Auckland Transport has conducted their annual fare review and decided that bus and ferry fares will remain the same, but that train fares will rise by around 10 cents per stage. Here’s the media release:
Auckland Transport said today it has completed its annual review of bus, ferry and train fares. Single and 10-trip bus and some ferry fares will continue to be held at their current levels.
Auckland Transport’s Chief Executive David Warburton says, “When reviewed against the Maximum Fare Schedule (MFS), the annual aggregated cost movement for bus and ferry services did not warrant fare increases for single and 10-trip multi-journey tickets which come under the schedule. Bus services in particular also have economies of scale, due to their carriage of over 80% of public transport commuters.
“An annual review of Auckland’s public transport fares is required by the contract between Auckland Transport and its operators. The review takes into account factors such as increased operator cost, revenue and patronage movements in the context of the wider economic climate, service quality and changes, price of diesel, service levels, wage and salary increases, and the CPI (Consumer Price Index).
“The annual Maximum Fare Schedule (MFS) sets maximum fares for adult, child/senior, and tertiary, single and 10-trip multi-journey tickets.
“It should be noted, aside from single and 10-trip multi-journey tickets, bus and ferry operators have the right to increase prices for ticket products they offer themselves, while some ferry fares are beneath the maximum schedule and may increase”.
Dr Warburton says, “Rail fares will increase from 13 March 2011 due to an $8 million increase in costs associated with providing more services from 1529 scheduled services per week to 1950 services per week. The price rises range from 10 cents for a one stage trip to 50 cents for eight stages.
“Customer fares are still heavily subsidised through Auckland Transport and government agencies such as NZTA.
Dr Warburton says, “Improvements in rail services include ten to fifteen minute train frequency at peak times with more service choices on the horizon. There have been major improvements in infrastructure as well with just under thirty train stations on the network upgraded, and a continued upgrade programme ready to roll out prior to the arrival of the first tranch of electric trains in 2013.
“Auckland Transport is working hard with its operators to provide greater connectivity and efficiency between public transport modes as well as better integrated pricing structure and price parity.
“More public transport users mean less congestion and faster travel times on the roads for those who have to use their cars for a variety of reasons. The use of public transport also benefits the more efficient movement of freight and of course there are environmental benefits. It’s all about sharing increasingly limited road space a lot more resourcefully”, says Dr Warburton.
Full details of the new fare structure for rail which comes into effect on 13 March can be found on the MAXX website maxx.co.nz from Tuesday 1 March.
More than 9 million trips on rail services have been recorded in Auckland over the last twelve months.
While it’s certainly annoying that rail fares have now gone up three times in the last year and a bit (including the GST rise), I think Auckland Transport are smart in trying to close the gap between train and bus fares by increasing rail fares while holding bus fares at their current levels.
I think it’s also a bit sneaky to make this media release at 5.45pm on Friday evening, but I guess everyone tries to bury bad news on a Friday afternoon.
Eventually, when we properly integrate our integrated ticketing system, I think bus and rail fares will need to be brought together and made the same. There seems no logical reason for train fares to be lower than bus fares – and in fact most cities around the world have higher rail fares than bus fares – because the trains offer a better quality option. It seems that perhaps having lower rail fares is a hangover from when the train system was so bad people felt somewhat apologetic charging anything for it.
My hope is that this is the last fare increase for a while though – now we’ve had three in the one year. Perhaps the next increase can coincide with the rollout of proper integrated ticketing and involve making fares identical for buses and trains. With free transfers and a zonal based ticketing system, people will get a better deal even if the base fare increases (because they’ll be able to transfer to a second service for free).
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“It seems that perhaps having lower rail fares is a hangover from when the train system was so bad people felt somewhat apologetic charging anything for it.”
No. The major bus company up to 1993 were NZR Bus – owned and operated by NZ Railways. This became Stagecoach, and is now stupidly ‘branded’ under multiple identities, such as Go Waka, North Star, Go West, etc.
NZR Bus & NZ Railways used the same tickets and charges for bus and rail stages. It was only when the buses were forcibly corporatised then privatised under National that bus fares rose above rail fares. Nothing to do with service levels (bus services were more widespread, but faaaar worse in reliability than the low frequency but reliable rail services at the time).
Just another cash grab by ARTA/Auckland Transport. Targeting the PT mode with increasing pax (which can clearly therefore stand a fare rise – not so the stagnant pax bus and ferries). Just like Fonterra with their milk price freeze – done once their price rises got blowback and falling sales.
My understanding is that the buses were owned by the “ARA” and then they passed to the ARC, then onto Auckland City Council and then were eventually privatised to Stagecoach.
i doubt the auckland city council ever owned the buses, certainly not as the sole owner. the ARA buses served almost all of the region except for the areas served by Birkenhead Trans., Howick and Eastern, and NZR buses. the NZR buses served from Papakura south, i think. iirc, the ARC was forced to divest the buses by legislation passed by the National govt in the 90s. another National Party-led disaster for AKL.
Yes it was the ARA, and it became the Yellow Bus Company.
The local government reforms of the late 1980s/early 90s replaced the ARA with the ARC and created the regional councils across the country replacing catchment boards.
The key points regarding transport were as follows:
– The Urban Transport Council, which had dished out central government taxes to local bus services was merged with the National Roads Board to form Transit New Zealand, which was required to dish out road and public transport funding on a level basis all from fuel taxes and RUC. Transit was both a funder (hence the name) and also the manager of the state highway network. It received funding bids from regional councils, territorial authorities (for local roads) and itself for the state highway network;
– Regional Councils were required to be the regional planners for land transport, and to contract subsidised bus and rail services. The Regional Councils were expected to fund these through regional rates and bids to Transit New Zealand;
– Territorial authorities were forbidden to subsidies public transport services, but permitted to own public transport operations in Local Authority Trading Enterprises to bid competitively for regional council contracts. The private sector and these LATEs were all free to provide commercially viable services registered with regional councils.
– NZ Railways Corporation had been receiving social services subsidies directly from Vote: Transport, these ceased and the ARC and WRC were required to contract with the NZRC for subsidised rail services (or in the case of some Wellington services, register them as commercial).
– ARC was the only example of a funder that also owned a supplier of services, so was a special case. The Yellow Bus Company was subject to specific legislation to put the ARA buses into an arms length body, but it was forced to be sold because of the conflict of interest in having competitive tenders carried out by a public body that owns one of the main tenderers. The efficiencies gained in doing this in terms of subsidies per passenger carried were dramatic.
– The proceeds of the sale of Yellow Bus went into Infrastructure Auckland which subsequently spent some of that cash on public transport projects. Auckland Regional Holdings Ltd now owns Infrastructure Auckland’s assets.
The performance of ARA buses was scandalous, it was responsible for decades of declining public transport usage in Auckland as it was driven by a combination of its management and the unions. Patronage was not very important, neither was fare revenue. For a while it introduced such appalling practices like “exact fare only” which was designed to speed boarding, but turned people off. Its route network and frequencies were influenced significantly by politicians and desire to serve areas of political importance, meanwhile there were no efforts at all to work with Birkenhead, Howick and Eastern and Railways Road Services, let alone trains. The ARA simply didn’t care. It had no interest at all in the rail network either, and for some years advocated ripping up some lines and putting in an O-Bahn network, which is called “we had a visit to Adelaide and this looks really cool”. Thankfully that was dropped, as it is a ridiculously expensive bus lane network.
Here ends the history lesson 🙂
There is no good reason for buses to be priced more expensively than rail when rail is touted as superior and is several times more expensive to operate. Quite why those who use rail shouldn’t have to pay at least half of the operating costs (forget capital because it doesn’t even start to recover that) when bus passengers do is remarkable, but if you want to justify to ratepayers why they should be forced to pay more then feel free, for that is the argument.
“Just another cash grab by ARTA/Auckland Transport.”
Indeed, but unfortunately they’re being forced to do this because of National’s stubborn insistence that PT covers 50% of all its costs.
Does this mean we get a new train timetable on March 13 with 421 more services per week??
I think that refers to the service increases in September last year.
Quite right Josh and LibertyScott – my apologies for misleading! (the dangers of flicking a quick comment off based on increasingly dodgy memory 😉 ). ARA/ARC owned Yellow Bus Co which became Stagecoach, and absorbed other bus companies like NZR Bus (which was no longer seen as core business for the privatised NZ Rail, which focused on freight).
The point stands though, that National may be forcing higher cost recovery as rtc says, but only because they think rail can ‘take it’ because of the pax growth.
Oh, and LibertyScott, you don’t think the dramatic improvements in Yellow Bus Co performance came from the lefty ARTS chair, the late Bruce Jesson, and assorted lefty chums? They were also responsible for paying off the ARA debt without selling the bus company or other major assets (a feat the tories said couldn’t be done without asset sales). Not really a win for the free market, eh? 😉
We could do with a Bruce Jesson or 10 to manage Auckland Transport right now. These fare rises are symptomatic of how out of touch most AT staff are with most Aucklanders, who are paid far less than the AT staff, and use PT because it is cost effective.
“We could do with a Bruce Jesson”
never a truer word spoken.
The dramatic improvements in Yellow Bus Company performance came because the legislation required it to be run commercially, but yes all power to them having made a decent improvement to a sclerotic operator. I’d dare say that confronting the unions under the ECA was part of that too, but nevertheless credit where credit is due. Yellow Bus did register many commercial services before being sold.
Oh and NZ Railways Road Services was not sold under TranzRail. It was sold under the 4th Labour Government by the NZ Railways Corporation as part of the “SOEing” into NZ Rail Ltd. The Palmer Government sold NZ Railways Road Services urban services to Stagecoach (and a few others as NZRRS had urban ops in Dunedin, Wellington, Hawke’s Bay, Rotorua and Auckland) and intercity to Guthreys. It had little to do with privatisation as that Labour government used the sale of NZRRS to justify wiping $1.3 billion (in 1990 values) of NZ Railways Corporation debt associated largely with the restructuring and mass redundancies in the 1980s that came with it, but also the electrification of the North Island Main Trunk, which was a financial failure.
The real issue is with Yellow bus being sold with its effective monopoly intact. I’m not sure how you’re going to defend that. This creates high barriers to entry for new operators.
This is a reason for the poor performance of NZ Bus/Stagecoach in this last decade.
The monopoly allows the operators to stop a route being commercial, and take the subsidy instead because they know they will win the route back under tender.
Need to encourage operators like Pavlovic and Go Bus to get a higher presence in Auckland.
Maybe Chch’s red bus could be interested too. Their CCO City Care has won contracts all over the country against overseas providers for construction, maintenance etc. No reason why red-bus couldn’t do the same.