Auckland Transport Blog v Auckland Transport's website

When it was decided that the new transport agency in Auckland would simply be called “Auckland Transport“, I thought it was amusing that if they ever wanted to run a blog, I’d got there first with the name of this blog. Vancouver’s public transport agency actually operates a very successful blog – Buzzer – which is used to interact with customers, encourage feedback, provide updates on service changes and also just comment on various things going on around the transport world. Maybe they’ll have to buy me out one day 😀 .

Of course, Auckland Transport does have its own website – a fairly useful place to go to as a repository for transport plans, policies, reports, strategies and so forth. There are also all the recent media releases and board information (including, at long last, more detail on what was discussed at least week’s board meeting). In fact, it was reading through the business report included in the meeting agenda (which for some stupid reason doesn’t include anything about public transport patronage) that I noticed some quite amusing data on the number of visits their website receives a day (though keep in mind most people probably use the MAXX website for information on public transport services): I have no idea whether 700 visits a day is meant to be high for a site like that or not, but it doesn’t seem particularly high for such an official website. On average, this blog gets around twice that: I suppose I think it’s somewhat amusing that this blog gets around twice the number of visitors as Auckland Transport’s official website. But more seriously, I think it also means that Auckland Transport needs to do better when it comes to making their website a place where people go to find out about what’s happening to improve transport in Auckland. Perhaps there should be a blog similar to “Buzzer” in Vancouver? Perhaps they should have some sort of in-built discussion forum or somewhere for people to suggest ideas to improve public transport… there are so many possibilities.

Matt L says:
February 22, 2011 at 7:18 pm
In the vein of people being able to suggest improvements, AT are running a series of events at train stations over the next week where you can go and meet with ‘senior managers’ to discuss your ideas to improve the train network. They even advertised it in the Herald today. First one is tomorrow morning at Britomart.
1. admin says:
  February 22, 2011 at 7:33 pm
  Is that AT managers or Veolia managers?
Roger W says:
February 22, 2011 at 7:49 pm
The AT website hit rate will go up markedly; I for one have had a look but failed to find any inspiration for a return visit.
Rob Russell says:
February 22, 2011 at 8:56 pm
Do your views per day include RSS requests? And do refresh requests (e.g. every 4 hours) count as individual hits?
1. Matt says:
  February 23, 2011 at 9:28 am
  Most web servers don’t count RSS traffic.
Luke says:
February 22, 2011 at 10:03 pm
Auckland Transport (and Auckland Council generally) seem to be stuck with their rushed and poorly thought out websites designed by the transition agency. They seem to lack obvious things like RSS feeds. In general information is hard to find. I have just found out today about the ability to set up RSS feeds using search terms.
Found out interesting things like this here about proposals for Sylvia Park/Mt Wellington bus lanes.
http://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/SiteCollectionDocuments/maungakiekietamakilocalboardcommitteesminutes20110215.pdf