University is back this week, and while I’m not heading off to lectures etc., it is interesting to see the effects that university students have on Auckland’s public transport system. To put it simply, this week it has really groaned under the pressure.
On Monday I managed to avoid the worst of it, as my 240 bus into town doesn’t go down Symonds Street and is therefore the kind of bus that students are likely to avoid rather than catch. So it had fairly normal loadings. The roads though, were definitely significantly busier than usual. On the way home I caught a train to Kingsland, once again to avoid the mess that is Symonds Street. The train wasn’t particularly busier than usual (university students don’t tend to catch trains as much as buses because there’s no really convenient station).
On Tuesday it did become increasingly obvious to me that university was back, as I caught a bus from Avondale into the city at around 10am. This is prime bus-catching time for students, and the trip (which has taken as little as 20 minutes during the uni holidays) took nearly 45 minutes to make its way into the city. It was completely packed out by the time we reached the university, and then probably emptied by about two-thirds at the two university stops. The ongoing Symonds Street roadworks (which would have been finished by now if it hadn’t been for the bad weather last weekend) seem to have really been creating havoc throughout the area, so I’m glad that I’ve chosen to avoid it most days recently by catching the train.
It’s interesting if you have a look at the fluctuations in public transport use over the past few years in Auckland, you can really see the impact university has. The below figure is from ARTA’s latest monthly business report:
What’s immediately obvious is how much bus use dominates. While rail has increased quite a bit over the past four years, it still pales into almost insignificance compared with how many people catch the bus in Auckland. The other thing that’s obvious is the enormous fluctuations in travel by the month. Clearly this is the result of lower use during school and uni holidays, and much higher use when everyone’s at work, school or university. Looking at the graph above, March 2006 and 2007 are really big spikes, while 2008 didn’t fluctuate quite as much as other months (due to much higher use of public transport in general last year). I guess that March stands out because it is the first month of university for the year (so everyone’s going to their classes), there aren’t any school holidays or university holidays, it’s a 31 day month and the weather’s generally not too bad.
Looking forwards to March 2009, I do wonder whether it will be the month that breaks through the 5.5 million trips barrier and pushes towards 6 million public transport trips made. There are a few things that point towards this being possible. Firstly, student numbers at universities and other tertiary institutes are up big time this year – largely due to the recession. Secondly, the increasing share of trips that public transport achieved last year (due to petrol prices) seems to have somewhat stuck around, with the most recent December and January having higher public transport usage than a year before, even though most of the rail network was shut down for almost all of January. Thirdly, it appears that public transport services have generally improved over the past year – particularly rail services. This could help contribute to bigger numbers of users, although I wonder whether the Symonds Street roadworks will prevent record levels from being reached.
I guess I’ll have to look forward to March ARTA report to find out. In the meanwhile, I suggest catching the train where possible! A busy train trip is much faster than a busy bus trip.
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