One of the things that has been a big disappointment for me is seeing the shape the new Auckland Transport will take. Not only because of its structure and lack of accountability to those paying rates (which will hopefully change in the final form of the third Auckland Bill) but also because we will lose the Auckland Regional Transport Authority which, despite some grumbling from transport advocates, has started to move Auckland in the right direction since it was formed in 2004.
Something little known is the instrumental role ARTA played in getting Labour to pass the Public Transport Management Act (PTMA), allowing the integration of routes, timetables and fares, planned by a single public agency, which can make PT significantly more attractive to users. The fact that it allows for gross contracting of routes (meaning a private firm is contracted and paid a fixed rate to run a certain route at certain frequencies with fares going to ARTA) is an added advantage, with the potential to significantly lower subsidies.
So what caused ARTA to push for the PTMA? It was decided they would after receiving a report from marketing consultants they commissioned asking how they could sell Auckland’s deregulated bus services. The marketers came back and simply said, “You can’t”. Last week Steven Joyce annoyed Councillors from Environment Waikato by talking about how he wants to bring back “competition” to bus services, the marketing report received by ARTA explains what “competition” means for the average punter:
Jack is waiting for a bus home at the bus stop. He hasn’t come to this bus stop before and only catches the bus at odd times, but his car is at the panel beater and he thought he would give it a go. A bus arrives, but it is yellow and red, and the one he knows is purple. So he waits, but he notices that this bus has the same destination as he is going but is unsure what route it actually takes. Three more buses arrive, they are different colours, one has Company 1 name but it has green advertising on it, and the bus he knows is purple. He also notices as the bus pulls away that the number corresponds to his normal route. So he asks a fellow traveller what bus he should should catch and they suggest numbers 027, 028, 025, 31 or 37. Very soon after that a nearly empty 31 arrives, he boards and presents his ticket however the bus driver says they don’t accept that ticket – he is a ABB bus and that is a company 1 ticket. Jack despondently gets off and waits another 30 minutes for his purple bus. The next day he collects his car from the panel beater and tells his friends about the nightmare he had trying to get home last night.
One good point about Joyce’s announcement of the upcoming PTMA reforms is that it seems he will leave integrated ticketing alone (I must say I now suspect we haven’t seen the PTMA reforms yet because the Government may be waiting for the disbandment of ARTA who would obviously strenuously object) which we really need, even though the PTMA has been in place for over a year now ARTA has not really acted on a ticket transferable between all companies and modes while we wait until the Thales Card (or pre-emptive Snapper Card) is introduced. This is from the Maxx Auckland Public Transport guide:
I think it quite clearly shows the nightmare getting anywhere without cash, that isn’t a commute to the CBD or requires transferring can be. My favourite part is the bottom left corner, “MAXX made easy”, not if you have experienced the ticketing in London, Hong Kong or even Perth methinks.
So bring on integrated ticketing, even if it is paper based for the time being.
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Ok Mr Joyce seeing as you are such a fan of commercialisation. Let’s commercialise the roads as well and open them up to competition. I can just imagine going down state highway one and being presented with different routes, run by different operators, with different ticketing and fare structures. Oh how efficient that will be.
In a couple of weeks I hope to have someone guest posting who believes that what you propose is the answer to PTs problems… Stay tuned…
In a way it would be. The natural advantages of public transport (more people shifted in less space) are effectively undermined by massive hidden subsidies for the road network. You could take away those subsidies and make road travel way more expensive, or you could realise that public transport needs subsidies to match up with the hidden subsidies of the road network.
While of course we all pay for transport one way or another in the end, I think that the split between user-pays and non-users pays is fine.
@ James The problem with that proposal is the roads will still need to be regulated to ensure they actually met, and people coming from one road could easily get onto another road. If you operated one road would you make it easy for people to get onto your competitors road? I don’t think so. Also the best way to make money would be to buy up all the competing routes, massively increase prices and spend no money on improvements.
I see the same thing effectively applies to PT, the nature of the service and infrastructure means the conditions needed for the competitive model to work are not there, and the incentives for the operators are all wrong.
Why stop at roads though? Why not commercialise the Police, Fire Service and Military as well. Sorry but these people who think commercialisation is a panacea for all of NZs ills annoy me.
@JamesB
Commerialisation was exactly how the Fire Service was started. In 1800s(?) London, you bought the services of your local fire brigade. A marker was placed outside your house to indicate that that particular brigade was your brigade of choice. If your house was on fire, other brigades might come rushing (after seeing the column) of smoke, but once there, see that they weren’t paid to put the fire out and leave it to burn (or worse, loot the place while putting the fire out and claim your property as payment for their service).
Let’s put some numbers on this. What percentage increase in demand could we reasonably expect from the introduction of integrated ticketing, and what sort of money would have to be spent to achieve it?
Well, it depends how the system is run after integrated ticketing… If we continue with the CBD focused system we are currently running, with timetables that are not integrated (between bus routes and modes), more fares that must be paid on transfer and meandering routes with low frequencies, we can expect only modest increases…
If we re-arrange the system to have a mix of CBD services and cross-town services, co-ordinated timetables, less routes with higher frequencies and a zonal based fare system we can expect patronage increases of 200% – 500% I’d suggest, as evidenced by cities as diverse as Toronto, Curitiba and Zurich that use these systems (which has 1000% higher per capita PT usage)…
My next post is on this…
Going based on international experiences, with widespread uptake of integrated *ticketing* there would be significant improvement in boarding/dwell times which would lead to a relatively minor increase in patronage. The main benefits would be timekeeping and reliability with some overall increase in trip speeds, however these things alone aren’t going to create that much patronage growth as long as we are talking about the same companies running the same routes under the same service model. One of the greatest benefits of integrated ticketing would be to the operator, they would be relieved of a fair amount of labour involved in routinely collecting coin on the bus and the associated cash handling that goes with it.
With integrated *fares* (which is a different beast altogether) we would see a greater increase in patronage, as in many cases people would immediately be able to make a direct, penalty free transfer which would open up a whole range of new trips and destinations. For example many people would easily be able to catch a service into the central city then hop on the Link or one of the Central Connector buses to get throughout the central area ‘for free’, or someone catching a ferry could get the train out to Glenn Innes or whatever. However, this will still only be the case for a minority of people, as connections on most non-CBD routes would still be limited due to low frequencies, timetables that don’t match up and transfers that are physically difficult to make due to non co-ordination between bus stops and train stations etc.
As Jeremy says, we won’t see a quantum boost in patronage unless timetables are co-ordinated, frequencies improved and routes designed to interconnect directly. Howver, we can’t have that until we have an integrated ticketing system and a corresponding integrated fares structure. In summary I would say a full integrated fares system would create a relatively small but significant increase increase in patronage, however such a system is a precondition to getting larger increases in patronage through other means.
Nick R – Intergrated Ticketing in Auckland terms as I see it is the combination of a *smart card* and *intergrated fares*, it’s the whole system. The success is going to be in the fare structure, we get this wrong it could be a huge failure, we get it right and we will see huge increases as Jeremy is saying.
Joshua, that is the common assumption but I’m not sure if it is warranted just yet.
So far there has been no discussion about changing the fare system at all, all the media articles, reports and press releases about ‘integrated ticketing’ have been about getting a single ‘smart card’ payment system that can be used on all operators. So there is a chance that the card becomes simply a stored value smart card that can be used on any service, in which case there would still be a variety of fare products from each operator and making transfers would still cost you the full second fare (i.e. more or less like Snapper in Wellington).
I certainly hope that integrated fares do happen, and the fact that ARTA created the zone based, unlimited transfer northern pass for the busway is promising in that regard. However one wonders why they haven’t rolled out such a fare structure region wide already. If it can be done on the North Shore using paper tickets, what is to stop them doing it everywhere else with paper tickets? In fact wouldn’t you want to make the fare changes first then introduce a new payment system, rather than make both complex changes at the same time?
I guess the answer to that is the contracting arrangements, while they have had gross contracting on the busway from the start, it would take an unprecidented level of government control of the private operators to force them to all conform to the same fare structure across the whole city. I assume this would be possible with the full powers of the PTMA in effect, but who knows if the PTMA will even exist in it’s current form in a few months time. It certainly isn’t in the interests Joyce’s private ‘competition’ to remove the operators ability to set their own fares.
My point is making all the operators use the same cash card is a pretty straightforward thing to achieve, getting them to all accept the same government mandated fare structure (including things like transfers between two operators) is a major political minefield, especially if we are to continue with the same fractured and dis-integrated semi-privatised contracting model. It is a case of the government telling a private business how much to charge for their product, which would go down with the neo-libs in the National party like a cold shit sandwich.
I agree that the success is going to be in the fare structure, not the ticket system (but so far all we have heard about is an electronic ticket system). However I don’t think we will get *huge* increases as a result of the fare structure alone, for that we also need the associated timetable, frequency and service co-ordination improvements.
I thought we were actually going to have some sort of paper based integrated ticket in place this year? Although that was before Joyce held everything up when he cancelled the fuel tax.
That is what the last sentence is about, I haven’t heard about anything but Thales and the RWC…
Exactly Cam, where is the paper ticket? They are awfully quiet on something that was supposed to be in place over the next six months. Gone the way of the dodo after the change of administration and all the super city shakeups perhaps?
Quite on topic Sydney started its paper zone based integrated ticket today, initial reports are positive:
http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-national/myzone-ticket-system-starts-in-sydney-20100419-sn3e.html
I saw an announcement on the wall at Matiatia that the 40-ride tickets will get a time limit of 12 months’ validity after purchase. The old style tickets will expire in March 2011. The reason given by Fullers is to make the tickets tamper-proof, although I have not heard of any incidents of people boarding with falsified 40-rides.
This is just a fare increase by stealth as it will force occasional travellers (i.e. those making fewer than 40 trips a year) to buy an non-time limited 10 ride ticket, which is more expensive per ride.
Waiheke residents should insist that the candidate they vote for for mayor purchases Fullers to cure the “Waiheke fare disease” once and for all… The interest on the $45 million it was purchased for a few years ago is under $3 million bucks a fraction of the region’s $1.3 billion dollar budget…
Getting back to the original post, I don’t think the role of the ARC in determining the final shape and form of the PTMA can be under-estimated. From memory Mike Lee personally talked Rodney Hide into supporting the bill – a pretty amazing feat considering it included a provision to prohibit commercial PT services.
Here’s partly how the ARC contributed to making the PTMA happen: http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/0420170259_001.pdf
I can only repeat my previous support for Mike Lee to assume the role of Auckland Emperor…
But what would the role of Auckland emperor be? CEO of Auckland Transport? Chair of Auckland Transport?
Surely not the powerless mayor……
The power to make whatever changes he sees fit to our transport system while retaining all fuel taxes and RUCs paid in the Auckland region…