What was interesting though was to note the people on board the bus (which went up and down at various points of the 50 minute each way trip). While there was quite a mix of types, including what seemed like most of a kindergarten class at one point, what seemed particularly noticeable to me was a big absence of people between around 20 and 65 years of age. This dichotomy, with only the old and the young seeming to use public transport, was also evident last weekend when I visited New Lynn train station to take some photos of how it’s coming along. All the people waiting for the train, or for a bus at the rather sad looking old New Lynn bus terminal, once again either seemed to be teenagers or pensioners.

I suppose that the obvious conclusion to come to is that during these “off-peak” times, generally it seems as though the only people who use public transport are those who don’t own a car: either they’re too young, too old or too poor. Now obviously it’s crucial that public transport is there for these people, as if they had no transport choices whatsoever it would be grossly unfair, but it does seem to me as though the whole off-peak public transport system is designed around the idea of only providing for those who unable/unwilling to drive – in other words, it’s a second-class system with nobody there by choice.

One only has to look at how busy Auckland’s road remain at weekends and during ‘inter-peak’ times on weekdays to realise that an awful lot of people still need to get around the city during these off peak times. The majority of trips in urban areas aren’t commuting trips, but rather simple “errands” trips – getting milk from the diary, dropping the kids at school or at a friend’s house, visiting friends and so forth. Yet it would seem that for just about all these trips, one would only ever use public transport if you didn’t have a choice.

In some respects, off-peak car trips aren’t so much of a problem as long-peak hour commuting trips – for which public transport can offer a service that people would choose to use over driving (although generally only where public transport priority exists in the form of bus lanes or a railway line, or when parking costs a lot). Congestion is lower during off-peak times, so the benefits of removing vehicles from the road through offering a better public transport option aren’t seen as so significant – or at least that appears to be the argument in NZTA’s economic evaluation manual when it comes to assessing the benefits of public transport: As you can see, the benefits (particularly the “road traffic reduction benefits”) are way higher for getting peak time PT boardings than off-peak PT boardings.

However, this misses something potentially quite important. As I was slowly making my way out to Manukau on the bus (and this would have worked even better on a train) I was able to read through some background information relating to the meeting that I was attending, and I was able to keep up with emails and so forth. In short, I was able to to productive in a way that simply wouldn’t have been possible if I was driving my way out there. Sure, the bus trip seemed to take forever (another thing that hopefully a train service would improve upon), but surely there was an economic gain from me being able to be somewhat productive during that time.

People have to travel between offices to attend meetings all the time when it comes to their work, and I imagine in Auckland that about 99.99% of those trips at the moment are undertaken by car or by taxi (the latter of which I suppose enables the possibility of being productive while on the go, but of course is very expensive). To me that seems like a huge amount of lost economic activity – with everyone driving when (at least theoretically) if they were on a bus or train they could be being somewhat productive with that time.

So what’s causing the almost complete absence of people making public transport trips for these purposes? Well I got a clue when I said that I’d think about catching the bus out to Manukau, with the general response being along the lines of “good luck with that”. In short, it would seem as though the image problem faced by public transport is particularly severe when it comes to off-peak public transport. Sure, I could have done my trip quite a bit faster by car (which is an issue that needs attention in my opinion), but otherwise the service was reasonably convenient, reasonably inexpensive ($10 return wouldn’t have paid the petrol between the CBD and Manukau return I suspect, and pales into insignificance compared to a taxi fare or rental car) and everything turned up when it should have – so it was reliable.

Perhaps some of the answer is a hangover from when Auckland’s public transport was truly terrible. Perhaps some is because we rarely hear about public transport when it goes right, only when it goes wrong. Perhaps it is some sort of anti-bus bias – that perhaps could be resolved through the upcoming rail link to Manukau (even more so when we have sparkly new train to run on it).

In the end, I think there are significant, and real, benefits out of somehow breaking down this mentality that you’d only use public transport for a non-commuting trip if you didn’t have any alternative. Workers could be more productive, workplaces could save significant amounts of money currently spent on rental cars, taxi-fares and so forth, and unnecessary car trips could be eliminated – with the resulting environmental benefits that would bring. However, I really do think that something drastic needs to be done to improve the image of public transport for this to be possible, and – critically – it needs to be a lot faster. Spending almost two hours of Friday on a bus really did rip a big chunk out of my day.

The idea I had would be for ARTA to somehow get radio stations which give traffic updates on how congested the motorways are each morning and evening, to also mention how the trains are running and how the buses are running along the Rapid Transit Network. I guess occasionally there might be hold ups on the rail network, but a simple message saying “the Northern Motorway is congested from Greville Road to the Bridge, about a 45 minute drive, or 25 minutes on the Northern Express” would raise awareness of public transport at exactly the right time – when people are stuck in traffic.

Here are some ideas I have (going somewhat chronologically):

1. The opening of the Orewa-Puhoi Motorway. Massive traffic jams and Steven Joyce’s announcement that he wanted to extend the motorway to Wellsford.
2. The cancellation of the Regional Petrol Tax, throwing into doubt rail electrification, integrated ticketing and a variety of other projects.
3. Changes to the Government Policy Statement, shifting masses of money into state highway building and away from other transport areas.
4. The Super City announcements (partly related to transport!)
5. The changes to the Waterview Connection route (which have subsequently largely been reversed).
6. The Harbour Bridge Crossing. My word that was an enormous amount of fun – for one morning we stuck it to NZTA and took back the Harbour Bridge.
7. The announcement of changes to the Public Transport Management Act. This will most likely be a bigger story during 2010, and didn’t get much press, but could certainly have some significant repercussions for Auckland transport.
8. Integrated ticketing contract awarded to Thales. Although there was certainly a lot of drama surrounding this initial announcement in June – before things were finalised just a few weeks back.
9. The bigger trucks debate. We still haven’t had it confirmed whether these larger trucks will be allowed on New Zealand’s roads yet.
10. Announcement of a study into the CBD Rail Tunnel. Perhaps this could win the award for the most under-recognised transport story of the year.
11. The Puhoi-Wellsford Motorway debate. Mike Lee’s “holiday highway” term has spread like wildfire.
12. The establishment of the Auckland Transport Agency as the transport branch of the future Super City. Originally I thought this was a good step, now I’m very much not so sure.
13. Possible cutbacks to electrification. Fortunately these didn’t happen quite so harshly in the end.
14. Slow progress on the Onehunga Line. A source of much frustration for public transport campaigners, it finally looks like progress is being made on building the stations for this line.
15. The $860 million widening of the Northwest Motorway. This one came rather out of the blue, and I think is an enormous waste of money due to induced traffic.
16. The debate over prioritising projects. Otherwise known as the ARC versus the government.
17. The release of the draft Regional Land Transport Strategy. Most probably Auckland’s best transport strategy in 60 years.
18. The debate over whether Auckland’s next harbour crossing should be a bridge or a tunnel. Personally I vote for a rail tunnel and that’s it.
19. The bus lock-out. I wonder if the NZ Bus public relations person has lost their job yet? What a botch-up that was on their behalf.
20. The announcement of funding for Auckland’s rail electrification. Yay!
21. The end of the Helensville train service. Many say it was doomed from the start and I would have to agree – Helensville is probably just not big enough to justify a rail service.
22. Another change to the Waterview Connection route! We’re almost back to where we were pre-May, which I guess is a good thing for the local community.
23. Transmission Gully gets the go ahead (not Auckland I know). This is despite it having an incredibly low cost-benefit ratio of around 0.3-0.5.
24. The Snapper/Thales battle over integrated ticketing. I think in the end Thales have won – although that will depend on the extent to which the PTMA is gutted next year.

A pretty busy year all up actually. The two issues which drove the most traffic to this site were, interestingly enough, the May Waterview Connection announcement and the October bus lockout.

Your thoughts? Top story? Top 5? Anything I’ve missed?

For a start, after leaving house (at a random time, I know, I probably should live my life to a timetable) my daughter Amalia and I reached the top of our street to see a damn 017 bus sitting at the bus stop. We ran like crazy towards it, and it didn’t move – until we reached it and discovered that it wasn’t our bus, but rather a broken down bus waiting for assistance. It would have been nice for the driver to change his sign to read “Not in Service” rather than leaving it showing the route and its destination. As the next bus was around 20 minutes away (and possibly not guaranteed to arrive in any case) we decided to walk to Ponsonby (only about 5-10 minutes away) so that we could catch the Link Bus, which runs every 15 minutes on a Sunday.

While waiting for the Link Bus, not one but two 017 buses decided to come along, but of course since we were at the bus stop for the Link Bus and not the 017, they didn’t stop for us – even with much vigorous arm-waving to try to encourage a driver to take pity on a guy with his 5 year old daughter – but to no avail. Eventually, our Link Bus did come along – and I think it had been quite a long gap since the last one as the people we were waiting at the bus stop with had got the point of making pointed loud comments wondering whether the bus would ever show up. Then the trip on the Link Bus into town seemed to take an age – perhaps we were just unlucky with the lights but I’m sure that my usual 005 bus trip doesn’t take as long as this Link trip did – even though they basically follow the same route.

Eventually we made it to Britomart, and were reasonably in luck to find out that our train was “only” 8 minutes away. I bought tickets (bloody annoying that my bus pass can’t be used on trains, perhaps that can be the first part of integrated ticketing to be sorted out) and we went down to the platforms to wait for the train. Oddly enough, even though the train we were due to catch was the next one departing from Britomart, platform 2 (the platform for our train) was the only one without a train at it. As the time our train meant to depart came and went, there was a platform announcement that it was running 5 minutes late. Goodness knows how you can stuff up running trains on-time on a Sunday, but I’m amazed at the depths Auckland’s system can plumb so I wasn’t surprised. Eventually the train did show up in the Britomart tunnel (around 5 minutes after scheduled departure time) – but then bizarrely sat there for a couple of minute doing nothing. I imagined at first it was waiting for a train within the station to leave, but as none was due to leave until after us, I really don’t know what was going on – I can perhaps imagine something along the lines of the following conversation between the train driver and whoever runs the signalling/trackwork:

Driver: Ah yeah, I’m in the tunnel, can I proceed to platform 2.
Britomart station person: Sorry, the guy who’s meant to be doing the points is just finishing his lunch, can you hold on for a couple of minutes.
Driver: Yeah sure, no worries.
Britomart station person: OK he’s back, now let’s go through a 14,894 step procedure to do this.

Perhaps I am being a bit uncharitable, but it does seem as though the whole organisation of getting trains in and out of Britomart is run on 19th century pen-and-paper technology, and there is an enormous lack of urgency about everything. Yes sure, it’s a Sunday, but still if your train is getting towards 10 minutes late a little bit of effort to get the train into the platform, and then out again ASAP wouldn’t go amiss. Eventually we were on our way again – and the trip between Britomart and Sylvia Park passed by fairly quickly. Somewhat annoyingly, even though we were on a four-car ADK set two of the carriages were closed off so everyone had to crowd together into two carriages rather than being able to spread ourselves out throughout the whole train. Hopefully that becomes a thing of the past once we have automated ticketing on our trains! Below is a photo of our train as we got off it at Sylvia Park:

By this stage it had probably been well over an hour since we originally left home. But anyway, we did our shopping – which was reasonably successful now as I am about halfway through all my Xmas shopping – and then left the mall to catch a train at around 2.15pm. Unfortunately that meant we had just missed the previous train, but I figured the wait wouldn’t be too long, as we reached the station at around 2.20pm – meaning around a 20 minute wait until the next train was due to come along. By this time I was starting to get a bit tired, as was Amalia – although she’d done pretty well so far to walk all the way to the bus stop, then walk around the shopping centre for a couple of hours. At around 2.44pm, when the next train was supposed to arrive a train did come along but it just barrelled straight through the station at around 100kph – a bit freaky when you’re expecting it to stop. I figured that perhaps it was just running as something of a support train to provide greater frequencies out of the city, and that our one would come along fairly shortly. But no, it took until 3.10pm – almost 50 minutes since first arriving at the station – until our train finally came along and whisked us back to the city. Certainly spent a long time staring at this view:

Fortunately from there it didn’t take too long for the 017 bus to come along, and although that bus took forever to get us home (thanks to the million sets of traffic lights on Queen Street that give no prioritisation to buses) we eventually made it – only around two hours after first leaving the mall. Overall, it was quite depressing to realise the incredibly sorry state of Auckland’s public transport on a Sunday. The terribly frequencies, the train that just decided it didn’t feel like stopping for us at Sylvia Park, the general lack of urgency from all involved in trying to keep things to the timetable – and the general amateurish feeling I got. I heard at least four of five people throughout the day commenting on how terrible Auckland’s public transport system is, and those were only the ones within earshot.

I must say I thought we’d got beyond the point of Auckland’s public transport being a complete embarrassment. Perhaps today was just a bit of a bad day, or are all Sundays like this?

1. Why can’t bus drivers on the Link Bus at Victoria Park tell you exactly how long it will be until their timetable says they’ll be leaving again?
2. Why is the pedestrian traffic light near the intersection of Durham Street and Queen Street so pathetic in taking so long to give pedestrians a turn that everyone jay-walks across the road anyway?
3. Why is the right-turn arrow phase from Queen Street into Karangahape Road (heading up Queen Street) so short? A lot of buses need to make that turn, so it’s stupid to give them such a short phase.
4. Why are pedestrians crossing Jervois Road at the intersection with Redmond Street and Dedwood Terrace held in such disdain that they have to wait two phases to cross the road?
5. Why is graffiti around the motorway system cleaned up almost immediately while that along the railway corridors stays in place for months, if not years?
6. How on earth can Manukau City Council justify giving Great South Road a speed limit of 70kph as it passes through their town centre? Do they want to kill off pedestrians?
7. Why does there have to be a difference between the 004 and 005 bus routes? I mean seriously, what does that do other than confuse people and put passengers off using the service?
8. Why is our main street a four-lane highway? (OK that can’t be particularly easily fixed, but it’s annoying all the same!)
9. Why is the 224 bus always 15 minutes late?
10. Why are we able to roll out real-time information signs for buses (seemingly quite a complicated task), but not for trains (seemingly a relatively simple task)?

Please feel free to add in your “pet peeves” about Auckland and its transport system. Perhaps I will be able to gather them all together and email them to a whole bunch of people at Councils, ARTA, NZTA, KiwiRail or whoever else is responsible and we can get some action on the simple stuff we should be getting right, but just aren’t.