Fare rises are inevitable, but never particularly welcome. Auckland Transport has just announced that most rail fares and some bus and ferry fares and to increase from April 29th. Here are some of the details:
Auckland Transport said today it has completed its annual review of bus, ferry and train fares.
The review is based primarily on recovery of cost increases including fuel and labour, and equalising the cost of travel for bus and train users.
Auckland Transport’s Manager, Public Transport Operations, Mark Lambert says, “In general fares have not kept pace with cost increases over time.
“As a result of this year’s review, some bus and ferry fares and most rail fares will increase between 10 cents and 90 cents but many fares remain the same.
“For a number of years train users have enjoyed significantly lower fares than bus users. We now have 2,000 train services a week, the rail network and facilities have been substantially upgraded including the first phase of the Manukau train station which opened for service yesterday.
“This year’s increase in rail fares removes that inequity with bus and simplifies the fare structure prior to the full introduction of HOP near the end of this year.
“In the ferry sector many fares will remain unchanged and fares for similar journey lengths on different routes will be closer aligned.
“In the tertiary sector, the 40% discount currently in place is not sustainable for operators or the ratepayer. This is being reduced to 38% which remains significantly greater than the 20% that was in place in 2008”.
Mr Lambert says, “Public transport fares remain heavily subsidised through Auckland Transport and government agencies such as NZTA. Public transport continues to offer good value for money against petrol prices and the full cost of car ownership”.
Details of the new fares are here. The way in which fares have been increased is quite interesting, with the biggest change being the alignment of bus fares with rail fares for non-monthly passes. With the shift to integrated ticketing this was inevitable, and also has a lot of logic: why would rail fares be different to bus fares for roughly the same journey?
However, while that’s a sensible and logical change, a less logical part of the fare increase is that once again it seems that monthly pass users are being unduly picked on – they’re just about the only ones who see their bus fares go up, for example:
So most monthly pass holders suffer 7-8% fare increases while cash fares for single trips don’t change. That’s not exactly rewarding our best customers is it?
As Matt’s recent post outlined, we need to get a lot smarter about how we structure our fare system – not just keep increasing the complex myriad of fare products by a certain illogical percentage every once in a while. Yet again, this fare review is a missed opportunity to do just that.
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I find the fair rise for the buses absolutely ridiculous, especially a rise of $0.10 for the Inner City Link Bus. This may not seem a lot but it all adds up at the end of the day when future price rises occur. I also find it unacceptable that the Outerlink bus as good as service as it is always gets delayed, cost $1.80 just to travel to Ponsonby, less than 2km from the city and then has to wait even longer when they switch bus drivers that’s really frustrating.
When I got on the Outerlink bus last time I had to wait 15mins before it left the stop outside the Civic. Something needs to be done about this to make bus travel more efficient around Auckland, and also the lack of buslanes around the city mean they get caught up in the general traffic, which is also frustrating and you might as well walk to Ponsonby as its quicker than getting a bus and saves money. The problem with public transport in New Zealand is that the government doesn’t make it any easier to use it and they seem to punish the people who want to use it.
I catch the Outer Link from Pt Chev to the university regularly BD and experience many of the problems you mention. Keep an eye out for a more detailed post on those issues going up tomorrow.
Yeah its absolutely appalling man, I study at AUT and catch the Outerlink bus regularly I also work in Ponsonby so its nice to be able to get on a bus wait no more than 5-10mins for the bus to arrive and then get there as soon as possible without having to wait 15mins for the bus to leave because they are switching drivers. Sometimes the Drivers don’t turn up on time so you have to wait even longer.
AT need to sort this out and the $1.80 fare is stupid it should be $0.50 as other buses in the city charge that much just to travel less than 2km.
Another thing that need sorting is the traffic light junctions on Albert Street and Mayoral Drive along Wellesley street, this area is increasingly becoming filled up with pedestrians and the street scape and traffic light delays don’t suit the demand, it make waking relatively uncomfortable.
I am quite pissed off about the increase to rail monthly fares. A 5 stage 10 trip ticket has gone from $58.50 to $60.00, an increase of $1.50. At the same time the All Zones Monthly has gone from $180 to $190. I know it isn’t exactly how people would use it but expand that out over a year and you get 52 * $1.5 = $78 while 12 * $10 = $120. It is still cheaper on a per trip basis to use a monthly pass but this has happened a few times now. Surely we want more people using monthlies not less.
I’m a ten trip, four stage kinda guy. Just wondering who thought that the 40c more than $50 was a good idea…?! I can see the conductors cursing that one….
These are the cash fares – what is happening with the Hop fares? Can’t find any info on maxx.co.nz
In searching for the new HOP fares I go to the Maxx website, which sends me to the myhop website, which sends me back to the Maxx website and so forth. Typical uselessness from the Auckland Transport IT department.
That’s a little harsh on the IT department Peter! IT departments only do what users specify.
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2003-03-21/
Why is there a Northern Pass Upper to CBD ticket at $11.30? The Busabout day pass is $10 across all of Auckland.
Because busabout doesn’t include Richies who run Northern Express and other North Shore buses. I really wish AT disallowed offering non-integrated products.
Oh well look on the bright side, at least the train and bus fares are now aligned, and we can only hope that once integrated ticketing occurs that Auckland Transport look at zonal rates rather than stage fares that would include the use of all transport available in each zone. Makes alot of sense! And we in Auckland shouldnt really complain about the increases, a day pass in Wellington costs $20 these days! But they do have an advantage on monthly fares for now.
Hang on a sec, wasnt the last fare rise also aimed at monthly pass users?
Am I remembering this right?
Yes you are right. The reason of cost recovery doesn’t really stack up if they are not increasing the fares for 2 stage trips and up. I wonder if there has been any actual cost analysis to determine which fare types are costing more? And now we have a discrepancy between the inner city fare and the city link for some reason. I would expect that it should be the same price if I got the 020 from downtown to K Rd compared to the city link, but now the 020 will be twice the price?!
We already have some of the highest public transport fares in developed countries, and now they’re going up again?! The sooner we get PTOM, integrated fares, and this nonsense of supporting the margins of the operators can be ended, the better.
Hop fares are here:
http://www.myhop.co.nz/HOP-Fares/Documents/HOP%20fare%20changes%202012.pdf
You can compare with the current fares here:
http://www.myhop.co.nz/HOP-Fares/Pages/Saving-With-HOP.aspx
Hop continues to be cheaper. City Link continues to be free. 1 stage $1.62 vs $1.90 case. 2 stage $3.06 vs $3.40. etc
HOP is only cheaper for short journeys. For longer journeys, or all day travel, cash is much cheaper. Cash will not exceed $10 no matter how far you go, because that’s the cost of the day pass. HOP will just keep on charging you past $10. Depending on how much travel you need to do, HOP can easily be twice the price of a cash fare.
The crazy part to me is the difference which has between introduced between the HOP single ride and the HOP Multi Journey. For 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, and 8 stages it’s more economical to change from Hop with a stored value, to Multi Journey (admittedly not by much, but still).
However moving to Multi Journey defeats one of the main benefits of HOP in the first place – which was to enable a flexibility to take different journeys on a single card.