I haven’t posted for a while but some of you may remember I gave up my car about 4 months ago and after 2 weeks of withdrawals it has been a really great experience so far. As such I am now very dependent on my Dom Rd buses which takes me into the city. Last Friday I noticed some B Line labeling had gone up on my bus stop and on the back of the electronic schedule display, I’ve also seen the branding on Mt Eden Rd. This morning when I arrived the timetable had been moved and changed to a yellow B Line one and I finally got my 5 minute schedules. This is really great, the schedule absolutely is a turn up and ride one now and it wasn’t bad before. I am confused about the transition though.
I’ve always thought the B Line idea was a good – even if the services didn’t really improve. Auckland’s bus service isn’t great by overseas standards but you can use it to get around, especially if you live on the isthmus and I think this type of branding can help people realise you can use it to get to work without the world ending. At the time it was first proposed we saw this:
My questions are:
What is going on?
Are we getting these bus stops and branded buses?
Or has the whole concept been scaled back to some half-arse affair?
I’m hoping they are just doing things in stages (I read on one of the blogs that the Mt Eden Rd routes getting some new buses and their newish ones moving to Dom Rd routes was a hold up – this has now happened I believe), the stops and buses will be branded and then we will get a big advertising campaign, which the bus companies should chip in for.
We’ll see I guess. Could be ARTA’s last push for PT.
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The thing that I think is stupid is that you currently have no worse than 5 minute frequencies on Dominion Rd during the day and no worse than 10 minute frequencies on Mt Eden Road, yet this is being sold as “no worse than 15 minute frequencies”. That’s like advertising that a concert will be for a rubbish band that hardly anyone’s heard of when actually U2 are playing. Who are the noobs in the ARTA marketing department?
Yes I noticed these going up along the route and thought it was a bit anti-climatic. As far as I can make out the bus service has not changed one bit. I do get on the bus at that disconnected bus stop outside the Asian supermarket at the top of Dominion Road though. The only buses that stop there are the flyover ones and I frequently have to deal with buses not showing up at all, or being so full that you can’t get on them. This seems especially true if I leave a little late as the school kids for Auckland Grammer seem to take up a large part of the bus.
I’ve seen the new Mt Eden Rd buses a couple of times now and I’m pretty sure they’re branded … metrolink (sigh)
Metrolink’s Roskill depot is in the process of introducing 11 new Euro 5 Scania buses. They will run along Mt Eden Rd. This means the Euro 4 Scania buses which have a higher seating capacity, will be allocated to Dominion Rd. I think that NZ Bus would be reluctant to rebrand their buses since the new Scanias are already in Metrolink livery.
Waka Pacific are also getting 11 new Scania buses.
The only problem I find at this stage with the dominion road busses is the lack of communication as to whether a bus is a flyover bus or not, a small (F) appending the bus number on the electronic signs would make some trips so much less frustraiting, getting on a bus only to find the bus thats 2 minutes behind is going to shave 5-10min off the journey time is a pain in the ass
All the 255’s are Flyovers I think and they usually are displayed as one of the “destinations” on the front electronic display…
The whole thing seems to me like it was thought about as, “good idea but the full idea goes in the too hard basket”, so it got scaled back and introduced as a part brand, with no fanfare and few timetable changes…. Hardly a recipe for success, I really wonder what goes through NZ Bus’ mind at this, surely they’d want to get behind anything that increases patronage on their commercial services, them seem to have very little interest…
The bus branding is not important. The route branding is important because it tells people that they can catch a frequent service from this stop. Only route branding also means a greater area of the city can already be B-Lined.
Personally I don’t think the bus branding should happen because the end of runs down Dominion Road have longer than 15 frequency and would therefore give people a distorted view of what is trying to be achieved.
As long as the branding shown isnt applied I’m happy. That branding is awful compared to the NZ Bus brand.
The issue I have with this is that Maxx will be spending money promoting these services, but NZ Bus will get most of the benefit as these are commercial routes.
With a fully contracted model the extra patronage revenue could be used to help start new services, and introduce b-line frequencies on other routes, I guess Snadringham Road would be the next one in line.
Remember that these ideas are based on the very successful Vancouver B Lines…