I was going to put much of this in a comment on Matt’s post of a few days ago asking how people get to work, but I think it raises issues that will be of general interesting to quite a few readers, so I’m making a post out of it. I catch the bus to work, from Pt Chevalier to the university – which means that my logical route is that of the Outer Link: it’s not too far away from offering me a ‘door-to-door’ service, at regular frequencies, across a vast span of service. About as good as I could ask for right? Well, in theory yes. But in practice unfortunately the Outer Link doesn’t seem to work as well as it should. Let’s run through the issues briefly:
It’s painfully slow. Especially outside the peak hours (when you’d think it would be faster) the trip can take almost an hour from door to door, which really drives you nuts and has pushed me back onto other Great North Road buses in recent times (even though they leave me with a much longer walk)
Related to the above, but it’s incredibly annoying that the buses keep stopping to “keep to their timetable” over and over and over again. I’ve been on a bus that took stopped along Meola Road to catch up to its timetable, then stopped in Westmere, then stopped in Ponsonby, then stopped at Queen Street for an age. There’s nothing more frustrating than sitting on a bus going nowhere when there’s really no reason for it to go nowhere. (I know this helps avoid bunching, but there surely must be better ways of doing this than having your bus stand still for half its trip continually needing to wait for the timetable to catch up to it.)
The service span in the evening is actually fairly poor, with the last bus leaving the city to Pt Chev at 11pm. This is at least half an hour earlier than most other “last buses”, without any particularly logical reason for such an early finish.
So those are the issues with my regular trip. I think most of the issue is with the regular stopping to catch up to its timetable – as this along with a lack of bus lanes along key parts of the route (going up College Hill towards the Ponsonby Rd intersection, going along Jervois Road between Ponsonby Rd & Curran Street) contributes to the slowness.
The other ways in which I think the Outer Link needs further refinement is on the section I don’t use as frequently: between Pt Chev and Newmarket along the ‘southern leg’. I’ve done this a few times (although not all the way) and once again it is a pretty painfully slow trip – largely due to those annoying stops, but also due to the bizarre route the bus takes. In particular, the section of the route highlighted in orange below is just plain daft: A route that’s meant to be going ‘east-west’ is pretty dumb if it spends most of its time traveling north, then south and then north again (or the reverse). The Mt Eden Road section is particularly counter-intuitive as if you want to head towards Newmarket and Parnell you actually need to be catching a bus heading in the complete opposite direction away from them. All this slow running must also add a huge amount on to the operating costs of the route – particularly pointlessly as the Balmoral Road section just duplicates the 007 route.
There seem to be two possible ways of fixing this issue – the first is pretty simple and from memory is what was originally meant to happen: a simple ‘cut through’ by the College of Education. This is shown below and makes pretty good sense: The bus spends much more of its time going east-west and much less of its time going north-south, which means more efficient operation, a more logical route and, most importantly, much faster travel times for passengers. We could take this one step further though: We make a few tradeoffs here. We serve Kingsland instead of Balmoral and we put the bus along Sandringham Road instead of Dominion Road. It also travels along Walters Road instead of Balmoral Road. Advantages are servicing Eden Park, a connection to rail at Kingsland (so potentially a useful rail feeder service from the Walters Rd/Valley Rd area) and less duplication of the 007 route along Balmoral Road. There’s also a fairly logical east-west route all the way from Kingsland to Manukau Road that the service would take.
Don’t get me wrong, the Outer Link route is definitely a step in the right direction and it seems like its model of a bus every 15 minutes, any time, is catching on. But that’s not to say it’s perfect as I think the route could and should be improved further in a number of ways – as suggested by this post.
The other day I took a trip out to Manukau to have a look at the station and made a stop at Ellerslie to see how things had progressed but I also made on other transport related stop (it was actually between the two mentioned). Auckland Transport held an open day in Pakuranga to update the community on what was happening with with AMETI. The key information was that AT have now confirmed where the South Eastern Urban Busway would go once it got to the Eastern side of the Tamaki River. They had confirmed in December that the busway would be build on the northern side of Lagoon Dr and that a new bridge would be built over the river exclusively for the busway as well as pedestrians and cycles.
The new Panmure bridge, complete with 80's style American buses
Once across the bridge AT have now confirmed that the busway will run along the Northern side of Pakuranga Rd until it gets to Ti Rakau Dr where it will then turn south. At the Pakuranga town centre and in the current carpark for the mall will be a major busway station. From there the busway will head down Ti Rakau Dr where it will run down the middle of the road. There will also be bus lanes that carry on along Pakuranga Rd up towards Highland Park.
Note: The Yellow dots are signalised intersections and the blue boxes are bus stops/stations
And some images of the busway and stops along Pakuranga Rd
And the central busway on Ti Rakau Dr
I do like the busway plans and they are a big improvement on what has been suggested in the past and I also overheard locals saying how much they liked it. There is downside to all of this though, the biggest and what I think will be most opposed part of the project is a plan to build a flyover down Reeves Rd. The intention is to divert all through traffic around the back of Pakuranga, over the flyover and directly on to Pakuranga Highway thereby avoiding the Ti Rakau Dr intersection and also avoiding the busway. The problem though is that flyovers tend to be extremely ugly things that dominate their location and cities around the world are removing them where ever possible. AT claim it will enhance the pedestrian realm but I can’t see it.
And here is an image of the flyover from one of the information boards they had.
AT are starting to put quite a bit of information up on their website which is great to see and they have now put up the information boards that they showed. They have also posted a couple of videos of how the busway would look. The first one is a bit lower quality but flies through the project while the second one shows how some of the stops would work in a bit more detail
Also pleasing is that the busway stops at the Panmure station appear to be right outside the station now rather than a few hundred metres down the road
Brian Rudman didn’t hold back in his column yesterday criticising Auckland Transport for folding under pressure of the utterly retarded Orakei Local Board, and agreeing the get rid of the Remuera Road bus lane and turn it into a T3 lane:
To eastern suburbanites stuck in rush-hour traffic on Remuera Rd, it seems there’s nothing more infuriating than being passed on the inside by a busload of commuters from less-salubrious suburbs to the south.
Local politician Ken Baguley has been on his hind legs about the inequities of it since the Remuera Rd buslane was first signalled at the old Auckland City Council back in February 2008. For four years, he and his fellow “victims” have been banging on about the evil bus lane, and finally they’ve worn the transport bureaucrats down.
Last week, Auckland Transport (AT) raised the white flag and proposed a compromise which the locals grabbed.
Instead of having to live with a nasty bus lane, Remuera will be graced with a T3 lane instead, an exclusive lane for Mummy to rush her two kids back and forth to school in the Remuera tractor, which buses will also be allowed to share.
While Remuera Road is not exactly a Dominion Road or Fanshawe Street in terms of the number of buses it carries, it is an important and increasingly popular bus route. In fact, bus use in Auckland is booming at the moment, which makes Auckland Transport’s decision even less logical, as Brian Rudman’s article points out:
What’s depressing is that AT’s backdown comes on the heels of burgeoning public transport patronage figures. If these statistics signal anything, it’s that as new life and regularity are pumped into Auckland’s long-neglected public transport network, new customers do, in rapidly expanding numbers, climb aboard the buses and trains and ferries.
The actual performance of a bus lane compared to a T3 lane obviously remains to be seen – and for that reason it’s good that this is just a trial. But the principle behind this just feels like a step in the wrong direction, especially when we are likely to need to significantly grow the bus lane network over the next few years.
I thought we were meant to be improving public transport in Auckland, not undermining it? Auckland Transport need to grow a spine on issues like these.
At the transport committee the other day we leant about our sexy new trains but that wasn’t the only interesting presentation that was given. Auckland transport gave an update on what is happening to improve buses across the region including a sneak peak of what the future network could look like. There are a few key things that are combining to enable us to provide a better bus system, the first is integrated ticketing (not much mention needed there) and the second is the new contracting model PTOM which was discussed by Peter the other day. With AT able to sign new contracts they have finally taken the opportunity to take a clean slate approach to the bus network.
One of the requirements of PTOM is that AT divide up areas into units with each unit containing one or more bus routes and a full timetable (so no cherry picking of services by operators). AT has chosen to divide the city into 50 units and each unit will be contracted out separately through a mix of tendering and negotiation with existing companies. The contracts will include revenue sharing between AT and the operators and have incentives built as well as KPI’s and penalties for not meeting requirements. Due to the size of the task AT will be spreading out the contracting and changes over 3 years with 1/3 done this year, 1/3 next year and the last lot done in 2014.
In previous PT plans AT had split the network up into three levels:
Rapid Transit Network
Rail & Busway = right of way and frequency
Frequent Transit Network (previously known as the QTN)
High Frequency Bus (& ferry) network: connected routes at least every 15 minutes, 15 hours / day, 7 days / week
Secondary Network (previously known as the LTN)
Local / feeder / shuttle services
Peak only services
School services
Here is a diagram showing the kind of thing they are hoping to achieve:
So instead of a network that has lots of services going everywhere but low frequencies, we can with the same amount of resources make a network that with some simple transfers allows much higher frequencies. Even taking into account the time of the transfer this can often lead to faster journey times (perhaps they could be improved with pulse timetabling).
Based on how planned funding and continuing on with how we have been developing our rail network currently it is estimated that we would end up with following high frequency network. It contains the busway, the rail network, the link services and only 10 other arterial routes.
Ignore the dotted lines
However by applying the methodology pointed out just before we would get a high frequency network that looks like this: (remember services on this network would be running at least every 15 minutes for at least 15 hours a day and for 7 days a week)
As you can see it is vastly different and my understanding is that the population covered by the ‘frequent’ network is around three times the business as usual version. There would also be secondary services that fill in many of the gaps that run at a lower frequency as well as peak only services and school routes. Here is an idea of what the total network could look like when secondary services are added (this image only focuses on the isthmus and west). The red routes are the high frequency ones shown above while the blue and purple routes are secondary or tertiary routes. The blue lines actually operate at worst at every 30 minutes 7 days a week
Here are some of the benefits and issues that AT identified
Less duplication, especially in rail corridors and on North Shore
More consistent service levels – “all day” network of frequent services which can be relied upon for many journeys, not just at peak commuting times
Improved reliability
Trade-off between frequency and “one-seat” for some journeys
New ways of designing passenger infrastructure to facilitate bus – bus transfers at key intersections
Speaking to the presentation they said that this fantastic new network not only dramatically improves services but also uses the same amount of resources as the current inefficient network does. They also identified that changing the network so drastically may see a temporary dip in patronage but that over the long term it not only recovers but grows at a faster rate and this has been witnessed in many cities overseas. There will of course be people upset about having their bus stop and route moved so there will be quite a bit of consultation later in the year.
I really get the feeling that over the next few years we are going to see absolutely massive improvements to out PT system. By 2016 we will have a completely redesigned bus network, rail will be electrified and most of the new trains will be running, we will have integrated fares that make paying easier and through better contracting we should hopefully see the level of subsidies required start to plummet. It could turn out to be one of the most important periods in Aucklands transport history.
Last Friday saw what seemed like a belated announcement – that the Public Transport Operating Model (PTOM) had acquired all its necessary approvals and will be implemented in the relatively near future. PTOM is the system under which bus and ferry services will be contracted by regional councils (or Auckland Transport). The announcement was welcomed by Auckland Transport and NZTA, although questioned by the Green Party as missing the big transport questions faced at the moment: booming public transport use and stagnating traffic volumes (while funding priorities are the complete opposite to these trends).
The contracting of bus and ferry services has been an ongoing argument in New Zealand for pretty much the last 20 years. The current/previous system effectively prohibited the logical planning of public transport networks, by splitting individual services into either commercial (run without a subsidy and over which the transport agency had almost no control) or contracted (operated with a subsidy and therefore much more control). The cabinet paper on PTOM describes the problem with this system:
At the moment, public transport services are delivered through a mixture of commercial and contracted services. It is up to operators to identify what services they wish to provide on a commercial basis (ie without public subsidy). A commercial service can be a single timetabled service running from one point to another (for example the 10.48 am from Smithville to the city). Regional councils then determine what other services are necessary to the urban public transport network. These services are then ‘contracted around’ the commercial services to fill service gaps.
The practice of registering single timetabled services as commercial has hampered regional councils’ ability to provide an integrated public transport network and achieve network efficiencies, as these services are not under contract with the regional council and do not have to conform to service standards or fare standards. The presence of commercial registrations has also arguably contributed to poor tender outcomes (on average just over one bid per tender in Auckland and Wellington) and higher prices than in regions where competition is more robust. This has led to increased tensions between regional councils and operators.
The 2008 Public Transport Management Act (PTMA) sought to resolve this problem, but the operators moaned and the new government reviewed the legislation before it could even be given effect to. The result of the review is PTOM – which is described in quite a bit of detail in this earlier blog post.
From reading through the most recent cabinet paper on PTOM many of the most important gains from the PTMA seem like they’ve been retained, although there are a few little nasty parts of PTOM which may hold back our ability to truly achieve the kind of improvement to our public transport system that is so desperately needed. Before I get into those details, let’s start with outlining what we really need from the contracting system:
The ability to plan an integrated network (therefore, the ability of the public transport agency to define the routes and timetables of every single service)
The ability to implement integrated ticketing and integrated fares (therefore, the ability to ensure operators accept the integrated ticket and fare system)
The ability to share risks and rewards from higher or lower patronage between the public transport agency and the private operator. This provides an incentive for both parties to grow patronage while also ensuring an ability for ‘cross-subsidy’ from the more commercial to the less commercial routes and means no more ‘cherry picking’ of the most commercial routes by operators.
The ability to measure performance standards and include matters like punctuality (measured properly, not this rubbish) in contracts.
So what’s the good news about PTOM in achieving these goals? Well a few paragraphs from the executive summary of the PTOM cabinet paper answer a few of the questions above:
The introduction of PTOM represents a fundamental shift in the delivery of urban bus and ferry services. Under PTOM public transport services, that form part of the region’s urban public transport network, will be grouped together into units and provided under contract with the regional council to enable stronger network co-ordination and a basis for joint investment. This replaces the existing practice ofoperators being able to register single timetabled services on a route as commercial, and regional councils having to ‘contract around’ these services with subsidised services — a practice that led to poor tender outcomes and network development.
Units will be operated on an exclusive basis for the duration of their contract, and where appropriate procured through a mixture of competitive tendering and direct negotiation based on unit performance. Sufficient units will have to be put out to tender to ensure confidence in costs. Operators will still be able to set up new public transport services outside of the existing urban public transport network. These services will be exempt from contract and will not have exclusive operating rights (ie other operators will be able to set up competing services).
Both legislative and administrative changes will be required to implement PTOM. PTOM encompasses a range of planning, funding and procuring tools that have been developed with the needs of the three largest public transport markets (Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch) in mind. Many of these tools may be utilised by smaller markets, but not all will be mandated through legislation. I recommend that amendments to legislation be kept simple and limited essentially to the introduction of the unit concept and the requirement for all public transport services to be under contract with the regional council unless exempt.
Properly implemented, PTOM will introduce competition to the system by incentivising operators to compete for exclusive operating rights and directly negotiated contracts. Contractual arrangements allow regional councils to prevent exploitation of these provisions through regulating fare setting and use of cost benchmarking.
The rest of the cabinet paper further answers the questions I set earlier in the post. By combining all services along a particular route (or group of routes) into a single unit, it’s possible to plan a logical network (at least within units), the ‘cherry picking’ issue is resolved, units will be operated on a risk/reward sharing basis – giving all parties an incentive to generate more patronage. All units (except exempt services, which I will get onto soon) will be contracted – meaning that even commercial units will need to provide for the timetable and route structure decided upon by the public transport agency. All units (once again, except for exempt services) will need to accept integrated ticketing and be included in integrated fares networks – should the PT agency want them to be.
So that’s the good news, and largely ticks all the boxes above. Units will be incentivised to become more commercial, by having fares cover an increasing proportion of their operating costs, because the more commercial a unit is, the more likely it will be contracted through direct negotiation rather than by open tender. Operators dislike open tenders because it introduces significant risk of losing the tender for that area.
Theoretically, the system sets up a framework to get better value for money from our spend on public transport services. Now I have little doubt the government has done this because they want to reduce spending on public transport, so it’s possible to throw even more money at their pointless and stupid Roads of National (Party) Significance – but improving cost-effectiveness of PT services by enabling better network planning has significant benefits regardless of this. With patronage increasing so fast in Auckland, a most cost-effective contracting system means that for any additional funding (and PT funding will not decrease in Auckland while patronage is growing so quickly) we should be able to get more extra service for the same amount of money. All we need is a different government in 2014 (something that’s looking increasingly likely) to boost funding for public transport and we have the ability to create a vastly better system.
That’s the good news, so what are the catches? Well as PTOM is meant to be a giant compromise between all parties, there are a couple catches to be aware of.
Exempt services. A number of PT services will be exempt from PTOM and while some of these are rational (like inter-city services) others make less sense, except as part of a fairly messy compromise. Bus routes that are currently fully commercial at all times will be exempt (this includes the Airbus in Auckland), while perhaps more significantly ferry services that are fully commercial will similarly be fully exempt. This includes the Waiheke Ferry – which means that there will continue to be little, if any, control over how that ferry operates in terms of its fares. It may also include the Devonport Ferry, if that runs on a fully commercial basis at the moment.
An aspect of the transitional arrangements which seems to allow for a proportion of units to be rolled over to the existing operator for an incredibly long 12 year contract without open tendering. This is seen as a concession to reflect the existing investment in commercial services – but sounds pretty bizarre. I just hope the roll-over of these contracts allows for full network planning to occur and also allows for some assurance that a competitive price is achieved.
Overall, it seems like PTOM is a step in the right direction – although that will largely be dependent upon whether we really do achieve the efficiencies the system is designed to achieve, how the units are structured in terms of their interaction with one another, whether the ‘catches’ listed above turn out to be particularly problematic and whether any of the efficiencies gained are spent on further improving the system to reflect rapidly increasing patronage, or whether they are siphoned off to be flushed down the toilet on another pointless RoNS project. So to an extent, we will have to wait and see.
There was something in last Thursday’s NZ Herald article about the punctuality and reliability of public transport in Auckland that really stood out like a sore thumb:
But buses stuck to their timetables – or were at least no more than five minutes late – in 99.24 per cent of cases last month and ferries were even more punctual, hitting the mark in 99.73 per cent of cases.
Brian Rudman picked up on these rather ludicrous sounding numbers in his column today:
Auckland Transport’s latest “good news” bus-service statistics read like the electoral results of some tin-pot dictator.
Indeed, they’re so fantastical any self-respecting dictator would have had them scaled down.
The transport overlords claim last month, Auckland’s public bus fleet scored 99.88 per cent for “reliability” and 99.24 per cent for punctuality.
In bus talk, “reliability” means a scheduled bus actually reaching its destination. To score on the punctuality scale, a bus also has to “commence the journey within five minutes of the timetabled start time”.
So AT’s transport number-crunchers are asking us to believe that of the 171,610 scheduled bus trips last month, just 206 failed to reach their destinations – and presumably didn’t start as well – and that only 1304 – 43 a day – failed to start within five minutes of their scheduled start time.
Later in his column, Rudman highlights why such ludicrous numbers occur:
That’s a key word: the statistics are “self-reported”.
Does seem overly trusting of Auckland Council, who hires these various firms at vast public expense to provide a timetabled bus service, to monitor outcomes using some school-yard, “cross your heart and hope to die” method of self-reporting.
The other issue is that, for some bizarre reason, the punctuality of bus services is counted at the beginning of its trip, while the punctuality of rail services are measured when they reach their destination – surely a far more logical measurement. I really don’t care when my bus or train begins its run, I care whether it’s late when it gets to my stop and I care whether it will get me where I’m going on time.
There’s a bit of hope that this laughable way of measuring bus punctuality and reliability is going to change – from the latest Auckland Transport Patronage Report:
Auckland Transport is in the process of developing an automated tracking and monitoring system to report bus reliability and punctuality and provide enhanced data to improve service delivery. A review of the reliability and punctuality of all bus timetables has also commenced to ensure timetables continuously reflect operating conditions.
What we really should be measuring is how the buses compare to their timetable at all points along the route. This information would actually be really useful in highlighting where we need bus lanes or other bus priority measures. With the HOP card I’m sure all the data is available – let’s start using it to improve the system.
This post is by Peter, and follows on from his previous post about feeder buses.
Toronto is the biggest city in Canada, and is an interesting case-study because – for such a large city – it has a relatively small ‘rapid transit network’. The Toronto Subway has about 70 kilometres of in-service track (with 69 stations), while the GO Transit commuter rail network doesn’t really offer the level of service and frequencies we would associate with ‘rapid transit’. Like many Canadian cities, Toronto does a lot with its relatively limited system – especially when it comes to integrating its bus network and feeding into the rapid transit system. Weekday daily ridership in 2010 averaged 948,100 on the subway, with frequencies up to a train every 2 minutes and generally no worse than a train every 5-6 minutes. Here’s a map of the subway and rapid transit network:
The Toronto system is also incredibly smart in its use of feeder buses to the rapid transit network. This passage from Paul Mees’s book “Transport for Suburbia” highlights a comparison between Toronto and Melbourne, when it comes to the role of feeder buses:
The real difference between Toronto and Melbourne is not in the share of residents living within walking distance of rail stations: the share in Melbourne is actually higher, at 20 per cent to Toronto’s 15, because its rail network is much larger and has many more stations. The critical factor is the behaviour of the 80-85 per cent of residents who didn’t live near stations. In Melbourne, these residents rarely used public transport, especially outside peak hours: across the day 69 per cent of rail passengers walked to the station and 17 per cent travelled by car. In the part of Toronto served by the TTC, residents who lived beyond walking distance from stations used public transport nearly as often as those who lived nearby: only 20 per cent of rail users walked to the station and a tiny 3 per cent took cars. The big difference was in the use of feeder buses (and trams): 76 per cent of TTC rail passengers travelled to the station in this way, against only 10 per cent in Melbourne.
So we know the vast bulk of passengers on Toronto’s rail system get there on the bus – that’s a heck of a lot of transfers happening! TTC statistics back this up – highlighting that across all forms of the public transport system there are really high rates of transfers. In 2010 there were 1,512,000 average daily ‘linked’ trips (i.e. that number of fares collected), but once you include transfer trips there was an average of 2,508,000 daily trips. While some trips involve more than a single transfer, if we were to assume that each trip only had the one transfer, the numbers indicate that around 65% of trips involve a transfer/connection.
How does Toronto operate a system based so significantly around transfers, while at the same time obviously ensuring that it’s an attractive enough network for very high ridership rates? That’s a question obviously worth exploring in more detail. Let’s start with what Mees says about how Toronto’s system works – largely coming from his previous book A Very Public Solution:
The TTC’s bus network operated as an extension of the subway system, linking it to the whole of the city. This enabled the provision of a ‘Paris Metro’ style frequent rail service, running every five minutes or better until 1:45am seven days a week. Frequencies like this would require extremely high densities if patrons walked to the station, but the TTC’s rail-bus strategy circumvented the density problem… Because of the economical densities of patronage generated by the feeder bus network, the Toronto subway returned an operating surplus, which helped defray the loss incurred by the buses. Conventional economists might object to this apparent cross-subsidy, but in reality the performance of the two modes cannot be separated: the rail service would not carry enough passengers to make a profit without the loss-making buses that fed it. The net result was that Toronto’s much smaller rail system outperformed Melbourne’s large network, by using buses to extend its reach.
The system relies on making these feeder buses work well, of course. Some key points relating to Toronto’s system are outlined by Mees:
Main bus routes operate at high frequencies (every 10 minutes or better) across the whole span of service.
The network follows the grid street pattern, allowing straight and logical links with the subway stations (which are generally located at the intersection of key arterial roads).
Free transfers between services – to the extent that at most subway stations the buses actually enter the ‘fare paid’ part of the station, avoiding inconvenient and slow ticket checks.
Bus to bus transfers are facilitated by physical design: stops located immediately adjacent to intersections where routes cross, approach and departure side stops on wide roads eliminate the need to cross wide streets.
So what does a Toronto feeder bus service actually look like? Let’s take the 36 route for example, which is shown in blue in the picture below (the rapid transit system is shown in the various colours each line is generally depicted in):
The 36 route has a few little variations – some buses branching off at various points as you head west, but generally follows what’s shown above: a straight and logical route that not only provides good east-west connections, not only feeds people into the Yonge-University-Spadina Line at Finch Station but also connects to a vast range of north-south bus services. In effect, with just one transfer, anyone living on this bus route has access to anywhere on the entire inner-western part of Toronto. Plus, for really common trips – such as those trying to get to the subway – the route offers the fastest and most logical option. No winding your way randomly through the suburbs here, just a direct route straight to the subway system.
As I said earlier, there’s a little bit of complexity with the route having a number of branches, but even those are handled in a way that’s pretty easy to understand:
Even though this route is really quite far out into the suburbs (remember the map earlier in the post to give a clue about its location in Toronto), it can support fantastic frequencies by doing so many different things and doing them so effectively.
So I think we can learn quite a lot from Toronto when it comes to feeder buses. Firstly, ideally the routes should be useful for something other than just being a feeder service (likely, especially if the interchange point becomes a retail/office/housing hub). Secondly, the process of the transfer is made as easy as possible – through high frequencies, station design, integrated ticketing and even at some stations bringing the bus effectively “into” the subway station. Thirdly, the route structure itself makes sense and is pretty attractive for travellers – being straight, direct, quick, easy to understand and logical.
Note: I’ve never actually been to Toronto, so all of this thinking just comes from reading books and looking at a lot of maps on the internet. If there are any locals, or people who have visited Toronto and wish to add to the points made or dispute them, I’d most welcome it!
An exciting media release from Auckland Transport yesterday and something hinted at on here a few days ago:
Double decker buses to be trialled
Double decker buses could soon be on the roads of Auckland.
A number of bus operators want to trial double decker buses on the city’s busiest bus routes possibly starting later in the year.
Among routes being looked at for the trial are the busy Dominion Road and the Northern Busway on the shore.
Before any trial can begin issues such as the weight, height and width of the buses need to be addressed to ensure they meet national standards.. Possible routes will also have to be checked for access around power lines, shop verandas and bridges.
David Warburton, Auckland Transport chief executive welcomes the move. “There is the potential to increase capacity by around 70 per cent on some of our busiest routes without putting extra buses on our already busy roads.”
And Mayor Len Brown also likes the idea. “Demand for public transport in Auckland is going through the roof. New infrastructure such as the City Rail Link is vital to unclog our roads. But at the same time innovative and forward thinking proposals like this from our bus operators are great ways of maximising our existing route system. I look forward to the trial.”
The trial is just one of many improvements for users of public transport in Auckland.
The frequency of services on the shoulder peak of the Northern Express has been increased to four minues to respond to existing demand and to future proof for the opening of the Albany Park and Ride extension in the middle of the year.
Mainline Howick and Eastern bus services from Howick/Botany through to the CBD via the Ellerslie Panmure Highway are being streamlined to provide a service at least every 15 minutes. In addition there will be bus service connections to the new Manukau Rail Station.
Cash machines have been installed at Albany, Constellation, Smales Farm and Akoranga Busway Stations to make it easier for commuters.
Plus a review is underway of all bus timetables against actual running information to improve the accuracy and reliability of all bus customer information.
This is what they might look like: As well as adding a “cool” factor to travelling on Auckland’s buses, double-deckers also provide some really useful practical advantages on routes like the Northern Busway and Dominion Road, where we’ve already got very good frequencies but need to keep adding buses simply for capacity reasons. Adding another paid driver and vehicle on the road for each additional 50 passengers is a pretty expensive task – especially at peak times when the bus might only be used for a few trips a day. So increasing the capacity of each vehicle is a great way to run a more efficient bus system.
There are pros and cons when comparing double-decker buses to articulated (bendy) ones. Double-deckers probably have slower loading and alighting times, but take up a lot less street space as they’re only the length of a normal bus.
Overall, it’s good to see the message is getting through to the operators that Auckland desperately needs bigger buses. The most recent tranche of buses to arrive in Auckland are stupidly small when you consider how quickly bus patronage is growing – so today’s announcement is a big step in the right direction.
Some more patronage information today. AT has released it’s February patronage report that shows we have now passed 70m trips per year on PT, the first time it has happened since the late 1950′s. Here are some of the highlights
Auckland public transport patronage totalled 70,201,635 passengers for the 12-months to Feb 2012 an increase of 6,135,469 boardings or +9.6%. This is the first time Auckland public transport patronage has exceeded 70 million passengers since the 1950‟s.
February monthly patronage was 5,967,878 an increase of 457,680 boardings or +8.3% on Feb 2011.
Rail monthly patronage for February is 861,081 an increase of 23,093 boardings or +2.8% on Feb 2011.
Northern Express bus service carried 2,270,667 passenger trips for the 12-months with a growth in Feb 2012 compared to Feb 2011 of +15.4%
Interestingly even though this year was a leap year giving us an extra day in February, due to Waitangi day falling on a Monday the number of working days was the same as last year.
The growth in local bus services (i.e. non NEX buses) which has been happening since the new link services were introduced in August last year has continued which is pleasing but as you can see from the second image the bus services out west are lagging behind. This is likely to largely be because there haven’t really been any network redesigns in the area, something that should be addressed as part of the bus service review currently taking place.
The other thing that has continued recently is the good increases being seen on the ferry network, patronage for the last 12 months is up 12.9%. Some of this has been due to a trail running extra services which AT claim has increased patronage by as much as 86% but it’s not clear if this just from selected stations. It does go to prove once again that increasing frequencies really does help patronage.
Rail patronage appears to have dropped off quite a bit recently only growing by 2.8% compared to last year however this year there were two weekends (including Waitangi weekend) where the rail network was shut down. This saw total patronage for weekends drop by 57% while weekdays still saw decent growth increasing by around 10% compared to last year. As is usual at this time of the year some services start coming under quite a bit of pressure, in Feb three services had average loads over the month in excess of AT’s target of 1.4 (four people standing for every 10 sitting). Two of these services were out west and tend to involve runs that carry a lot of school kids which is just one of the reasons it is a real shame that it looks like we AT has gone back on its promise once again to have 10 minute frequencies out west during the peak times.
Keeping with rail one disappointing thing is the continued poor punctuality of services, I do think that this is one of the things that is starting to hold patronage back and doesn’t seem to have improved much for this month either as my train is at least 10 minutes late to Britomart almost every single day.
It’s easy to criticise Auckland’s public transport system, or wishfully think up additional projects that don’t really have much hope of happening any time particularly soon – but sometimes it’s more difficult to actually celebrate our successes. And we have actually seen some great successes in the past few years. Let’s take a look at public transport patronage totals for each year since 2002: Perhaps most helpfully, let’s compare the 2002-2007 period with the 2007-2011 period: The contrast is, shall we say, significant. After quite a long period of stagnation during the middle of last decade we’ve grown patronage by almost a third over the past four years. That is very very impressive. So where has the growth happened? You get some idea from looking at each individual mode: Once again, if we split at 2007 we get more interesting results:
There are some very useful conclusions we can make from this data:
If we want to meaningfully grow public transport patronage generally we need to be growing all modes, but especially bus patronage.
From 2002-2007 most rail patronage increases seems to have been ‘cannibalised’ bus patronage.
Since 2007 bus patronage has grown massively, being the prime contributor to significant general patronage growth over that time [2/3 of the numbers]. While rail patronage continued its strong growth. So clearly PT patronage growth since 2007 has come from people who previously drove- 17 million trips, that’s a lot of cars off the road. This is the period that we ‘grew the pie’, instead of just slicing it differently.
Imagine if patronage grew by another third in the next four years? It looks clear that the desire to use PT is there, so will we have the capacity and the quality of service that this growth requires?
Well, in theory yes. But in practice unfortunately the Outer Link doesn’t seem to work as well as it should. Let’s run through the issues briefly:
A route that’s meant to be going ‘east-west’ is pretty dumb if it spends most of its time traveling north, then south and then north again (or the reverse). The Mt Eden Road section is particularly counter-intuitive as if you want to head towards Newmarket and Parnell you actually need to be catching a bus heading in the complete opposite direction away from them. All this slow running must also add a huge amount on to the operating costs of the route – particularly pointlessly as the Balmoral Road section just duplicates the 007 route.
The bus spends much more of its time going east-west and much less of its time going north-south, which means more efficient operation, a more logical route and, most importantly, much faster travel times for passengers. We could take this one step further though:
We make a few tradeoffs here. We serve Kingsland instead of Balmoral and we put the bus along Sandringham Road instead of Dominion Road. It also travels along Walters Road instead of Balmoral Road. Advantages are servicing Eden Park, a connection to rail at Kingsland (so potentially a useful rail feeder service from the Walters Rd/Valley Rd area) and less duplication of the 007 route along Balmoral Road. There’s also a fairly logical east-west route all the way from Kingsland to Manukau Road that the service would take.
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