the 374 vehicles that used the T2 lane and could make the trip in 100 seconds less than before. The buses were only held up marginally – largely because of the wide stop-spacing and the relatively low (13 per hour) number of buses travelling along the route. But, quite fascinatingly, the biggest losers were those single occupant vehicles that remained in the general lane – whose trip times increased by nearly two minutes, a bigger increase than the improvements gained by those in the T2 lane. This means that the average time taken for anyone to travel along the corridor increased from 189 seconds to 214 seconds – a sign of failure in my opinion (although oddly enough the council didn’t quite see it that way).
One could expect an even worse result for vehicles in the general lane if the same changes were applied to Dominion Road. This is because the buses stop much more regularly, forcing vehicles in the T2 lane to chop into the general lane – holding up traffic in that lane. Furthermore, with the larger number of buses it seems reasonable to expect the delays for buses to be greater, and the gains for T2 vehicles to be not as significant as was seen on Tamaki Drive.
All up, the proposed change for Dominion Road’s bus lane to a T2 lane is complete and utter madness. It is what happens when Councils don’t properly analyse the effects of messing around with important traffic priority measures – effectively it is what happens when Council don’t think before they act. Fortunately, the one good thing the council has done is give us the opportunity to make a submission on the proposal and to tell them exactly how stupid it it. So make sure your voice is heard – make your submission here before Friday.
If you’re running short of ideas about what to say – my submission is here.
By admin, on August 22nd, 2010
I have been hearing that ARTA’s “b.line” initiative, which actually amounted to little more than putting up a few signs at bus stops and on buses, has led to significant increases in patronage, in the region of 20% according to some, on Dominion Road and Mt Eden Road bus routes in the last couple of months. It will obviously take a while to see whether those patronage increases are simply seasonal (public transport patronage jumps around quite a bit throughout the year depending on whether university is on holiday or not).
Assuming that the increases are long-lasting, then this would certainly allay my fears that the “under-promising” (saying buses every 15 minutes when they’re actually every 5-10 minutes) might actually do more harm than good. It also shows the importance of making public transport easy to understand: something that b.line really really focuses on. If such significant gains can be achieved so relatively easily and cheaply – remember that there have been no additional bus services (although there have been some new buses), no lengthening of bus lanes, basically nothing at all to improve the quality of the service apart from the new stock – then the question that comes into my mind now is “where to next?” Dominion and Mt Eden road services were a pretty easy target to start with, as they run at very high frequencies all day long and were already very well used.
A few possibilities come to mind (just looking at the isthmus area for now), and are shown in the map below. The existing two b-line services are shown in black (green is the rail network), with the possible additions being in gold:
The three routes would be along Sandringham Road, Great North Road and Remuera Road. All of these routes have fairly high frequencies at the moment, so you would probably effectively see the kind of gains that we’re getting out of Mt Eden Road and Dominion Road: increased patronage but not really a better public transport system.
Personally, I’d like to see some effort going in to creating a cross-town B.Line service. Probably the Carrington Road/Mt Albert Road corridor is the most likely for such a service to work, linking together many north-south route across the isthmus, then continuing on to Onehunga, Sylvia Park and Pakuranga. Pretty much like the blue “Route 3″ in map below: One of the main reasons people are put off using cross-town services is because they have notoriously poor frequencies (and are generally very unreliable in their time-keeping). The beauty of having an effective cross-town service would be that you have the beginnings of a true “public transport network”, and can start to take advantage of the network effect, even if just to a relatively small extent for now.
Over time it would be great to have the whole route network shown above as “b-line” services. That will obviously require a bit more funding, and some pretty hard decisions in simplifying the bus network, but for now it would be great to have the radial routes supplemented by a true cross-town “Quality Transit Network” – it would be the first step towards actually achieving what is stated in so many of our public transport plans.
By admin, on August 12th, 2010
An article in the NZ Herald today notes that North Shore City Council is looking to utilise the park and ride spaces the feed the Albany busway station a bit more effectively by giving priority to those who arrive at the station in a “carpool” with two or more people sharing the car. Here’s part of the article:
Commuters’ cars with two or more occupants will get parking spots nearer to the Albany Station on the Northern Busway, under a trial starting on October 1.
Most weekdays, the 555 spaces at Albany are full from an early hour and latecomers have to make a 10-minute walk.
This had been the case for three years during which the station recorded a 60 per cent increase in peak-time use by people catching the Northern Flyer across the Harbour Bridge to downtown Auckland.
North Shore City Council is designing an extension to the parking spaces, and is considering a $4 million option to fill in a pond and double the parking.
I generally think this is a good idea. Park and rides are a bit of a vexed issue for public transport advocates like myself: certainly they are effective at making it easy for people to use public transport and they have been very effective in making the Northern Busway become the huge success that it has been over the past couple of years. But on the other hand, apparently around half of those using the park and ride previously caught the bus for the whole of their trip, while at the same time park and rides can use up valuable urban space: particularly in a future town centre like Albany.
Here’s the current park and ride, with (I presume) the proposed expansion area to the north: I suppose with all these considerations in mind it’s quite good that efforts are being made to utilise the space set aside for park and ride areas as efficiently as possible. It will be interesting to see what happens if the council decides to expand the existing park and ride, because from what I’ve heard it can be struggle getting on buses at some of the station to the south during peak hours because the buses are so jam packed with people. Another 500 odd parking spaces is quite a few more full buses.
Which really makes me wonder, why didn’t we get articulated (bendy) buses to run Northern Express services?
By admin, on August 10th, 2010
A week or so back I blogged some preliminary thoughts on the changes to bus routes that ARTA is currently consulting on. In general, I supported the changes as they provide some level of simplification – although I noted that it could be argued the changes didn’t go far enough and some level of unnecessary complexity remained.
I sent off a few questions I had on some of the changes to ARTA, and they’ve come back with some interesting answers:
Green Bay:
It is worth keeping in mind that the Green Bay review is the first stage of a two-stage review of bus services in this area in which the second stage will include the current 18- series services operated by Go West.
1. Why is the 104 a “one way loop”. This seems to be something that would make the route useful to pretty much nobody as you will inevitably have to go around the wrong way for half of your trip, meaning that it takes forever. If ARTA need to provide such a bare minimum level of service, then wouldn’t the “targeted services” proposed in the RPTP be a more efficient use of resources?
The 104 service provides a vital connection between New Lynn and the Rosebank Peninsula which is currently poorly served. By running the route one-way, we can provide an even frequency. In addition, the core customer base for this service are the elderly and people with reduced mobility. These users live around Wairau Ave, New Windsor Road and Ulster Street. The one-way loop means that none of these users have to cross the road to get to the service. For these customers, our feedback tells us that proximity to bus stops and not having to cross busy roads are much more important considerations than vehicle operating speeds. As the service has plenty of time to run its route, it can accommodate the longer time needed by its largely elderly customer base to get on and off the bus (including getting seated before the bus moves off) without compromising on on-time operation and reliability.
2. Why the 207 and 207X have been kept. These routes seem to duplicate other routes and it’s just strange and unnecessarily confusing having the route on the map when it only runs once a day.
These services are very well used and hence popular with current customers as they avoid the chronic congestion on the Waterview Straight, meaning a faster travel time than services operating via Great North Road. They also provide a connection between Blockhouse Bay, Mt Albert Grammar and Auckland Girls Grammar School around school start and finish times.
3. What is the point of the Blockhouse Bay to New Lynn sections of the 198 and 199 routes? Surely nobody catching a bus between New Lynn and the CBD would take the 198 or 199 as it travels in the wrong direction for quite a long time, while also surely for trips between New Lynn and Blockhouse Bay the 185 is providing the “LCN” that you want as a feeder to the New Lynn Train station. The 199 takes a particularly convoluted route, which seems wasteful.
Up to the late 1970s, the Blockhouse Bay to Downtown and Green Bay to Downtown routes were separate and part of this structure still exists for the peak services. It is something that we intend to look at when we do the second stage of this review, involving the current 18- series services. We acknowledge that the 199 is quite circuitous but, given current funding constraints, we cannot afford to operate both the 185 and 198 services late at night. We will look at this again in the second stage of the review of Green Bay services. It is also worthy of note that the 199 also provides the only service to Seabrook Ave, Parker Ave and West Lynn Road when the 180 and 181 services are not operating.
4. There also seems to be a few unnecessary complication still. Like why does one need to distinguish between the 198 and 199? Why does the 197 need to be different again? Why does there need to be a 191? Couldn’t all four of these routes be simplified into one (probably along the 197 alignment).
The 198 is a quite direct service between New Lynn, Astley Ave, Golf Rd and Green Bay while the 199 service is a cover-all service for when we cannot afford to operate both the 185 and 198 services. The 197 is a peak only express service between Green Bay and Britomart that is designed not to duplicate the current 18- series services operated by Go West. Again, we will look at this when we do the second stage of the review of Green Bay services. Meantime, as these routes are completely common until the 197’s end point, we will consider having a common number for both 197 and 198 services with a different destination sign to distinguish their respective end points. The 191 service maintains the existing level of service on Taylor Street and St Georges Road while reducing the route numbers from four to one (for Urban Express services). These services are very well utilised.
5. Couldn’t you simplify things down to four main routes: the Green Bay to Britomart, the 009, the Green Bay Local (185 route as proposed or simplified even further) and a 180/181 Titirangi feeder bus? Wouldn’t simplifying and reducing the number of routes mean that resources were available to run the remaining routes at higher frequencies?
The proposed service design is a considerable simplification within the constraint of not duplicating the existing Go West bus services. We see the proposed service structure as the basis of a solid core network for the Green Bay and South Lynn areas. The 185 service is an example of a shorter feeder route which will enable us to double the current frequency in Green Bay in its hours of operation.
Onehunga:
1. In the longer term, how useful is it to even keep the Onehunga transport centre open? If the buses just went straight up Onehunga Mall then they would be able to take a direct line, making the system easier to understand, faster and also creating a much nicer environment for bus users to wait in.
We acknowledge that the current level of passenger amenity in the Onehunga Transport Centre, is not ideal. However, the scope of this exercise is to provide a bus to rail connection for the new Onehunga Railway Station, not to review the overall operation of buses in the Onehunga area. This will be the subject of future work. When Onehunga Mall was re-opened to vehicular traffic, it was specifically designed not to accommodate bus services. The low-speed nature of the environment, while appropriate for a town centre , is not suitable as a bus route due to narrow carriageway widths; sluggish traffic and conflicts with cyclists and reversing vehicles.
2. Short of the above, surely the buses heading towards the city enter into Pearce Street (I understand it’s one-way at the moment but surely that could be changed) to shorten the route.
Pearce Street is one-way westbound between Onehunga Mall and Upper Municipal Place which means that bus potentially could use this route as a faster way to get between Onehunga Station and the Transport Centre. We will raise this issue with Auckland City, the road controlling authority, and check whether the roading geometry is suitable for bus manoeuvring.
Waikowhai:
1. Considering that Gillies Ave runs so closely to Manukau Road, whether there is much benefit in running this service via Gillies Ave rather than just making it a service that hooks into Manukau Road and adds to the significant number of buses running along there. I imagine that Manukau Road is a QTN route, so therefore focusing services on that road, and improving the level of bus priority for that road, would seem to be more logical in the longer term. The distance between Mt Eden Rd and Manukau Road seems fairly similar to the distance between Dominion Road and Mt Eden Road.
Manukau Road would provide some useful linkages, however it was important to keep the revised routes close to their current route structure at this stage. However further route standardisation in Newmarket may be possible in future, although there are capacity issues at bus stops. Newmarket was also considered as a terminating point at weekends, but same issues as for Marua Road.
2. The proposed route (outbound) seems to have a right-turn out of Peet Ave and into Mt Albert Road – surely that’s a recipe for disaster for delays?
The right turn out of Peet Ave into Mt Albert Road has been in place for many years as it is extremely difficult to turn out of Buckley Road into Mt Albert Road at any time. This is due to its close proximity to the heavy queued traffic at the Hillsborough Road traffic lights. As Peet Ave is half way between the signalised intersections of Mt Albert Road with Hillsborough Road and Pah Road, this allows gaps for buses to make the right turn into Mt Albert Road.
Marua Road:
1. During off-peak times the bus only runs hourly – wouldn’t it make more sense to terminate the route at Ellerslie station (people transfer onto the train or other services) so that you could run the route at half-hourly frequencies with the same resources? This bus appears to be an obvious “Local Connector Network”, so therefore it goes against the hierarchical route structure proposed by the RPTP to have it run all the way into town.
Newmarket and Ellerslie had been considered as terminating points, but the lack of supporting infrastructure (bus stands) and integrated ticketing are the barriers to this change. The advantage would have been a higher frequency or longer operating day. Further route simplification at Ellerslie / Panmure may be possible in future.
2. Some of the detours appear to add unnecessary length to the trip. Why does the route detour down Matapan and Dunkirk streets in Panmure? Why does the route detour down Pukerangi and Amy streets in Ellerslie? These two detours don’t seem to serve much of a purpose in getting too many people closer to the bus stop, and just seem to add unnecessary delays.
The close proximity of the inbound bus stop in the Ellerslie Town Centre to the Ladies Drive intersection means that if buses went direct via Ladies Mile they would not be able to get flush to the kerb at the inbound bus stop. If this bus stop were to be moved closer to Ellerslie Station, this would address that issue and provide better bus rail connectivity in the Ellerslie Town Centre. The outbound bus stop in Ellerslie Town Centre is past Ladies Mile so a new common outbound stop in the Ellerslie Town Centre would be required prior to the Ladies Mile Intersection. Any future signalisation of the Ladies Mile/ Main Highway intersection would also make right turns from Ladies Mile safer for all vehicles as there are very limited sight lines at this intersection. It would also provide a safer protected crossing for pedestrians to access bus services.
People who depend on public transport choose housing around public transport routes. Any change to these routes needs to be carefully considered, balancing the strategic goals of network simplification with maintaining reasonable levels of connectivity for existing users. In the case of this deviation, there is a significant clusters of pensioner housing, who are heavy dependent users of public transport. Route simplification proposals, while often delivering significant network benefits, would have a significant impact on the quality of life for this group of highly dependent users.
I think this provides some useful insight into the thinking behind many of the changes, and the thinking behind why further changes have not (at this point in time) taken place. I thank ARTA for taking the time to put this together.
One thing that does become clear is how limited ARTA’s capability is to improve things until we have integrated ticketing up and running. In terms of their response to the Marua Road route change, and in particular the reasoning behind not cutting the off-peak service off at Ellerslie (citybound) for people to transfer onto other buses or onto the train, it’s clear that they want to be making changes to the system such as this, but until integrated ticketing is properly up and running, it may actually do more harm than good to start forcing people to transfer. This just reinforces the frustration I have with how long integrated ticketing has taken to be implemented.
Feedback on all the changes (except for Green Bay which closed last Friday) can still be made here.
By admin, on August 9th, 2010
While it seems (hopefully) that the big “bus lane debacle” is finally coming to an end, I think it’s probably time to take a look at what the effects of this completely unnecessary and avoidable issues have been. ARC Chairman Mike Lee, as quoted in an NZ Herald article today, highlights the potential for long-lasting damage from this issue:
Council chairman Mike Lee said yesterday that a public backlash against bus lanes might undermine support for public transport.
He said he was encouraged that the region’s annual public transport use had exceeded 60 million passenger trips for the first time in more than 25 years, but much remained to be done.
The city council’s bus-lane policies worried him.
“I believe Auckland City Council has engaged in revenue gouging.
“If bus lanes are used almost as a form of entrapment for revenue raising, it puts the credibility and popularity of public transport in question, and that’s bad for everyone.
“What I’m concerned about is a backlash against bus lanes if they’re used in a kind of Sheriff of Nottingham way to raise revenue from commuting motorists.”
Mr Lee denied suggesting the city council should allow drivers to clutter bus lanes, but said it should improve markings to end confusion about where the lanes began and ended.
My initial response to the NZ Herald raising this issue was as another attack on public transport, and I’m still certain that it would have been a NZ Herald editor or reporter getting nailed for driving in a bus lane that sparked the issue. However, the response of the City Council has – over time – changed my mind as their inflexibility over accepting criticism of the poor signage, has continued to give life to a pretty simple issue that should have died away almost immediately.
Now I don’t necessarily think that the council has deliberately been making the signage confusing to raise revenue, although I can certainly understand that it could be perceived that way. Particularly since the bus lanes are proving highly lucrative for the council’s coffers. However, the council’s reluctance to accept the inadequacy of their signage has enabled an ugly mixing of what should have been two separate issues:
- Whether the city needs bus lanes and whether the bus lanes that exist are a good idea.
- Whether the bus lane signage is a good idea.
The bus lane debacle was really solely about the second point: is the existing signage clear enough to get across when you’re allowed to enter a bus lane, when you must exit the bus lane and whether you’re in a bus lane at all? The problem is that the council’s very arrogant attitude towards the issue has meant that things have spread into the first point – a debate about bus lanes and whether they’re a good idea.
While it’s unlikely that we’ll actually have bus lanes removed (except for another recent Auckland City Council debacle – the Dominion Road T2 lanes), the real tragedy of this whole issue is the response that anyone proposing new bus lanes is likely to now get. I can already imagine the cries of “you just want to raise more money don’t you!” And this is a real tragedy, as undoubtedly the single most effective, best ‘value for money’ and quickest to implement thing you could do in Auckland to improve public transport in the short term would be to significantly extend the network of bus lanes. This debacle may well make it harder to implement the desperately needed Quality Transit Network, it may make it harder to implement desperately needed bus lanes on Queen Street and so forth.
I still think the best solution would be to paint a big fat green line across the bus lane every 10 metres. That way if people want to work out where 50 metres back from an intersection is, all they need to do is count back five lines from the intersection. Similarly, if they want to know where 50 metres is after pulling into a road with bus lanes, then all they need to do is count the number of lines they cross over.
If Auckland City Council’s immediate response to this debacle had been “we understand the signage could be clearer and we’re open to ideas about how to improve it, please send in your feedback” instead of “tough, it’s the rules”, I tend to think it could have been sorted out without anywhere near as much mess, and without anywhere near as much long term damage for public transport.
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