Auckland Transport has launched what I think is a good initiative, by having a bi-monthly newsletter that discusses improvements to the rail network throughout Auckland – known as “Keeping Track”. The first version of the newsletter can be viewed here, and they will be handed out to rail passengers over the next week or so.
The newsletter contains a variety of useful bits and pieces, including dates of weekend line closures, what happens to rail services when there are games on at Eden Park, how things are coming along in the rail electrification project and a bit of information on the HOP card. I particularly like how we are finally starting to see improvements to the rail network being promoted:
I have often thought that Auckland Transport (and ARTA before them) needed to do a better job in explaining to passengers what the “light at the end of the tunnel” is when it comes to the rail upgrades. While things have improved in recent months when it comes to train reliability, still we far too often see trains breaking down, signals failing or simply trains being extremely late. That’s what happens when you run extremely old trains on a system that is in the process of being completely overhauled. What passengers who find themselves inconvenienced by all this probably want to know is what improvements they’re going to see, when they’re going to see them and an assurance that all the parties involved in running the rail system are working together as closely as possible. So often it has seemed that when something goes wrong on the rail network Veolia pass the buck to Auckland Transport who pass the buck to KiwiRail who then probably pass the buck to someone else. Let’s hope that nasty habit changes over time.
While this newsletter is a step in the right direction, I still think that Auckland Transport should be operating something similar to the Vancouver Buzzer Blog, which combines a huge amount of marketing, public relations, customer feedback, service change updates and general floating of ideas into one place. It gives Vancouver’s Translink a public face that’s friendly and accessible, rather than the predictable and boring manufactured press releases that Auckland Transport seems to churn out.
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Not really connected with the post, but I think this is neat. It works on my desktop system but I don’t have a droid phone to try it…
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/know-when-your-bus-is-late-with-live.html
Watch the video for instructions and a list of cities.
Well done Auckland Transport! Another great initiative.
The advantage of a newsletter over a blog like that is coverage- a massive proportion of people will flick through this on the train, followed by a possible huge increase in interest, knowledge and excitement about our rail networks future. I doubt whether a blog could achieve the quite the same level of mainstream readership.
And for floating of ideas/ customer feedback, Auckland Transport need look no further than your great blog, and Auckland Trains… Which as we know, they do keep an eye on.
this is the crux of many of the problems. there are too many parties invovled. come electrification, will there be some better solution?
Yeah you’ve hit the nail on the head there.
I think the content is pretty… simple fare is the friendly word. Maybe train-riding-but-not-transport-nerd-people think differently, but I don’t think this offers much new info. Like the idea though.
I hope they proof-read it again, too. But similarly, people like me may be the only ones bothered by the somewhat sloppy editing, which even missed a content sentence being repeated right in the next paragraph. Oh my, I do sound negative today!