Goodbye Helensville Train Service
Well it sounds like the Helensville rail trial service will end on December 24th, according to ARTA’s press release:
The Auckland Regional Transport Authority (ARTA) and the Auckland Regional Council (ARC) said today that the trial rail service to Helensville would end in December this year, just prior to the three week shut down for the continuation of rail upgrade work around the network.…
19 Comments Transfers: pros and cons
When it comes to public transport network planning, the vexed issue of transfers always comes up. Inherently, public transport routes are fairly inflexible while travel patterns tend to be very flexible. This means that your trip isn’t always catered for by the route the runs past where you are – so therefore you might need to catch two buses to complete your trip, or a bus and a train.…
Integrated Ticketing – the saga continues
There have been a couple of articles in the NZ Herald over the past few days that show Infratil, through their subsidiary Snapper, have been busy trying a last ditch effort to win the contract for Auckland’s integrated ticketing system. This is despite ARTA and NZTA having now chosen Thales as their preferred supplier on no fewer than three occasions.…
Analysing our Bus Network
The MAXX website has a few regional maps that look at all the bus routes in Auckland – split into Central, Northern, Eastern, Southern and Western suburbs. They are useful diagrams in one sense – in that you can find out what routes serve your house and perhaps where you need to get to – although the Journey Planner is pretty useful for that task too.…
24/7 Buses to the Airport
I was quite heartened to see that the Airport Express bus route is having its timetable expanded, so that it will run all night, every night of the week. Buses will operate along the route (which roughly goes: Queen Street-Symonds Street-Mt Eden Road-SH20 Motorway-SH20A-Airport) every 15 minutes throughout the day, and then every 30 minutes at night time.…
Electrification Progress
While there are still a lot of unanswered questions about the funding for Auckland’s electric trains, the project to actually put up the wires is slowly chugging into action. Thanks to Andrew from the Silverstream blog, we have a scanned in flyer from KiwiRail providing more information on the progress of this critical project.…
Urban Transit vs Commuter Transit
As I mentioned a few posts ago, I am reading a very interesting book at the moment by Paul Mees, called “A Very Public Solution“. The first few chapters of the book outlined the various problems with auto-dependency, why public transport use has declined so much over the past few decades, and why many of the steps taken to supposedly improve matters have actually ended up making them worse.…
Could we be the next Perth?
A very interesting report from the Chief Executive of the Perth Public Transport Authority, looking at the extraordinary growth in patronage they’ve had on their public transport system – particularly the rail network – in the last few years. Here are a few excerpts:
Total boardings across our system went up more than 18 per cent to almost 129 million.…
Where to now for the bus dispute?
Well the bus drivers have rejected the latest pay offer:
Union negotiators say they will regroup and assess their next step after the Auckland bus drivers and cleaners they represent today rejected a pay offer from their employer.
The offer of an 11.5 per cent pay rise spread over three years was contained in an agreement reached last Friday between New Zealand Bus and the four unions making up the Auckland Combined Unions.…
Induced Traffic Demand
One of the big debates in transport circles is the concept of ‘induced demand’ or ‘induced traffic’. As its simplest, induced demand means that when you make an improvement to a transport corridor, that improvement will encourage more people to use that transport corridor – or more simply: “if you build it they will come”.…
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