I have been meaning to post this table for ages, because it shows us some quite interesting information on Auckland’s rail network.
I’m not sure whether this is an average, or whether it’s just on one particular day, but it does provide us with some useful information. There are around 32,000 rail trips a day on the Auckland network (a 13% jump from 2008 to 2009). Assuming most people make two trips a day, this is around 16,000 people who catch trains on an average weekday in Auckland (not a lot I know, but it is increasing very quickly). Of those people, around 10,000 board or alight from the train at Britomart, around 60% of people using the rail network. A further 10% board or alight at Newmarket. While quite a few trips are between Britomart and Newmarket, these figures tend to suggest that around 30% of trips involve neither Britomart nor Newmarket – perhaps mainly school kids, those working in places like Henderson & New Lynn, or those going shopping?
Britomart is clearly the busiest station, followed by Newmarket, Papakura, Manurewa, New Lynn, Papatoetoe, Henderson and Middlemore (all stations with over 2,000 boardings/alightings per day). At the other end of the scale (excluding the closed Helensville service and Mangere which is only used by a couple of trains a day) the quietest stations are Waitakere, Te Mahia, Remuera, Westfield, Swanson, Penrose and Morningside (all stations with under 500 boardings/alightings per day).
I wonder how this table will look in a couple of years time, with the ProjectDART upgrades completed. I would suspect that Newmarket will increase fairly dramatically over the next while, same with New Lynn and Avondale. It’ll be interesting to see how the future stations in Manukau City and Onehunga fare. There’s an expectation that Manukau could be nearly as busy as Newmarket, but I think that’s hugely over-optimistic. I think Onehunga could be a bit of a surprise (if only ARTA gave it half-hourly off-peak frequencies!) and out-perform many expectations. It’ll also be interesting to see if the new Grafton Station is much more popular than the current Boston Road station.
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I’d love to see this table compared to one from say ’92…
What’s with the huge drop at Pukekohe? Do the highlights on the 2008 figures mean something?
I also think that Manukau prediction is hugely over-optimistic – and a well-performing rail network shouldn’t have all its eggs in a few baskets anyway!
Where is that table from? Links to the document would be good.
My station (Sturges Rd) has the biggest improvement on the entire network, up 94% (My wife and I moved to the area in christmas 08 so would have contributed to that). I think part of the improvement has to be the park and ride. Its also interesting that the only station to decrease on the Western line was Boston Rd, maybe something to do with the works going on there for Grafton.
Next years results will be the interesting ones to watch as by then all of the major track improvements will have been completed and things should *fingers crossed* be running more smoothly. When we get integrated ticketing I imagine these results should get more accurate and hopefully more frequent.
I am not sure what’s up with Pukekohe. The figures were sent to me by someone, not from a document as far as I know.
Is there a similar table available for ferry terminals?