Rail performance statistics for January 2011 have been released, and to be honest they’re pretty pathetic:
While the Western Line did comparatively well (compared to a 12 month rolling average of 74.5% punctuality) the Eastern and Southern Lines were terrible. Almost half of Eastern Line trains during January were more than 5 minutes late in arriving at their destination.
Veolia have served up the usual bunch of excuses for this hopeless performance:
Veolia Transport acknowledges that there has been a reduction in performance in recent months and is working with Auckland Transport and KiwiRail to resolve the issues that impact service delivery. Veolia Transport is also reviewing customer communications to find ways we can improve.
The rail network was closed from 25 December to 9 January so preparations for electrification could take place. On 10 January the Western Line and part of the Southern Line reopened and from 17 January the network was running as normal. Veolia Transport provided bus services for customers while rail lines were closed and the punctuality of these services affected train services. Some bus services feeding train stations were delayed by traffic which in turn meant the connecting trains left stations late.
Network-wide safety measures were also in place while work upgrading platforms was carried out over Christmas. These lower than normal speed restrictions made some journeys longer than usual.
The entire network was closed over Auckland Anniversary weekend, 29 to 31 January so electrification preparation works could continue.
Overall issues affecting performance in January were:
Train breakdowns and faults meant 57 services were cancelled
Track and signaling problems resulted in 42 service cancellations
Other issues resulted in 110 cancellations during the month
I can’t quite fathom how half of Eastern Line services end up being more than 5 minutes late to their destination. There are no major track works going on (like affected Western Line performance last year), trains do not get affected by road congestion – as do buses, the Eastern Line is a fairly fast line and runs quite a lot of short ‘shuttle services’ between Britomart and Otahuhu. How can almost half of those end up six minutes or more late?
What would be particularly interesting is to see these statistics tweaked slightly so they counted the percentage of passenger trips that were late rather than the percentage of rail services that ended up late. If a 10.00pm train runs a bit late, far fewer people are inconvenienced compared to if an 8.00am train ends up late – and I suspect that it is the peak time trains that have the greatest chance of running late because the margin for error is less, the potential for passenger-caused delays is greater and because the system is simply under greater pressure during the peak times. It may well be that well over half of Eastern Line passenger trips ended up late during January, which would be particularly pathetic.
Overseas cities manage to run decent train services, why can’t we? I suspect it’s because we have too many different agencies involved in running the rail network and they continually ‘pass the buck’ on to each other over the delays, nobody being prepared to actually take some responsibility for improving the operation of our rail system.
Processing...
I completely agree that a lack of co-ordination in operating the trains is a big factor in the poor performance statistics. KiwiRail run the tracks and employ some of the drivers, Veolia operate the trains, Auckland Transport own the trains (and lease some of the locos)… it’s all very complex. Wellington has a much simpler system and, while it still has its problems, there always seems to be a greater willingess for KiwiRail to take responsibility.
Isn’t it true that this is going to get even worse in the future though? I’m pretty I remember Steven Joyce saying that he wanted a separate agency to own the electric trains to all the agencies that exist now. That will be just one more unnecessary bunch of people to throw into the mix – more passing the buck coming up!
Its a terribly inefficient service. The infrastructure is leaves something to be desired, we need to go electric, underground and the logistics needs to step up! P.s I’m sitting at the penrose station and the train is currently 33 mins late.
A couple of points, first there were still a lot of track protection measures in force out south and east after the shutdown, when track gets relayed I believe they have to put speed restrictions on for a while until everything settles down. This would have affected a number of sites and I believe there was a particularly large section between Papakura and Pukekohe that was affected so any trains coming or going from there would have been late. There were also restrictions around the bridge replacements and the Purewa tunnel. Out west there were new tracks at Baldwin and they were still working on the platforms so their were speed restrictions there as well. As much as I don’t like it I do think that this is a case of growing pains as by 2013/4 we will have almost a brand new network but that is hard to do when trains keep running. Once it is all upgraded it should hopefully only mean occasional maintenance with less disruption.
This however doesn’t excuse poor communication and is something Veolia is now well known for. I also raised the issue of using such broad stats like this to the ‘senior managers’ they had at their Lets Talk Trains event, I also suggested they use something that accurately reflects the number of passengers late rather that trains and they admit they do have this information but just don’t publish it.
They need to decouple the routes, like Wellington has. West trains stay out west, south trains stay south, east trains stay east, and Onehunga trains stay with Onehunga. Take away the route mixing and you isolate problematic events. Most of the current delays are caused by the flow on from a single train having a problem.
That’s a good point Geoff. Perhaps the reason the Onehunga Line is so reliable is because it operates independently?
Except it doesn’t, not in the sense Geoff is meaning. Delays on the Southern affect the Onehunga service, because the track is shared. Most trains don’t switch between lines on any given day, from what I’ve observed of arrivals/departures at Britomart, but they’re all tied to the same shared sections of track.
I think the reason Onehunga is more reliable is simply that there are fewer services and it’s a shorter line. When your maximum scheduled service duration is about 30 minutes, your scope for getting delayed by five minutes is significantly reduced. When that’s your maximum duration and you only run one or two services an hour, your numbers are bound to look better because even if you only run one service an hour that’s “on time” that’s still at least 2/3 of total services.
I don’t care. All I care about is that in Japan, you would have to catch the train for _years_ to see one late train. In Auckland, it is literally almost every second train.
Nobody is responsible, clearly.
I have to say, that being a daily passenger on the eastern line for the past seven years, if the trains in the morning were actually on time, it would cause total chaos. I can not remember the last time a morning train coming through Panmure between 7:30 and 8:00 am was correctly on time. Of if it was it was empty because the previous train was only two minutes ahead and picked up the majority of passengers expecting to catch the ‘on time’ train.
I agree, it would be interesting to see the figures for the peak hour trains.
Veolia forgot to mention in their report of when one morning a driver did not turn up for work so a train was cancelled. (at least that was what the following train’s staff informed me when I pressed them for a reason for cancelling a service).
Don’t get me wrong though, taking the train is far better than any other method of getting in to town for work.
Taking the rail replacement busses in January was quite an eye opener. I really do not envy the drivers. Quite a scary experience.
“passenger trips that were late rather than the percentage of rail services that ended up late.”
Actually, I think that passengers on time ARE a more important metric than trains on time. After all, it’s about moving PEOPLE by train, not about moving trains. No excuses on the shoddy performance as such, though.
How are you operating the trains during peak hour. Do you still have to buy a ticket from a ticket seller inside the train or is that only off-peak?
Yes you still buy a ticket with cash the clippie, although you can buy single tickets and ten trips in advance at a handful of stations… they still have to sight and clip the ticket however.
Really? And they do this on the train or on the platforms?
Does this hold the train up?
No they clip them after they get away from the station. At peak there is usually one clippie for each carriage. Ten trips are easy and done with a simple clip. About half will buy single-trip tickets which take a while. Its annoying for the clippies though when they use a 20 dollar note to get a ticket instead of a few coins.
Aside from being a very slow system, it must also be extremely expensive in terms of operating costs. One of the big advantages of rail is that you can shift a lot of people with very low staffing costs. That’s negated if you need a clippie in every carriage.
I was supprised to see clippies when I visited at Xmas. It’s all a bit barzar really
I always find it kind of amusing that if punctuality gets anywhere near this bad in WEllington (as it did last year) there is a huge big fuss about it, the rail company is forced to publicly apologise, people get free trips etc. This is presumably because lots of important civil servants and MPs catch the train.
In Auckland nobody even notices because we are so inured to it.
Yes, I’ve also noticed that Auckland passengers seem to be remarkably supine in the face of enormous inefficiencies found with Veolia’s provision of services – I shan’t mention the buses because that’s another kettle of very large worms. Maybe it’s because they’re all aware of how feeble AT is in respect of the contracts it writes with providers; of how our rolling stock is so antiquated it’s a miracle that it even moves (sometimes); of how little concern Veolia displays when it comes to informing waiting passengers of delays and cancellations; of how their taxes have for over fifty years been directed into supporting the motor vehicle industry; etc, etc. Somehow, I think not; I rather suspect people in Auckland are so conditioned to bad PT they’ll put up with anything as long as it gets them to roughly where they want, sort of vaguely on time and as long as doesn’t cost them an arm and a leg.
I don’t understand how the Service Delivery metric is defined. Maybe someone could explain?
The 12 month moving average for punctuality since September 2010 goes 79.2%, 78.9%, 78.6%, 77.9% and 77.7% so performance is getting worse and we can infer that management thinks that lateness of between 20 and 25% is OK. (try doing that as an employee). Punctuality is obviously not a key performance indicator for these guys and the only way to make it one if for someone to regularly poll passengers and stick the results under the Mayor’s nose until he does something about it. Like George says, if you are late for the Shinkansen your train has gone. If the Japanese can do it why can’t we?
I’ve never understood how Veolia get away with such bad performance stats. In overseas cities you can lose contracts for being below 90% punctuality.
I’ve never understood how Veolia get away with such bad performance stats. In overseas cities you can lose contracts for being below 90% punctuality.
Len Brown or whoever needs to take the knife to them.
Wow..whoever said Onehunga line is reliable has obviously not taken train from Onehunga before. Today I waited for over an hour for the train – they cancelled the service twice with a classic BS excuse “due to a train fault”. When I called they put me on hold for 5 minutes and hung up on me. This has happened on numerous occasions. It is obvious they don’t really know what they are doing….
I suppose because they operate the Onehunga line independently from the rest (usually with one ADL2, or 2x ADL2 at peak times) it means that usually it’s immune from disruptions on other lines, however when there are issues there’s no support from other lines to pick up the slack.
Trains on other lines interchange and can go over all three in one day….