Well I attended the open evening on the reopening of the Onehunga Branch Line this evening, and it was reasonably enlightening. It was good to catch up with a few fellow public transport advocates, and in general I think ARTA must have been extremely pleased with the turnout for the evening. I passed on to ARTA the feedback I wrote for the Campaign for Better Transport, and had some interesting discussions with both ARTA and KiwiRail staff. In terms of the five key points I detailed in the feedback form, ARTA seems to have the following response:
- Service must terminate at Britomart. This seems almost certain to happen, as ARTA realise the success of the Onehunga Line is very dependent upon people being able to get all the way into town, and to not have to change trains at Newmarket. Nobody wanted to fully guarantee it, so let’s not count our chickens until the service is operating “some time early next year”.
- Half hourly off-peak and weekend services. Unfortunately it seems as though ARTA are going to go with hourly off-peak and weekend frequencies to start with, with half-hourly frequencies only during peak hour. I pointed out that this was likely to make the service less attractive to people, and therefore is likely to result in lower patronage, making it very difficult to justify increasing patronage in the future. Apparently nothing is fully settled yet though, so I hope they change their mind on this one – particularly inter-peak on weekdays and during Dress-Smart’s opening hours on weekends.
- ARTA to work with Dress-Smart. There seemed to be quite a lot of promise with relation to this point, with ARTA confirming they’ve talked to Dress-Smart about working together and making the service a success. Hopefully this will mean real-time information signs within the mall, good signage between the mall and the train station.
- One month free trial period. Obviously this one was a bit difficult for ARTA representatives to answer, as it comes back to the amount of funding available. They did recognise that it was a good idea though.
- Re-routing buses closer to the train station. Once again promising noises were made on this. Apparently there will also be a small park and ride area provided as well.
So overall it was definitely worthwhile going along. I found out a bit more information on the CBD Rail Tunnel too, but I might save that for a future post.
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I was pretty impressed with everything they said today except the frequencies… And I got the impression they would like the higher frequencies and to gaurantee a Britomart termination but their hands are tied a bit…
The small park and ride and bike lockers were good news… I liked the station designs and locations…
They had discussed free fares for the first month amongst themselves and got quite animated in a good way when I mentioned it…
It seemed they were really aware of the oppurtunity to make it “Slylia Park 2” as I heard some wise young person describe it, which is why the hourly Saturday frequencies were so suprising…
I think they can be talked out of hourly frequencies on the weekend 😉
I get the feeling that ARTA often feel like they’re a lone hand in promoting better public transport for Auckland, so they do really like having people like us out there supporting them and pushing them to go even better.
Agreed! ARTA do not have to feel alone. We can put pressure on Central Government to make things happen. Although, I am seriously concerned about electrification funding 🙁
Definitely a Sylvia Park #2 in the making. Nearly every mall south of the Shore can be reached via a train and 2 minute walk from the station. Dressmart will be twits not to cash in!
Glad to have met you Josh!
William
The ARTA people seemed very assured eletrification was definitely happening… I just think it is to far progressed for National to drop now, it makes more economic sense to keep going…
The big question is “when?”
Simply put – when they’re preparing for elections! 😉