Occasionally I do ask myself whether Auckland’s public transport is that bad after all. Perhaps it’s because I’ve had a few buses turn up on time, not take forever, I’ve caught a train that provided me with a pleasant trip, or something along those lines. I get lulled into this false sense of security that maybe we’re OK, maybe things don’t really need to change THAT much. Then I end up with days like yesterday, where a combination of patheticness and just plain bad luck on my behalf, made it seem like I spent half the day battling with Auckland’s public transport.
To start things off, yesterday morning I readied myself to catch the 004/005 into town. On Monday morning Leila and I generally have a coffee together up the road, and then I wander across the road to catch the 8.25am bus into town. So 8.25 rolls around, no bus…. not in fact until around 8.40am. Now I know that in the scheme of things having a bus turn up 15 minutes late isn’t the worst thing that can happen, but the strange thing was that the 8.40am bus that turned up wasn’t a late 8.25 – it was just the normal 8.40am bus. So for some reason the 8.25 just didn’t exist – rather frustrating (especially at that time of the morning).
I spent all morning in town, sorting out stuff there – and then in the afternoon needed to head back to Avondale. I could have caught the bus back home and then driven to Avondale – but that seemed a bit silly considering there is a direct bus between the two. I was also quite curious to see how the roadworks along Symonds Street are progressing – as the university section should be fairly close to completion. The bus turned up on time, a good start, and the university section of Symonds Street has had some really good progress made along it, hopefully leading to the bus lanes becoming operational in the fairly near future. In the meanwhile though, the bus trips along Symonds Street – and just in general – are pretty painfully slow. The bus driver on my 224 route seemed like the bus equivalent of the “Nana drivers” who cruise along streets at 30 kph. Added to that, just about everyone who got on the bus seemed to have to dig through their bags for their wallets and then dig through their wallets for a $20 note, make the bus driver dig around for the required change, all while asking for detailed directions about where to get off for whatever place they were hoping to go. It’s certainly enormously frustrating to be sitting there thinking how utterly slowly the whole process is going. From the city to my work in Avondale is around 9.6km, via the route of the 224 bus. Now, the bus took about 40-45 minutes to complete that trip – creating an average speed of around 13 kph. Wow you could certainly cycle the trip faster than that, and could almost jog it quicker. Do Auckland’s buses need to be quite that slow?
After finishing off my work for the afternoon, I came to the conclusion that I certainly couldn’t face another bus trip of that length any time soon – so I’d catch the train. The Avondale train station is about a 10 minute walk from my work, so I set off early enough to get there – and to zip in to a dairy and get some cash out for the train trip. It would have been nice to use my bus pass for the train trip, but of course Auckland still lives in the 1960s when it comes to ticketing and our train tickets are not interchangeable with bus passes. After walking for yonks in the wrong direction to find a dairy, I came back to notice that my 5.05pm train was departing the Avondale train station – at 5.01pm! As the saying goes “the only thing worse than a late bus or train, is an early bus or train”. So I missed that one. The next train did arrive a bit early too (or were they in fact both 10 minutes late?) and the train zipped me into town in under 20 minutes – twice the speed of my geriatric 224 bus route!
As I rushed out of Britomart train station to catch my 005 bus back to Herne Bay I saw it pull away from the stop before I could get there. It was leaving on time, but I kinda felt like it was no real surprise I would miss it – considering my general poor luck with public transport.
A lot of emphasis does get put on improving Auckland’s railway system – perhaps to the neglect (at least among public transport advocates) of essential steps that need to be taken to improve the bus networks too. The huge majority of public transport users in Auckland catch the bus, and that’s likely to remain the case in the foreseeable future. Buses clearly need to work out ways to board much faster (smart-card ticketing is essential for this as it doesn’t require driver interaction) and to also travel faster (bus lanes are essential for this). A good argument could be made that getting faster boarding times and more bus lanes is perhaps one way in which the greatest number of public transport users would benefit. Not that I’m saying we should ignore rail improvements of course though!
Processing...