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By Matt L, on January 29th, 2012 A pleasing trial is starting on Waiheke Island which involves adding bike racks to buses to make it easier for cyclists to get around. The Waiheke Bus Company which is owned by Fullers has installed the racks on three buses and each rack can hold up to 3 bikes at one time. Here’s the press release”
The Waiheke Bus Company has become the first public service bus operator in Auckland to offer bike racks on its buses as a trial and as part of its initiative to help promote cycling as a mode of transport.
Waiheke ferry customers can already take their bikes for free on the ferries and now this is extended to the service buses as well.
Bike racks have been installed on three separate buses, each capable of carrying 3 bikes each. The racks have been imported from the USA where they have been successfully deployed on public services buses.
The aim is to improve the options for cyclists and many commuters who choose to ride to and from the ferry terminal or who want to explore the island’s many cycle tracks, whilst giving them the flexibility of being able to hop on a bus with their bike in order to venture further, get home after dark when cycling can be hazardous, or in the case of cycling visitors, link up with the 360 Discovery ferry service that calls in at Orapiu Wharf and connects to The Coromandel on a regular basis. The Coromandel shuttle bus service from Hannaford’s Wharf to Coromandel Town now also provides bike rack options meaning cyclists can take their bikes even further.
At the launch at Matiatia today, attended by representatives of Auckland Transport, NZTA, Cycle Action and the Local Board, Fullers CEO Douglas Hudson said “Fullers has been committed to carrying passengers and their bikes on their ferry services for a long time and were awarded for being a cycle friendly business by NZTA at the CAN (Cycling Advocates’ Network)Awards in 2009.
We are very pleased to be able to extend this to the buses on Waiheke Island for the benefit of commuters and tourists who visit the island. This may only be a small step but it has taken a lot of effort to find and import the right racks that are sturdy enough to work effectively on the Waiheke roads. We hope that people will see this as an opportunity to explore more of the island and also connect with the 360 Discovery service that carries passengers from Orapiu at the Eastern end of the island to Coromandel, where the shuttle service from Hannaford’s Wharf to Coromandel town now also has bike racks on board.”
The trial, which will run until the end of Easter, will allow the Fullers owned Waiheke Bus Company to gather data and opinion from users before deciding how to adapt the service and how to develop it further.
Last summer the company worked with Cycle Action Waiheke and Auckland to produce a map of Waiheke cycle touring routes. Publicity about the map has encouraged increasing numbers of cyclists to tour the island, enjoying its cafes, vineyards, beaches and accommodation.
The bike racks are expected to be welcomed by local commuter cyclists and visitors alike. Touring cyclists may be encouraged to ride to the vineyards on the Onetangi Straight or even further afield, rather than stopping at Palm Beach, if they know the bus will help return them and their bike to the ferry or accommodation in Oneroa.
Cycle Action Waiheke supports the trial as an important local transport and tourism initiative for Waiheke. Chair Tony King Turner said “We thank Fullers for taking this step and see it as just the beginning of what could be very exciting developments for cycling on Waiheke. It will also be very important as we work towards our goal of getting Waiheke included in the National Cycle Way program.”
Barbara Cuthbert of Cycle Action Auckland is also impressed with the trial. “..having seen the positive impact that cycling initiatives can have on communities and how it can boost tourism, I am confident that when we look back at this moment in 10 years’ time, we will understand how important this launch and trial is.”
Auckland Transport also strongly supports this initiative and sees it as a good example of the private sector delivering outcomes that encourage integration between cycling and public transport. Such projects link very strongly to the work of Auckland Transport across the region in improving safety for cyclists and encouraging more sustainable travel
The bike racks will be used mostly on the Onetangi bus routes and feedback forms will be available at the Fullers ticket office at Matiatia as well as on the Fullers website.
This is obviously quite good for tourists who want to get around the island but don’t want to pedal the whole way but the thing I like about this is that it can really help to extend the reach of the bus system for residents. Instead of a bus only having a catchment of people who can walk to the bus stop it enables a far wider catchment of potential users which should help to make the buses more attractive. Hopefully after the trial is finished we will be see these racks installed by other bus companies in other parts of the region as I think it has the potential to help both boost bus patronage and the number of people cycling around the city and can be done without needing new vehicles or infrastructure to support it.
By Guest Post, on January 25th, 2012 This is a Guest Post by William Stewart
When I first moved to Christchurch after leaving Auckland in 2004, I was amazed by what was then to me, the best execution of public transport I had ever seen. The biggest barriers to me in using public transport have always been ease of use, comfort and affordability.
No-one’s going to use a bus system which is complicated, illogical and difficult to find out which bus route to travel on or where to catch your bus. The core of the system in Christchurch was the Central Bus Exchange, a staging area through which almost all buses (excepting the Orbiter outer ring service) in the city were routed through. Having all the bus stops in (or beside) one building meant that transfers were easy, that you didn’t have to walk far to get between stops and the easy to understand maps helped visitors and new PT users find their bus stop. Compared with Auckland’s multitude of departure points from Downtown, Mid City, Civic Center, Albert St, it does make it a lot easier to the non native user to find their stop. Aiding ease of use were large electronic signage which clearly and accurately display arrival times of all buses using the Exchange and what platform they depart from. Each platform also had a smaller sign which displayed only departure times for that particular platform. While electronic signage is becoming increasingly common in Auckland over the last 10 years, because all of Christchurch’s CBD buses depart from the same place, every passenger has access to the signs, as opposed to many of the inner city stops in Auckland (i.e Albert St, Customs St) which don’t, and all to frequently have had their printed timetable vandalized.
After you’ve made public transport easy to use, you also have to make it comfortable. Your own weatherproof clean car with padded chairs is always going to be more attractive then a bench (if you’re lucky) on the street with possibly no rain cover and definitely minimal wind cover. Once you add in the dangers of being alone at a bus stop late at night in town, the litter, stench and graffiti that plagues our inner city stops, public transport can become a very unattractive option. With the Bus Exchange, Christchurch was able to provide a modern and comfortable venue for PT users. You could wait indoors for your bus, safe from rain or wind or excessive heat thanks to the interior air conditioning, relaxing on padded chairs in a security patrolled safe and well lit environment. We are seeing more and more people realize that these are the type of facilities that needs to be offered to PT customers. With the development of New Lynn, Britomart and Manukau, Auckland is getting there. Unfortunately these are all mainly beneficial to train users, there isn’t really anything which offers the same level of ease to bus users. Which the construction of Britomart I had hopes that they would better integrate the bus system with the train station, but that hasn’t happened. New Lynn is primarily a train station and while the bus station is integrated, it is designed for people to sit outside for their bus rather than in.
Here are some photos of the old bus exchange: 
Christchurch also meets the third tenet of providing an attractive choice to private transport which is affordability. It’s not really relevant to the Bus Exchange but Christchurch does enjoy integrated ticketing based on a time scheme rather then zonal. Users may travel on any number of buses for 2hours and pay only $2.30. If they travel longer, they pay $4.60, the daily max charge.
With the events of 22/2/11, Christchurch lost much of its city center including the bus exchange. We had a temporary bus exchange for a few months which filled an emergency requirement. 
Thankfully October 2010 bought an improvement with a purpose built Temporary Central Station. I haven’t had a chance to use this new exchange extensively as a passenger, but I believe it will certainly fill the gap until we get the promised brand new under-grounded (so that emerging buses do not impact pedestrian movement) bus exchange at some future point. Another major impact the earthquakes had was on traffic within the city. With the central city cordoned off for well over 8months, and the central part of the city still cordoned off, traffic every where else in Christchurch has been chaotic with all of that throughput which usually uses the city center’s 4 one way lanes redirected to roads which are not designed to handle that quantity of traffic. This isn’t even mentioning the fact that due to having to bypass around the giant rectangle of closed city center added more time to every journey. This understandably had a massive impact on the bus times and for the first few months after the quake our services were unreliable, always late and very inconvenient.
With the gradual reopening of the city center, timetable adjustments which reflect increased journey times and some central city through roads being opened, traffic is slowly getting back to normal. With a bus exchange located once again in the city it makes it easier to get cross town and transfer between routes. While most shops and businesses have relocated out of the city center, the bus exchange being back does mean that people can once again easily commute into town. This will play a crucial role in the rebuilding of our CBD. Here’s a comparison of diagrams of the old and new interchanges: And some photos of the new temporary interchange:
By admin, on January 23rd, 2012 I’m not going to repeat the excellent Guest Post review of the book Human Transit – other than to note from what I’ve read of the book so far I agree with pretty much everything in the review. It is a very good book. It is a book that should be widely read by those involved in public transport planning, as well as by anyone who find themselves interested by public transport, how it works and how it could work better.
One part of the book that I found particularly interesting, perhaps because it fits with some of the critiques I’ve made of Auckland’s bus network in previous posts (for example: here and here) relates to the question of how much emphasis we should put on peak travel against all day travel. The question occupies chapter 6 of Human Transit, which also provides some useful insights into this issue.
At a basic level, most public transport has times of peak demand which correspond with the beginning and end of the working day. Human Transit notes that the peaked systems (those with the biggest difference between peak and off-peak demand) are almost always systems serving low-density suburban areas – where driving all day is easy and it’s only congestion (or parking costs downtown) which encourage people onto public transport during peak hours. Auckland’s North Shore is a pretty good example of a highly ‘peaked’ public transport market, with very strong demand for public transport to the CBD during peak hours (to avoid congestion and having to pay for parking) but pretty weak demand outside the peak because the public transport system isn’t particularly useful for trips other than those heading to the CBD.
There’s nothing particularly new about all this. Where life becomes interesting is when we start to look at the cost-effectiveness of adding services at different times of the day, or alternatively where we decide to cut service if we need to save money. Human Transit tells us an interesting story in this regards:
In the early 1980s, when I was an undergraduate intern in the planning department of Portland’s TriMet, I remember a day when the manager of scheduling was tearing his hair out in frustration. The agency faced budget cuts and was having to cut service, but the general manager (the chief executive officer of the agency) had instructed them to cut only outside the peak. “Don’t cut the peak,” he had said. “The peak is our bread and butter!”
But as it turned out, there was no way to protect the peak service from cuts and still save any money. They could cut midday service, but this would turn all-day shifts into peak-only shifts, which would make those shifts more expensive to run. This effect was so pronounced that it cancelled out most of the cost savings from the service cut.
There are many reasons why peak services are more expensive to run than off-peak services. Labour is one matter, getting the buses and trains back to the depot when empty (those dreaded “not in service buses”) is another, but perhaps the most significant is the cost of the bus or train fleet that must be owned to provide that ‘peak of the peak’ service frequency. Increasing off-peak frequency generally only requires a bit more fuel and staff cost (and may not even require that if staff are heading back to the depot anyway, or have contracts requiring minimum shift times). Increasing peak frequency typically requires buying more vehicles (be they buses or trains), hiring more drivers, running more ‘out of service’ kilometres and entering into increasingly complex and inefficient rostering procedures. The book picks up on this issue:
Fleet size depends on how many vehicles you need at once, and that, of course, depends on your peak service, not your all-day pattern. Many transit agencies must purchase, license, store and maintain a vehicle that makes only one round trip per day. That’s a huge inefficiency compared to an all-day operation whose fleet may work 10 to 20 hours each day.
I think it was Paul Mees’s book “Transport for Suburbia” which compares Vancouver’s West Coast Express peak-only commuter train with the Skytrain system on this issue. On average, each West Coast Express train has its seats filled around twice a day – one trip in during the morning and one trip out during the evening. In contrast, each Skytrain has every seat filled something like 50 times a day because they operate at high frequencies all day long, providing service for far more trips than just commuting ones. That makes the Skytrain system incredibly efficient to run, even if overall it may not seem as “crowded” during very peak times as the West Coast Express train.
What the book goes on to highlight is that if we are looking to improve the cost-effectiveness of our system, we shouldn’t focus on cutting services outside the peak (even if the buses or trains are fairly empty), but rather look at services during the peak that aren’t at maximum capacity:
…if you see a transit vehicle running nearly empty during the peak period and in the peak commute direction, you may be seeing some actual waste. Suppose that a commuter express bus, doing a long run from a distant suburb into the city, carries only fifteen people, less than half a seated load. If the transit agency is looking at its cost-effectiveness fairly, this situation should look much much worse than a bus with fifteen people at noon, running on an all-day, two-way line. For this one commuter express run, the agency has spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy the bus, thousands more for the land on which to store it, and thousands per year to maintain and operate it, including penalty rates for the driver who works a brutal schedule and is kept from spending time with family most days – all to serve only fifteen people!
In this previous post, I compared bus frequency across a number of central isthmus routes: 
Perhaps the most interesting observation of the above (along with Dominion Road’s excellent inter-peak frequencies) is how service levels drop away dramatically after 6pm, which encourages people to travel home during the evening peak. A thorough assessment of whether each and every one of the peak hour services is needed may end up freeing up resources to run a huge number of inter-peak and evening services – at the cost of just a few peak time buses.
The 15 minute frequency all the time of the Outer Link bus is a pretty extreme example of an ‘un-peaked’ service, but is a key element of the route’s success. We are able to afford to run a good frequency service around much of the inner isthmus, even on a Sunday night, because we don’t have the extremely high costs of additional peak services (aside from a couple, to ensure the route can keep to its timetable in peak hour traffic). While those Sunday night buses might generally be empty, over time the guaranteed frequency of the service means that people will learn to trust it and rely on it – influencing land-use patterns, decisions people make about where to live and decisions people make about how many cars to own. The Outer Link’s constant timetable and its regular frequency are all made possible by squeezing the peak a little bit harder (lower frequencies at peak time on some services in the area than there used to be), so we have achieved a really high-quality service at relatively low cost. I suspect though that some additional peak time services, for capacity reasons, will be required inevitably.
This is not to suggest that we should go cutting peak time services ‘willy nilly’, because – after all – the TriMet General Manager was correct in saying that serving the peak is the ‘bread and butter’ of public transport, to an extent. However, it’s worth keeping in mind the cost differences of running peak and off-peak services, so you don’t get quite so grumpy next time you see a predominantly empty off-peak bus, or have to squeeze onto a peak time bus. Even though such an outcome looks inefficient, looks can be deceiving.
By Guest Post, on January 22nd, 2012 This is a Guest Post by Matt. (Yes a lot of Matts comment on this blog, this is by “handlebars Matt”).
Human Transit is Jarrett Walker’s blog, which he calls the professional blog of a public transit planning consultant. Human Transit – How Clearer Thinking about Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives is his book distilling his blog, and the essence of his philosophy of public transport planning. The book, and his views are based on where he’s lived and worked (Portland, Sydney, Vancouver amongst them) and his examples are from West Coast North America and Australasia, and therefore will not be so remote from readers in Auckland and Wellington. He even acknowledges that some people call it public transport, and in some cities they even drive on the left. He’s worked in various cities and hints at some of the arguments and debates that he’s witnessed over the years. Whatever his frustrations may have been, he wished that everyone was arguing from the same place with the same language and the same understanding of the basics. This is a book about those basics.
It’s a short book, and an easy read (which I finished today, appropriately on a train). You’ll not struggle with convoluted language. It uses simple and clear prose. This is a bit of a blessing since this is essentially a book about the geometry of transit, a topic which could be as dry as Weeties in a milk drought, but here it isn’t. I think anyone could read this. And I think a lot of people should. It would be nice if more people understood the trade-offs that a city makes when they plan and fund their network. You’d hope this was known like the backs of hands by people who do the actual planning. One look at the average city map (like Maxx’s Southern Suburbs map) shows that there is a lot of room for taking on more of the book’s key messages.
Some of his topics will be familiar to readers of his blog – legibility of maps, and frequent network maps is important, and the ease of making connections (with a short spiel on smartcards and integrated ticketing) facilitating a grid of rapid services which give the rider the freedom of personal mobility to move around their city. Coverage in a network can be given by local, meandering services, but ridership is increased by frequent connected services linking the major nodes of the city in a grid. In a flat city with many nodes of activity this would be a rectangular grid, but in a city like Auckland with a strong CBD, and it’s unique topography, a spider’s web network of rapid services would fit (that’s my observation and not one from the book). It is making the same point as Paul Mees in his book A Very Public Solution (and more recently, Transport for Suburbia); a network of frequent interlinked services is possible in dispersed cities (like Australian, US, Canadian and NZ cities) even with low overall density if the local density around the stops is higher.
Like his blog the book is technology neutral. He doesn’t care whether trains are better than buses. He cares about whether they have their own right of way, whether their crossings are at grade or not, the frequency of service, and the span of those services. He talks about planning for all day products, and not necessarily concentrating on the peaks. The book does ignore technology, but there are aspects of technology that are relevant in regards to capacity, e.g. passengers per hour (train lines can carry more passengers than a dedicated bus lane perhaps) and in some ways technologies aren’t solving the same problems. Replacing the Wellington Cable Car with a bus for instance isn’t possible as some technologies have different capabilities. Somehow, interesting as they are, I think those kind of discussions would have got in the way of the lessons that are in the book.
Another thing missing perhaps was much talk of the stations and stops themselves, other than to say they must respect the passengers, and be safe and pleasant places. There was only passing mention of bicycle and car park and rides and kiss ‘n rides. Again maybe this is my bugbear and is a detail left for elsewhere.
Frequent readers of Human Transit, or other urban transit blogs may think they know it all already. You probably do, but still read this book. Seeing the rules of transit planning distilled down to simple heuristics, and understanding that some things (like coverage and ridership) are tradeoffs, all in the one place may be useful to you. Lessons learned for me are the language of describing the different delays that a service may encounter and the “be on the way” rule. If you’re planning a passenger generator (like a university) don’t build it on a cul-de-sac or on top of a hill. (He mentions the currently in the news Simon Fraser University in Vancouver in regards to this). Another example of his “be on the way” rule was the dreams unfulfilled of Peter Calthorpe designed Laguna West south of Sacramento. It had me breaking out Calthorpe’s The Next American Metropolis and checking it out on Google Maps. His example of Fresno, California left me scratching my head though. 6-8 lane boulevards are just not the New Zealand experience.
All up this book is a practical vision, working inside political realities, where a city can intensify development opportunities, by choosing the geometry and frequency of its services, that result in more efficient public transport opportunities that give people true freedom to have the mobility of their own cities. It is a very human philosophy and should enable us to share a language to ask for what we want.
For Auckland if the political reality is a central government that is not going to come to the party on rail improvements then what lessons could we learn from this book about how we could have a frequent grid? For all NZ cities how do we get bus priority and, where useful, buses in their own dedicated lanes? We often accuse the central government of “being dumb”, but how, faced with that reality, could we be smarter? This book should help.
By Matt L, on January 20th, 2012 A few days ago we reported that Auckland Transport was about to spend $5.5m to add another 550 car parks to the Albany busway station. Today the NZ Herald is reporting that AT could have an additional 104 car parks open this year at a proposed new Silverdale busway station with a second stage increasing the number of car parks to 500.
Auckland Transport says northern bus users could have 104 free parking spaces at Silverdale this year.
This is in addition to the 550 extra spaces opening at the Albany “park and ride” in July.
Agency spokeswoman Sharon Hunter said public comment would be sought on whether the Northern Express service should be extended to Silverdale to coincide with the opening of the “park and ride” and better local Hibiscus Coast services.
Charging for parking was not being considered.
Resource consents for the first stage of the Silverdale station have been approved by independent commissioners.
I find it odd that they would consider building a park & ride without a firm commitment to extend the Northern Express to service, not that I could see to many people opposing extending it. I also raised the issue around the need for better feeder buses and that is something that some politicians like George Wood have also questioned as adding more parking is not something that can be done forever. In this regard it is also odd that they seem to be completely ruling out charging for these parks yet people who did use feeder buses would be charged (either separately or as part of the northern pass). AT do suggest that better feeder buses will be looked at later in the year however given what they have said about other projects and how long it has taken them to actually come to fruition I wouldn’t expect anything for another 2-5 years.
On Monday, the agency said it was spending $5.5 million on doubling the free parking area at its Albany bus station, raising questions about the adequacy of “feeder” bus services from northern suburbs.
Ms Hunter said that demand for more feeder services was part of the agency’s talks with Auckland Council on its annual funding plan.
Ideally, increased feeder services would start late this year or the first half of next year
Going back to the Silverdale station, here is an idea of what the station layout would be, the motorway is just to the left of the image. I’m not sure if this is the final design or not but if it is, my main concern is that by having the station to the west you separate it from any future development which would most likely be to the east.
By admin, on January 20th, 2012 This will be my last blog post about bus route changes, as the blog transitions towards being run by Matt, Stuart, Patrick, Nick and whoever appears out of the woodwork in the future. I still have a few more posts to write over the next week, but they will focus on other matters – including a look back at my involvement in this blog.
Anyway, there is one last bus route idea that I want to post about, because I think it’s potentially a really important next step for our bus system in the southern part of Auckland. I’ve touched on this matter a bit before to an extent, when looking at suggested bus changes for Mangere – but this post focuses on proposing one particular bus route, which I’ve called the “Southern Link”.
Aside from the strong north-south connection across much of southern Auckland, provided by the railway line and Great South Road, most of the rest of the area has relatively poor public transport. The bus routes in Mangere are so confusing as to be almost incomprehensible, the public transport in Auckland’s southeast is notoriously horrible and much of the system seems to still be based on the incorrect assumption that everyone’s trying to get downtown. I have heard (although it’d be great to see data confirming it) that fewer than 5% of people living in Mangere actually work in the CBD, with the Airport, East Tamaki, Manukau, Wiri and Penrose being much more common employment locations.
Compounding the issue of poor public transport throughout much of this part of Auckland is, inevitably, the socio-economic situation that many residents in South Auckland face. Compared to most of the rest of the country, Auckland is an increasingly polarised city – with an increasing number of very well off people, an increasing number of very poor people and a decreasing number of those in the middle. For southern parts of Auckland, poor public transport means they need to rely on driving to work – which can mean the cost of feeding the car competes directly against the cost of feeding the kids; or leads to them being trapped in an ugly cycle of high-interest debt to buy/fix the car that is considered so essential for getting them to work.
It is for this reason that improving public transport is seen as a key part of the Auckland Plan’s “Southern Initiative”. If improved public transport in this part of the city can reduce the reliance of its residents on that expensive second car or on increasingly costly petrol, then the socio-economic benefits may be immense. Of course in order to achieve this, a system needs to exist that is of sufficient quality (convenience, speed and price) for residents to trust it enough to use on a daily basis. Looking at the very low modeshare of PT in many parts of southern Auckland suggests to me that we’re quite a long way from achieving this goal.
For this post, I’m mainly going to be looking at parts of South Auckland that are generally to the north of Manukau and aren’t particularly close to the current railway line (except where it’s possible for a route to cross the line and enable transfers). This creates the following major centres that we probably need to base our thinking around: Onehunga and Botany are clear connections to more CBD-focused parts of the public transport network. Botany will be connected to Panmure through a busway in the future, while Onehunga has rail links to the city and also high-frequency routes along Manukau Road. Otara, Otahuhu and Papatoetoe aren’t identified because they’re relatively close to the existing rail corridor or Great South Road and can probably be predominantly served by routes focused on there. East Tamaki is just a horrific place to try and serve with high-quality public transport – something that needs resolving in other ways to this proposal.
In addition to the locations above, you can add in secondary centres and you start to get an idea of a general ‘swathe’ along which we may be looking to put our route: A really critical element here is connecting the airport – as a major employment hub – with other parts of the city where its workers are likely to live, as well as other employment hubs. Another critical point is to ensure that we can run the route at a high enough frequency to encourage people to simply “turn up and use it”. Therefore, it needs to be a single route and needs to serve enough places to generate a level of demand that can justify something like the Outer Link’s existing timetable: a bus every 15 minutes at all times on all days of the week.
My most likely route follows the course outlined below: In general, the route is a fairly simply “U” shape, with as few “higgledy piggledy” sections to it as possible. To serve Mangere Town Centre it needs to veer off the ideal route to an extent, but this is a fairly minor detour. Around Flat Bush it might also need to veer off Chapel Road – depending on how public transport is structured in the yet to be developed town centre. Aside from that, the route generally follows main roads along a fairly logical path to make it easy to understand for users. At the Onehunga end it should connect to buses along Manukau Road (hopefully in a timed fashion, but frequencies should be good enough for that to be a bonus rather than critical) while at Botany it will also connect to buses heading into the city or to other parts of southeast Auckland.
The other major hub is Manukau, where the route could connect to rail, a high frequency bus along Great South Road and all the buses further south that should feed into Manukau in the future. The route is intended to provide relatively quick service between points that are relatively far apart – so bus lanes would be advantageous where this can easily be done, or where it’s found to be necessary to avoid traffic delays. Bus stops might also be spaced a bit further apart than normal to facilitate faster travel – although this is helped by the big gap between the airport and Puhinui, as well as (to a lesser extent) gaps to the north of the airport.
If we branded the service as the “Southern Link”, gave it new and dedicated buses and put it on a “15 minute anytime” timetable I’m pretty sure it would be successful – and a good forerunner to build demand for Airport Rail and future rail between Botany and Manukau. Of course we will need a lot of other routes in this part of Auckland, but I think this could form our high frequency backbone of the network to supplement the north-south corridor – with most of our other routes feeding off either of the two.
By Matt L, on January 19th, 2012 So your going to the last ever Big Day Out and you want to get there, here’s how http://www.maxx.co.nz/info/events/big-day-out.aspx AT has this to say about it:
Music fans going to the Big Day Out at Mt Smart on Friday are advised to plan their travel and check out transport options to the stadium.
Auckland Transport is putting on extra train services to Penrose Station while the event organiser has joined with commercial bus operators to provide special event bus services.
All track lines will be open on Friday to run trains from Waitakere, Britomart, Onehunga and Papakura to Penrose Station for the festival.
People travelling to Remuera, Ellerslie and Greenlane stations from Newmarket on Friday should take extra care as some services will not stop at these stations, instead some special train services will run direct to Penrose for the festival.
It should be noted there is no free travel on public transport included in Big Day Out tickets. Timetable and further information can be found at www.maxx.co.nz or by phoning 09 366-6400.
Auckland Transport Public Transport Operations Manager Mark Lambert says using public transport for events is very popular so people should be patient.
“Trains will be busy with regular passengers and festival goers particularly in the late morning, so we encourage everyone to be patient and check the timetable.
“After the event large numbers will want to get on public transport so again people should expect some time waiting. Train passengers should consider pre-purchasing their return ticket as people with tickets will get priority queuing at Penrose station.
“Passengers are reminded that alcohol and drugs are not permitted for consumption on any of these services. For the safety of our commuters any persons who are drunk or worse for wear will be refused travel,” says Mr Lambert.
Bus from Auckland City Centre:
Special event buses organised by the event organiser and NZ Bus will depart from Real Groovy (450 Queen St) between 9.30am – 2.30pm, dropping passengers on O’Rorke Road beside the stadium. Return buses will depart from O’Rorke Rd, departing when full between 9.30pm – 1.30am returning to the St James Theatre, Wellesley St.
Bus to Auckland City Centre following the event
NiteRider buses run via Lower Albert St, Civic/St James, top of Queen St and K’Rd between 1am – 3.40am. Tickets, $4.50 (zone A), and $6.50 (beyond zone A).
Northern Express buses will depart Britomart, stop 7045 approximately every 15 minutes to midnight and then every 30 minutes to 3am running to Albany Station via all Northern Busway Stations.
Bus from New Lynn
Additional 008 buses operated by Urban Express will depart from New Lynn Transport Centre, stopping at all stops en route to Mt Smart Stadium. Buses depart at 10.15am, 10.45am, 11.15am, 11.45am, 12.15pm, 12.45pm, 1.15pm, 1.45pm.
Return services will depart from stop 8169 (343 Church St) running to New Lynn Transport Centre from 10.30pm. Normal fares apply.
Train
Additional trains will operate to Penrose Station, a short walk to the stadium. It is best to pre-purchase your special event ticket from the Britomart, Newmarket, New Lynn and Papakura ticket offices as people with tickets will get priority queuing at Penrose station.
Extra services for events are nothing new but I am really pleased to see that AT will be running trains from out west directly to Penrose, they will run mostly half hourly between Henderson to Newmarket then directly on to Penrose and there will still be normal trains in between those times. Oddly for the return journey people will have to transfer at Newmarket so hopefully services will wait should there be any delays to make it easy for people. Auckland Transport are expecting that there will be an additional 20,000 trips on the network on top of the 15500 daily trips that normally happen this week in January and this was one of the key drivers for closing the network between Britomart and Newmarket a week before Christmas so the Parnell works could be completed in time.
There will also be road closures around Mt Smart Stadium
Beasley Avenue will be closed from 6am Friday 20 January to 1am Saturday 21 January.
Maurice Road and O’Rorke Road will be closed from 8pm Friday 20 January to 1am Saturday 21 January.
By admin, on January 16th, 2012 An article in today’s NZ Herald confirms that HOP cards will need to be changed over later this year to the new Thales system, enabling them to work on all buses, trains and ferries.
Auckland’s “integrated” public transport cards, introduced in May with a $1 million marketing budget from the public purse, will have to be replaced because they are not compatible with a new system for trains, ferries and some bus companies.
More than 93,000 electronic Hop cards, supplied by Snapper, are in use – but they work only on NZ Bus services.
NZ Bus and Snapper – which was beaten in 2009 by French electronics and military technology giant Thales to an $87 million supply and operating contract for an Auckland region-wide integrated ticketing scheme – are owned by Wellington-based investment company Infratil.
From the middle of this year, the Hop cards will have to be replaced at an undisclosed cost to Auckland Transport by upgraded versions suitable for all forms of public transport using the Thales system.
These include trains, ferries and bus services such as Northern Express operator Ritchies Transport, Howick and Eastern, Birkenhead Transport, Urban Express and Bayes Coachlines.
This issue has been brewing for almost a year now, since HOP was first launched, and is the result of a pretty complex number of factors – stretching back a number of additional years and related to Snapper’s role in the whole integrated ticketing project. Effectively, when Thales won the contract to provide the integrated ticketing system for Auckland, Snapper were pretty grumpy about the whole thing and as their owner (Infratil) also owned NZ Bus, a deal between the two was stitched up that would introduce the Snapper Card onto NZ Bus services in advance of Thales’s system being rolled out.
The charitable side of me notes that NZ Bus’s old ticketing machinery was no longer supported, and the machines were breaking down on a very regular basis. The cynical side of me thinks that the whole process was just Snapper trying to ‘throw a spanner in the works’. In any case, a compromise deal was struck whereby Auckland would see Snapper Cards introduced on NZ Bus services, but rebranded to look like HOP cards. I think all parties hoped that the technology would evolve to enable those HOP/Snapper Cards to be useable on the Thales system once that was up and running – thereby avoiding the need for a card-swap – but that hasn’t happened.
I think it’s a bit mean to beat up Auckland Transport for their role in all of this. When NZ Bus decided to go with Snapper, this put AT in an incredibly challenging situation of having another card launch a few months in advance of something they’d been working on for years, stealing their thunder and really muddying the waters when it came to brand recognition of the card. So I can understand why AT went down the path they did last year, launching the HOP brand as soon as they could, even if technically it was on a Snapper Card rather than a “proper” HOP card. I have spoken to those involved in the technical side of things and there was (and remains to an extent) a belief that the Snapper Card “could” become compatible with the Thales system to the required extent to make it work. But it’s just taking too long and AT have understandably decided they can’t wait any longer and will go with the card swap option instead.
Theoretically, the ‘swap you HOP’ process should be pretty painless. Unlike the switch-over from GO Rider to HOP, it seems likely that there will be a period when the machines on the bus accept both HOP/Snapper and real HOP cards – enabling the simple swapover of cards when your HOP/Snapper card runs out of credit. I think it’d be a good idea for the cards to look different too (and not just through the removal of the Snapper logo) to avoid confusion.
In the end, it seems that the only real loser out of this becomes Snapper. While it remains to be seen whether people get to keep their HOP/Snapper cards and still get a new “proper HOP” card for free, Snapper is getting squeezed out of both things it does: Thales kicking it out of the public transport side of their business (aside from the card readers on the bus) and a new generation of bank/credit cards with contactless operation starting to squeeze them out of the retail side of the business.
By Stu Donovan, on January 14th, 2012 Matt L has just dissected AT’s recent announcement regarding the expansion of the Albany Park and Ride.
Park and ride is a vexed transport planning issue: It’s very popular with middle-class commuters and as a result tends to receive a lot of public/political support. On the other hand, P&R’s merits are often not well understood. Is P&R really the boon it is made out to be?
Let’s consider the arguments usually put forward in discussions on P&R; turning first to the downsides:
- P&R requires considerable tracts of land. For this reason it tends to be very, very expensive to provide within the urban area, unless opportunistic (read CHEAP) land parcels are identified (more on this later). Given the cost of land and the general constraints on PT funding in Auckland, it is quite reasonable to ask whether P&R in urban locations represent value for money – compared to other possible PT improvements.
- The second issue is a logical extension of the first: Because P&R requires so much land it squeezes out opportunities for intensive land use development, often in the very locations that have good PT access. This second issue is very important, because it means that P&R may actually generate relatively few *additional* trips per sqm, above and beyond what would be generated by the intensive land uses that would exist in the absence of the P&R.
- The third major issue with P&R is that it competes with other modes to provide access to PT stations. Surveys of the Northern Busway have shown that approximately 50% of users previously used local buses. The message is that providing free P&R can encourage people to drive down the road and park, when they previously waited for a local bus (which is typically going to run anyway, i.e. relatively low marginal economic costs).
- The final major issue with P&R is that it concentrates vehicles on what are often strategic locations in the road network. In the case of Albany, the provision of 1,100 car-parks within the town centre itself represents about one full lane of traffic. By concentrating vehicle volumes at these locations, large amounts of P&R may soak up capacity in the surrounding road network and cause localised congestion.
Just to re-cap the points made above: 1) P&R can be expensive to provide (because of the land that it occupies); 2) may generate little additional patronage (above and beyond what we would get anyway); 3) tends to compete with other modes of access to PT stations (which are often more cost-effective); and 4) can cause localised congestion.
Given these issues you might reasonably ask under what circumstances would you ever want to develop P&R? The answer is that P&R can be useful where:
- Alternative means of PT access (primarily local bus services) are ineffective. In these situations P&R can help to focus PT demands to a level that supports a modicum of PT service. This tends to be outside the main urban area, where land is cheaper to provide (especially where you can identify opportunistic land parcels, such as sites beneath high-voltage power lines or in flood prone areas, as is done for some P&R sites in Vancouver).
- It is priced appropriately. Charging people to use P&R generates revenue from users and mitigates two of the issues noted above. Namely, the cost (or subsidy) of providing P&R goes down, while also reducing the degree to which P&R competes with other (substitutable) modes of access. Pricing P&R really just levels the playing field with other possible ways of getting to the PT station. It can also reduce the congestion caused by P&R.
- The PT station has been provided in advance of more intensive land use development. Here P&R simply becomes an interim land use, until such time as development is ready to occur. At this point the land on which the P&R sits can be sold and the costs recovered. This practise of “landbanking” is not a bad strategy, especially where the interim P&R allows PT services to build to the point where they support relatively intensive development.
Given these pros and cons, as well as the general public/political pressure, it is perhaps not unsurprising that PT agencies struggle to find an appropriate role for P&R. In my experience most cities have relatively ad-hoc approaches to the development P&R.
So where to from here? Well, I thought I’d round out this post with a few takeaway P&R messages that I’ve collected during my years working as a transport consultant working in New Zealand and Australia:
- The party rarely lasts – P&R is usually an interim activity. P&R should be viewed less as a permanent feature of the PT network and more as an interim activity that is redeveloped at some point in the future. Rose-tinted press-releases (such as that released for Albany) create the illusion of a never-ending feast of free P&R and build a public rod to beat the backs of future decision-makers (as an aside, there is a general need for transport agencies to better manage public/political expectations).
- Ain’t no party like a policy party – the development of P&R should be governed by policy. Experiences in cities overseas has highlighted the issues that may arise with ad-hoc P&R development. In San Francisco, the (private) operators of BART had a pig of a time trying to redevelop and/or charge for P&R decades after the development of the system, even though the land on which the P&R sat was wholly privately owned.
- No party is that cool – P&R is just another form of PT investment. Ultimately, P&R is just another way of getting people onto the PT system. As such, any proposed investment should be compared against other possible uses of that money.
Following these three P&R ‘party rules’ can help ensure that investments in P&R are a boon, not a boondoggle.
*** Disclosure of interest: Stuart Donovan is manager of MRCagney’s Auckland Office, which provides transport and planning consulting services to public and private sector clients throughout the Asia-Pacific region. The views expressed in this article are his alone; they do not necessarily represent the views of MRCagney, its employees, and/or its clients. ***
By admin, on January 14th, 2012 The November 2011 PT patronage statistics report has been (finally) released by Auckland Transport. This is the first post-Rugby World Cup report so should give us a bit more of a ‘realistic’ look at patronage across the network than the September and October reports. Here’s the summary: Perhaps the most unusual feature of the summary above is that general PT patronage growth (7.9%) was higher than rail patronage growth (2.1%) during November. Typically we see the opposite. Let’s delve a bit deeper into the numbers to see what happened: Big increases on the Onehunga Line, on the ferries and (most of all, numbers wise) on general buses. In fact, out of the total monthly increase compared to November 2010 of 441,624, 82% of the increase was on “Quality Transit and Local Bus”. This is quite different to what has generally been the case over the past five or so years, when most of the increase has been on the rapid transit network.
Here are the long-term trends: Looking at the graph above, it is interesting to see that although November’s overall patronage was down by around 400,000 on October (no surprise as it’s a shorter month and the RWC ended), bus patronage for November was actually higher than for October. A useful explanation is given for the perhaps lower than expected rail increase on 2010 figures: it seems this was largely due to different timing of special events:
 And the graph below really highlights what a massive difference the RWC made to rail patronage in September and October. I wonder at what point we will see a ‘normal’ month top October’s rail patronage. March this year or next year is my guess. But as I mentioned earlier, the real story for November was the bus patronage. Let’s take a closer look at those numbers: With close to 80% of our PT trips taken by bus, fluctuations in bus patronage will have the biggest effect on whether overall patronage is going up or down, and at what rate. So it’s very heartening to see a series of months in late 2011 that have put together really strong numbers for growing bus patronage. Looking in more detail at where this increase is happening, it’s also heartening to see the previously under-performing isthmus area starting to show some strong levels of increase: The most recent three months of data (September-November) show really strong growth on the isthmus – corresponding nicely with the timing of when the City Link, Inner Link and Outer Link were introduced. I’d suggest that is no coincidence, and these number indicate that the significant bus change made have been a success. Let’s hope that gives Auckland Transport the confidence to continue with the necessary radical overhaul of our bus system.
Overall, the patronage numbers were fairly solid – with better than expected numbers from the bus network and slightly below (but with good reason) numbers from rail. With the extended shutdown of the rail network over the past few weeks, it seems likely that patronage data for December and January will be rather skewed, and it’s likely to not be until February that we start to see some more typical numbers come through.
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