Looking forward to this year, there are four main things that I think will be particularly interesting to follow regarding the development of Auckland’s public transport system. They are:
- The opening of the Manukau Rail Station. I have been somewhat sceptical of the Manukau Rail Link in the past, as I have wondered who will use it without a southern connection. But with most of south Auckland’s bus routes linking into a ‘hub’ at Manukau, with people transfering onto trains for trips further north, I am now quite optimistic the station will be fairly well used. Of course, for transfers to work we need…
- Integrated Ticketing. The staggered rollout of integrated ticketing throughout this year will be, in my opinion, the biggest development of public transport throughout 2011. There are still many unanswered questions about how this is going to work though – including the big question of when will we be able to use the same ticket on all public transport services – regardless of their provider.
- The continuing electrification works that we’ve seen in the last few days. 2011 is likely to be similar to 2009, in the way that we will have to put up with a lot of weekend closures and other inconveniences, without actually seeing too many rewards for the frustration. However, every weekend closure and every other inconvenience brings us one step closer to a modern electrified rail system – and that is exciting. I hope that, as some sort of reward for the inconveniences that the works will bring, we are able to benefit from improvements to things like the signaling system as soon as they are completed.
- And finally, it will be interesting to see what happens to our public transport system during the Rugby World Cup. While a lot of focus has gone into improving the rail system for people getting between Britomart and Kingland for the games themselves, I actually think what will be of most interest is how the rest of the system performs on non-game days. There will be a lot of international media floating around Auckland between games and I’m sure they would love nothing more than to write articles on how pathetic Auckland’s public transport system is.
As well as these “big ticket items”, perhaps what I hope most for throughout 2011 is continuing small-scale improvements that can make a big difference to the quality of our public transport system. More bus lanes, simplified bus routes, higher bus frequencies, easier transfers between services, faster boarding times and so forth.
It should be an interesting year.
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– Electrification is good (though I don’t rate it as highly as others do), but it will suffer from teething issues – brace yourselves!
– RWC is a potential disaster. ARTA have not prepped well, and have a bad track record on big events. The new Kingsland subway tunnel is far too small for the thousands of expected rugby fans getting on after the matches. Bizarre, as they could easily and cheaply have made it 4 times the width (and should do so now!). Has anyone looked at gating and guarding the platform entrances to regulate commuter numbers, so trains don’t get swamped (causing massive delays and risks)?
– I have yet to hear anyone explain why we need a special Integrated Ticket (other than the daftly obvious – seamless transfers; yes, I get that!). We already have an ‘integrated ticket’ – the Discovery Day and Monthly Passes, which let you travel on all buses, trains and ferries (except Hauraki islands and Half Moon Bay). Expensive, but it exists, and I use them. Why can’t ARTA just tweak the conditions to include ten-trips and cash fare tickets being used on any operator? Cut off contracted service funding to any operator who won’t play ball…
– Lastly, Manukau spur rail. Finally, some sense from Kiwirail may save this – they have rebuilt the Manurewa road overbridges at Browns Rd and Jutland Rd to have space for 3 tracks (which Jutland already had). If they lay the 3km of track south to Southmall (key shopping mall in Manurewa, and site of underused bus-rail interchange), then Manukau-Manurewa can run as a seperate shuttle service. This means no signals/points delays, and a chance of attracting patronage (most Manukau shoppers live in Manurewa).
Another option is for all South and East trains to divert to Manukau – adds time to all South and East passengers not going to Manukau, but gives a consistent service (no alternating nonsense), lets Manukau passengers go north or south without transfer, and does not halve the frequency of existing trains south of Manukau (which ARTA currently plan by terminating East trains at Manukau).
Are you reading, ARTA planners? If so, respond! In deed, if not in word 😉
You raise a good point about integrated ticketing effectively being two distinct projects:
1) Having a ticket that is accepted on all operators. We do kind of have that now, but only for monthly and daily passes (and it’s exceedingly expensive).
2) Having a smart-card, with the benefits of faster boarding and better information management (knowing exactly what trips passengers take, allowing automatic top-ups etc. etc.)
There’s nothing stopping us doing the first of these tomorrow. All Auckland Transport would need to do is issue a set of tickets and say that all operators MUST accept and sell that ticket. Effectively, you’d just need to roll out the Northern Pass throughout the rest of Auckland.
In terms of electrification, it’s good because it’s actually cheaper over the lifespan of future trains to electrify the system and buy electric trains than it would be to buy new diesel trains. Furthermore, electrification enables faster running and also enables the CBD Rail Tunnel – which would be impossible without electrification.
Only problem with the Northern Pass (other then you can’t use it on the link bus) is that the day pass is for that day. So you can’t buy a day pass for tomorrow. Which is only alright if you live near a station or perminentally carry cash. Fix that then role it out as the Intergrated Ticket.
Just make it like the Oyster card, you store value on it, swipe on/off services and once you get to the day pass cost you stop being charged. Simple. Have a weekly and monthly pass as well for regualar commuters.
There should also be a two hour paper based ticket that is expensive enough to encourage regular users to get a Hop card, but which gives people an ability to transfer without buying a new ticket and holding everyone on the bus up. Make it with big numbers and letters so the driver can check it easily and push whatever button he’ll need to push.
Yes there will likely be some teething issues but in the grand scheme of things but provding they aren’t anything that will impact the service long term (like omitting something like aircon from the trains) then they will be quickly forgotten.
hopefully there will be more station upgrades
Otahuhu needs an upgrade urgently
Anothing thing the will be interesting will be the dissussion over the CBD tunnel, will the government agree to help fund it or will they dig their heels in, also how will that be impacted by the election.
That’s very true Matt – I was mainly thinking of physical works and improvements that will come to fruition this year, but perhaps the most interesting thing will be what happens in the CBD Tunnel debate. It could become an interestingly big election issue.
What i find as staggering about the integrated ticketing, is the fact that we seem to be being dictated to by the transport (mainly bus) companies not the other way around. Auckland transport should cancel all existing contracts and reissue them with new instructions. if the companies do not wish to conform with the new standards, they don’t have to apply.
Exactly John. After all, the bus companies receive tens of millions of dollars worth of public subsidies every year. I’m pretty sure they’d miss that money.
it’s not really a public transport project but I’m looking forward to the opening of the new shared spaces, think they’ll do wonders for their respected streets!
That’s my favourite 2011 project as well. Auckland will hopefully transform itself to a city that people are excited about. The shared spaces projects are about transforming the city centre into something unique to this part of the world. I hope that these are only the first of many projects to improve the city. Hopefully this will encourage people to take some ownership of the city centre. That’s the one difference I find between Wellington and Auckland, Wellingtonians take a great pride in their city centre. That attitude needs to change because we have just as good a city centre, it just needs a few projects to tie it together. Give us shared spaces, Hobson/Nelson Street, High Street Mall, Waterfront Promenade, Queen Street pedestrianisation and Auckland will have a world class CBD.
Brisbane collects all fare revenue and then pays operators on per-km travelled basis, regardless of patronage.
It allows routes to be adjusted and integration to come about. Integrated fares did wonders and then Brisbane got integrated
ticketing GoCard (note the difference between integrated ticketing and integrated fares).
15 minute, all day, all week and weekend, no exceptions to all stations services in both directions linking with 15 minute co-ordinated bus and free transfers are the keys to unlocking patronage. If people think this is crazy, have a look at the rail timetables for Perth, Australia (TransPerth)- trains are 15 minutes to all stations, and Perth is less dense and has less people than Auckland! A place like Auckland should be aiming to carry at least 50-100 million journeys per year on the rail network.
Good to see its happening!
The resurrection of light rail – albeit in a somewhat irrelevant loop at Halsey/Jellico Streets. Will it stimulate interest and pressure to extend tramways or will patronage stats prove the undoing.
While I most definitely support light rail, I’m still shedding a tear for the destruction of the last decent road cycling criterium circuit that isn’t 20km out of the city.
Simon – dunno about Northern Pass, but the Discovery Day Pass could be clipped by the driver/guard/ticket agent for the following day, as it has all 31 days and 12 months listed on the ticket. Technically though, condition 2 on the Terms of Use would have to be changed – it says the ticket must be used on the same day. Daft.
Everyone (well, John D and Josh and Simon) seems to agree then, that Auckland Transport (ex ARTA) should stop faffing around and use their immense leverage to force the operators to accept an AT ticket that works on all services. Goodo – so it’ll be done in 3 months, right?
Smart cards do offer massive gains in data for AT to analyse (and improve services based on, right?), and convenience in top-ups, but…. there are massive privacy/security concerns here that few PT fans seem to talk about. There are obvious security risks around Smartcards accessing funds from your bank (as we have seen with Eftpos skimming scams).
But of more concern is that Smartcards give the operator total power to track and deny travel to any patron. Paranoid perhaps, but it is too easy to create an authoritarian regime this way (look at Britain’s frightening ‘kettling’ of peaceful demonstrators and anti-terrorist CCTV scheme – in Manchester? – that was revealed to be just a community control device). I would love to see a cost-benefit analysis for Smartcards vs paper integrated tickets with proper statistical surveys for data collection. I think Smartcards would struggle to justify themselves…
I note there are no bites on the flawed Manukau route that will soon be forced on us?…
On the smart card issue, Thales when they came to a CBT meeting said cards could be registered or not, non registered cards could be updated by kiosks and ticket agents etc but that was it, registered cards can be setup to have things like automatic top ups, ways to check your usage and lost/stolen card functionality etc. That way anyone concerned about being privacy or security could just doesn’t need to register it and AT will never know who it is. All data is then put into a database and access to that info is determined by level of authorisation, registered users can see their info only as mentioned, bus/train/ferry companies can see info for their specific services but not others (but I don’t think they get individual user details), AT get everything and the NZTA get high level patronage data i.e. not route or operator specific, so they can monitor the effectiveness of the subsidies they are paying (this was a condition of them paying for some of the technology).
For the Manukau point, a shuttle would likely kill the chance of it even remotely working, this would be the same as if they did this for Onehunga, also south of Manukau there is only really 10 min frequencies anyway as most of the other services on the lines are short runners to Otahuhu so by simply extending these to Manukau those south of there should really see much difference in frequencies.
AT has no leverage at present. Its contracts with NZ Bus were renewed until 2014, and in the absence of a PTMA-compliant transport plan there’s nothing that can be done to commence the de-registration process that would allow the contracts to be terminated without compensation. It’ll take over a year to get the plan approved and in place, probably three months to carry out the de-registration process (after allowing at least six months to confirm that NZ Bus are buggering about), and then as long as it takes for the inevitable appeals to wend their way through the courts. All of which time NZ Bus will have obtained interim injunctions to allow it to continue to screw Aucklanders. By that time, the contracts will be up for renewal.
The only thing AT can do is grin and bear it and wave the stick of “We’ll go elsewhere”. Which, I’m afraid, won’t really scare NZ Bus because they know they’re pretty much immune from any fallout until a PT-friendly government comes to power and will stand behind AT.
Matt – I believe that NZBus have now come to an agreement with AT that means the PTMA will stay in place but they will get 12 year contracts instead of what was planned previously. I don’t know if this means they will give up their existing contracts and move across to gross contracts immediately but will definitely come into effect in the future.
Brisbane had a bit of a fallout as it turned out that police were using the GoCard smartcard to help with their investigations.
There is an option to not register your card, and this gives people privacy options.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/go-card-records-handed-over-without-justification-20101123-184qc.html
talking about Brisbane, it’s a shame Auckland and NZ Govt didn’t get on with the job with electrification rather than procrastinating – you might have had a working section, say Britomart to New Lynn, in time for the RWC.
Brisbane had its embryonic network in place by the time of the 1982 Commonwealth Games.
IIRC Ipswich, Ferny Grove, Kingston and the recently electrified Shorncliffe line were present. IIRC Lota, Caboolture, Beeleigh and Doomben were not yet done. The Exhibition loop was electrified just in time.
Enough to show off to visitors and make the job of carrying more visitors easier (as they hung on to extra stock during the transition).
If Auckland could have had a few units of the electric fleet available AS WELL as the current fleet, hang onto the SXs and ADKs and stuff just long enough to get through the RWC.
Anyway, been wasting enough time that might have been put into getting something in place.