After a couple of weeks catching really random buses to and from the hospital, last week I got back to something near my normal commuting. I also noticed that the uptake of people using the HOP card seemed a lot greater than it had been a couple of weeks earlier – especially during the peak times when I normally catch my buses. One thing that stood out for me, was how much faster the buses seemed to be loading – when people had their HOP cards. I think the process of issuing a ticket for someone paying with cash on the new machines is slower than what it used to be – so if more than a third of passengers are paying by cash it would seem that much of the advantage created by HOP is lost.
The flip side of the much faster ‘tagging on’ is that people now also need to ‘tag off’. My observations were that at stops when a whole pile of people are getting off at once, the process for them to all tag off is a bit slow. For my particular bus, the disembark points are spread across quite a few different stops in the CBD, so the delay doesn’t seem to be particularly great, but I’m guessing for some buses where most people all get off at once (might be particularly the case for North Shore services) this may cause quite a lot of delay. Overall, my buses don’t seem to get getting to my stop any earlier in the morning peak – although I am on a pretty short bus route.
What I am curious about is the experience of others.
- What proportion of people on your bus route are using HOP cards?
- Are people getting used to forming two lines: one for cash and one for HOP users?
- Do people paying with cash get out of the way so you can sneak on with your HOP card?
- How much of a difference is the HOP card making to boarding times?
- How much are the buses slowed down by people tagging off?
- Do you think it’s making your trip faster overall?
It seems to me that the key to making buses faster with the HOP card is getting as many people as possible to use the card – so that we minimise the slowness that comes from people paying with cash. Hopefully the next time Auckland Transport play around with fares they create at least a 25% price differential between paying with your HOP card and paying with cash – rather than the pretty pitiful 10% you get now. After all, when I was in London a couple of years ago a tube ride within zone 1 cost £4 in cash compared to £1.50 with an Oyster Card. Unsurprisingly, pretty much everyone used the Oyster Card.
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Could you not have swipe readers at the main downtown bus stops, so that people can jump off the bus and then swipe out? And they should totally get automatic coin counters on the buses, like Edinburgh … 🙂
All Snapper tag information is stored on the bus and uploaded on returning to the depot. While I guess technically you could set up tag off posts, you would have to wire them in to the network so route data could be downloaded and tag data uploaded. All too hard I think for the benefit you would get.
And HOP has the same set-up?
Train validators are networked in. You can even receive top ups after paying online. Not sure about their bus solution.
I’ve noticed people are starting to flow through when boarding instead of standing still in front of the validator. Also AT have ads in the herald claiming hop will be available on all buses, ferries and trains by mid 2012. That actually isn’t very far away! No word on limited pilot 1 – the RWC ticket which is supposed to work on trains, ferries and NZ Bus.
While HOP and visual monthly passes have sped up non-cash boarding, The Snapper/T-money consoles have slowed cash boarding down compared to before they came along – it’s to do with data entry. It takes longer for a driver to enter a cash fare on the (resistive?) touchscreen on the Snapper/T-Money driver console than it did using the Wayfarer units.
Cameron claims that it’s not worth the difficulty. I think having tag-posts on heavily used stops is actually a great idea. Everyone has already tagged on – they just walk straight on. You could then implement such a system for ferries.
Of course, you’d need inspectors much like they have on other tag on/off systems. This is why I think it is important that the new train fare legislation being drafted is wide enough to cover buses, ferries, and other modes. (If only I could use my HOP to tag on and off AirNZ flights 😉
While in Brisbane I thought I noticed more than three tag posts in a bus. When you have 60 people in a morning bus, three doesn’t seem sufficient. You get 20 people all hopping off, and they can only do it one or two at a time. I’d be interested to know how these are set up overseas, and whether (as I suspect) Auckland has gone for a cheap but inefficient limited number.
In Amsterdam they only have a few readers on each bus, so I don’t think they’re skimping too much. But yes I would have thought being able to tag on/off at the stop was a reasonably easy extension to the system that would reduce time to load/unload.
The whole tag off debate is redundant in Edinburgh because they have a flat fare – so no need to tag off.
I think it shows that’s there’s a need for a ‘continuous improvement’/kaizen approach to these things. There are always small things that can be done to make things more efficient, faster, and just plain nicer. And a need for small scale experiments to see what the effects of unknown implementations are. Some will increase costs, others will decrease them, but all will improve things.
HOP can’t handle passes, so as a pass / 10-trip user, HOP hasn’t been relevant to me so far. Any other sort of trip requiring multiple buses ends up being so expensive for a family of 4 that we always take the car….so again, HOP is useless to us.
HOP may be useful for lone travellers needing to go to a variety of non-routine locations….but in every other context (family, passes, 10-trips) it’s much more expensive.
I may get a HOP card when it can store a 7-day Northern Pass and I can top it up anywhere. I can’t do those things today.
Good point Steve. It has been pretty quiet on when the visual monthly passes will be integrated back into the Snapper / Hop. Having said that I haven’t seen many people at all using the visual monthlies, I wonder if NZ Bus will be phasing these out all together. If they did that it would effectively be a price increase for the customers that use their buses the most.
I think the Hop fare is the same as the 10-trip fare. On the 1-stage trip I usually, take, I’m always charged $1.02 (a tertiary student 10-trip is $10.20), whereas with Go-Rider, using stored value, I would have been charged the cash fare of $1.80 less 20%.
Is it necessary to tag off when going into town? That’s the end of the line (no pendulum routes in Auckland?) and that’s when most people get off.
I had wondered that myself – on a bus route that travels say two stages (like the 005) and I get on in the one stage area, if I forget to tag off do I pay one stage or two? I should probably run an experiment.
Here in Wellington, you get charged the full cash fare of the journey you could have made. So if you can only travel 1 stage when you get on, you get hit by a 1 stage cash equivalent. Maybe the HOP / AT rules will be different but that’s how Snapper / Go Wellington have gone about it.
Yes my understanding is that is how it works up here as well and I remember the Thales guys saying that is how things will work once that comes in as the backend later this year. They did say that while you might still pay the same if you are traveling the same distance as the bus route, it still counts as a penalty fare. The system is able to handle penalty fares differently so if AT wants to so they could set it up so that after X number of penalty fares in a row you get a message and after Y your card is frozen etc.
I can clearly say that some people in Aucklnd Transport dont want to change. They are still stuck in the old world and not thinking about what customers want! Even when the HOP team gets a complaint, they say “Shit, I don’t care”.. I am not joking…!
Yes, as of now if you are getting off at the last stage bus travels, then penalty got the same effect as Tag Off. That is based on a zero Tagg on fare. However, when Thales solution is in place, it will be an initial fare of $6 at Tag On… In that case, if you dont Tag Off, your $6 will be gone. That means you always have to Tag On and Tag Off unless your fare is more than $6 🙂
Does that also mean if you have less than $6 you won’t be able to board – even for a one stage trip? That’s going to be enormously unpopular if it’s the case.
Thats right. You wont be able to board bus/trail if ur balance is less than $6 irrespective of the stages. Ferry will have higher initial fare of about $15+ so that risk with Waiheke etc. is covered..!
Unpopular? Hell yea, but thats the only way Thales can do it. They cannot do penalties.
Hey Admin
Well, if you tag in at one stage area, and get off within the 1 stage area and forgot to tag off, you will be charged as a 2 stage fare.. so let say, if you take the wrong bus like what I did last time, I tag on at View Road, Mt Eden, and I tag off at Dominion Road, then i just charged for 1 stage!!!
Regards
Jacky
I use a “visual monthly” on the Waiheke Ferry, Waiheke buses and downtown buses. Since Fullers Ferries to Waiheke are not public transport but a private monopoly outside Maxx regulations, I haven’t heard it will be integrated into Hop at all.
As far as I can tell there’s issue with installing HOP equipment to allow HOP users the chance to touch on and touch off. Ultimately that will be a decision for Fullers – like most NZ companies they’re likely to stick with what they’re doing because ‘it works’, and not take a chance.
On a whole I have to say yes, however it wasn’t this morning on the Link because the driver decided to stop and sit at almost every bus stop between K Rd and New World by Vic Park – ended up being late for work even though I allowed over an hour to get from Newmarket – Vic Park New World then a walk back up to Hopetoun St. Absolutely ridiculous.
I was talking to a guy at work about this yesterday, he catches a bus from one of the busway stations but the one he gets is often a Northstar bus. He was saying he has definitely noticed buses boarding quicker and as an example he said if he was walking from his car he knew that if a bus turned up while he was at a certain point he would pretty much be guaranteed to get it but now it is the opposite, he knows that unless there is something out of the ordinary he will miss that bus because of how much faster they are boarding.
What I have started doing is tagging off before my stop and then just hopping off. Because it is between stages there is no difference in price and it means that I do not hold the bus up when I get off thus making disembarking quicker for everyone.
One day this past week, however, I had to wave on 3 buses in a row, none of them had HOP and I had no cash! This was on a major route. According to all the signs at the stops, all 3 buses should have had HOP installed.
I have also noticed that buses are either more on time or very, very late since the inception of HOP. It is annoying when buses are early, however, and this is particularly so on routes such as the one I use where buses only run once an hour. It is like drivers are trying to race through their routes so that they can get back to base and have a longer break between runs. Grrrrr