ARTA seem to finally be getting the message that public transport might be useful for more than just workers in the CBD going about their commuting (last Sunday’s experience notwithstanding), with their announcement that there are going to be extra trains running on the Eastern Line to provide good access to Sylvia Park shopping mall – during its extended opening hours. Here’s the announcement in full:
ARTA adds additional evening trains to wrap up Christmas shopping
16 Dec 2009Additional evening train services will run to and from popular shopping destination Sylvia Park in the week leading up to Christmas for those taking advantage of late night shopping.
ARTA’s General Manager Customer Services, Mark Lambert says ”Taking the train is just one of the convenient public transport options people have to do their Christmas shopping, saving the cost and hassle of parking.
“Late night shopping in the week leading up to Christmas is always a busy time and by running additional services to Sylvia Park we hope to make life a little easier for our customers.”
The additional train services will run on the Eastern line from Sunday 20 December, running up to and including Wednesday 23 December.
Normal train fares apply.
For more information about public transport services to do your Christmas shopping call MAXX on (09) 366 6400 or visit maxx.co.nz.
Whilst this is a reasonably small measure, it is a good sign that ARTA are starting to realise that people will use public transport to get to and from shopping centres – if you can provide a good enough service. Let’s just hope that this realisation carries through to providing decent enough frequencies on the Onehunga Line at weekends once it opens next year.
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seems like it is a real last minute thing they have done. Surely only several days notice will mean many people will not know about the service. Still a positive move though, maybe I am being too ungrateful. How full were the Sylvia Park services you took last weekend?
Oh well better late than never! I think it will make a massive difference. Though wont affect me much today for we are taking the 8.33 Birkenhead ferry across the harbour and then a 9 minute walk across to Britomart for the 9 am train to Sylvia Park for a bit more Christmas shopping. The last 3 times to Sylvia Park and I haven’t had to drive once – it’s just great!
I hear car parking at the mega malls (Sylvia, St Lukes and Albany) are total shite at the moment. Next week we’ll planning on the using the 975 bus from Birkdale to Smales Farm and taking the BRT to Albany for another (shopping) adventure 🙂
BRT..? Someone’s been in the Americas recently… I’ve never heard anyone call it that here…
I wonder if Sylvia Park is behind this at all, or if they are still turning their back on the rail line that could bring up to 20,000 customers an hour onto their site without any additional demand on their car parking? These are the people that fought ARTA in court over having to provide access to the station FFS!
Mad props to ARTA anyway for doing this.
Personally, I live five minutes away from the largest mall in the southern hemisphere (Chandstone, a bewildering place…) but at this time of year I will sooner catch the train 20 minutes into town to get to Melbourne Central Mall (on top of the station) rather than drive five minutes and spend an hour fighting my way around a carpark looking for a spot. It’s horrible over there at the moment.
(I did ride to the mall a couple of weeks ago, but got knocked over trying to navigate the extremely bike and pedestrian unfriendly surrounds, some guy hit me on a pedestrian crossing then started to berate me for ‘walking in the street’, he didn’t even realise there was a crossing there. A symptom of the design of the place more than anything).
Jezza, BRT is the standard industry term for busway type infrastructure, I don’t think it’s just an americanism.
I’ve only ever seen Americans call it that, here I’ve always heard Busway…
BRT refers to the whole package, busway, buslanes, information systems etc. You could say the North Shore has BRT of which the busway is the trunk route.