The NZ Herald reports that implementation of the HOP card got off to a reasonably smooth start on Sunday and Monday:
North Shore commuters gave tentative support yesterday to an early version of what will become a seamless integrated ticket for public transport throughout Auckland.
But although Auckland Transport last night hailed the introduction of its Hop card in a joint venture with Infratil subsidiary Snapper as “a roaring success”, there were plenty of teething challenges to be sorted out.
Some passengers were upset at not being able to use their old Go Rider cards to get to work yesterday on the NZ Bus company’s North Star fleet.
Others had difficulty finding where to take up an offer by NZ Bus, also an Infratil subsidiary, to swap Go Rider cards for Hop cards free until mid-June…
…Meanwhile, various retail outlets with machines for topping up cards had difficulty knowing how to complete transactions and a computer glitch caused delays in showing passenger credit balances on a dedicated website.
This would seem to match up with most of the feedback I got in response to this post a couple of days ago. Everyone noted that even though they had put money on the card it wasn’t showing up as an online balance. My card (which, incidentally, I decided to call “Kermit the Frog”) still says $0 even though I topped it up on Friday.
I’ve managed to use my HOP card twice in the last couple of days: first going into work yesterday morning and then coming home from work this evening. The trip in yesterday was pretty smooth, but coming home today boarding the bus was exceptionally slow and tedious as just about everyone got into an argument with the bus driver over why they couldn’t use their Go Rider card. It does seem pretty idiotic to run North Star buses on a number of the 005 routes when they’re now using a completely different ticketing system – I know it’s only for a short time but it feels like the integrated ticketing project has actually “dis-integrated” things further at the moment.
Another thing that I’ve noticed, and perhaps it’s just luck so far, is that my card seems to take quite a long time to register with the reader. One would think that the “ding” would happen almost immediately, but from my experience so far it does seem to take a second or two (which is quite a while if you’re trying to get a lot of people off the bus quickly).
On the bright side, the image below from Auckland Transport’s triumphant media release suggests that we’ll be able to board the buses through the rear doors:
Strangely my bus home today didn’t open its rear doors for me to board, so I had to stand there waiting forever while everyone boarded at an excruciatingly slow pace. I guess over time the teething problems will sort themselves out – and perhaps NZ Bus would be wise to not spread its North Star services over the rest of the city until HOP is fully rolled out. It could have been worse I suppose.
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Josh, in all the excitement around integrated ticketing do you know whether anyone at AT is objectively monitoring the effects on boarding times? It would seem like the perfect opportunity to do some research, which could help inform future investment decisions around. I’m particularly interested in how speeding up boarding flows through into lower bus operating costs and ultimately higher patronage. Information that would be really really useful when making other decisions around, for example, requiring people to pre-pay for tickets for high volume stations/routes. But I know AT don’t have a lot of money/time for research, however worthy. I just think it’s really important to not only roll out these big projects, but also ensure thorough post-evaluations are undertaken to see how they track compared to predictions. And also to identify areas for improvement …
Stuart apparently there have been assessments of this done overseas and the difference made to boarding time is massive. However in order to achieve such improvements you need pretty much everyone paying with the HOP card – for that to happen we need a much bigger price differential between the HOP price and the cash price.
I remember seeing a document recently (I think it was the governments views on the spatial plan) where they were looking at various projections for things compared to what AT have said. In terms of boarding AT were projecting big savings from faster boarding but the NZTA seemed to think that the extra patronage generated by having a better ticketing system would result in the system being the same as now. Considering the rest of the document was pretty much trying to be a hatchet job on PT I lend more weight to what the professionals who have done this overseas say (which was that boarding times were considerably lower)
A crude way would be to look at the average time it takes busservices to travel from Constellation to Akoranga using the Bus GPS and boarding data from AT. Then compare that with previous data.
It would at least tell you if boarding times impact on travel times.
I was in Wellington today, catching the airport bus (it has a few problems, but these deserve another post). What I noticed is that there were only single touch-on touch-off posts at either door. Meaning that boarding and disembarking was considerably slower than in Brisbane, where double posts allow rapid movement. I certainly hope that Auckland does better than this – this isn’t about gold-plating the system, but about doing it right.
That image has been flipped – note that the Hop card/stickers and the Information board in the background are all backward. That is indeed the front door, and the photo is taken from the perspective of the driver.
Ah very true. Even the information sign in the background is a mirror image.
Hi Stu- we are on the ground watching all the way.
Good work AT peeps!
Can anyone tell me if the HOP card is the same as the Oyster card in London, where if you find that you end up taking the bus, or train, more in a single day than you normally would, it stops charging you after you’ve paid the equivalent of a day pass for the zone that you are travelling in?
And is there going to be any change for the way fares are charged in the future?
It is quite vexing when you are travelling across 2 fare stages, but travelling actually less than the distance of one full stage, but you still have to pay for two.
I am certain that more people would use public transport if you didn’t have a fare stage system and just a total distance charge. Even better if we could emulate New York’s transport system whereby if you need to take 2 buses or a bus and a train you pay only for the entire journey rather than 2!
HOP card will eventually be able to do everything you mention above. However, its implementation will take some time.
My bus driver told me this morning that I can’t use the emoney on the HOP card to buy a northern pass, which means that I’ll end up paying more instead of less with the HOP card!
The daily northern pass (Upper-CBD) cost $11.30, whereas the two trips with the HOP card come to 2×6.80 (minus 10%) = $12.2. Thats about a dollar dearer.
So now I have to get my cash sorted again and pay cash every morning, and the bus drivers still won’t have any notes and hand out one dollar coins… Great stuff.
Yes, the current version of Hop/Snapper only supports eMoney. It doesn’t support Zone A, B, A+B, Northern Upper or Lower passes. There are only the separate visual Zone A and B passes at the moment and the paper based Northern Upper and Lower passes.
There has been no announcement on when Zone passes will be supported on Hop as far as I’m aware.
Should add that HOP/Snapper should also support 10 trip (aka MultiJourney), would be interested to know if this is working ok, especially when overriding the preset fare stages.
definitely would be logical for hop e-money to be able to be used (as a micro payment) to purchase a paper Northern pass. Cash use is slow and generally expensive to society.
Exactly, its not only that cash is slow, the drivers usually have trouble giving change for a $20 note.
I had the same issue, both routes on my commute are NZBus and have snapper, so I figured that the rare would be the same as the Northern Pass by discounting my transfer.
The helpers at the station had no idea what a Northern Pass even was (so they were no help). Then my driver told me that using the Hop would be cheaper then the Northern Pass (which is so wrong).
A lot of Shore passengers use the Northern Pass so Snapper are missing a big market if they cant provide the same cost for a day or allow for transfer trips.
It will be great the integration has been integrated…However, rolling it out universally across the city/region rather than staggered would have made much more sense. There is a lot of confusion and refusal and doors not opening. The free card swapping in the central and western areas, for example, won’t occur for another 2+ weeks. So anyone taking buses coming from the N Shore that go cross town had better carry cash. That said, the 966 bus still shows no sign of HOP, and those silly paper tickets or cash are required, but it still has the nicest bus driver around so I’ll hand over the cash.
The 966 is Birkenhead Transport and they are unlikely to join the HOP system until next year.
Thanks for that. Shame that Birkenhead Transport will not be part of the integrated ticketing system. Seems to somewhat defeat the purpose. Their buses are still more reliable than the 962 North Star buses.
apaprently this is one of the reasons Thales system was preferred to Snapper. Once it is up and running it will have significantly quicker swiping times than Snapper.
I really can’t imagine how this could have been more messy. As if Auckland was the first city in the world to do an integrated ticket. Just go to London, give the mayor a case of NZ wine and steal the oyster system. Sometimes kiwis exaggerate in doing things their way. Just copy from where it works!
I think the roll out is being done quite well. Look into London system and see how long it took to get all operators online. Hopefully we should have our roll out done a few years quicker than London’s.
That’s exactly the point: if it’s already been experimented there, why don’t copy the results in a city much smaller, with far less PT trips, less transport modes etc?
Gian, we are copying other cities! The HOP system is being implemented by a consortium lead by Thales (the lead contractor), who has rolled out almost the same system in many other cities around the world, e.g. Amsterdam. Of course there is some tailoring/branding that goes on in every city, but on the whole the HOP roll-out seems pretty good.
“I really can’t imagine how this could have been more messy.”
I’m sorry – your imagination must be very limited.
It’s not that bad. So the PR and rollout have not been the greatest. Most major changes in systems have teething problems, and that’s to be expected.
Oh dear. They’ve gone for just one on every door, haven’t they?
There are two readers at all rear doors. I think the same is true for front doors though so far I have always slipped through to use the reader on the right.