After talking about it for over a decade, it’s quite exciting to see that construction work on some of the hardware required for the rail section of the integrated ticketing project has commenced. This was from Auckland Transport yesterday:
Auckland Transport announced today it has commenced rail station construction works which will enable the introduction of a single public transport ticket (Integrated Ticketing) across the Auckland region.
Construction works, comprising ducting and cabling ready for rail tag on and tag off devices for all train stations on Auckland’s network, are commencing in readiness for an integrated ticketing product being developed by Auckland Transport specifically in time for Rugby World Cup 2011.
Auckland Transport’s Chief Executive, David Warburton says, “The start of construction works for ticketing devices is the next step towards integrated ticketing for Auckland. Those travelling to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, or further afield, will be familiar with these types of devices and how to use them. We are now well on the way for a single public transport ticket for Auckland.
“Auckland Transport is developing an integrated travel product which will make public transport an easy choice during the period of the Rugby World Cup. We will be announcing further details of this in the coming months.
“Integrated Ticketing is a critical initiative for public transport in Auckland. It has proven potential to make public transport a much more attractive option for many Aucklanders, maximising public transport patronage and thus freeing up the roads for commercial vehicles and those who don’t have an option but to use a car. This will lead to more efficient use of our roading space and faster travel times”, says Dr. Warburton.
Construction works commence this week at Mt Albert, Morningside and Mt Eden train stations with other stations following over the coming months.
I do wish Auckland Transport would stop selling public transport’s main benefit being the freeing up of road space for cars. While that certainly is a benefit, I would say that there are many greater benefits: with grade separated PT options in particular offering (hopefully) a speed and reliability of travel time that simply isn’t possible by car.
But anyway, that’s just a small gripe. Of more interest is to see how far things get for the Rugby World Cup and to see the details on which stations get fare gates, which bus companies will be integrated with the rail system in time for the World Cup and what ticketing options will be available by September (plus the key issue of whether transfers will be free). After many many years of waiting, it’s good to finally see some concrete progress.
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YAY! I am so happy for Auckland, watch your patronage BOOM!
I hope that transfers are free to help this happen.
Just some notes. Sydney does NOT have smartcard. In fact, they had so many problems that they ripped up the contract for T-Card, and it has NEVER been delivered.
The system now is ‘MyZone’ which is mode-specific (or there is multipass option) but is expensive and certainly not very simple.
Brisbane has smartcard (Go Card) but we were forced to retain single paper tickets because of occasional users and tourists. This is the catch, it might not be possible to get 100% smartcard environment.
Melbourne has Myki, it is working well, but only after major cost blowouts.
Perth has SmartRider, the cheapest of all the systems so far.
So the things to watch out for:
1. Cost blowouts
2. Glitches and errors which are costly
3. Transition period- you need to run both systems side by side for a while to get people to move over and back up if something goes wrong
Other than that, it is good!
I do wish Auckland Transport would stop selling public transport’s main benefit being the freeing up of road space for cars. While that certainly is a benefit, I would say that there are many greater benefits: with grade separated PT options in particular offering (hopefully) a speed and reliability of travel time that simply isn’t possible by car.
Yes, there I share this complaint. However, in a culture where it is assumed that everyone must buy a car and has one (like there is some law that says if you want to move around you must do it in car?)
then really the selling points are unsurprisingly “this is good for car users!” which is of course, not the only thing, but seems to be the only thing that might hope to register with such a car-focused bureaucracy.
Public Transport is great because it allows people who would rather spend their time in their car in traffic congestion the choice to sit there.
Nobody can complain about traffic congestion if they are given an alternative, high quality option and they refuse to use it.
Yeah you are right BrisUrban that selling PT’s benefits to car users is important. Particuarly with the current NZ government who would probably completely abandon PT otherwise.
That comment about freeing up road space for cars is just so that AT can show they are meeting the governments number 1 priority of reducing severe congestion and justify the funding. The transport people planning and delivering this know its way more than that.
I understand that AT will roll out integrated ticketing (one ticket for all), but will there be integrated fares (one price for all per zone, regardless of mode?) or will Auckland retain the awful stage system?
That is part of the great unknown, we are meant to be getting integrated fares but it is now listed as a future stage of the project which doesn’t bode well for it. Supposedly the bus companies are digging their heels in because they are concerned they will get less income due to the fact passengers currently have to pay for each trip individually where as with integrated fares they might only get a portion of each trip if the customer uses more than one service.
Perhaps they aren’t comfortable with the uncertainty over whether trips will increase due to tighter integration.
It is going to be impossible to market a system where each bus operator or mode has a dogs breakfast of differing ticket products and prices. Even the Sydney MyZone products New South Wales, Australia, rolled out are just a mess of options, and they still haven’t integrated the Light Rail system into the rest of the network.
I’m not sure how Perth and Brisbane managed to get around this problem, but they seem to have managed to do it. And Brisbane’s TransLink works with 19 different operators (many of them bus operators) across 7 regions which is a combined size far, far greater that the Auckland area. So it is possible.
http://translink.com.au/about-translink/who-we-are/who-we-work-with
“I understand that AT will roll out integrated ticketing (one ticket for all), but will there be integrated fares (one price for all per zone, regardless of mode?) – BrisUrbane
(plus the key issue of whether transfers will be free). – original post”
If AT don’t do these two things – integrate the fares, and make transfers free – then what is the point of an integrated ticket? Yet again, we are asking these questions because the politicians and CCO bureaucrats have utterly failed to make these points clear. 🙁
“Construction works, comprising ducting and cabling ready for rail tag on and tag off devices for all train stations… – original post”
Siiiigh! So we embark on the insanity of trying to lock down every station in the region, so passengers cannot sneak onto the platform past the ‘tag on’ point and get a free trip. Sure, you can have guards, but that pushes the opex cost up massively…
If you want to make that IT system work, the tag on/off points need to be at the train carriage doorways, which is cheaper to implement (as trains are already sealed units, you don’t have to spend a fortune trying to fence platforms off, or running vast crews of ticket ‘tagged on’ checkers).
What a waste of time and money, and yet more disruption… ;(
Perhaps I should clarify my concerns above. 😉
There are 2 basic models for Integrated Ticket tag cards to work:
1) station/stop/wharf tagging points
2) onboard vehicle tagging points
Model 1 offers the operator the benefit of cutting train and ferry staff to 1 driver and 1 guard (to check for safe embarking, alighting, and door closing); it also speeds bus embarkation and hence travel times slightly. Passengers tag themselves on and off, so all rail and ferry ticket operators (clippies) can be axed – a huge opex saving. This is offset by the cost of having a staff member watching at each station/wharf tag on points to ensure majority compliance with tagging on, and the cost of a few random audit crews wandering trains, buses and ferries to check passengers are all tagged on.
This gets a high compliance rate of tagging on, but is it cheaper than having ticket clippies on every trainset and ferry (and the time taken by bus drivers for them to tag each passenger on)? Any pruning of station/wharf checkers and random audit staff will drop the compliance (and hence ticket revenue!) drastically. I recall the significant drop in fare jumpers when Stagecoach stepped up their random checkers in the late 1990s…
Model 2 is closer to the current model – it does not require the station/wharf checkers, but clippies are replaced by a slightly smaller number of onboard checkers (less are needed as it is slightly quicker checking people are just tagged on than issuing tickets and taking cash). The advantage of model 2 over model 1 is the inbuilt security of the bus/train/ferry mitigates the ability of passengers to dodge tagging on – they are literally a captive market!
It does not significantly slow bus boarding for the driver to observe every passenger tag on. Trains and ferries are harder, as they have multiple entries/exits that people simultaneously board on (for speed, as passenger numbers are far higher than on a single bus), which necessitates onboard checkers. Thankfully, such tag on checkers have all the time between wharves/stations to check, and checking is faster with tag cards – fast enough that perhaps the guard alone is sufficient (at least on off-peak services).
Model 2 is also faster and cheaper to extend services (like the Helensville rail service that got trialed), as there is no need for expensive upgrades to trial or roll out tag points on the extra stations/wharves/stops, as the vehicles already have them.
But to verify which model is better, we need test figures from Auckland Transport to show the volume of tags that can be checked vs tickets that can be clipped per minute, and comparison of these between onboard vs station/wharf tagging/clipping volumes. Not to mention the cost estimates for station tag points vs onboard tag points…
Anyone seen such figures?
The idea is to have tag posts at all train stations with gates at the main stations only which is initially likely to only be Britomart and Newmarket. The idea is that by having gates at only those two stations is that the vast majority will have to pass through a gate at one point in their trip and if you don’t tag of/off at the other destination then you can be dealt with most likely by way of a higher fare to discourage it. The system also has the ability to display messages if someone didn’t tag off regularly the next time they use their card e.g. AT could set it so that if you forget to tag off 3 times in a row the next time you tag on you will get a message in the display above the scanner to remind you and if you continue to do so then your card could be temporarily stopped etc. The plan is also to have fare collectors doing random inspections by way of a handheld device, because of how quick each card could be scanned they could potentially cover an entire carriage quite quickly. All of that should give a fairly high level of compliance on trains but it will never be perfect.
For buses the scanning posts would be in view of the driver so he can ensure all passengers have tagged on, also as all of the info is stored in the card itself it doesn’t matter how many times in a day you use it, it will always be up to date with your balance.
As for staff on trains, depending on what trains we get we might only need a driver. I think the newer Perth units have a system whereby when a train pulls into a station a screen in the cab picks up a local feed of the platform off fixed cameras. From there the driver can monitor the doors to ensure there is no one stuck and also has a display showing that the doors have shut correctly.
TransPerth automatically tags you on if you catch a bus which stops within the ‘fare-paid’ zone of rail stations. So you just transfer.
When you are carrying a lot of people, it might be better to have off-board collection and a lot of readers rather than have them on the train.
From what I read there will be no integrated fares, these seem to have fallen into the ‘maybe someday’ basket. All Auckland will get is a stored value card that is accepted by all operators, although a new full fare will need to be paid on each vehicle, according to the operators fare schedule.
As for why we would do this, well the dogs breakfast model of public transport provision is to blame. All we are really doing is cutting a huge amount of cash handling and staffing for the private operators, and lumping those costs onto a publicly funded ticketing company. So NZBus and company give absolutely nothing, and get a nice additional public subsidy in return to fatten their shareholders dividends.
The system works well in Brisbane and Perth because they use an efficient gross contracting model where the council plans and tenders routes, runs the ticketing system and collects all the fares. They pay the operators a fixed amount to run the services and collect fares on their behalf, operators compete at the contracting stage, and have the opporunity to improve their efficiency and increase profitability once they have a contract.
I was thinking later today of ways to work around this problem.
Around the world there are a number of toll roads. You pay the toll, whether electronic or in person, when you pass the toll collection point.
However, not all toll roads are like this. If I recall correctly, there are some toll roads where you don’t pay anything, because a shadow toll is in force.
The way a shadow toll works, is the toll road operator tells the government how many people went through, and then bills the government an amount.
The motorist never needs to know there is a toll in force or pay anything. See here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_toll
What does this have to do with public transport? By modifiying this idea a bit- maybe some workable transitional arrangement for public transport can be made?
Imagine that when a person boards a bus, they pay the integrated fare (one price for all, no matter what operator or mode). The operator collects this money.
The operator bills the government the “dogs breakfast price”, so this might be a payment to or a payment from the government,
depending on whether the difference between the integrated fare and the dogs breakfast fare resulted in a shortfall or surplus.
The passenger never notices that the fares are not integrated.
The dog’s breakfast is sorted out at the back end like a shadow toll is sorted out
between the government and the toll road operator.
I’m not sure how TransPerth or Brisbane’s TransLink managed to get their systems running up, but worthwhile maybe to look at that.
I feel that there might only be marginal benefits to an Auckland smart card integrated ticketing (one ticket for all) if integrated pricing (one price for all)
isn’t also included. Because in a way you could argue that the ticketing is already integrated- It’s called cash, and it is already universally accepted by all operators.
My understand of how we got into this mess is as follows:
The council was forced to sell the public bus company by the government in the early 90’s and the city was effectively divided up
The model that was used was that the private companies could nominate commercial routes and had full control over them, they took the risk but also took all of the profit. If ARTA wanted a certain run or additional services on a run (i.e. off peak services) then they would have to pay a subsidy to the bus operator to do so however there wasn’t much in the way of openness or accountability so they had to take the companies word for it.
Bus companies would get long term contracts for certain areas that allowed them to run the commercial routes they wanted during that time.
ARTA and the ARC realised this was a bad way of doing things and wanted to change it, they managed to get the government to pass the PTMA allowing them introduce gross contracting to PT services which they have started doing but the problem is there are still a number of years left to run on the contracts of many of the commercial routes and the companies are afraid to give them up and move to them in case a competitor wins the tender.
Due to lobbying by mainly NZBus the government was going to make changes to the PTMA most likely to allow the commercial routes back in but luckily have come to their senses and are no longer going to do so but the revised model they have come up with appears to satisfy the bus companies by giving them longer contracts and better incentives (more money?).
Based on all of this history I think AT are just waiting for the commercial contracts to expire and when they do are then rolling them onto gross contracts but this will take a few more years but once they are all on that AT should have more control of the fares etc. It might be easier than trying to force the contracts on every route as I imagine they are concerned about lawsuits etc but its not good from an integrated ticketing perspective.
Ah sounds like Privatise the Profits, Socialise the Losses- which leads to buses being run mainly on the profit-only routes.
for high-passenger-volume electic trains, tag on/off at the train door is not going to be efficient or practical for very long. it would only be a stop-gap or used for off-peak or low-volume services. the other question is the cost of so many card reader writers, i.e. one for every train door. as far as i can tell, the only reason most stations/plaforms are unmanned at present is because they are so low volume. at some point it becomes necessary/desirable to have staff on the platforms or at ticket gates. i really hope that the people planning this rollout have closely studied a wide range of implementations overseas. it’s not like AKL is a pioneer in this field!
Erm, tagging on and off trains and ferries will happen at the stations. For ferries having gates at downtown and devonport will cover 100% of trips. Having gates only at britomart and Newmarket could be a problem though, that leaves a lot of potential trips up to honesty. If you don’t tag on the usual thing is you can’t get out at the other end and/or you are charged the maximum fare possible. But if there is no gate and you haven’t tagged on there is no issue.
Driver only train operation is very common, but I think it would be a shame not to keep one conductor per train. Melbourne trains suffer from vandalism, fare evasion and unpleasant behaviour which I believe is largely due to the fact they are unstaffed. Furthermore the only human face you ever see is a ticket enforcement officer demanding to see your papers and interrogating you about your travels. Not very good for the public image.
I’ve travelled on Melbourne trains, they’re clean, reasonably frequent (20 minutes or so). Generally good.
The Brisbane trains are the ones covered in scratchitti, grafitti and so on, so I think these things aren’t really related to staffing.
Brisbane has roving ticket officers which also interrogate (and help), this is a feature of any well run system.
Safety would probably improve with more frequent trains- because passengers are taken away from the platforms quickly and don’t spend a lot of time waiting around.
Brisbane trains have guards on every train at night- that’s arguably a better safety measure than general station staff because station staff are not security staff.
Melbourne trains aren’t by any means clean but they do tend to be frequent. Generally good yes but like Brisbane most are covered in scratching and graffiti (FYI I live in Melbourne and use the trains daily).
I think a lot of the problems like the garbage in the aisles, the puddles of piss, the weird guys yelling and ranting etc would be greatly managaged by having staff. I’m talking about conductor on the actual train, not station staff. There biggest security issues in Melbourne are on the unstaffed trains themselves. All the larger stations have security and police patrols at night.
They have just introduced a politically motivated move to put to police at every station in Melbourne at night, this is completely ludicrous if you ask me. The problems aren’t on the stations, they are in the trains (which will remain unstaffed).
Yes, I think that train conductors (or train managers, customer service officers or whatever you want to call them) should have an element of security training and conflict resolution too, in addition to providing information, helping people navigate the system and generally keeping an eye on things.
Agree with Nick that having some staff roving around on board is key, especially on the off-peak, where safety concerns are added to amenity concerns. Hopefully they will keep on a lot of the clippies for such duties.
It may be one idea to turn them into roving ticket inspection and customer service officers. We have those here, but they mostly do security and ticket checking work.
I feel that it would be better to have both that AND customer service functions, so that you could approach one and ask “how do I get to …” and get an answer.
This would be a huge benefit. Of course, they would have to have a good working knowledge of the rail system and how the high frequency bus routes and destinations work.
They would also need to be much more legible- so maybe ASK ME!! could be sewn into their uniforms in giant letters.
Thats what I would like to see, staff whose roles are (in order of importance):
1) Customer service: Giving directions and information, helping people put prams on, announcing stations when the voiceover fails, assisting disabled passengers etc.
2) Security: Dealing with problem customers who like to do grafitti, intimidate other passengers, beg for change or make a mess, plus randomly inspecting tickets (and helping people get one if they have a problem rather than just fining!) and generally being an official presence.
3) Train presentation: clearing garbage and newspapers etc.
I honestly think just having a uniformed set of eyes and ears on board would make a massive change, and Auckland should look to keep at least one train manager per train.
I hope they don’t keep them as there security abilitys are pretty limited and their customer service skills often leaves a lot to be desired. We do have security staff already off peak in the form of Maori Wardens and I think it would be better to train a few more security gaurds to do customer service rather than try to train current onboard staff to do security.
With integrated ticketing we should be able to almost half the number of clippies overnight as we curretnly have a TM and up to 4 clippies per train and reducing this number could still provide a staff presence but help to reduce costs by quite a bit which will help a lot with making the trains more affordable to run meaning less subsidies are needed.
Yes, having 4 people per train does not seem necessary at all.
One of the larger costs of operating a rail system is labour.
If the frequency of train services increase (whats the basic frequency on the trains in Wellington and Auckland- 30 minutes off peak?)
and maybe new roles as customer services and directions officers
then the increase in passengers should allow both an increase in service and everyone to keep their job.
“I think a lot of the problems like the garbage in the aisles, the puddles of piss, the weird guys yelling and ranting etc would be greatly managaged by having staff. I’m talking about conductor on the actual train, not station staff.”
Modern train designs where the carriages are joined together continuously without inter-carriage doors help. Not much point having a guard keeping an eye on things when he or she is limited to a single carriage.
I thought the new Wellington trains were of a door-less design, but I can’t find a photo online that confirms it. Is that the case for the new Auckland and Wellington trains or was I just imagining it?
Wellington’s new trains are 2 car EMU’s so for a 6 car train you would need 3 people to be able to monitor the whole train at once as there is no inter EMU access, in Auckland we will have 3 car EMU’s so for a 6 car EMU we would only need 2 staff to monitor the enitre train at once.
One person could probably manage it simply by using the intercarriage doors and periodically moving up and down the train. They could change ends every five or ten minutes or something.
Thanks Matt! These are both improvements over single carriages where it is easily possible for people to be alone and anti-social. Sydney (I think it was Sydney) has marked carriages with guards for people to use at night time if they feel threatened. That doesn’t stop people vandalising the rest of the train, but makes for a more pleasant trip for single women and other vulnerable people.
Is there any reason that a single guard shouldn’t monitor a whole train via CCTV? I’m not sure I like the idea of guards spying on people, but I’m even less keen on people spoiling train carriages and making a nuisance of themselves. Having fixed non-zoomable cameras would be sufficient for security purposes and eliminate any potential to crossover from monitoring to stalking.
Would it change during the 2011 World Cup or it’s just publicity for the upcoming event? Security is important especially with tourists abound during that time.