Every time I hear the saying “but Aucklanders love their cars” I generally roll my eyes. My reply is generally along the lines of: “yes, it is true that Aucklanders are very auto-dependent and that we have one of the highest rates of car ownership in the world. However, that’s not because we naturally love our cars more than Wellington (or wherever), it’s because our transport policies of the past 60 years have focused almost exclusively on making it easier to get around by car than by any other mode.”
In short, for most trips in Auckland the logical transport decision is to drive. If you own a car, have a license to drive it and can afford to put fuel in it – generally driving will be faster, more convenient and/or cheaper than other transport modes for most trips.
The problem I have with such an outcome is that we have sacrificed the quality of Auckland’s urban environment to a significant extent to create the current transport situation. We bulldozed thousands of houses to create spaghetti junction, we continue to degrade central Auckland by having arterial roads resembling full-scale motorways, we’ve build soulless new suburbs like Dannemora and Botany Downs with every little design detail of these places having the car in mind – and everyone else very much as an after-thought. Looking into the future, continuing this trend simply doesn’t make sense: there is nowhere for future motorways to go, widening any of our arterial roads is likely to be extremely difficult and expensive, we can’t give private vehicles any more priority in the central city without destroying the place completely.
There are exceptions of course; the biggest one being that paying for parking in the CBD is expensive, so public transport becomes a more attractive financial option. Also, for some trips to the city centre – in particular along the Northern Busway and the Eastern Railway Line (as well as some bus routes like Dominion Road and Onewa Road) the public transport is fast enough to be competitive with driving – and as a result the services are extremely popular.
Of course a certain portion of the population will always need to use public transport: generally those that don’t own a car or are unable to drive one. There will also be the odd nutter like me who catches public transport even when it doesn’t make logical sense and I have the driving option available. When I used to live in Sandringham and work in Avondale I often caught the bus to work just to be a good public transport supporter, even though driving would have been much faster and probably cheaper.
While we must obviously ensure that those with no transport choice retain decent public transport, I think the main test for improving Auckland’s buses, trains and ferries is to see whether the improvements make public transport the logical choice. As it’s going to be nigh on impossible (both financially and practically) in the future to build more roads (or widen our existing ones), reducing vehicle congestion is wholly dependent on getting people out of their cars and onto more efficient means of transport. But in order to do that we can’t simply think it’s going to magically happen, and I don’t think we’re going to get particularly far by appealing to altruistic tendencies: that catching the bus is going to save the planet and so forth. In the end, we need to make public transport the logical choice.
So how does one do that? I suggest there are three main ways:
- Speed. In fact, I could say that the three ways of improving PT are speed, speed and speed – this is just so critical. Public transport is generally just so incredibly slow that it will struggle to attract people who have viable alternatives. Why would you spend two hours a day commuting by bus when you could instead spend one hour doing the same thing by car? To increase speed requires more bus lanes, faster boarding times, faster trains and simpler bus routes. We simply must do everything we can to make it go faster.
- Quality of ride experience. One big advantage of using public transport is that you can do something else on your trip than simply driving. With smartphones you can check emails, with laptops you can prepare reports, with a book you can simply have a nice read. We should be looking to both sell this advantage of PT, but also enhance it. Why not put free wifi on our trains, or even our buses – for example? We should also make sure as time goes on all our buses and trains have air-conditioning and that they offer a top-notch ride quality.
- Make the system easy to use. Often I think that many people are put off using public transport because it’s simply “too hard”. Getting in your car and driving somewhere is easy: you don’t have to worry about timetables, you don’t have to worry which bus company operates a route and whether they’ll accept your pass, you don’t have to try to decipher impossibly complicated maps to work out where you bus route goes, or where in the city your bus back home will leave. Catching public transport should be just as simple: a ticketing system accepted on all buses and trains, high enough frequencies that you don’t need to bother with a timetable and a bus route system simple enough to stick in your head like the London Underground map.
This is not an impossibility. The success of the Northern Express shows that when you have a fast, simple and convenient public transport option people will leave their cars at home and use public transport. When public transport becomes the logical mode option for more and more people we will see patronage skyrocket, and we will have succeeded in reducing our auto-dependency and creating a world-class transport system.
Patronage increases won’t happen by magic though, we need to continuously improve our public transport system – with a focus on speed, quality, convenience and simplicity.
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Two things really bug me about the buses (which I use anyway).
Uncomfortable seats. Who chose those stupid bucket seats that half the StageCoach buses have.
Noise. This is the really big one for me. I hate how noisy the buses are.
They are noisy when you are waiting at the bus stop and several buses pull up and take off. As loud as trucks. This makes waiting for buses really unpleasant.
They noisy sitting in them. One day I realised I had my headphones on full to be able to hear. It was then I realised how loud it was inside the bus.
I know it would be expensive to fix but to me the noise is the big difference in user experience between cars and buses.
I would be happy to get hold of a noise meter and write an article on this.
This is something that Auckland Transport should add to the bus specifications.
Public Transport is a service business. If you provide bad service, don’t expect customers. Expect to lose them to the competition (car).
Poor service is not how you get more customers, it’s how you go bankrupt.
People will happily leave their car at home or at the park and ride (so high car ownership isn’t the cause at all, more of a effect of a cause), “love of the car”- Perth is one of the most car dependent cities in the world, they love their cars but they also love the Joondalup and Mandurah line trains (so it isn’t one or the other), low density and dispersed trips, again Perth shows that is not a barrier and the theoretical “squaresville” example by Mees, which has 100% of public transport trips dispersed and with random trip origins and destinations shows that even under the worst-case conditions, you can still get good PT.
The number of excuses to take refuge from for bad public transport are rapidly disappearing.
You used the word “generally” four times in that post. Care to do some actual research?
I like the article, and would make one remark about speed. I am fortunate. I live in Pukekohe and work at the University. The particular morning and evening ‘bus I take go all the way – no ‘bus changes in Papakura – and go down Symonds Street. But a lot of possibilities would be out for me. If I took the train, for instance, I have a long walk up from Britomart, and back in the evening. Routes and transfer points that work are really a major part of speed.
jj
he used it 5 times, care to do some actual research? 🙂
I love my car, but we’re not exclusive.
While I love driving, I hate driving in traffic, it takes all the fun out of it. That is why I take the bus to work. I also would like the option after about 4pm, when your mind turns to nocturnal pursuits, of being able to get on a bus or train and head into town or Ponsonby and not have to worry about an expensive taxi ride home. I’m lucky where I am now that it’s only $15 by taxi home, but I remember when I was in Devonport and it cost $50. The last ferry is at 1am and I usually wasn’t ready to go home until at least 2-3am. This left me with the terrible quandry of having to choose between going home before everyone else or staying later and having to spend a small fortune to get home.
“yes, it is true that Aucklanders are very auto-dependent and that we have one of the highest rates of car ownership in the world. However, that’s not because we naturally love our cars more than Wellington (or wherever), it’s because our transport policies of the past 60 years have focused almost exclusively on making it easier to get around by car than by any other mode.”
I know a number of people who, if I used the line in the opening paragraph when talking transport, would have tuned out about halfway through that sentence.
I’ve seen this elsewhere already, but it is a good way to open an explanation to people using just one breath and making sure they don’t tune out when responding to the “love affair” line:
“It’s not a love affair, it was a forced marriage, arranged in the ‘sixties.”
Oops, correction: “It’s not a love affair, it was a forced marriage, arranged in the late ‘fifties.”
Re: Air Conditioning… your wish is slowly coming true, quite a few of the buses I catch (North Star) already have the aircon on and it’s set to 9*C. Since it’s summer, I don’t carry a jacket or a jumper, leaving me… cold!!! I just heard from my workmate the same thing about Howick & Eastern! What is it with people going extremes? A nice 21*C would be quite comfortable for everyone!
Brisbane, in your neighbouring country Australia is doing a good job with busses IMO.
For a booming population spread over a large area, who long ago ripped out it’s beloved trams/light rail (because that’s what the Americans were doing), busses are the answer.
— Dedicated bus tunnels to get in and out of inner city with no congestion
— Buses that run as infrequently as 20mins on major routes
— Express busses that get office-workers in and out, fast
— Simple 3-zone payment system that covers you for Rail, bus and ferry transport
— LED info boards on major bus stops telling you the next 5 busses and times
— Modern, quiet, low-riding busses
Brisbane has spent a huge amount of money on infrastructure (and some of it probably went under water lately) but are facing an LA like problem where CO2 is trapped by the mountain ranges around it leading to a potential a smog-bowl.
Hi Keith.
Yes we have reformed our buses. However the cost to do the busways was actually similar to the cost to build heavy rail ($100 million/km plus). It really was a choice based on ‘fit for purpose’ and context. The busways had an advantage in that they didn’t need an expensive tunnel downtown until much later and also could avoid a transfer “a nice to have”.
We have a rail system that is now ready for upgrade, and the latest planning documents such as Connecting SEQ 2031 reflect that in their “rail revolution”. The busways are extremely successful and are now extremely full such that people are being left behind and there is overcrowding. This is not an argument for or against busways, but just a clarification around why there is a need to move on to rail based solutions purely out of capacity, necessity and making best use of existing rail assets.
Brisbane has 5 times as many rail stations as it has busway stations. Buses are good, but they are not a reason to ignore reform of existing rail assets. There are issues with too many buses on streets and terminal capacity of the CBD to take them all at stops.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/features/push-for-rail-tunnel-funding/story-fn4z2520-1225834056511
The next phase will be to fix up the rail system by bringing in all day high frequency train services, which has recently been done on a section of the Ipswich line, where trains run every 15 minutes between 6am – 10 pm 7 days and also start running BRT out of the train stations as well.
Oh, did I mention, rail tunnels in the CBD are all the rage over here. Perth has one, Melbourne has one and wants another one, Sydney has come up with and idea for one.
Auckland isn’t the only one trying increase core rail capacity!
Dare I say.
You’ll only achieve a substantial mode shift if you fix the pricing of roads. The global experience, especially in new world cities, is that mode shift is marginal regardless of the fortune poured into an alternative.
Public transport has a long list of disadvantages that can’t be easily or affordably addressed (e.g. other people, standing for some, schedule bound, stop bound, route bound), but which look far different when motorists are faced with some of the marginal economic costs of congestion.
Sadly even public transport advocates in NZ haven’t really “got” this, partly because snakeoil keeps being sold by people like Mees who reject the economics (and the experience) probably because it looks too suspiciously like the free market.
The other point, is that this should also be about active modes, and not travelling. Technology has done a lot to reduce the need to travel, and everything that is done for public transport should NOT be taking modeshare from active modes.
I do agree that effective road pricing would definitely help however given the complaints that come up by just proposing a toll road I think it would be political suicide to try and implement nationwide/citywide road pricing which is why no one suggests it.
Another thing is that logistically it will be hard to implement, how would you suggest roads be priced, toll booths on key roads? electronic gantries all over the city? GPS tracking?. The thing about all methods is they effectively require the state to track your movements, something libertarians are also opposed to.
Petrol tax is a pretty blunt way of collecting roading tax but it is also the easiest so converting to any other system is going to cost a lot to implement. In saying all of this, I think making changes to road taxes is something that will need to happen within the next decade or so. This is mainly due to the fact that cars are getting more and more efficient and electric cars are starting to come out which won’t incur any petrol tax yet maintenance costs won’t reduce.
Given congestion pricing now exists in forms in London, Stockholm, Singapore, Rome, Florence, Dubai, Oslo, Milan and Valetta, the practicality is not in question. It has existed in electronic form for 13 years, Singapore being the most evolved example. DSRC beacons are now no more intrusive that a streetlamp, and can be introduced on major routes.
The idea that “tracking” is needed or exists is a media myth perpetuated by reporters who don’t know how GPS works. It is a received that triangulates radio signals to display a position in a piece of equipment. The satellites track no one, they are transmitters. New Zealand already has GPS based distance charging with those who pay Road User Charges able to choose a GPS measured option called ERoad. It is a simple matter for a unit to measure distance, varied by time of day, varied by location, and to calculate the total charge and transmit the total billing data through 3G mobile networks to an account. The state need not be involved, as it isn’t with the German and Slovak systems.
The costs of implementation are low compared to unlocking vast economic benefits in halving congestion, delaying road improvements, increasing viability of public transport and the environmental benefits.
The petrol tax point is on the ball though, it is exactly the problem faced in the US where it is untenable to raise fuel taxes and revenue is in free fall because of efficiency of vehicles and alternative fuels. There are now serious investigations into options to replace fuel taxes with systems similar to what I just described.
The MoT received a report in 2003 demonstrating how it was technically feasible and not costly to shift to time, place and distance based charging of roads for existing RUC liable vehicles (about 22%) (roads need only be charged by road type classification).
The thing that is key is that it is NOT about generating new revenue, but replacing existing charges. If Auckland only I’d suggest it replace rates based funding of roads, which would benefit those that do not drive, but it would be preferable to have it rolled out nationally step by step.
I generally agree with you in this case Liberty, and the key for the future should involve firstly motorists paying a larger proportion of the direct costs of road use, plus secondly paying for some or all of their externalised disbenefits (i.e. paying for the congestion they cause by driving).
However there are otherways to effect the same without a full electronic congestion charge. Perhaps the simplest is to simply ramp up existing fuel taxes. This price obviously doesn’t differentiate between congested and uncongested routes directly, but it would have some effect in that regard as people would try to avoid wasting expensive fuel in congestion and favour less congested routes and times.
As for your gybe against Mees, his theories are specifically designed to address your concerns regarding “schedule bound, stop bound, route bound” in a simple and affordable way. With a properly designed network of public transport there is a stop handy to any location and schedules and routes become irellevant. Surely as I see you are now based in London you have experienced this with the Tube. Tube stations are generally convenient to anywhere within the network, services are so frequent that timtables become meaningless and because transfers are such a straightforward, fast and intergral part of tube travel the particular route of a given line is almost inconsequental to travelling on the network.
Certainly Auckland couldn’t afford to build the London Underground, but there is no reason it couldn’t replicate it at surface level using buses and trains.
Furthermore one key point Mees keeps stressing in his latest book is that you can throw billions at one mode, but you’ll never see a real mode shift if you keep also throwing billions at the alternative. His basic case is that mode shift would be effected by not spending billions each year expanding the road network, or in other terms to effectively restrict growth in road traffic. Pricing is one thing, but I don’t think we should underestimate the ‘price’ charged in terms of people’s time and frustration either.
It would be relatively straightforward to leave (or even encourage) the general road network to reach a congested equillibrium while focussing on improving the speed and capacity of public transport. Pretty soon it would become considerably faster to make most trips by public transport. Now this wouldn’t be a particularly efficient use of the road network but it certainly would effect mode shift, and in terms of the cost to the state it might be a lot lower.
“plus secondly paying for some or all of their externalised disbenefits (i.e. paying for the congestion they cause by driving)”
The congestion externality is mostly a disbenefit to other motorists. In which case the only fair way to disburse my congestion charge is to pay it to the motorists I delay while they pay their congestion charges to me. Which all balances out at zero, minus the government or council’s handling fee.
The alternative approach of paying the congestion charge to the council, as happens in London, means that motorists suffer the externality disbenefit of congestion and then have to compensate the council for some reason.
I think there are two issues getting mixed up in one, replacing petrol tax and congestion charging.
On the Petrol tax one, we both agree that tax income will start to fall and we need something to replace it nationwide. A modified version of RUC’s is probably the most logical answer although I think the biggest issue would be chasing up payment. As it is now if you don’t want to pay the tax then you can’t drive as you have to pay it at the time of buying the petrol. With an RUC style system though I think we would see a lot of people skipping payments and it would need strong enforcement. I also think there should still be a small petrol tax which is determined by the amount of environmental damage burning that petrol causes.
Congestion charging is something completely separate though and would only really be needed in the larger cities. Thinking about places like London though, it is just as blunt a tool as petrol tax in that you get charged if you cross an imaginary line so doesn’t work well for all situations. In Auckland I find that most of the congestion isn’t CBD focused but people trying to get across the city like from Te Atatu to Penrose and the congestion isn’t just focused in certain places but a broad area across the city. I think we would need to be careful about how we introduce any congestion charge so it doesn’t distort commercial and residential development.
I do like the idea of replacing rates dedicated to roading with more direct taxes as for one it means that those who are renting are more directly impacted by their decisions instead of the current situation where they can call for roading/PT improvements but don’t directly pay for it.
RUC enforcement is entirely plausible and is done in Europe. Most people pay motor vehicle registration, so it would have no less compliance than that.
Congestion charging would be RUC like, no cordons, just charge all by distance, more within Auckland city at peak times, more on certain types of roads.
The practicalities are not a problem, it is the politics.
Considering the massive inefficiency of the Northern Gateway toll-road (transaction costs eat up almost half the toll) I wonder whether any benefit of road pricing in a way other than petrol tax would be negated by the administration costs.
The NZTA running a toll road is not a measure of efficiency. A NZ government agency does not compare to companies who have been in this business for years. The Melbourne Citylink toll road has transaction costs significantly lower. However you can’t compare a single toll road to charging a network.
I don’t really see what the problem is. Despite there being disadvantages to public transport, we have so many people wanting to use it that buses are full and people are being left behind at stations. That’s not failure, but being victims of success.
The car might be convenient, but it is the lowest capacity mode and has a number of its own disadvantages- petrol prices, you need to drive it and it becomes much less useful when you need it most- at peak hour because it gets stuck in congestion.
Brisbane is having a huge argument over these new toll tunnels that are being built here. Congestion pricing may be fit into the picture, but there is no one solution. You need public transport because people need to see an alternative to go to if they are priced out of their car at peak hour by the market.
Active modes are good, but walking and cycling will be always at a time disadvantage compared to an express train or an express bus. If you live far away, like down at Mandurah, these options are not available to you.
Horses for courses really.
This article is a good summary of the approach we should be taking. We know travel by car is going to keep getting worse in Auckland, but we should be committed to improving public transport standards to win people over rather than just waiting for them to be forced onto it.
One area you didn’t mention explicitly was technology and how that can be used to make travel easier. On my last trip to Los Angeles I ignored conventional wisdom and didn’t hire a car. The reason I could do this was because of Google public transport route planning on my iPhone. There’s no way I’d have been able to work out the bus routes and ways to get places without this, but it worked surprisingly well and was a very cheap too (a few dollars compared to US$50 or more a day on parking alone if you went places by car). These mobile route planners combined with better real-time signs would make bus travel much more approachable for those not familiar with the setup.
Finally, when you put something like this article together, it really highlights the lack of answers coming from our minister for Transport and the National Party. They’re obsessed with using our money to build these motorways and bypasses out in the rural areas but don’t give any real solutions for city commuters to move around more efficiently. The closest Steven Joyce has come to an answer was his opinion piece in the paper summed up “lets move the problem and go for more sprawl.”
I think we need to be designing our bus networks with tourists in mind. If tourists can use it, it will be a breeze for the locals. One example would be on board information letting passengers know what stop/suburb they are in so they actually know when to get off. More consistent and obvious bus shelters and signage would also help legibility of the system. At the moment its just a bus stop pole and a plastic bracket – easily missed.
I notice travelling that tourists rarely uses buses but always use trains/metro and trams to get around cities. Buses are often just too complicated unless you have very specific instructions, and even then can be a struggle.
Having rolling electronic displays inside buses would be a good start, give stop name, and also change here for buses to x,y and z. Automatic announcements for major stops could be worthwhile but they may annoy more people than they help.
I don’t find the Link Bus announcements annoying and they announce the location of every coming stop. Perhaps it would be useful if the link also said things like “change here for Dominion Road buses” and stuff like that.
There are buses and LRT that do this. Amazing!
Its worthwhile but the voice needs to be carefully chosen so as not to be irritating to customers. Sometimes only the main stops or stops where interchange with high frequency services might be announced.
“There are buses and LRT that do this. Amazing!”
What do you mean by this?
Admins suggestion was to have announcements inside buses and so forth. I think the systems in Toronto, Canada have this already in operation with LED signs in the bus, stop announcements and interchange announcements.
Hope that clarifies things.
I am well aware of in bus/train/tram announcements and displays and use them daily, it’s pretty normal in Europe – however your comment itself didn’t make much sense so I was more asking what you were trying to say.
How about less bus stops?
try taking the 277/274 from the city to three kings. every 100m there is a bus stop or traffic lights or the bus lane ends(!!!) and the bus is forced to join the traffic lane.
I feel quite guilty sometimes when i get off the 004/005/017 by the chip shop, when everyone else got off at the BP 20m back up the road.
I believe that you also need to include level of service as a major requirement. If PT on a route run at hour intervals (or even half hour intervals) during the weekend and after 7pm at night then the residents serviced by that route will only use it if desperate, this then leads to people not even thinking of PT as an option. Buses/trains/ferries need to run at reasonable intervals all the time, major bus routes and trains should be running until later than 1am and start again at 5am. As noted by James B, if you use PT one way but then must catch a very expensive taxi the other way driving becomes a lot cheaper.
The current PT in Auckland is mildly warmed over from how it was in the 1950/60s. Life has changed a lot, once upon a time most people went to church on Sunday and all stores were closed. Now many people go shopping and stores are open, which was unimaginable back then.
Unfortunately to make a real difference a significant boost in service is required for a number of years before decent increases in patronage are seen, this means that it is a financial burden in the short term to reach a long term achievement.