There’s a fairly long and quite rambling opinion piece in today’s NZ Herald, about transport in Auckland and particularly about the relatively poor quality of the city’s public transport system. There’s nothing particularly surprising about this, and the article’s look back at Auckland’s transport history – in particular the tale of Mayor Dove-Myer Robinson’s rapid rail proposal – is a useful reminder about how efforts to improve Auckland’s rail system have generally found huge public support.
But there are a couple of paragraphs in the article that stood out as being a bit weird:
Mayoral hopeful John Banks’ master plan focused on an improved rail service, including an inner-city loop and airport link. He wanted to see central city stations and an integrated ticketing system.Increased ferry connections and improved cycleways were also part of the plan. Many Aucklanders, including Banks, attribute his failure to land the Supercity top spot to the ambitious plan.
“The people kicked my arse right out of the mayoralty,” he said this week but declined to discuss it further. “I spent two mayoralties building transport infrastructure around Auckland. I think I’ll leave it to the new mayoralty.”
Uhhh… really?
My recollection of the super city mayoralty race was that both John Banks and Len Brown came across as fairly pro public transport for most of the campaign, except that by the end of it Banks was starting to declare war on South Auckland and back-tracking a bit on his public transport aspirations. Len Brown ended up winning, and has made improving Auckland’s public transport system his top priority. Hardly consistent with the idea that Banks lost because he promised to focus too much on improving our transport system.
There are a few weird other things in the article, like “Electric trains are expected to be running within the next three years, including an inner-city link” (what inner city rail link? Or are we talking about buses now?)
I’m not sure whether Abby Gillies, who wrote the piece, just isn’t that well informed – or whether John Banks put together the story to come across as less pro public transport as part of his campaign to win Epsom for Act, who have generally not been the most public transport friendly party around.
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I am sure it will be on your reading list Jarbury, but I look forward to your post on the upcoming Longterm Plan. Time to see whether Len Brown is going to put his money where his mouth is concerning public transport, and I don’t just mean the big ticket items like the City Rail link. How about more money for PT services (opex), and infrastructure to support the bus system!
Seems we have left funding to the NZTA for too long, and look where that has got us.
There are many plans on my reading list over the next few months. Starting with the draft of the Auckland Spatial Plan, released for consultation on September 20th.
I don’t necessarily think we need much more money spent on PT operations in the next few years. There are huge inefficiencies in the current system that can free up resources for improvements if they’re sorted out.
I read the article this morning and was thinking the same thing, overall it was a very weird article and seemed to lack focus, it just seemed like the author threw a few random thoughts on PT together
There’s several scenarios; Abby Gillies is not particularly well informed which tells me that she a) is a young reporter and b) never voted in the Oct 2010 Local Body elections, or alternatively, she is being particularly disingenuous and is advertising her National Party colours. Either way she needs to explain her reportage. Or alternatively, a sub-editor has got it in for her and has changed the story without her knowledge. Which she needs to explain as well if this is the case.
I predict that Banks will be Gillies BFF in the next few months.
My guess is b) – it seems likely that she has moved to Auckland since the 2010 Local Body Elections – see http://www.starcanterbury.co.nz/local/news/the-star-reporter-puts-up-a-fight-for-youth-charit/3924408/
Ahhh, so she never voted in Auckland Local Body elections and has only recently moved from Chch. I think her story got past a sub-editor somehow. She needs to print a correction.
I thought exactly the same thing! Bizarre history rewrite. It sounded like she had a pretty shit trip on the bus and decided to write an article about it and then just got some filler stuff to go around the bus trip story and, sadly, didn’t run it past Matthew D to check for accuracy 🙂 Although i do sympathize with her because have had similar experience with bus driver berating me for not having exact change.
I also wondered what planet the journalist had been living on to come up with that revisionary statement. It was roads John Banks wanted to build, and he insisted was better value than Len Brown’s plans for rail to the airport and Shore:
“Complete Auckland’s motorway network over the next 12 years — 1.2 billion dollars a year for the next 12 years.”
$14,400,000,000 of new motorways — just what our city needs to solve our transport problems!
They should not give change on buses; full stop. People need to accept that if they pay by cash then they need to have the right amount, or at least accept that they don’t get change back. Great incentive for people to switch over to HOP … works swimmingly well in Edinburgh.
And until HOP is rolled out across all modes, what’s your solution? Plus there’s no significant price incentive to use HOP. The discount is negligible for most users. The penalty/bonus for cash/HOP needs to be huge – 50% or more – before there’s a big incentive to get a HOP card.
Then there’s the issue of getting cards topped up. I went into the Newmarket train station the other day hoping I could get my Howick & Eastern card topped up. After all, H&E buses travel through Newmarket. Could I? Hell no. So, through no fault of my own, I was in a position where the only way I could pay fare on an H&E bus was with cash. Why should I be penalised because the public bloody transport operator’s own kiosks wouldn’t recharge my card?!
I was on a bus during the weekend, it was one headed for west Auckland, and noticed at least half the people using cash. I think they need more targeted marketing, like a poster or sticker on/near the ticket machine or coin tray saying “Your fare would cost less with a HOP card.”
They should get those pre-loaded HOP cards onboard all buses for people like the reporter who only have a $10 or $20 note. Eliminate the problem…
Good idea!
Sounds like she must have taken a cursory glance at ARC proposals from a few years back (e.g the regional fuel tax package) and somehow attributed that to the mayor of Auckland city council at the time. Probably has no idea of the situation pre Supercity.
As an aside – walked past the new K Road overbridge bus stop this morning – first time I’ve seen it open and water was ALREADY on the seats. God I love this city *shakes head*
@ Stu. Yes indeed, I am sure that getting on a bus and being berated by the driver for not having a card they had never heard of or the exact correct change will make sure that somebody who has never used public transport before and gives it a go will come back…not. Bus drivers shouldn’t be rude to customers. That’s just a given. we don’t expect people in retail to yell at us for not having correct change, or people who work at Subway to berate us for not speaking English properly or wearing headscarves. Why do we think that’s acceptable behaviour for the people who run our public transport system?
I am sure there are better ways to get people to use an integrated ticket than to outlaw the use of cash. I know that in Wellington you can still use cash but most people use Snapper cards.
From my untrained eye, cash payment rarely happens on the bus in Wellington during the week, but at the weekends, it seems a significant amount of people paying cash. Maybe something Go Wellington / Metlink might want to consider?
A simple solution is to have a big differential between cash and HOP fares. One way to do this could be, at the next fare rise, only raise cash fares, and round those cash fares up to the nearest whole dollar to simplify change-giving, with maximum change given capping at $5 or $10.