Well we arrived in Sydney yesterday, and because the weather was so fantastic we headed to Coogee Beach for a bit of relaxation and to enjoy the weather. While we were in a friend’s car, it was interesting on the way back to see how many people were using the bus network to get from the beach to wherever they live. Buses seemed to be passing by at extremely regular intervals, and then when we were leaving I noticed a large number of people waiting for the bus. Finally, as we drove away from the beach we passed a bus that was doing the same and was absolutely packed with people.
While yesterday was a particularly nice and sunny day, and as a Sunday it was a day that one could expect an enormous number of people to go to the beach – it was interesting to see how well the bus service catered for them. I remember quite a number of years ago when I caught buses to and from Bondi and Coogee beaches that they were also generally very busy. In short: it’s pretty normal to use public transport to get to the beach.
Like Sydney, Auckland has a number of urban beaches that can get pretty popular on summer weekends: I’m especially thinking of places like Mission Bay, St Heliers, Takapuna, Milford and Long Bay. While there are bus services to most, if not all, of these places – the frequency on weekends follows the normal Auckland tradition: shocking.
This seems like a missed opportunity, as it means two things. Firstly, off-peak patronage is pretty “cheap” to provide for, as you don’t need to buy any additional buses compared to what you need to run during peak times. Therefore, any measures to boost PT use to recreational hubs (like beaches) at weekends are likely to make good financial sense. Secondly, with public transport so bad (and especially with it perceived to be so bad) it can end up seeming necessary to dominate the beach area with a million carparks – so that it’s relatively ‘easy’ to access and enjoy these areas.
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Point Chev is also extremely popular – more people than Saint Heliers I think easily…
I reckon you could make a killing by hiring a van and taking tourists out to the West Coast beaches such as Muriwai.
I was in Sydney nearly exactly a year ago and I also did the bus-out-to-Coogee thing. I was staying in a hostel on Glebe Pt Rd: there was one direct bus route (the 370, I think).
It took a suburban backstreet route to get there, avoiding the dead middle of town but still going via Parramatta Rd/Broadway just by the Central Railway Station (also through Newtown and via Randwick Racecourse). This is probably an example of one of those Auckland-like bus routes that takes a pointless backstreet diversion, but I really don’t know enough about Sydney’s traffic plans to comment properly.
What did mess me up in a big way was getting a bus from Glebe Pt Rd to the Opera House that evening at 6:15pm: it took in the order of 45 minutes to get all the way to Circular Quay. I was supposed to be meeting a friend at 6:30 prior to a 7:30 show… if I’d budgeted to arrive for 7:30 that could have been a waste of A$144.
@lucyjh – Hah – good luck getting NZ Bus to run a schedule that conincides with High Tide at Pt Chev !
One bus per hour every day to Palm Beach and Onetangi Beach on Waiheke. They are usually overloaded with old people on a cheap cruise across the Waitemata.
One of the reasons the buses are so full is that there is no train line to the eatern suburbs beaches – the eastern line ( I think thats its name) stops at Bondi Junction.From there, you have to take a bus to the beaches, and from memory that takes about 30mins. So many of those buses will be full of people connecting from the train.
I used to live in the city and take the train/bus commute to the beach on weekends. Door to door it took over an hour, maybe a bit more, which isn’t great considering you could drive to Bondi from the CBD in about 20mins (off peak).