Simplifying Timetables

As regular readers of this blog would well know, there are quite a few things about Auckland’s public transport system that annoy me. But perhaps what annoys me the most are things that wouldn’t cost much to fix, or those where the benefits of an improvement seem so significant that you can’t quite believe nobody’s done it yet. Changes that wouldn’t cost anything that comes to mind are lengthening the right turn phase for buses travelling from Queen Street into Karangahape Road, while changes with big benefits in my mind would be increasing rail service frequencies from one train per hour to two trains per hour on the Western Line at weekends.

Another change that could be made that would potentially cost fairly little, but make public transport far more convenient, simple to use and customer friendly, would be to simplify timetables. In particular, what I mean is to align off-peak times during weekdays with those on both Saturday and Sunday. In the past I have wondered why Sunday frequencies have to be worse than Saturday frequencies, and I am yet to hear an answer on the matter. Obviously aligning those frequencies would cost a bit, as I would certainly prefer to see Sunday frequencies being raised rather than Saturday frequencies lowered – but the benefits of making the system easier to understand may outweigh the costs, if patronage grew.

To illustrate my point, let’s have a look at the timetable for Sandringham Road buses. The Monday-Friday peak hour timetable is relatively complex – and certainly it would be completely unnecessary and stupid to replicate peak hour service levels on Saturday and Sunday. So let’s look at the “inter-peak” frequencies, the “counter-peak” inbound afternoon frequencies and the “post-peak” evening frequencies: While the fact that the 233 takes a 5 minute detour to St Lukes complicates matters a bit, generally you have 15 minute frequencies during the inter-peak, 10 minute frequencies during the counter-peak period, and post-peak frequencies that start at 20 minutes and then lower to every 30 minutes after 10pm. Bizarrely, during the day the buses alternative between 233s and 249, but during the evening you get a random mixture of 243s, 248s, 249s and a 233. Now obviously the main purpose of the 233 is to serve St Lukes, which is closed after 6pm (except Thursdays and Fridays), but I still don’t quite understand the strange mix of other buses that we see.

Anyway, let’s look at Saturdays: During the morning you have a 20 minute frequency, but that settles down to a bus every 15 minutes during the middle of the day before tailing back to every 20 minutes and eventually every 30 minutes during the evening. So not altogether that different to the weekday frequencies during off-peak times. But bizarrely, the timetables don’t align! All buses on Saturdays are timed slightly different to those during the week – even though aligning them wouldn’t actually require much of an increase in service provision! It’s like we’re just being poked in the eyes for ARTA’s sadistic pleasure or something. Similarly, the service patterns have been reversed in the evenings, creating further confusion . Now it would cost nothing to align these times – as both ways you’re getting hourly frequencies – but for some unknown reason it seems there has to be a difference, just to confuse the poor bus user I suppose?

Now to look at Sundays: It seems here that we generally get 30 minute frequencies in the morning, a time of 20 minute frequencies in the afternoon and then 30 minute frequencies again in the evening. While there are obviously fewer services than on a Saturday or an ‘off-peak’ weekday, the difference isn’t really that great. All end up being half-hourly in the later evening and all are either every 15 or 20 minutes during the day. But stupidly, once again, even when the frequencies are the same the actual times don’t align.

It seems obvious to me that the Sandringham Road bus service could be simplified significantly without much additional cost. There are probably two steps to the process – the first being a change to the times and routes of existing services to match them up as much as possible (eg. late evenings on all three timetables and inter-peaks on weekdays with Saturday’s day-time routes). The second step would be to look at the gains that could be achieved by full alignment across the three timetables. Perhaps this could be funded by a bit of route simplification – do we really need that many buses going to Blockhouse Bay when the 258 route services the area? Do we really need the buses going to New Lynn, which is already served by multiple bus routes and the railway line? The money that could be saved by potentially shortening or simplifying some of these routes could be redirected into upping Sunday frequencies so they match other days – so that people know that no matter what day of the week it is, their bus comes at 10 past, 25 past, 20 to and 5 to the hour (or whatever).

Improving frequencies and the ‘ease of use’ of public transport is, in my opinion, critical to increasing patronage during these “off-peak” times. I have less of an issue with complicated timetables at peak hour – as people will use the same service over and over again so will therefore ‘learn the system’ and it doesn’t have to be so simple and easy to understand. But for non-regular trips – those generally taken at the weekend, in the evening or during the middle of a weekday, ease of use and decent frequencies are critical to encourage people to choose public transport over driving. It just seems stupid that we appear to be actively discouraging this at the moment through unnecessarily complicated timetabling.

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