I suppose I was asking for it, hoping to take public transport from Herne Bay to Sylvia Park on a Sunday and expecting it to not be complete and utter rubbish. Although, on the other hand past experiences haven’t been too bad. Although the bus route from here into town, and train from Britomart to Sylvia Park only run at half-hour intervals on Sundays (does anyone actually know why Sunday timetables have to be different to Saturdays, the patronage never seems hugely different?) usually in the past they have aligned reasonably. Well today proved everything wrong, and to me really showed in perfect clarity everything that is wrong with public transport in Auckland.
For a start, after leaving house (at a random time, I know, I probably should live my life to a timetable) my daughter Amalia and I reached the top of our street to see a damn 017 bus sitting at the bus stop. We ran like crazy towards it, and it didn’t move – until we reached it and discovered that it wasn’t our bus, but rather a broken down bus waiting for assistance. It would have been nice for the driver to change his sign to read “Not in Service” rather than leaving it showing the route and its destination. As the next bus was around 20 minutes away (and possibly not guaranteed to arrive in any case) we decided to walk to Ponsonby (only about 5-10 minutes away) so that we could catch the Link Bus, which runs every 15 minutes on a Sunday.
While waiting for the Link Bus, not one but two 017 buses decided to come along, but of course since we were at the bus stop for the Link Bus and not the 017, they didn’t stop for us – even with much vigorous arm-waving to try to encourage a driver to take pity on a guy with his 5 year old daughter – but to no avail. Eventually, our Link Bus did come along – and I think it had been quite a long gap since the last one as the people we were waiting at the bus stop with had got the point of making pointed loud comments wondering whether the bus would ever show up. Then the trip on the Link Bus into town seemed to take an age – perhaps we were just unlucky with the lights but I’m sure that my usual 005 bus trip doesn’t take as long as this Link trip did – even though they basically follow the same route.
Eventually we made it to Britomart, and were reasonably in luck to find out that our train was “only” 8 minutes away. I bought tickets (bloody annoying that my bus pass can’t be used on trains, perhaps that can be the first part of integrated ticketing to be sorted out) and we went down to the platforms to wait for the train. Oddly enough, even though the train we were due to catch was the next one departing from Britomart, platform 2 (the platform for our train) was the only one without a train at it. As the time our train meant to depart came and went, there was a platform announcement that it was running 5 minutes late. Goodness knows how you can stuff up running trains on-time on a Sunday, but I’m amazed at the depths Auckland’s system can plumb so I wasn’t surprised. Eventually the train did show up in the Britomart tunnel (around 5 minutes after scheduled departure time) – but then bizarrely sat there for a couple of minute doing nothing. I imagined at first it was waiting for a train within the station to leave, but as none was due to leave until after us, I really don’t know what was going on – I can perhaps imagine something along the lines of the following conversation between the train driver and whoever runs the signalling/trackwork:
Driver: Ah yeah, I’m in the tunnel, can I proceed to platform 2.
Britomart station person: Sorry, the guy who’s meant to be doing the points is just finishing his lunch, can you hold on for a couple of minutes.
Driver: Yeah sure, no worries.
Britomart station person: OK he’s back, now let’s go through a 14,894 step procedure to do this.
Perhaps I am being a bit uncharitable, but it does seem as though the whole organisation of getting trains in and out of Britomart is run on 19th century pen-and-paper technology, and there is an enormous lack of urgency about everything. Yes sure, it’s a Sunday, but still if your train is getting towards 10 minutes late a little bit of effort to get the train into the platform, and then out again ASAP wouldn’t go amiss. Eventually we were on our way again – and the trip between Britomart and Sylvia Park passed by fairly quickly. Somewhat annoyingly, even though we were on a four-car ADK set two of the carriages were closed off so everyone had to crowd together into two carriages rather than being able to spread ourselves out throughout the whole train. Hopefully that becomes a thing of the past once we have automated ticketing on our trains! Below is a photo of our train as we got off it at Sylvia Park:
By this stage it had probably been well over an hour since we originally left home. But anyway, we did our shopping – which was reasonably successful now as I am about halfway through all my Xmas shopping – and then left the mall to catch a train at around 2.15pm. Unfortunately that meant we had just missed the previous train, but I figured the wait wouldn’t be too long, as we reached the station at around 2.20pm – meaning around a 20 minute wait until the next train was due to come along. By this time I was starting to get a bit tired, as was Amalia – although she’d done pretty well so far to walk all the way to the bus stop, then walk around the shopping centre for a couple of hours. At around 2.44pm, when the next train was supposed to arrive a train did come along but it just barrelled straight through the station at around 100kph – a bit freaky when you’re expecting it to stop. I figured that perhaps it was just running as something of a support train to provide greater frequencies out of the city, and that our one would come along fairly shortly. But no, it took until 3.10pm – almost 50 minutes since first arriving at the station – until our train finally came along and whisked us back to the city. Certainly spent a long time staring at this view:
Fortunately from there it didn’t take too long for the 017 bus to come along, and although that bus took forever to get us home (thanks to the million sets of traffic lights on Queen Street that give no prioritisation to buses) we eventually made it – only around two hours after first leaving the mall. Overall, it was quite depressing to realise the incredibly sorry state of Auckland’s public transport on a Sunday. The terribly frequencies, the train that just decided it didn’t feel like stopping for us at Sylvia Park, the general lack of urgency from all involved in trying to keep things to the timetable – and the general amateurish feeling I got. I heard at least four of five people throughout the day commenting on how terrible Auckland’s public transport system is, and those were only the ones within earshot.
I must say I thought we’d got beyond the point of Auckland’s public transport being a complete embarrassment. Perhaps today was just a bit of a bad day, or are all Sundays like this?
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Wow I guess I don’t know how lucky I am living next to a set of large shops and on a really busy bus route… What a disgrace…
Even Sandringham Rd buses don’t have the best frequencies on Sundays.
No wonder everyone drives to malls when this is the alternative.
I’m on Dom Rd now…
So how long did you expect it to take? Looking those timetables, it looks like you had about 45 minutes on the bus and train and since timetables arent syncronised you could expect 15 mins waiting time for each connection. And 5 mins walking at each end? So door to door I’d guess about 80 or 90 minutes would be average for the one way journey on a sunday – best case would be an hour. I guess they must have some pretty great stuff at Sylvia Park…
David, of course I didn’t expect it to be a particularly quick trip, and the fun of the journey was meant to be an interesting part of the day. However, it did seem a though everything that could go wrong did go wrong.
On a positive transit note, having to work this weekend, I caught the northern busway and was glad to find out that the buses seem to run at pretty much the same frequencies at the weekend. The busway is great.
Travelling on the trains, I do seem to get the impression that there two camps of staff both at Veolia and on the signals desks – those who care about their job, and those that really don’t give a toss.
I’ve seen staff who go the extra mile on the trains to be of great customer service, and I’ve seen staff that put their feet on the windows and litter on their own trains – not a good look!
Looks like all the “don’t care” workers were on duty yesterday for your trip.
No station announcements about train problems at Sylvia Park Station I take it? That plus the delays leaving Britomart earlier tell me that the signal staff that day were definitely of the “don’t care” variety, or at least they forgot what Auckland’s urban rail system is there for – to serve the travelling public.
I have been commuting on Sundays for years (Waiheke ferry and West Auckland bus). Timetables have never matched up – even if they are a reflection of reality anyway, which often they are not. Returning home is even more of a hassle with only a 6pm, 7.30pm and 9.30pm ferry back to the island. We have this warped sense of religiosity on Waiheke that prohibits islanders to stay out late in town on Sunday nights. The 5km bus ride often takes lionger than the ferry ride if you include waiting times.
I must say I do wonder why Saturday and Sunday timetables have to be different. Surely patronage between the two days is not THAT different.
I’d suggest in some areas the patronage could potentially be higher, for instance the zoo’s busiest day of the week is always Sunday…
Good point. I suspect the same would be true for Tamaki Drive buses… My guess is that the real reason is a relic of 1960s thinking that everyone stays at home or goes to church on Sundays, and certainly that the shops are shut.
A sad reflection of the lack of thought put into PT over the past 40-50 years.
Surely having the same timetables Mon – Fri and Sat – Sun would be much cheaper, only two timetables to print then, 1/3 less work when reviewing timetables…
Indeed. And one would think that to simplify matters even further, the off-peak timetables from Monday to Friday could be the same as the weekend timetables. That way you would simply have one “base timetable” with the peak hour services added on top of it.
Sure, that would mean additional weekend services, but I think there is a weekend public transport market out there (especially if minimum parking requirements are eventually removed) that would respond to a better service being offered. All my buses and trains were quite busy yesterday.
With the exception of the odd Saturday night, I don’t think I would even consider public transport on the weekend. Its so much more convienent to drive on those days i.e. If I was going to town it would take me at least 50 mins on the train not counting waiting at the station compared to a 25 minute drive and I can get free parking at the other end.
Going to and from work in the city is a different thing though as the times spent traveling are similar.
The only real difference here in Melbourne between Sat and Sun is the hours, Saturday starts earlier and finishes later. That is on the trains at least, the buses are a different story. We still have some routes that simply do not run at all on a Sunday, while other finish at 1pm. Why 1pm you ask? Because back in the early 80s most shops closed at 1pm, two decades on and they have yet to change the timetable!
Josh, you’re a good Dad taking your daughter on a train. I see more and more parents doing that at the weekend which is not only fun for the kids but also shows them that public transport is part of life.
But just think by the time she is a teenager, she will be zapping around Auckland at lightning speed on fast electric trains or choosing hybrid buses or light rail.
She’ll be puzzled when you say that in the bad old days, you wrote a blog about how bad PT was in Auckland.
Then again, you might still be writing a blog about how bad PT is!!
Well Jon if she is five now she’ll be a teenager in eight years time. Auckland should have electric trains and decent integrated electronic ticketing system by then, but I don’t know how much else to be honest. There seems to be a lack of anything else on the horizon, maybe some proper bus lanes on Dominion Rd?
I did a more detailed post a while back on why I think it’s a good idea to get kids used to using public transport: http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2009/08/06/kids-and-public-transport/
Unfortunately this is “normal” for a sunday.
A tram down the centre of jervois and college hill would be nice…maybe even a ring route past the zoo?
I live in Mt Albert, and my girlfriend is in Herne Bay. on the weekends it is quicker to walk home than catch 2 buses or bus then train.