With the release of the station boarding data in the post yesterday by Mr Anderson, and the recent sluggish patronage growth, its perhaps worthwhile looking at how things are going compared to projections. Again we can look at the supporting report for a lot of information as AT/AC attempted to answer one part of Steven Joyce’s question relating to evidence of patronage growth, particularly in the morning peak.
First of all, anyone who has followed this blog for long enough will know about how rail patronage has increased. In 2003 before Britomart opened rail patronage was sitting at about very low base of 2.5 million trips per annum, since that time it has shot up to over 10 million trips per annum now. While it is off a low base, it has easily outstripped population growth and the report says it has seen per capita usage jump from 2.2 trips per person to 7.3. over the same time morning peak patronage has increased very strongly going from 1,012 people arriving at Britomart during the two hour peak to 6055 in 2012. What the report notes is interesting however is that the percentage of off peak patronage growth, particularly in recent years has outstripped the level seen during the peak which is useful for showing that the improvements aren’t just about getting more peak users but that there are benefits off peak too.
It is pretty clear that that there has been some pretty big increases but the next question is if the increases were a result of a cannibalising of bus patronage. So the reported looked at the AM peak numbers and compared those with private vehicle numbers over time and from that we can see that both rail and buses have increased there share when it comes to accessing the city centre although for some reason ferry patronage wasn’t included which would explain why private vehicle usage is at 56% when the 2012 numbers were 50:50 between PT and car.
But what about those projections, well each of the projects over the years have had some form of projections attached to them. In 2001 when the council of the time was putting its case together for Britomart the report notes that the current transport model used was still being developed however it was working enough to get some basic results. There appear to have been two years that were modelled forecasting 10 and 20 years out (2011 and 2021) and the numbers are below:
So with the exception of outbound passengers in the morning peak, the actual numbers are considerably higher than even the 2021 projections (40% higher than 2011 prediction and 15% higher than 2021). In fact the change in daily patronage out of the station just between 2010 and 2011 was greater than what was predicted to occur between 2011 and 2021. What’s more the author of the report notes that the projections included the network and frequencies being in a similar state to what they are in now and included electrification.
The next set of projections come from the 2006 rail development plan which is what really kicked off project DART and electrification. While it appears we are tracking at less than what was forecast, there are some fairly important reasons for that. The forecast was based on by now there being more frequent services and importantly was based on electrification being started almost straight away and completed in 2011. It was however delayed by both the previous and current governments and we are now not expecting all the trains to roll out to the network till 2015/16. The report notes that the 2016 forecast patronage has now been revised up higher from 15.7 million trips to 17.3 million.
Electrification had been forecast to be completed in 2011
We also have projections for Onehunga, which ended up opening later than expected (from memory it was initially said that it would open in 2009 but didn’t open till late 2010. Even so AM actual numbers seem to be a little bit ahead of projections while the all day numbers are not far off.
This post is starting to get a little long so tomorrow I will look at some of the reasons that have been identified as being responsible for the increase in patronage but it is pretty clear from reading through the report so far that we seem to constantly underestimate rail patronage. As the same modelling is being used, that means it is quite likely that projections in the CCFAS and the original business case have also been underestimated and that could have significant impact on the outcome of the economic analysis.
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