With the release of the June 2011 patronage information, we now see the complete picture for the 2010/2011 financial year for patronage data. The results are pretty amazing. Total patronage increase by 8.5% – the biggest percentage patronage increase in any of the last nine years, bus patronage increased by 7.4% (which translates to a whopping increase of 3.5 million extra bus trips), rail patronage increased by 16.3% and ferry patronage by 5.3%.
This is briefly shown in the table below:
What’s quite interesting to look at is the bottom line of the table: which shows the makeup of the patronage growth. While most of the talk is – as per usual – about the big percentage increases in rail patronage, because buses carry the vast majority of PT trips in Auckland, we actually saw almost 70% of Auckland’s patronage growth over the past year come from increased bus trips.
Compare this to the situation a couple of years ago, when a much greater proportion of patronage growth came from the rail system (although interestingly in pure numbers rail patronage grew more in the last year than ever before).
This is why it is important for Auckland to continue to focus on improving its bus system. As an extreme example of this situation, let’s look at patronage changes between the 04/05 and 05/06 financial years:
As you can see, it took an increase in rail patronage of over 30% to ensure that total PT patronage grew by even a pretty small 1.1%: because of a relatively low drop (in percentage terms) in the number of people catching the bus.
Here’s a basic graph of patronage data by financial year over the past nine years:
And if we look at the change from a numbers perspective comparing each year with the previous year, across the three modes:
The graph above shows quite clearly what a spectacular year 2010/2011 was for PT patronage growth in Auckland. I think the graph also shows quite clearly how important it is to focus on ensuring we have a good bus system – because changes in bus patronage are so influential on the final total.
Finally, another way to see how PT patronage in Auckland has really increased over the past few years is to create a table showing patronage levels, coloured by the particular financial year that month falls within. The yellow lines indicate months in 2010/2011 and the red indicate months in 2009/2010.
August 2003 is an interesting outlier. The only month with higher bus patronage than August 2003 was March this year. Full data is here.
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I think that the lesson to be drawn from this is that people will use a quality transport network, and prioritise it significantly over lower quality forms of transport. The rail network covers a very small section of the Auckland region, but sustains almost one 5th the patronage of a huge bus network with hundreds of lines.
I’ll be interested to see when we finally get integrated ticketing (pushed back to mid-late 2012 I hear) and electrification (2013 ostensibly)
George, you’re right about the need to prioritise a quality transport network.
But it’s not insightful to infer the “size” of the bus network from geographical coverage, or alternatively the number of lines (because that ignores frequency, i.e. service levels). I’d suggest that costs (preferably opex plus annualised capex) is a much better measure.
If you just consider operating costs, you can see that the rail network chomps up about $60 million for versus $100 million for bus. And in terms of pure subsidies (i.e. opex less fares) I suspect they are about the same. So I’d suggest you turn around your perspective: Rail generates only 1/5 of the patronage, but receives 1/2 of the operational funding.
This imbalance probably gets even worse when you throw capital costs into the mix. But the short message is that Auckland’s rail network is not performing well. I also look forward to those projects you mention, but overall growth is still likely to depend more on what we do with our bus system than tinkering with a dinky and costly rail network.
I think geographic measures are very much a legitimate measure – I was commenting on the paucity of direct access to this transport mode across the region. If you live more than a short distance from a train line, you have to actively engage in other transport modes to deliberately use a train. Think about that for a second – who drives or cycles to the bus (except for QTN Northern Connection)?
Operational expenditure per passenger should be comparable for rail and bus, as far as I know, and I’m surprised to hear that Auckland doesn’t fit that pattern. I hope that as passenger loadings increase this year the equation looks a lot more reasonable. (and you’re right to exclude Capex, otherwise you’d have to include a large fragment of the cost of Auckland’s roads on the bus side of the ledger!)
Auckland’s rail network is operated hugely inefficiently, largely due to the ancient ticketing system and the diesel trains. Hopefully post electrification & integrated ticketing we will see a huge lowering of per passenger subsidy.
I consider that geographical measures are an extremely poor indicator of network effectiveness. Doesn’t matter how close you are to a bus/train stop if there’s only one service per day. Socio-economic measures (i.e. patronage operating costs, capital costs, and willingness to pay) are a much firmer foundation for comparisons of effectiveness.
Plus the inherent differences in the modes mean that the assumption “keeping coverage constant” simply does not ever hold – we just can’t (on grounds of cost and urban design impacts) expand the coverage of the rail network to match that of the bus network. Maybe to make it clearer, I’m suggesting that a better comparison would be: “what sort of bus patronage could we get if we spent the same $ per trip (or trip.km if you have the data) as we do on rail?
“A lot” is the obvious answer. You’d have so much dosh that you could deliver a combination of high quality infrastructure and reliable services in a number of places (such as out east and west), which are currently very poorly served by PT. Yes electrification plus HOP will reduce rail’s operating costs and increase patronage , causing a dramatic reduction in $ per passenger.
Nonetheless it will be many years before Auckland’s rail network even comes close to the effectiveness of the bus network. Meanwhile buses continue to get more efficient; so it’s moving target. I also want the rail network to get more efficient, but it’s hard to ignore that bus improvements are the low-hanging fruit.
Stu, the subsidy per passenger-km is almost identical between bus and rail in Auckland (search back on this blog for the data, it’s been mentioned a couple of times). It is true that the subsidy per *trip* is significantly higher for rail pax than bus pax, but that is simply an artifact of the fact rail trips are on average 2.7 times the distance of bus trips. I.e. Aucklanders tend to take short trips by bus rather than train, and prefer to avoid buses and take rail (where possible) for longer commutes.
So the answer to your question “what sort of bus patronage could we get if we spent the same $ per trip (or trip.km if you have the data) as we do on rail?” is “about what we have now”, because we already do spend the same per trip-km.
Really the question is how can we get improved efficiencies out of both our rail and bus systems (or rather our one integrated public transport system), and there is a huge list of things that can improve that.
Nick, does that subsidy comparison include the cost of capital? I suspect if this was included, the bus subsidy would come out much cheaper. I think Stus analysis is pretty good, we get more bang for our buck from busses so that should be a bigger focus than it seems to be currently.
Nick R, don’t believe it. Some quick and dirty figures:
Rail – Annual opex = $45 million, @ 10 million trips/year yields $4.50/trip or $0.38/pkm (@ 12km/trip)
Bus – Annual opex = $100 million, @ 51 million trips/year yields $1.96/trip or $0.33/pkm (@ 6 km/trip)
Please correct me if these numbers are wrong, but they suggest that bus costs 60% less per trip and 13% less per pkm compared to rail. But as noted a) this does not consider marginal effects and b) excludes capital costs. With respect to a) you would find that new trips generated by the Northern Express (and other important bus projects such as AMETI) would be closer to 12km/trip (i.e. average rail trip) than 6km/trip (i.e. bus trip).
With respect to b), capital costs are very important because bus subsidies covers new buses, whereas rail subsidies do not cover new trains. On it’s own the $500 million for new EMUs adds about another $0.50/trip or 4cents/pkm (annualise the cost over a lifetime of say 40 years @ an average of 25 million trips/year). So once you throw in the total capital costs of rail and buses to 2016 (around $2 billion) you would expect costs of $0.60/pkm for rail versus around $0.35/pkm for bus (basically just the Northern Busway and Central Connector).
I support the planned upgrades to the rail network but have to conclude that their costs (both marginal and average) seem fairly high compared to what could be achieved with buses. So when people suggest the Central City Rail link should be the next big PT project for Auckland, I have to disagree. Once the core network upgrade is complete (say 2016), I think Auckland should spend about 5-10 years developing a kick ass bus network, while planning for the CRL to come online around 2020-25.
Some might protest that without the CRL Auckland’s “rail network will be at capacity” long before 2025. I shrug my shoulders at this statement because capacity constraints are, on their own, a fairly poor rationale for investment (think about how many highways are at capacity, but should not be expanded).
Basically, current performance (as well as my understanding of the bus projects that are in waiting) suggests Auckland would get better results from focusing on buses for a while. I suspect that over time the CRL will rise to the top of the priority list, but it’s not there yet – from what I can tell.
The average rail trip length in Auckland is 16.6km vs 6km for bus, the source is the NZTA PT economic evaluation manual, vol 2. That brings your figure down to $0.29/pax-km.
As for capital costs, consider that the expenditure on theelectrification project will greatly reduce the operating costs of rail. This is why the business case was so compelling, it will allow around a doubling of patronage with similar operating costs to the current system. So in other words even after annualising the capex the opex per passenger km will still be significantly lower than currently.
As it happens I was talking with a Nuiean lady in Mangere yesterday who works at Auckland Hospital. She told me she knows of many who drive to Middlemore to catch the train rather than use bus as she does. Her eyes lit up when I told her that at some point in the future there would be a new train connection in Mangere.
Anyway, that’s the negative. The upside is that Aucklanders, on average, take just under one return bus trip a fortnight, or 6% use the bus on average daily. There’s obviously huge room to move those figures, and a fivefold increase within 20 years isn’t an unreasonable on this basis.
Which is why it’s important to get the quality right. Not only will people’s lives improve, so will the entire system and its patronage.
Don’t forget that it is passenger kms that is a better measure than boardings…. 16.6 km per rail passenger boarding, 6 km per bus passenger boardings.
Ha ha yes I was about to point that out. Difference in trip length is the main reason why rail generates much greater congestion relief benefits than bus trips.
Cam do you have a reference for that figure? It seems very high – 16.6km takes you from Britomart to Middlemore south, and to Glen Eden west. That seems too far, given my experience on the rail network.
Yes the bus system needs work and will provide the cheapest route to more PT journeys, especially in the short term. And must be done.
But when you look at AK as it is now rail investment is by far the best answer for the medium to long term improvement of the city on all levels, because
1. It is a partial and underutilised existing resource that offers billions of dollars worth of ROW waiting to be unlocked;
2. It soon will be a fully electrified system that means it’s running costs will fall significantly and will be detached from the coming insecurity and uncertain costs of this resource. It will be a significant contributor to improving air quality.
3. It’s growth does not degrade the quality of the streetlife like the addition of dozens or hundreds of extra bus movements.
4. Rail ROW investments are the narrowest insertions, the least disruptive and of the longest value in tight city areas.
5. The coming investments, if executed well should lead to a Perth-like scale in the numbers finding utility in using this mode, it will become gain a greater share of the pax and become the backbone of AK’s PT system: here’s how, And these are all underway
Electrification
Integrated ticketing
Feeder bus routes to interchange station
The CRL, which is the key to unlocking the network
Note buses are essential to this so it should never be thought of as either or. The misdirection of resources is to general traffic priority, that’s what the sarcasm should be directed.
My advocacy for this mode has nothing to do with trainspotting I did not have a trainset as a kid. I have just looked at AK with a cool eye and it is clear that the conclusion that unlocking the latent power in the existing rail network is the single best thing we can do in Auckland to improve the quality of the city and enable it to grow as well as it could.
Further to the above. Rail boardings in Perth tripled in a few years post electrification [1993] and the opening of the Joondalup line, from under 10 million [about where AK is now] to around 30mil. It made a another big jump after further extensions to the network in 2007 and is now approaching 60mil.
The key to these figures is the integration of the bus network as feeders to the rail network. As new lines open bus routes that used to go all the way to the centre now feed train stations, then head back into the hinterland. There is absolutely no reason why we can’t expect these types of effects to occur in Auckland if we plan for them and make the necessary changes and investments.
Worth looking at Chris Harris’ excellent analysis [and wild photography] again here: http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2010/12/11/guest-post-alternative-auckland-notes-on-perth/
As it is now I expect a more gradual change in Ak because of the hostile approach of the current government. However as we should get real Integrated Ticketing in place next year and the opening of Manukau City and Parnell Stations. And if AT spend 2013 putting in a programme of true bus feeder routes to take advantage of IT, this blog will be full of stories about full to overflowing trains.
2014 should see relief to this problem for a while with the introduction of the new EMUs. But this too will not really be able to unlock anything like the potential of the network as it will still be strangled by the Britomart terminus.
So the real transformation of the network, well creation of the network really, requires the opening of the CRL. And this will also mean the transformation of Auckland city too in a way not seen since the Harbour Bridge opened.
There is no reason why we can’t get all of this in place in the next 5/6 years. We know there is a huge and growing desire for alternatives to car driving but we do not yet have decent services available. We also now that the push factors, the cost of oil and the environmental externalities of more cars and buses, are getting more and more intense every day.
Yes work on bus privilege and reorganisation urgently, but do not use the current ratio of bus trips to train trips to argue that we should not be going all out to put in place the best real lasting solution to Auckland’s sub-optimal transport structure.
Couldn’t agree more. We do need to focus on the low-hanging fruit of improving the bus system, but not at the cost of the essential work to the rail network.
The beauty is that we could get huge improvements out of the bus system at next to no cost.
Stu – you actually skip over a few things.
1. Rail opex is will be changing quite a bit over the coming years, things like maintenance and fuel will drop quite a bit but we are adding in higher track access charges and also the loan payments to pay for the new trains is being included in the opex so you are wrong to count that separately. You should also note that the tender for the new trains was also for at least 10 years of maintenance as well as brand new facilities to store and maintain the fleet so of that $500m some of it replaces existing opex.
2. Many of the bus routes, especially those at peak times, are run commercially. Now of course when looking at overall costs that needs to be included but when thinking about expanding the network you need to look at what it is going to cost to get new people using it. Over the last 5 or years bus subsidies doubled to about $100m while patronage has only risen by about 10m. Things like reorganising bus routes will help but to get new passengers using the service but to get lots more people using buses it will probably push that average cost up quite a bit.
Looking forward about ten years we could assume something like the following:
Rail – opex = $60m @ 20m trips/year = $3.00 per trip or $0.25/pkm (@ 12km/trip)
Bus – opex = $150m @ 70m trips/year = $2.10 per trip or $0.36/pkm (@ 6km/trip)
So rail should actually fall as below buses as a result of the current investment taking place.
And frankly, Matt, your numbers look conservative. If we take current number [10 mil], and the current growth rate [25%] we get:
2011 10 million
2012 12.5
2013 15.625
2014 19.53
2015 24.41
On the one hand these numbers look unlikely, if not impossible, simply because of capacity constraints. How well can we expect the EMU roll out to go, how disruptive will it be? Will it be delayed even beyond 2014? But also can the network handle these numbers before the CRL is open?
On the other hand, it seems likely that both the oil price will rise and the NZD will fall, $4 a litre at the pump is more than likely at some point in this period, even next year…. what will that do to all PT demand in AK? And we are so not ready for it, are we?
Hang on, just capital costs on the system amount to over2 billion that I can count (britomart, dart, electrification). At 6 percent the cost of capital is 120million a year for these items alone. Depreciation and maintenance would push that closer to 200 million. And thats before fuel, staff, admin costs etc. Include the CRL and that will double to 400 million
Ok Swan, how far do you want to go back? Shouldn’t we cost the construction of the whole road system as the bus capex? Harbour bridge too for those NS buses…. Let’s be consistent.
Well I’ve only gone back to the nineties. Roading infrastructure is paid for mainly from fuel taxes so there is no capital subsidy to pay. For the part funded through general rates, busses share this with cars and in terms of proportion of vehicles busses are a small percentage. I agree that a full analysis needs to take into account the cost of capital on both sides of the equation, but I would expect this to work out strongly in favor of busses
Yeah I’m interested in this. It seems to me that a tax is a tax, that it comes from say alcohol, or petrol, or income doesn’t seem to me to be important. The government still chooses what to spend it on and on how to justify it. If there is no problem with say tax on wine being spent on, I dunno, um the Film Commission, or the Navy, running prisons, or Ministerial travel, why such a fuss about the hypothecation of fuel taxes? I know the history of these types of taxes but to narrow the use of this money to build new state highways as is the current policy is just that, a policy, not a law of nature. It doesn’t mean that roads are free somehow, or even self funded. It simply means that it is current policy to fund them from taxation.
@ Stu. i can believe that figure is true. I have been told that the third busiest station on the rail network is actually Papakura – after Newmarket and Britomart. I think maybe the rail system in Auckland has historically been so crap that people have only uesd it regularly if they live very far away from their job and the benefits of rail (e.g., not having to focus on driving for the journey, not getting caught in congestion, not paying for fuel) have come to outweigh the disadvantages (lack of reliability, slow travelling speed). Otherwise they just drive in/catch the bus.
Stu you still just ignore any externalities that are hard to price. This seems to to be a constant problem with all economic arguments. Do you ‘just shrug your shoulders’ at the impact of all these additional buses on the city streets? To the need to improve air quality, to reduce our oil imports, to reduce carbon emissions, to improve AK’s dreary urban form? Does the holy grail of getting more boardings at the lowest cost trump all other considerations? If so then it appears that your thinking is suffering from a version of Stockholm Syndrome; been listening to too many anti PT reductivists and now have somehow accepted their terms of reference. This is the same kind of math that ignores parking as part of driving, of deaths and injuries on the roads, of violation of place by roading and parking infrastructure.
I repeat, yes lets sort the buses, especially as Nick says above, what’s needed is a holistic view of all modes in AK and for us to invest in a co-ordinated system. It is interesting to do this math but it in no way is it anything other than part of the story.
Also there is so much unlocked capacity in the existing rail ROW that the marginal cost of expanding on what there already is will clearly be rewarded exponentially. The example of Perth above.
So, buses yes, especially a NW busway, and the AMETI plan if it has proper privilege. And urgently co-ordination to rail interchange stations. Trains, especially the CRL as it turns a terminus system into a proper network, and to Mangere as it is already mostly there.
Then lets see where we are, and where the world is….for example what oil price do you use in your forward projections? That is hard isn’t it?, NZTA just ‘shrug their shoulders’ at that problem too.