Last week something rather sad happened. After my blog post on the systems used to track buses around Auckland brought attention to a fairly new blog on transport issues in Auckland, there was obviously some pretty messy stuff happening behind the scenes which led to the aforementioned blog being taken down, apparently because it had ‘overstepped the mark’ and shared information it shouldn’t have. This was kind of weird, because the post in question had gone to some lengths to disguise commercially sensitive information by blocking out the particular route number and how many passengers were on that service:
Before the blog was completely taken down, there was an insightful comment by someone, once it had been announced that the blog was to be discontinued. The comment noted that the information in the various posts – that had offered a useful insight into some of the inner workings of Auckland’s PT system (but in a sensitive way) – had led to them having a higher opinion of Auckland Transport and many of the bus operators than they’d ever had before. Like me, they were actually surprisingly and thoroughly impressed by the detailed, advanced and professional way in which buses were being tracked.
While I understand issues of commercial sensitivity, and the need for confidentiality on issues where decisions are yet to be made, I generally think that the various agencies in charge of transport matters in Auckland (and throughout New Zealand) are overly secretive, and that they are actually hurt by this fact. Most of Auckland Transport’s interesting board reports are confidential, NZTA turns down or delays Official Information Act requests all the time, no transport agencies have detailed public blogs like you see in Canada, and so forth.
The result of all this secrecy is, I think, a poorer transport debate than we would otherwise have – and as a result of that, poorer transport decisions. It is beyond doubt that Auckland in particular has made a series of incredibly bad transport decisions over the years, typically the result of ‘experts’ over-riding and ignoring public opinion – an obvious case in point being the roads-centric 1955 Master Transportation Plan. The transport plan was taken away from public participation as it was considered ‘purely a technical matter’.
Even now it’s mightily difficult to have excellent transport debates in New Zealand – where are our independent transport experts? We need to bring them in from Australia to ignite any public debate. The difficulty is that most people who know a lot about transport matters work for the transport agencies, or for consultancies who work for them. Of course they can’t talk about transport issues – so most of the work continues behind the scenes without the public really knowing what’s happening.
I guess all of this perhaps helps to explain why I get a bit dispirited.
Processing...
This is appalling behaviour by Auckland Transport. My rates goes towards paying for buses so why am I denied knowing about their performance or the mechanism by which they are measured?
You mean you don’t trust the “self reporting” from bus operators saying that they’re reliable 99.8% of the time? LOL!
Exactly. It’s ours. OURS. We use these, we pay for them, we benefit, we suffer.
If trains fail to run 1.5% of the time and are 20% of the time, we deserve to know why – is it because the trains are old, and breaking down? Is it because there is too much freight on the lines? Is it because they are overloaded? If we know, we can advocate, and send our thanks and blame to the right people. We can make this an election issue, and get money where it needs to be.
Sometimes it seems like they think that the only stakeholders are the companies, the council, and the Government (order depending on which you talk to). We’re just things to be managed.
Indeed. This kind of thing helps explain why I knew next to nothing about Transport issues in Auckland until after I actually LEFT Auckland! And I decided to ask a few questions, like ”if transport in (insert city here) is so good, why on earth is it so awful in Auckland?
I don’t even think I realised we had any trains at all until I was at Uni and Britomart reopened, sad but true.
We have trains?!? 😀
I can understand some secrecy behind decisions given that businesses are involved and their business processes may have intellecutal property related issues.
Spot on regarding transport experts. It is a very specialised field in NZ with basically only NZTA, Auckland, CHCH and wellington able to employ full time engineers etc. Virtually all the consultants work for these groups only and it is a very small group of peole in NZ who all know each other for the most part. Obviously leaking information is for people who don’t want to work in the industry anymore.
I’d really-really-really like for the data to be public. In the cast of Wellington when I asked for data about number of boardings and the like I was told that Metlink/WRC didn’t have it, only the bus companies had that information, and they wouldn’t release it to WRC because it was commercially sensitive. WTF? How can you be paying someone to run a service where you don’t get any performance statistics? How can anyone evaluate the usefulness of routes? Viability of new routes, etc?
Yeah, I definitely find the buses are 99.8% reliable when I use them. NOT 🙂
did you notice that they measure punctuality of buses in Auckland based on whether they START the route within 5 minutes of the scheduled time? I mean, forgive me but isn’t that a slightly weird measure of punctuality? Wouldn’t it be a bit more meaningful to measure whether they get to the end of their route on time?
I have heard it said that NZTA deliberately gives contracts to every civil engineering firm that works on transport in NZ – precisely to ensure that everybody works for them and therefore nobody will ever speak out because it would cost them/their firm money.
I agree about the secrecy. It starts with the Minister and goes all the way down. The Minister treats oral questions and written questions and OIAs as a game – where he manages to answer the question without giving any meaningful information. This is quite different from other Ministers who do make an effort to answer honestly and clearly most of the time.
It also really saddens me when public servants lie to me or deliberately misrepresent the truth… It is a sign of a broken democracy. Better for them just to say “I can’t tell you that.”
“Commercially sensitive” is a BS excuse. Full transparency should extend to all aspects of public transport, especially if there is any public subsidy of the service. All those bus companies should have open books.
Correct information. There was no request by AT to close down the blog- indeed we welcome and read blogs every day. That is the correct story.
Well someone threatened him. Who *was* it then?
Sunlight is the best disinfectant :). In defence of Auckland Transport, they do not have control over bus contracting arrangements, which in turn leads to the situation where we cannot get patronage data.
It is a crock of bollox and very frustrating to those of us who work on these issues everyday, inside and outside council. The bus companies need a kick up the ass, unfortunately the current minister is not up to the job.
Luckily i made a back up of the blog before it was taken down….
If the bus companies are running purely commercial routes that they fund themselves, then sure keep the information to yourselves.
When they are at the public trough gaining millions of dollars of subsidies every year, then the “commercial sensitivity” argument is just nonsense. We need transparency to make sure that every dollar of public money is being spent sensibly.