There was a very concerning article in the NZ Herald today about possible cuts to funding for rail, and public transport in general, in the near future:

Auckland rail passengers are likely to face fare rises early next year and pensioners may have their free travel trimmed to meet a funding shortfall.

The Auckland Regional Transport Authority will next month consider fare rises it expects will be required by a new policy of the Government’s Transport Agency, which believes Auckland rail passengers receive heftier subsidies than Wellingtonians.

Holders of SuperGold cards in Auckland may also have to make do with free public transport trips during off-peak periods only, rather than through the afternoon and evening rush hours, bringing them into line with pensioners in other centres.

Other cost-cutting measures the transport authority will report to an Auckland Regional Council finance meeting this morning include reducing its Maxx customer contact centre staff and delaying the return of passenger trains to Onehunga by five months, until July.

Although KiwiRail has indicated it may not be able to complete track signalling work for Onehunga by then in any case, the authority will similarly hold back timetable improvements on the southern and eastern lines in response to a potential funding shortfall of more than $60 million over three years.

That does not include a cut by the national Transport Agency of $4.5 million to what Auckland territorial councils have sought for building and maintaining bus shelters.

Potential rail fare rises in February are not directly related to the funding shortfall, but to a new fare-box policy being formulated in Wellington by the agency, which shares operating subsidies with regional councils.

Regional transport authority chief Fergus Gammie says the agency has highlighting a difference in fares between Auckland and Wellington, and he believes the proposed policy will “most likely” mean increases for his rail passengers.

“Any potential rail fare increase would be implemented from February 2010,” he said in a letter to the regional council.

Although that will be three years since the cost of Auckland rail travel last rose, regional council chairman Mike Lee said more effort should be put instead into recovering an estimated 6 per cent loss of revenue from fare-dodgers.

The authority meanwhile intends reducing its purchases of spare parts for rail rolling stock, to the extent possible without affecting services, although it has ruled out skimping on heavy maintenance on safety and reliability grounds.

It has confirmed a decision to stop the daily Helensville passenger rail service on December 24, although the regional council is investigating ways of keeping trains running as far as Huapai or Waimauku without Government funding.

A potential loss to pensioners of free public transport trips around Auckland during afternoon peak periods is expected to save $1.3 million a year. That would see them joining SuperGold card holders in other centres, who are entitled to free travel in off-peak periods only, and they would have to make do with a 40 per cent discount on fares in the afternoon peaks.

Mr Gammie said in his letter that the three-year national land transport programme, an $8.7 billion Government package of which about 75 per cent is earmarked for roads, made no allowance for inflation for bus, rail or ferry services.

Neither did it include enough money for planned new rail service improvements or any funding at all to promote alternative transport, including walking and cycling, or for school and workplace travel plans.

The authority also intends curbing its use of consultants and marketing programmes, and cutting three staff from its Maxx call centre.

Mr Lee welcomed the move to reduce professional fees, but was disappointed “people working at the coalface” were to be laid off while the authority was becoming weighed down by “top heavy management.”

He said regional council members and senior managers were trying to lead by example, by doing without pay rises this year, yet there appeared to be an “enormous number” of transport authority staff receiving more than $100,000 a year.

The authority’s annual report lists 35 staff on salaries higher than $100,000 compared with 25 last year, and indicates a 12.5 per cent pay rise for Mr Gammie, to between $350,000 and $360,000.

A Transport Agency spokesman said the organisation was investing $2.8 billion over the next three years – an increase of $613 million – to improve Auckland’s transport systems and to boost its economic growth.

OFF THE RAILS

Proposed Auckland public transport budget moves:
* Limit free public transport for pensioners to off-peak hours.
* Delay timetable improvements on the southern and eastern rail lines.
* Delay opening Onehunga branch line.
* Axe trial Helensville rail services.
* Reduce rail rolling stock spare parts purchases.
* Reduce grants to schools for travel plans.
* Curb consultants’ fees.
* Cut customer services staff by three and defer IT enhancements at Maxx transport call centre.

It appears as though this funding “squeeze” is the outcome of the revised Government Policy Statement, that was released in May, and how that filtered through to the National Land Transport Programme, that was released in August. The GPS shifted a lot of money away from public transport investment, both in services and infrastructure, into construction of roads – most particularly into the construction of state highways (especially the roads of national significance). There was a bit of confusion when the NLTP came out as to what it meant for public transport – although some careful analysis showed that it wasn’t particularly good news for public transport. Overall, it seems like funding for public transport services has effectively been held to its current levels – which ultimately makes it very difficult for ARTA to do “anything new”, at the very same time that we have long-planned upgrades to the rail network such as Newmarket station, New Lynn station, the Onehunga Line and the Manukau Branch Line finally coming to fruition over the next year and a bit. That seems rather odd.

Another thing that has seemingly “come out of the blue” a bit is this whole “Farebox Recovery Policy” from NZTA. The goals of the policy are potentially quite worrying for those of us hoping for improvements to, rather than cuts to, public transport over the next few years:

The Draft Farebox Recovery Policy is designed to address the following:
1) Help improve the effectiveness and efficiency of public transport services
2) Ensure that the costs and benefits of providing public transport services are shared fairly between those who use public transport and those who don’t
3) Improve the transparency and consistency of the approach to farebox recovery implemented by regional councils throughout the country
4) Set out NZTA’s expectations on having a fair distribution of costs for providing public transport services
5) Arrest the decline in users’ contribution to the total cost of providing public transport services. This contribution has been falling for a number of years and is forecasted to continue to decline without intervention
Enable the NZTA to undertake better benchmarking and monitoring of farebox recovery ratios throughout New Zealand.

Basically, it’s a way to make public transport “pay its way” more, which will inevitably result in less money being made available for subsidising services, which will lead to higher fares or service cuts. While I accept that some level of control over farebox recovery ratios is probably a good idea, if we’re going to start worrying about the level of subsidies to public transport services, shouldn’t we be doing something about the massive subsidies enjoyed by road users too?

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10 comments

  1. It’s ridiculous to cut subsidies for one form of transport while not doing so for another… Don’t people get carbon pricing is coming and will be forever..?

  2. If the fare rise on rail is equalisation with the buses, then this is understandable IMO. Ideally they’d both move to $1.50 which is up for train and down slightly for bus, but in the current environment highly unlikely. Always thought it strange that for example Britomart – Kingsland by train is $1.40 but Vic St – Kingsland by bus is $1.60

  3. I think small raises in the fares is probably OK, as it has been a while since the last increase. I also think it would be sensible to match up bus & train fares – considering that integrated ticketing is (supposedly) not too far away.

  4. Equalising fares is a good idea, especially as the first step toward integrated fares. A little unfortunate but realistically this involves putting train fares up to match buses.

  5. The NZTA and the Treasury (where I think this is really coming from) have mentioned this Auckland/Wellington fare subsidy difference is several docs I have seen before.
    They seem to completely ignore the fact that Wgtn and AK PT systems are at completely different stages of development, and the layout of the cities is very different. Wellington has had a reasonable PT system with good patronage for many years so it does not need to work to attract new users out of their cars. Wgtn also has a more condensed CBD, and only really two main corridors through the suburban areas which make provision of PT services much simpler.
    On the other hand, Auckland needs to work hard to move people out of their cars, and the wider city is much more complicated which makes provision of services more difficult and thus more expensive.
    I would also say that congestion is worse in Auckland so the benefits of moving people out their cars are higher.

  6. A big difference is that Wellington has electric trains, which are far cheaper to run, while Auckland’s stuck with diesels. Of course, that’s being sorted out, although it seems like that fact is totally ignored by the boffins in Wellington.

  7. Whoops, my first response makes no sense (wrong thread)…

    It’s possible fares will be raised in Auckland to achieve parity with Wellington and then we get electric trains making us more efficient dollar for dollar…

  8. Unfortunately rail prices should increase to match bus prices, for intergrated ticketing reasons, however welington is not a fair comparison due to the investment they have received, compare them once we finish electrification and the CBD tunnnel project.

  9. I agree, and new electric trains should be far cheaper to operate than the ancient trains we run at the moment. Integrated ticketing shoulf also mean lower operating costs as fewer staff on the trains would be required.

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