A few weeks ago I asked if we were ready for ‘March Madness‘ and there was some good news today with AT announcing it has put on extra buses to cope with March which is a nice change from previous years where extra capacity always seems to have been added too late. Here is their press release:
Extra buses will provide up to 170 extra trips a day for ‘March madness’, the busiest time of year for the transport system.
The increase in people travelling in March is related to the return of tertiary students and others trying public transport for the first time. People normally establish regular travel patterns in April, which eases some of the spike in demand.
Auckland Transport and bus companies are providing extra capacity from this week until early April, or longer as required, to manage the higher demand on services. Additional drivers will be on standby in some areas.
Additional bus capacity will be provided on various routes including:
- Mt Eden Rd, Dominion Rd, Remuera Rd, Tamaki Drive, Richmond Rd/Westmere
- Howick and Eastern services as required
- Green Bay to Unitec and other Urban Express services as required
- Birkenhead Transport services in Bayview and on Onewa Rd.
The Northern Express currently has a significantly higher number of services than in early 2011. From 7am – 8am and 5pm – 6pm buses run every three minutes in peak directions and hours of service are longer.
Auckland Transport Public Transport Operations Manager Mark Lambert says the extra services means there is more capacity on popular routes and back up buses available when passenger numbers are high.
“This means it is less likely buses will be overloaded and can’t pick up passengers at stops. It also gives passengers a better experience than travelling on an overcrowded bus.
“March is always our busiest time so we have put in place more services with the support of bus companies to be prepared for it,” Mr Lambert says
Its good to see this being done but a shame we still haven’t heard about the new train time and Manukau Station opening that was promised to happen in February.
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Easter for Manukau and timetable. Passed the station this evening and still a construction zone over there 🙁
Manukau station will be a construction zone for a number of years yet, as they are only just getting started on the campus being built over and around the station area.
If this morning was anything to go by (still February) I doubt we will be ready for March madness. The Eastern Line was a mess: trains were late, trains were over full, people were left on the platforms and my biggest issue = hardly any fares got collected from GI onwards (same as the 17:12 yesterday).
I know the new trains are coming, but how will we handle the growth over the next couple of years?
There’s really no solution, there are simply no more trains!
Refine bus routes in parallel, provide more capacity in the short term until the trains arrive. They cut them back to feeders, or maybe just keep them all going if there is capacity.
What I mean was that there’s no solution to increasing capacity on the trains, of course encouraging people onto buses is one way to try and reduce that demand.
Buses already seem fairly busy out my way. It will be interesting to see when the extra capacity kicks in and whether it will be enough (my guess is there has already been an increase in patronage).
I also think AT has dragged their heals far too long on integrated ticketing. This speeds up loading considerably (from London experience) which can only be helpful during busy periods.
Dominion Rd today and yesterday were pretty bad. Cars moving very slowly (except for some crazy idiots) and some busses full as early as Mt Albert Rd.
The percentage of people paying cash has gone up, hopefully will fix itself soon but slows down the loading a lot.
I admit I’ve gone back to paying cash instead of using Hop as I just find it frustrating that I can’t either put cash on via the driver or the internet – that I’ve got to go out of my way to do so, and then pay an extra fee to put the $$ on.
I’m trying to find out what services have been increased and their new timetable information, but I can’t find any such details anywhere. I got a 893 express service to Orewa today at 2pm. Usually the first express service starts at 3:30pm. It would be good to know what other services have been added so I can plan my travels.