It’s known as March Madness due to all of the extra people that use the PT network however this March appears not to have been much madder than previous years. Auckland Transport has released their patronage stats for the month which show that PT trips increased by only 0.9% compared to the same month last year. Here are the highlights according to Auckland transport:
- Auckland public transport patronage totalled 70,287,931 passengers for the 12 months to March 2012 an increase of 5,720,694 boardings or +8.9%.
- March monthly patronage was 7,128,167 an increase of 65,882 boardings or +0.9% on March 2011.
- Northern Express bus service carried 2,275,442 passenger trips for the 12 months with a growth in March 2012 compared to March 2011 of +14.3%.
Most interesting about the the report was that rail patronage dropped compared to March 2011 by 6.3%. It has been quite a long time since this happened and Auckland transport has given the following explanation for the decrease.
- There was one less business day during March this year compared to last year. This is equivalent to approximately 4.5% of monthly patronage;
- There were fewer trips on special event services this year – one free travel with an event ticket this year compared to two for the same month last year (equivalent to approximately 1.6% of monthly patronage);
- The comparative weekend block of lines impacted on a greater proportion of services in 2012 compared to the previous year (equivalent to approximately 1.5% of monthly patronage);
- A fare increase occurred during the same month last year and it is likely that advance ticket purchases prior to the increase boosted the reported patronage during that month
I like that they have quantified it and the one less business day would also explain the general weakness across all the figures with the exception of the ferry network which is perhaps due to the extra weekend trips. Also interestingly March next year has another day less again so we could see something similar happen.
Even local buses were fairly quiet, the isthmus services which had been seeing double digit growth since the new link services were introduced in August last year slowing down.
Oh and there has also been no increase in state highway volumes either. Traffic over the Harbour bridge is down 5% on March last year and down 8% on 2 years ago.
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Declining rail patronage is pretty worrying in terms of trying to convince the government that the City Rail Link is an essential project. It also makes the impending fare hike somewhat questionable.
A month-on-month change means nothing. The March 12-month trend is a 15.2% increase, and the March FYTD trend is a 13.8% increase. Don’t get too concerned.
Those are pretty important caveats. But it’s also rather disappointing.
The continued failure of AT to ensure a reliable system must be acknowledged (yes, I acknowledge the soup of agencies they deal with to implement this result, but I’m going to hold somebody responsible).
Really not sure how you’d have them ensure a reliable system without the work that’s underway. The continued weekend disruption is entirely related to creating this “reliable system” that you (and everyone else) desire. Without that work, the electrification won’t happen and without the electrification we’re stuck with prehistoric diesel trains that break down frequently and are slow. The signalling and points upgrade work is, similarly, essential.
Note that these are both things out of AT’s control. They don’t own the corridor, they don’t own the tracks.
Your determination to “hold somebody responsible” and then criticising AT for work being done to ensure reliability is pretty bizarre.
Outside of December, in which holiday and unreliability (due to construction & maintenance work) issues overtake, this is the first nominal drop in any month in 7 years.
The trend is far more important, but a single data point is interesting, and tells us something. It comes after a number of months of low growth – 2.1% Nov, 1.5% Dec, 13.9% Jan, 2.8% Feb. The January figure is good, and tells us that summer and holiday use is improving off a low base. February actually represents no growth, as this year had an extra day (29th Feb). The Southern and Eastern line are tailing off in FY growth, and that’s also interesting.
January also had more network working days because of the buggery around the Big Day Out, with the converse effect on December. February is traditionally slow, but not quite that slow and I’d be interested to know why AT thinks that happened.
It will be interesting to see what impact the changes to the timetables has next month, when there’s a full month for analysis. Also very interested to see a couple of years into the future, when we’ve got better trains but are constrained by Britomart on the number of peak-time services.
You’re being pretty rough about March, really. It’s a one-off not a trend, and at some point these things were going to happen. The loss of a working day to a public holiday is outside AT’s control, as is the loss of a special event. Meteoric month-on-month growth without a check is never going to happen, no matter how much we might wish it. If this month also shows a drop, then we are entitled to start worrying.
I don’t think we should start worrying as such. Though the anti-rail brigade will be happy to jump on that bandwagon. Of course without pointing out the declining road traffic.
On Wikipedia it’s called recentism – putting too much importance on recent and short-term events. I don’t think 1, even 2 or 3 month numbers mean all that much. Start talking to me once you have 4-6 months of trend
Need to start planning for weekend special tickets, timed for when the weekend line works are finished (mid next year). Sydney and Melbourne both have good weekend rail patronage, consisting mainly families going to events and entertainment in the central city area.
Such special ticket prices need to be worked into the bus contracts as they are renegotiated.
Follow Berlin’s example and allow an adult to take two or three children with them at nights and weekends.
Couple of points that come to mind.
1. Is the drop off in rail number due to constraints at Britomart starting to show already? I recall comment made that Britomart is now at the maximum pretty much for trains per hour in/out so the number on each train is pretty fixed, coupled with loss of a “working day” in March may show as part of the drop off.
2. Is there a counting problem too? I presume train numbers come from counting sales of tickets (in station on on train) and monthly passes etc. If the trains are full and lots of people are buying tickets on the train – is there not a potential problem in that if the trains are too full, then many folks are evading fares due to the conductors taking too long to get from one of the train (carriage) to the other before some have hopped off the train – reducing the train ticket sales as a result – this would only get worse as trains get more crowded.
Thats happened to me when I went from Britomart to Orakei one weekend, the DMU was full, and the conductor won’t have been able to get to everyone on the train before the first few stops had been made – in this case while the ticket sales may show a 3/4s full train , the actual train was packed with passengers – ot all of whom paid. This is a minor effect though, but I recall a Campbell Live story about train crowding showing the conductor had no chance of collecting all the fares as the carriages were too full. This was last year about this time if I recall.
3. April will show a drop as compared to last April, we have ANZAC day on a weekday as opposed to Easter Monday last year, so there will be 1 fewer working days in April. Some people may also take a 5 day weekend before or after ANZAC day by taking the two days before or after off, reducing PT users further (mainly only affect cash sales).
Train capacity is estimated based on head counts as much as it’s calculated based on ticket sales, in part because 10-trip and monthly tickets leave no paper trail.
So these Train numbers are, in part, a work of fiction then?
Yes pretty much but they are the best indicator that we have. It will be very interesting to what happens when we get more reliable results from after HOP rolls out.