The second meeting of the Auckland Council transport committee is happening on Monday (today for most of you reading this) – at 9.30am in the Reception Lounge of the Auckland Town Hall. There are some interesting items on the agenda:
- A discussion about the “Next-Bike” bike hire scheme, and what the preferred future form for this scheme is – given that the current business unfortunately hasn’t been profitable enough to continue.
- An analysis on the way forward to eliminate rail level crossings around the Auckland region.
- An update of major transport projects around the Auckland Region including AMETI, Dominion Road, the Whau River Crossing, Penlink and Integrated Ticketing.
- A more detailed presentation from Fergus Gammie of Auckland Transport on the progress of implementing integrated ticketing.
- An update from Auckland Council on “Rail Electrification in the regulatory context”, whatever that means. Potentially something about who will own the new electric trains and who will pay for them.
- A presentation from the Campaign for Better Transport (including myself) on ideas to improve transport in Auckland over the next five years.
All up it should be quite an interesting meeting. In particular, it should provide useful updates on Dominion Road, AMETI and Integrated Ticketing.
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Good luck with the presentation. I hope they give it a big seal of approval.
So, how’d it go?
Pretty good I reckon. The report is being referred to Auckland Transport for their comments.
Going to give us a run-down on what you presented?
What KLK said.
Ditto!!!
Yeah Josh, could you share the presentation with us?
Will do so this evening. Also there was some useful extra information presented on integrated ticketing.
The notes from the CBT and Josh are available on the AC website as an appendix – I assume this is what you gave them the run down on? Looked very thorough.
Other than the CBT presentation, what was the other items discussed? Anything new on ticketing or electrification or the level crossing one?
I couldn’t hang around for the whole meeting but there was an interesting presentation by Fergus Gammie on integrated ticketing. http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/AIFS-presentation.pdf
From the AIFS presentation:
“Due to the point to point nature of ferry travel, ferry monthly passes will remain the same as the existing ferry monthly pass structure…”
So this means that there is no intention for ferry fares to be part of an integrated fares structure? The reason seems a bit strange. Yes ferries go from point to point but they don’t go origin/destination for many people. I would have thought ferries would be an invaluable part of an integrated system.
Seems completely stupid, a ton of people probably commute from somewhere on the shore and on arrival in town would like to hop on a train to say Kingsland or on a bus to the uni – this was you might as well drive. Seems like a half-baked idea, but then again AMETI was pretty half-baked and seems to be improving so as long as people point out how stupid their current thinking is perhaps things will change for the better.
I think you’ll find that the owner of Fullers, Brian Souter, is refusing to implement integrated ticketing on ferries in the hope of extracting more leverage from negotiations with AT. He also owns Howick and Eastern so he’s probably hoping for either a fully subsidised installation of reader devices or more fare flexibility. Alternatively it might just be about ensuring that AT keeps away from the ferries as much as possible. Souter’s Stagecoach Group own South West Trains, and as such was one of the network rail operators who resisted the implementation of the PAYG Oyster integrated ticketing scheme on London commuter services; he’s got plenty of form. There’s an interesting comment on this issue in one of the Skyscraper city fora: http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=329366