ARTA’s monthly business report for February 2010 has been released, and it contains some very positive news in terms of patronage on the Auckland public transport network:
Patronage growth on the “Rapid Transit Network”, which is the rail system and the Northern Busway, is growing at a particularly impressive rate. This just goes to show that if you offer top quality public transport services that can compete with driving for speed, then people will use them. It’s also good to see that the patronage statistics seem to have recovered from the October bus lockout, and the year as a whole is now ahead of the 2008/2009 year.
Here are the patronage trends, by mode, over the past few years:
Given the reliability problems being experienced on the rail network in the last couple of months, ARTA must be particularly happy that it would seem that patronage has not suffered, being 16% up on last year.
Here are the rail stats for the past few years:
It will be particularly interesting to see what March’s rail statistics end up looking like. March is typically the busiest month of the year for public transport – as it is 31 days long, has no school or university holidays and is right at the start of university (before everyone starts skipping classes to stay at home and sleep I guess). Last year’s stats for March showed just over 800,000 trips, and a 15% increase on that would push us well over 900,000 trips. Maybe we will have to wait until the Onehunga Line and the Manukau Branch are open before finally breaking through a million trips in a month – but it can’t be that far off.
There are also some useful updates in the report on various infrastructure projects going on around Auckland. Something particularly pleasing to see is included below:
Freaking finally!
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How come its taken so long for the Feb MBR to come out?
I wonder which 20 stations will be getting the PIDs, my guess is on the Western Line there will at least be Henderson, Glen Eden, Morningside and Kingsland
This is great, patronage continues to grow, particularly on the rapid transit network. this is despite all the disruption we have had recently and the service issues. Even better is we still have integrated ticketing, electrification and the opening of two branch lines still to come which will continue the momentum .
No this is terrible, can’t you see all this waste of time ridiculously expensive subsidised welfare ‘rapid transit’ is doing is cannibalising patronage away from commercially operated bus services! It’s doing nothing but destroying wealth and distorting the free market! Forcing people into trains through the restriction of road supply is just another leftist technique to control our minds and limit our freedom, because the left hates cars because they hate individual freedom.
(note: libertarian tinged sarcasm)
Matt, generally the MBRs take about a month to come out. Lots of stats to compile I guess, and then probably the actual report doesn’t get posted until quite a while after it has been prepared.
Nice one Nick. It is very promising to see the RTN being so successful. After all, this is where the majority of investment is required (or has happened) so it’s fairly necessary to get good results from the investment.
I really hope we start getting these sooner once integrated ticketing comes along. We should be able to know patronage figures for each hour of the day if the system is set up right.
Once Auckland Transport comes along we can kiss goodbye any of this information.
Even higher stats than when gas was over $2 a litre… I think that proves the “once people try it theory”…
Since selling my car I am personally responsible for a bit of the trend, my go rider card is getting a workout…
Oil is at USD86 these days, that’s more than double 1 year ago and hasn’t been this high since before the financial crisis. I think $2 petrol will be back before we know it, 98 is already over $2 at a bunch of places and 91 is slowly edging its way back. This will also help with pushing the stats up this year I’m guessing.
The tepid ferry figures in your graph don’t gel with Fullers’ comment they have had the best patronage ever over this Summer (greatly helped by the $2m Super gold card loot)
One does wonder how ferry patronage would figure if the Super Gold Card hadn’t happened. It seems a rather neglected part of Auckland’s PT infrastructure.
The Christmas shutdown decimates train figures for both Jan and Feb…
Normally December and January figures are very low, February is often back near a par with months like July that get affected by school and uni holidays. March, August and October seem the months least affected by any holidays – hence they end up with the highest patronage.
I would be VERY happy if we saw a 16.2% increase on last March’s patronage figures, though I think that’s unlikely.
8 million trips by rail last year, I wonder how much the shutdown lobs off… When did we think the first year without a Christmas shutdown would be..?
There will be shutdowns for a few years yet to enable electrification works to happen. I don’t know how many trips the shutdown really eliminates, as generally the holiday period is pretty quiet on the rail network.
Oh for sure, I’m guessing it would be the quietest period all year… I’m just curious what the total would be no lengthy closures…
2015 looks like the first full year with no interuptions… I’d suggest we’ll see 12m – 15m boardings that year for sure…
It would be interesting to break out the bus patronage nos. for the Busway and everything else. If the busway market is netted out of the totals, what happens to the overall figures?
Nick R is being sarcastic, I well know, but it’s not clear from the reports where the growth is coming from.
Ross – The northern busway and each of the rail lines are broken out in the report. It shows that patronage on the busway is was up 18.2% on Feb last year to around 130k trips. In comparison the Southern and Eastern lines were at 468k trips and the Western line at 243k
@Matt, isn’t that just the NEX figures for the busway..?
I think that they may have just grouped everything together as the NEX, when it is described earlier as the RTN figures it just says the Nothern busway. They would be pretty stupid not to include other services as they will want to make the result look as good as possible.
Matt I am not sure whether it’s something ARTA has a choice over. As far as I know the NEX is the only gross-contracted service on the shore, meaning tha ARTA collect the fares and pay Ritchies to run it. When it comes to the othr routes using the busway ARTA probably don’t actually know the numbers.
Admin – if that’s the case then both ARTA and the bus companies are selling themselves short. They would both benefit from the numbers being higher as it helps to justify the infrastructure which increases the business case for other bus infrastructure.