Last week Jon over at Auckland Trains wrote a post entitled Cheer Up! prompted by a post at Silver Machine about how the negativity of the public transport forums is driving people away and causing politicians to say, “stuff the PT advocates, they are never happy”.
I agree and and admit I have been one of the worst at this.
So I’ve decided to focus on the long term and fighting to ensure as much “good stuff” is included in the long term plans for our city, I believe we will win eventually whether through good arguments or world events. A good first step to positivity is to focus on all the gains we have made since the really dark, dark days of the early 90s:
– The rail system wasn’t removed, it seems crazy to me now to believe people were seriously talking about this.
– The Link bus service.
– Expansion of bus lanes, mainly in Central Auckland.
– Creation of ARTA.
– Public Transport Management Act amendments.
– Construction of Britomart.
– General railway station improvements and continued maintenance of bus stops, new suburban stations and stops.
– Relatively modern bus fleet.
– Train service on Sundays.
– Better bus frequencies.
– Introduction of electronic bus displays.
– New downtown ferry terminal.
– New ferry terminals at Birkenhead and Bayswater.
– New ferry routes to Half Moon Bay and Westaprk.
– The Northern Busway.
– The Central Connector.
– Newmarket station.
– Duplication of the Western Line (almost completed).
Things to look forward to:
– New rail signals.
– Electrification.
– New EMU rolling stock.
– Integrated ticketing.
– New Lynn.
I think looking at this list we have a lot be thankful for and hopeful that the ball is rolling enough now, that the call for further improvements will become overwhelming and the entrenched majority position. I believe the above is the reason we’ve seen patronage staying proportional with population growth and hopeful with the upcoming improvements that will continue till a pro-PT administration is back in the mix.
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Looking at that list we have come a long way and i agree to often we do focus on the negative (i admit i’m as bad as anyone). However i do beleive with the current government the pressure needs to be kept on to insure the gains continue.
You’re right Jarbury. I guess the negative tone comes from the fact that pretty much none of these was an easy win. Even some of those projects everyone liked had a hard time getting funding. So we have become used to gritting our teeth and snarling a lot, expecting setbacks at every turn.
Whether that has hindered us, or in some cases, saved projects that would have otherwise died a quiet death, we will never know. But it’s true that we are on the upswing, we just haven’t realised it in our bones yet.
“New ferry terminals at Birkenhead and Bayswater”. The Waiheke ferry terminal was upgraded too, although we lost the free car parking near the terminal.
On the other hand, we lost the competitor to Fullers in 2001 (and ARTA did nothing to prevent that)
@max, this post was by me…
You can add the bike racks in town centres that I had put in (I initiated the project) as Chair Eden Albert Community Board.
Now Western Bays is putting in bike racks, and we are going to put some more in such the demand for them has been!
New bicycling commuting stats would be good, mode share dropped from 2% to 0.8% from 1990 to 2006, which is very discouraging, seems a slight reversal may be happening…
You forgot to include the Manakau and Onehunga branch lines as something to look forward to as well.
Keeping that ball rolling is all important, think baby steps, every little bit helps to build that big picture.
Think positive and keep thinking into the future, getting the planning correct is money well spent
I’m absolutely delighted by a PT improvement: my Britomart bound train, the 16:16 at New Lynn, was ON TIME today for the first time ever! I think they (ARTA/Veolia/Train Control?) have readjusted the western line running schedule to prioritise Britomart bound trains in recognition of the fact that the delay these days is invariably caused by Waitakere bound trains (Newmarket, Grafton, etc). Mind you it has taken them a mere six or so months to work it out, but they’ve apparently done it, so congratulations!
“@max, this post was by me…”
Fair enough. But I would have needed to have noticed that first… 😉
I only pointed it out because I said this,
“I agree and and admit I have been one of the worst at this.”
But you should have known Max 😉 All the good posts are by Jeremy 😀
You mean all the cheap and nasty posts are by me..! I’m kind of like Auckland’s infrastructure…
@jeremy Good post
Aucklands improvements are great and we do need to keep the ball rolling, however the best way to do that is to increase demand, force them to do so, whenever we can we need to take PT, whenever we can we need to encourage others. No good talking the talk without walking the walk.
The improvements have been great so now we need to prove they have been effective.
Agreed. I was working for the old Transit New Zealand in the early 1990s as a budgets and programme officer, concentrating on public transport, and things were very miserable then. Tranz Rail finally had the wit to buy the Perth rolling stock, but the breakthrough was Britomart in 2003 (or Britomess, as I used to call it).
60m pax per year in a population of 1.4m also gives scope. But Portland OR’s system carried 100m pax per year for a catchment of 2m pax – so in terms of per capita use rates Auckland does better than it is sometimes given credit for.