One of the main differences between the calculated benefits of the Ministry of Transport’s review of the City Rail Link project and the revised analysis undertaken by Auckland Council and Auckland Transport of the project depends on the extent to which many of the current “long-haul” bus services are turned into rail feeder buses. There’s a clear logic behind this: the more bus routes you curtail into feeding the rail system the more rail passengers you generate and therefore the greater pressure you put on the rail system (hence the greater need for the rail tunnel). This is not rocket science, or a unique proposition: around 70% of riders on the Toronto Subway arrive at their station on the bus.
However, historically we have been utterly pathetic at co-ordinating buses with trains: not only in terms of ticketing (which is finally being sorted out) but also in terms of timing, the physical ease of transfering between the two and so forth. This has led to multiple stupid situations where we’re subsidising buses and trains to complete basically the same journey – the public purse paying for parallel routes. Incredibly stupid, incredibly inefficient. Furthermore, by making it nigh on impossible to transfer, we actually leave many in the outer suburbs with stupidly long bus trips to take.
Let’s take a comparison of peak time train and bus trips between four obvious transfer points around Auckland – New Lynn, Panmure, Onehunga and Manukau City (well, Manukau from February next year when the station opens):
You can see for many of these trips the train is enormously faster than the bus – taking less than half the time in the case of an Onehunga to Britomart trip (no wonder the Onehunga Line’s so popular!) Now while we will obviously need to continue to run buses between downtown and these various points – to pick people up in between and deliver them to intermediary locations, it seems utterly crazy that (for example) we run buses from Howick to town, which pass right by Panmure station. Surely if every bus from east of the Tamaki River terminated at either Panmure or Ellerslie, with their passengers transfering onto the train we would be able to vastly improve frequencies of buses using the same resources (shorter trips means more trips per hour), while at the same time giving people a much faster trip to where they’re going.
It just seems so obvious. Cut every bus serving the Mangere area at Onehunga so people transfer onto the train there for the much faster ride. The shorter bus trips mean that the same resources can go into much higher frequency feeder services, so people don’t have to wait as long for the bus.
Do the same with all buses west of New Lynn – and possibly for buses west of Henderson you could have a further transfer point. Some of the more recent changes to Green Bay buses incorporated elements of this – although until we have integrated ticketing there will probably be a relatively limited market for it:
You can do the same south of Manukau (as well as having either Otahuhu or Westfield being a further transfer station for areas around the Southern Line north of Manukau).
Through this process not only do we end up with a far more efficient transport system, much faster trips for passengers, but the booming rail patronage will make it more and more obvious to Central Government how essential the City Rail Link project is. It’s a win-win all around.
But what’s the bet Auckland Transport’s too scared and disorganised to actually implement any of this?
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I would like to say thanks for the post.
At the moment I am doing some research for a presentation in regards to the inner city rail loop.
Your post has helped my research along and am wondering if I could use parts of it for my presentation.
Of course for References and Citations (where required) will be noted in my presentation.
With kind Regards and thanks.
link. it’s a link, not a loop.
city rail link.
I think feeder services are a good idea as you can:
(a) turn the buses back at train stations to do another run rather than pay to drive duplicate services over the top of each other
(b) you can operate bus rapid transit (BRT) out of subway stations
(c) you don’t have to find so much space in the CBD for laying over buses
(d) you can run high frequency trains well into the night
(e) you can make a much simpler network and cater for cross-town trips as well as CBD bound trips much more easily
(f) take advantage of the class A ROW that rail has and get an uncongested trip right into the CBD
But you need good interchanges that allows the bus to approach the station from either side of the station and circulate well.
Auckland Transport should send a team out to visit Toronto before building anything would be my view.
“Auckland Transport should send a team out to visit Toronto before building anything would be my view.”
Yes. There’s a bit of a tendency in NZ to reinvent the wheel. Things are done well overseas, it would be remiss not to learn from experience instead of having to learn it all from scratch ourselves.
Mayor Robbie did it already in 1968. Now that’s really reinventing the wheel.
There is no need for timetable co-ordination if you run frequent train services, say every 10 minutes or better in the off-peak.
Throw your resources at getting high frequency trains, frequency stimulates patronage, and then running bus rapid transit (BRT) out the train stations.
It is a no-brainer, but some things have to be taken into consideration – capacity of our current the rail system, amount of rolling stock, frequencies, reliability etc. Without ensuring that the rail operation can deliver in 99% of the time turning our existing system into a proper feeder-backbone one is a recipe for disaster. Just imagine all buses from Howick/Pakuranga area delivering passengers into Panmure – the frequency and capacity of the trains would have to be much higher then it is ATM.
Ultimately there should be some duplication (albeit minimal) left to cater for the destination along the rail routes that are not easily accessible from train (or busway) stations.
You could also have bus RTN between the main transit nodes (like Onehunga to New Lynn) to cover the links currently not provided by rail.
Yes it would, but it is more efficient this way. This is what rail modes are for- high frequency, high capacity mass transit.
The Toronto 510 and 509 Spadina subway station feeder *TRAMS* are outperforming the entire Auckland Train network in terms of patronage.
Seriously!
There will always be a need for some direct trunk routes for whatever reason, but you have a train system in its own reserved right of way
that is free of congestion, why not upgrade it and use it?
Some of the point is to overload the rail system, and prove the point of how necessary the City Rail Link is to save the city from being choked with buses & cars.
The capacity issues are more of a reason to expand rail to its full potential rather than have the current system which is so handicapped that two Toronto trams feeding Spadina station are actually outperforming the ENTIRE Auckland system!
The point is that the government officials don’t believe the rail system will attract enough patronage to make it a worthwhile investment. They reckon even with the project most of the increased number of PT users will be on the bus, logic says that’s stupid as we would turn many more bus routes into feeders. The point is that let’s get that process started to show how necessary the project is, while also offering people a faster PT journey.
And that’s the thing. MoT seems to be looking at vehicles, and can’t seem to see ONE INTEGRATED SYSTEM.
Improvements to trains are also an improvement to buses because you can now run those buses at much higher frequency by simply turning them back at train stations rather than pay them to drive all the way into the CBD and overlap other routes.
The other thing AT must do while waiting for intelligence to break out in WGTN is working the rail system much much harder offpeak, at night, and weekends and holidays….. The amount of kit is not going to increase but we could at least run what there is all the time, build patronage outside of commuting.
This is what Brisbane’s BUZ rapid frequent bus services are based around. We call it “no compromise” timetabling. High frequency all day every day no matter what.
Recently the “BUZ” prinicples were applied to a small section of our train network- between Darra and CBD on the Brisbane’s Ipswich train line– and I have noticed an
increase in off peak patronage since the change, so I think the same principles- no compromise timetabling can be applied equally to trains as well as buses.
Brisbane BUZ
So I think Len Brown can get the tunnel, if you just increase the frequency and start making the bus connections… patronage will grow and the
system will begin to overload itself with patronage, and the case for a rail link will simply make itself because you won’t be able to fit more people on.
That’s our experience- you put more BUZ buses on, and they just fill up like magic.
A couple of points:
1. Yes we definitely need to do this and now integrated ticketing is rolling out it means we should be able to (although it probably will need integrated fares for it to properly happen)
2. While the benefit may seem obvious, I think that AT might need to do a bit of work advertising the benefits of this. I can see some local boards and groups who aren’t that clued up on transport to try to paint this as a ploy to cut costs/isolate their area to focus on the CBD. AT will need to be on the front foot with this saying how much it will benefit people, both from an increased frequency/convenience factor but also the benefits to ratepayers.
3. Your times are based on the current timetable not what we should have with electrification, my calculations on times to Britomart are roughly, New Lynn – 24mins, Panmure – 14 mins, Onehunga – 20 mins and Manukau – 34 mins.
4. I think we have to be careful how we do it, I agree with the ones you have pointed out above however I think that in the North West we need to be careful, it might be only a few km away from Henderson but places like Massey, Glendene and Te Atatu South have much shorter journeys to town via the motorway due to the fact it is a shorter distance and I think we need to be mindful that people aren’t going chose an option that takes much longer than something they may have access to now. (I’m putting a post together on this at the moment)
5. We need to make sure we have decent off peak frequencies on the rail network and well timed connections, there is nothing worse than getting off a train and having to wait half an hour because your bus left 1 min before the train arrived.
6. AT have been focusing on one area at a time with their bus route optimisation however I think they need to present a bigger picture of their plans for bus routes as I worry that sometimes they are focusing on such a detailed level they may be missing the wood from the trees.
I’ve been reading case documents,and I haven’t been able to find a City Link outlining this kind of plan in it yet, but I do hope it’s there. Suburban shuttles to rail stations at a higher frequency than current bus services would be ideal. Glendowie is a prime example – five minute drive to Glenn Innes Rail Station, but you’d need to catch two buses and walk a kilometre between stops to get there. You might as well weather the often late and sometimes non-existent 76X timetable along Tamaki Drive. Even if I could drive to Glen Innes, it wouldn’t do me any good because there’s no Park and Ride facilities either. The suburban shuttles are, in a way, far more important than the rail loop itself, and it would be silly to fund one without the other. It’s hard to believe there’s a model stupider than forcing buses and trains to run the same route and compete for subsidies, but for some reason that’s what we’ve got.
That the ‘efficiency’ of a competitive free market at work Dan.
It’s about time the lingering Rogernomes shuffled off so we can move on with the rest of the world in realizing that an entirely deregualated private sector competition doesn’t actually work in public transport, and that planning the transport system actually leads to more effective and affordable outcomes.
Let the council develop the routes and timetables as one integral network, then the private sector operators can compete for routes at the tender stage… and we can get rid of subsidy all together.
Well free market or not, the Council is the one dishing out the subsidies, and if it really wanted to, it could make throughput a measure of performance counting towards subsidy levels. I would like to see some council discussion on this idea as well, it really is the only way forward. Integrated transport for integrated ticketing.
I would re-brand the Auckland Train network and get rid of “MAXX” which means nothing.
Call it Auckland Subway or something like that, to emphasise the frequency (when you eventually boost it).
Otahuhu should also be transfer point for Mangere east, coming from Massey Road. this can be done much sooner than the Onehunga transfer point. Need 15 minute frequencies at least to make this happen, so the Onehunga transfer point really needs double tracking to work properly.
Could split Great South Road services in 2 at Otahuhu with them going to Otahuhu centre, then onto terminate at the station.
Also could have transfers at Greenlane station for Oranga, Orakei station for Orakei and Remuera(Orakei Road area), Manurewa for Conifer grove, Takanini, Addison and Papakura North; Avondale station for Blockhouse Bay.
Also a St Johns station would be great for feeders to St Heliers, Kohimarama and Glendowie.
Also should note that rail-feeders are not just rail feeders, they are bus feeders, and also services that connect people to their local shopping centre too. That is a common (silly) criticism.
Luke,
Surely the existing Glen Innes station could be cajoled into providing such a service – along Felton Mathew, onto St Johns Road, onto St Heliers Bay Road, down Maskell, around Riddell and down Bay Road to St Heliers, and then up Long Drive?
Yes – I agree, it’s a no-brainer really. It creates a much more dynamic public transport system in Auckland. However I agree that trains need to be more reliable, and also more rolling stock etc. needs to be procured (as others have said) for this to work.
Nevertheless, I think we need to foster an improved Public Transportation “ecosystem” and public awareness before kicking off something like this. However minor it may seem, this is still a initiative that threatens (and improves) the very integral parts of of our regional passenger transport network.
Easy on tigers. Before you start terminating all the buses at the nearest train station, just be aware that buses provide much, much better coverage than the rail network can in many places. For example, all those people out east might not be going to the city, but actually heading for Newmarket/Hospital. In that case a forced change at Panmure is not particularly convenient. Similarly for buses out west that go via Symonds Street – much better access to the universities than you can get from Grafton Station. So I understand the sentiment, just not the somewhat extreme execution that’s suggested in the post (and some of the comments).
You would obviously continue to have buses servicing areas like the uni & hospital. You would still have b.line buses from New Lynn, Onehunga etc to the city. I’m just saying most buses from wayyyy out are pointless to travel right into town and out again.
Two questions:
1. How many bus routes are there in Auckland?
2. How many have a frequency of 15 minutes all day or better?
Answers:
1) Heaps
2) Hardly any
My point is that it would take forever to make every single route, or even a small portion of routes even basic all day frequency.
Brisbane has around 12 BUZ routes now I think (rough approximation), that’s only 6% of the entire bus network! Every thing else is low frequency unattractive and downright horrible service.
Rather than wait forever for funds to come along, leave a few main bus lines into the city that are complimentary to rail, and then feed the rest of the buses to trains and these main bus lines.
That way you can get high frequency everywhere.
If you want to provide really good coverage people need to get used to changing between buses/modes at major interchanges/stations.
However I would not intend to force everyone to change. Using the Eastern area a an example changing at Panmure to rail would give a far better journey to the Britomart end of the CBD. However the bus would continue on to run along into the city express along the motorway to serve the University, midtown and terminate in the Western CBD. If you wanted to go to Ellerslie, Newmarket you could transfer onto another bus.
Also could transfer onto another bus that would go onto Penrose and Onehunga, or a train going south to Manukau.
Buses would still run between Glen Innes and the CBD but there purpose would be to serve local trips along Remuera Road and Tamaki Dr.
As for transport from the west, transfers at Grafton should be free with electronic and integrated ticketing, and with a bus every minute or so I see no issues. Again I wouldn’t cancel services along New North Road however no-one would go by bus between New Lynn and the CBD.
Our major issue is with services that try to give people a journey from far-off suburbia to the CBD, and these services are designed to make it difficult to transfer to rail, which actually offers a far superior journey.
When real integrated ticketing is up and running, AND we have frequent co-ordinated bus/train services then a big-arsed marketing rebranding campaign is on. But please please get the actual services running first. Once it’s there, well the best we can do pre-link, then it we can so make it big….. would be a pleasure to be selling it.
Got to have the courage of our convictions though, be running a few empty trains for a while until the new services are reliable and believable….. It will work though. Just wait for the artificially high exchange rate to come down and oil to keep on going up…… there will be a need, but there has to be a real high quality range of services.
The Onehunga Line is a big boost for the suburb. However, for us regular commuters an extra one or two services between 9.45 and 11am would be greatly appreciated. Between these hours a number of people would be likely to use the service and they should not have to wait 1hr 15 between a service.
Half hourly services all day long, including weekends, seems pretty logical for Onehunga.
Hopefully the Onehunga upgrade can be staged so the first bit built is one that allows 15min frequency.
Much of the work will actually be on sorting out the mass of level crossings too, especially the mess around the Captain Springs/Church Road/Mays Road intersection, Captain Springs would close I think, same for Galway and one of Alfred or Victoria.
Surely the one or two additional services arent too hard to arrange-and could be added asap. I agree that sevices should be at least every half hour all week
As has been noted, there are a lot of services go near the Otahuhu station, but all of the problems outlined above exist. It, and Papatoetoe are logical places to integrate services.
To be more specific, the 304 bus leaves from Otahuhu, goes past the train station, and then precedes to wander through Mangere, overlapping the 305 (40 minutes thus doubling its frequencies asymetrically) before arriving in Onehunga 35 minutes later, and then on to Newmarket and Downtown. This part of the route triples up the 312 bus, making that 20 minute frequencies. The Otahuhu – Downtown ride takes 1 hour and 15 minutes for a 25 minute train ride (pre-electrification).
Lack of integration in the last 20 years has been part of the problem, but the greater problem was that until recently the train network was virtually invisible in people’s minds, and thus didn’t form part of the solution. This is clearly not the case now, and rapid improvement can be immanent, if people have the guts to make sensible improvements.
Oh, and even the “express” 486X takes a full hour. Catch the 502 and you’ll take one hour and fourty minutes. You could be a way past Hamilton in that time…
Just a question about the Manukau line – what’s the plan for Homai, and the industrial area? I assume they could remove Homai, and place another one that is more specific to the Manukau line in – speeding journeys while increasing relevance. But there could be downsides, obviously. Any news?
have you seen the piece in Metro on urban sprawl Josh? Very interesting…
The one by Chris Harris? No not yet, must get around the buying a copy.
This may be a stupid question, but will the Manukau train end up stopping at Newmarket Train station, or will it go around?
Thanks!
Kerrie
Trains already run to Manukau.