The weekend election results confirmed that money will be tight for public transport over the next three years. The proposed Government Policy Statement cuts PT infrastructure funding quite dramatically and while PT services (subsidies) funding increases, this will largely be eaten up by repayment for Auckland’s electric trains and the increased track access fee. With patronage continuing to grow, and therefore putting pressure on the need for more services in some areas, we are going to need to look really carefully at places where we can find efficiencies in the PT network.
The most obvious candidates are where our bus network currently duplicates the rail network. Somewhat unsurprisingly, given the historic ineptness of the rail network, our bus system pretty much ignores the fact that we now have trains. Even where buses go past train stations the timing of their services typically fails to align. More commonly we have situations like at Onehunga – where the bus station is hidden behind the shops (horrible public transport must be hidden!) rather than being next to the new train station.
There are a few obvious examples of rail/bus duplication – with the 135 bus service and the Western Rail line being a classic case:
The red line shows the Western Line, the blue line indicates the route of the 135 bus between Swanson and Britomart. At peak times, while it takes the train around an hour to make this journey (and it should be a lot faster than that!), the 135 route takes a lot longer: 
I can’t imagine many passengers willingly choosing to take the bus for the whole length of their journey if they’re in the outer parts of the route – unless it’s because of something like a lack of integrated ticketing or the lack of a feeder bus to get them to the nearest station. Surely most routes serving the Ranui/Swanson/Sunnyvale area should be feeder buses into Henderson and/or New Lynn stations? Most of their trip length is to get between New Lynn and downtown, something a train can obviously do much quicker.
Another classic example of pointless duplication can be found for bus services between Papakura and the city centre. Consider the map below – with once again blue being the bus route and red being the railway line:
Added to this, there are a number of express buses from Papakura that travel up the motorway at peak times – although even they struggle to do the Papakura-town trip quicker than the train, which has a similar length of journey to Swanson-Britomart at around 50 minutes.
Here are all the Papakura buses in the morning peak:
The time it takes some of these buses to make their trips is simply extraordinary. The 473 bus leave Red Hill at the eye-wateringly early time of 6.10am but doesn’t make it into town until after 8.00. The 471 leaves Pahurehure at 6.45 and takes almost two hours to make it into town. Even the express buses are timed to do their trip at around an hour and a quarter – 25 minutes slower than the train.
Now obviously everyone catching these buses (assuming people catch them) isn’t travelling the whole length of the route – many might simply be travelling to Manukau City for work or between stops along Great South Road – but having these buses do such incredibly long routes means that the vehicle and driver are basically occupied for the entire peak period within a single trip. In the three hours or so it might take to do a return trip between Papakura and the city (and I’m guessing most of the express buses run back empty and not in service), you could run that same bus on a feeder route three or four times at least. The “80” route already serves this purpose throughout Papakura, although it runs at stupidly low frequencies – presumably to discourage people from using it:
I’m sure that with the resources currently wasted on long-haul bus services out to Swanson and Papakura we could have a far more attractive feeder bus system and probably still have a heap of money left over to plough into areas where we actually need to boost frequencies to cope with increasing patronage. The people of Papakura and Swanson would end up with a better, more frequent and faster service. The rest of the city would save money and be able to reallocate those funds to where it’s most needed.
It’s a clear win-win for everyone except the bus operator – who is currently making a tonne of money for operating empty buses all over Auckland.
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The elastic sided trains are on order!
That is the only drawback to this idea – train capacity, especially in the peak.
You’re right Chris – train capacity is an issue. Of course we do want increased rail patronage to keep pressure on for the City Rail Link, and there’s plenty of off-peak capacity in the rail system still.
We could always do what the Indians do and let people ride on the outside for free.
Duplicated inefficient services? Use feeder services to the trains.
Put more people on already congested trains? Add rail capacity?
No rail capacity? Add more trains.
No capacity at Britomart for the extra trains? Build a rail loop.
Don’t have a government willing to build a rail loop? Change the government.
Oh derr. I think we just made a monumental error.
What rail loop are you talking about because there is none planned and why would we want trains going around in circles, there is however a city rail link which will open up the network and allow for higher frequencies.
Good call Matt L. I think we need to battle against “loop” at every opportunity.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Capacity is not the only problem. We know that PT use is price sensitive and buying two tickets for one journey is a big turn off to transferring along with the lack of coordination.
Important issue to highlight… Wouldn’t those car users on SH1 prefer to the buses gone in favour of better use of the existing rail ROW? And not begrudge the investment in improving its effectiveness and therefore appeal.
The thing is that these routes are only the tip of the iceberg and there are many more like them. From what I’ve read AT have just been rolling over contracts from year to year because they have been waiting for the contracting model to be sorted (was meant to be gross contracted routes but is now PTOM). One of the requirements with PTOM is that they have to have a plan for all routes and I really hope that eliminating some of these duplicate routes will be part of that (they also have more incentive to now as wasn’t this pointed out in the governments CRL review).
The other main issue is ticketing, feeders will never work if they require new fares, even if that fare is discounted slightly (which has been the suggestion rather than free transfers). A classic example is just the other day my wife and I caught a train home but it was scheduled to stop at Henderson. When we got there, a bus was actually waiting next to the station and followed a route similar to the rail line and we could have caught that to get to our station but it would cost us another fare as our rail monthly passes don’t allow the free transfer.
Someone who lives in Papakura and works in Red Hill can currently catch a single bus to work in about 40 minutes. This is a bit long, but it wouldnt turn everyone off. Under a feeder system, the person would have to:
1) catch a bus to papakura – 15 mins
2) transfer to a train – 5 minutes
3) catch train to Puhinui – 20 mins
4) transfer to another train – 5 minutes
5) catch train to Manukau – 5 minutes
Not only does this take 10 minutes longer (assuming seamless integration of not only buses, but also northbound trains with Manukau bound trains), but the passenger doesnt get the opportunity to settle into some work, or a book, or sleep- which is a massive benefit of PT.
I transfer buses every day- I catch a Dominion road express half way home, then transfer to a dominion road all stops service. This trip normally takes me about 10 minutes, as opposed to about 18 if I go on an all stops bus the whole way. The transfer is on a fare stage so it costs no more, and peak all stops services run every 3 minutes so the transfer is always seamlessly timed. I have still NEVER seen anyone else make this transfer, even though it couldn’t possibly be more convenient.
overall, I wonder if people could be bothered always watching out for their approaching stop, and constantly being unsettled mid trip. A key difference between us and many other cities is that cars are often a viable alternative if PT gets too hard, and we have only just reached the standard where the mainstream will give it a go. Are we sure that this wont over complicate things?
Sam, data shows that hardly anyone catches the bus from south of Manukau to north of Manukau (and vice versa). This means Manukau is an ideal place for feeder buses from everywhere south of it to be “chopped”, giving people either the option of transfering onto the train or onto a regular b.line “400” route along Great South Road.
The waste comes from having millions of buses duplicating each other and the rail line along the inner parts of Great South Road.
Botany to CBD which goes over the Eastern line at Panmure is a classic example. Hopefully Ameti will sort that out and also integrated ticketing.
A lot of these express buses run on the motorway meaning they actually provide a lot less connectivity than the train. I think we have to use this period of contracting resources as a time to really cull back a very large number of these bus routes – you did a post once about using funding cuts to your advantage to consolidate an outdated bus system.
One very important aspect of the 135 bus is that it serves the Waterview area – this neighbourhood will become only more disjointed with the Waterview tunnel, so if services like 135 were to be restructured they should be replaced by a service that perhaps starts at Avondale and continues via Waterview down Gt North Rd. This would also have the benefit of providing a connection from Waterview to the Avondale train station but also provide a route into the city.
There will always be a New Lynn to CBD route via Great North Rd. The issue is whether we need hundreds of overlapping routes.
OK, are these parallel services provided commercially or are part of existing contracts?
* If they are part of existing contracts then it may be wasteful to keep them.
* If they are being run commercially, though, I’d be tempted to leave them – they are paying their own way and customers are choosing to use them, because they are the best fit for what the customer wants.
What we forget is that people’s modal preferences are mostly driven by the option with the lowest travel time, subject to a budget constraint. “Lowest travel time” isn’t just about how long you spend in the vehicle, but how long you take to get to and from the stop, and how you might have to wait for any transfer.
So, if people are prepared to use a bus which they know is going to be held up on the motorway, there is generally a fairly good reason why. My own suggestion would be to review this once the CRL is in place, and then see what customers wanr.
Under the PTOM contracting system all routes within a unit are bunched together and subsidized. So continuing these ones will cost money.
Waiting for the CRL is basically saying lets do nothing with Auckland’s PT for the next 10 years. If we don’t even both optimise Auckland’s bus system to feed into the rail network and thereby provide better frequency, we may as well give up.
For the PTOM all routes have to be redesigned and then they’re locked in for 10 years I think, so if AT doesn’t do it now then it literally will be after the CRL opens that we have another chance to do it.
Excellent idea to cut the bus/train duplication. When I lived in Taipei, Taiwan, when the Metro system opened and each time a new line opened subsequently, every bus route that matched a Metro line was closed. For around a month beforehand there were notices at the bus stops advising people that the bus would not be operating after X date, and after X date, the notices directed people to the nearest Metro station. Of course it helps that the bus and Metro system are both owned and operated by Taipei City and that Metro makes a huge operating surplus which is then used to build new lines as there is no expectation that the Metro must make a profit and pay out to the Taipei City Government.
It was really interesting in a “developing country” that managed to avoid some of the mistakes that
“developed” countries like NZ persist in making. It was refreshing to, to live in a country where the “invisible hand” wasn’t worshipped like a god and there was a genuine sense of social progress.
Excellent idea to cut the bus/train duplication. When I lived in Taipei, Taiwan, when the Metro system opened and each time a new line opened subsequently, every bus route that matched a Metro line was closed. For around a month beforehand there were notices at the bus stops advising people that the bus would not be operating after X date, and after X date, the notices directed people to the nearest Metro station. Of course it helps that the bus and Metro system are both owned and operated by Taipei City and that Metro makes a huge operating surplus which is then used to build new lines as there is no expectation that the Metro must make a profit and pay out to the Taipei City Government.
It was really interesting in a “developing country” that managed to avoid some of the mistakes that
“developed” countries like NZ persist in making. It was refreshing too, to live in a country where the “invisible hand” wasn’t worshipped like a god and there was a genuine sense of social progress.
This is an old topic, but I wonder whether there is an update as to whether these replicated bus routes are planned to change now that we have integrated ticketing?