The March ARTA monthly business report has (finally) been released, and the information it contains is pretty awesome from a patronage perspective. Here’s a brief summary of what’s contained in the whole report:
Considering that on-time performance of the rail system was so poor in March, with only two-thirds of trains actually reaching their destination less than 5 minutes late (and only half on the Western Line), having such high patronage is a pretty impressive achievement. I guess the new Newmarket and New Lynn stations are proving popular. March is generally the busiest month of the year, because there are no university or school holidays, plus Easter fell in April this time around, but still the patronage stats are pretty damn impressive.
Looking a bit closer, it’s heartening to see that March 2010 broke March 2009’s patronage record by around 500,000 trips – and also it’s good to see bus patronage being so high. We do put a put of emphasis on what’s happening to rail patronage (and with good reason too), but it’s also good to see that the “meat and drink” of Auckland’s public transport system – the buses – are performing so well.
Here are the patronage trends for the past few years:
I think it is worthy having a look at the rail statistics, because they are so impressive:
Perhaps in October this year, with the Onehunga Line open, we might hope to break through the 1 million trips per month barrier? Looking at the patronage stats for March over the last few years, we have gone from under 400,000 in 2005 to over 900,000 in 2010 – a pretty amazing increase. With electric trains in place by 2013, I think it’s definitely possible that we’ll see rail patronage double again in the next five years.
One interesting inclusion in the March 2010 report is an analysis of bus patronage across the four sectors of Auckland (North, West, Isthmus and South). Bus patronage was obviously hugely impacted by the October 2010 bus lockout, but it’s interesting to see that where service simplification has occurred in recent years (on the North Shore and in the Howick/Botany area) the patronage increases have been pretty spectacular. I can imagine the results being similar elsewhere, particularly in West Auckland when ARTA eventually get around to their long-promised and extremely overdue updating of the bus system out west. Anyway, here is the analysis:
The statistics compare each month’s patronage with that of the previous year.
The whole report is actually worth a read if you’re interested in the development of Auckland’s public transport system. It’s particularly interesting to hear about progress being made on the rail system.
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Good news, all around. Though the one thing I’ll take away from this post is the discrepancy between total train and bus volumes. We DO mentally have a bit of a skew there…
You mean how much of our focus is on the rail system even though 80% of public transport users in Auckland catch the bus?
The report seems to suggest that buses are 99+% reliable and punctual – having ridden buses in Auckland for several years I can’t really believe this to be the case.
RTC, I think reliable means “did it start its run?” Not a very high-bar there.
They’re also self-reporting stats for buses I think.
Definitely looking good and with rail continuing to increase at these kinds of levels it is going to make it hard for the anti rail people to deny it. It just goes to show that investing the money to upgrade the network and rolling stock is already paying off and long may it continue as with electrification coming it will only get better (providing we haven’t hit capacity by then). Hopefully this also strengthens the case for the CBD Tunnel.
I do think that western line patronage will increase quite a bit after New Lynn if completed and hopefully all those that have been turned off rail by all of the disruptions come back once the reliability improves. A bit of an advertising campaign to say the work is finished and the services are good again wouldn’t go astray either.
I agree that there should be a huge campaign once Project DART’s upgrade of the Western Line is completed. I imagine ARTA will advertise it pretty heavily.
I do wonder how close patronage would have got to 1 million trips in March if the Western Line had been more punctual/reliable.
Yeah – if we are looking at another doubling of patronage in the next 5yrs, like has been seen in the last 5, then surely it makes the case for the CBD loop a strong one. I think earlier predicitions had Britomart reaching capacity by 2016…perhaps earlier based on the current stats?
Have you heard the ad by the personalised plate crowd urging people to dump public transport and embrace the freedom of the car? Don’t forget your personalised plate. No point in having a car if you can’t put your own special mark on it.
You’re right KLK, in that Britomart’s capacity might be hit sooner than we thought.
Electrification’s cost-benefit ratio was raised from “around 1” to “1.5-1.7” due to higher than expected patronage growth. Furthermore, by the end of this year the number of trains running in and out of Britomart will be at capacity. That literally means that it will be impossible to run ANY more trains into, and out of, Britomart – ever. The only way to increase capacity will be through longer trains, or by squishing more people onto existing trains.
So in a way Britomart will hit train capacity by the end of this year. It will just take a while for it to hit passenger capacity, as we have the opportunity to make trains longer.
@ Ian, no haven’t heard that. A sure sign that the auto-industry is realising that PT’s renaissance is the real deal?
One thing that hasn’t been mentioned much is the CBD tunnel comment, this reconfirms that we will get the costs and business case for the project in September. What seems to be forgotten though is that providing it is good, it is probably the best time of the year for us to get this info. We would have just had the Western line duplication finished for a few months and the New Lynn station building should be finished, as I mentioned earlier this should help reliability and drive up patronage. Onehunga should be open or close to it which will help to raise the profile of rail and more importantly only a month or so later we will be having local body elections. I think the candidates will be falling over themselves to promise and build this which will only increase the pressure on the government to step up and fund it.
In a way this could all be the perfect storm needed for this critical project to be built
When Britomart reaches capacity later this year, I’m concerned about what will happen when a train is late and misses its ‘slot’ at Britomart. I probably wrong, but what seems to happen is trains often wait at quay park for the next available slot. If there are none, will services on all lines not be delayed for the rest of the peak period?
You’re right Matt that a perfect storm is forming for the CBD Rail Tunnel. I am extremely pleased that it looks like the business case will be coming out in September and not December. Before the local body elections is very important!
Sam, apparently there has bee a “computerisation” of working out the slots into, and out of, Britomart in recent times. That has led to fewer waits at Quay Park junction, while bi-directional running in the tunnel will also assist when it comes to this issue.
Ian, I’ve heard the same ad.
Then again it made me hate Personalised Plates just that little bit more. They’ve always been tossers in my book as its only the boy racers and the exceedingly vain who seem to buy personalised plates.
The critical factor is bus patronage, the bus network is the only mode that currently has the capacity for truly spectacular growth (say a doubling or tripling of PT use per capita) for example; even after electrification and the completion of DART ARTA’s goal, in 2016, is for there to be 16 million rail trips for the year, i.e. rail patronage will top out at 1.33 million per month (which I have consistently said will happen in 2014), the system will have no room left to grow and relief many years (if not a decade) away, even if the tunnel is approved… At the same time (2016) the aim is for bus use to be at 80 million per year or 6.66 million per month with the only constraints how well and how many buses we run…
I agree that buses will always be the workhorse of the system, but bear in mind that buses have a central growth limit also. Over half of all people heading to the cbd already go by public transport, so there is limited growth potential there (especially if you want to avoid cannibalizing the relatively high cycling and walking mode share in the cbd).
In that regard the bulk of patronage growth will have to come from the largely untapped market of non cbd trips. While this would probably be done mostly by suburban buses, there is still a lot of potential on the rail network regardless of capacity at britomart, particularly in the counter peak direction.
For example, if the trains were as full going counter peak as they are heading in, rail patronage would more or less double. We might begin to see a bit more of this as non-cbd destination stations such as manukau start to grow in importance.
Furthermore growth in suburban trips is likely to result in shorter trips, which translates into a high number of boardings. That’s one thing to remember about the rail system: currently it carries a smallish number of long trips. While the mode share by boardings looks small, if you look at the mode share by passenger-miles it does a lot more of the ‘work’ of the system.
All good points Nick, ultimately I don’t think 300 m pax is out of the realms of possibility with the right system in a couple of decades, of which I think the trains will never do more than 50 m odd pax…