Matt’s post on the latest patronage figures confirmed something that has been brewing for a while now: rail patronage isn’t growing anymore. Let’s track rail patronage increases for the past while, each time comparing against the patronage of the same month the year before:
Just looking briefly at the graph above it seems as though the Rugby World Cup was a turning point – for the worse. Up until (and obviously including) the World Cup there was really steady patronage growth in most months, but after it there has been almost nothing (April’s figures are likely to be people pre-purchasing tickets before fares went up).
Let’s now look at it in percentage terms, once again comparing each month since November 2010 with the same month the year before: 
Once again we see a pretty clear split between pre World Cup and post World Cup. One does wonder whether the chaos on opening night of that tournament has had a lasting legacy in wrecking the perception of Auckland’s rail system. It completely failed in its time of greatest need. Yet nobody’s ever really been held accountable for what happened – which is a mystery to me.
Another obvious candidate as the cause behind the recent trends are the continued reliability problems which are occurring on the rail network. You can see from the graph below, which comes from June’s patronage report, that ever since February the performance has been worse than (or the same as) the same month last year:
What truly staggers me about Auckland’s rail system is that these statistics don’t seem to get any better over time, even though we’re spending huge amounts of money on upgrading the network – installing new signals, new track and so forth. In fact it almost seems like we’re getting worse – a truly depressing situation.
If you dig a bit deeper into what the causes of the delays are, you start to see a possible explanation for the above:
While there are fluctuations on a month by month basis, over time it seems as though the proportion of delay minutes due to network issues (in blue) is declining, but the proportion of delay minutes due to operations (in red) is increasing. In other words, Veolia’s doing an increasingly poor job at running the train system.
Other possible explanations include a series of fare increases on rail, which have now brought rail fares into line with bus fares. While this makes sense from a logical point of view, it may have put some people off catching the train – bus patronage has continued to blossom over the past year or so in contrast to stalling rail use. Further, the timetable improvements earlier this year – when the Manukau Line opened – were incredibly disappointing. Long-standing promises to provide 10 minute peak time Western Line frequencies, better than hourly frequencies out West on the weekends, 15 minute interpeak frequencies, half-hourly Onehunga Line frequencies, were all broken. We saw hardly any boost to rail frequencies, aside from the introduction of trains to Manukau – which hardly anyone is using because they come so infrequently.
Now for all we know this may just be a “blip” – although looking at the very first graph of this post we’re now coming up on a six month long blip. But really this couldn’t come at a worse time in the justification of future investment in the rail network – particularly in terms of convincing the government that the City Rail Link project is necessary. At the moment I’m quite sure Central Government’s thinking “hey if rail patronage has stopped growing, maybe we really don’t need that project.” Of course such an approach is very short-sighted, as rail will simply have to play an increased role in Auckland’s transport network over time (it’s the only bit with the spare capacity to significantly increase its throughput) and the CRL is needed for that. But really, this isn’t a good look.
So how can we turn this around? Well there are clearly a few things that need to be done in the very short term:
- Get some significant improvements to punctuality and reliability statistics, especially operational improvements (which should be the easiest to achieve). Seriously consider firing Veolia if they don’t improve their performance.
- Implement the promised timetable improvements, especially off-peak as they don’t require additional trains. Some improvements like half-hourly all day service to Onehunga would be so simple to provide it’s absolutely stupid we don’t have it now. Weekend trains on the Western Line should be half-hourly, trains should actually travel past Henderson on Sundays (what is this, the 1950s?)
- Get the HOP card up and running on rail as soon as possible so we can actually count patronage properly and can hopefully crack down on fare evasion, which is currently rife.
- Roll out HOP card onto all buses by November 30th, as previously promised, so that people can start using the bus network to feed into the rail system, rather than having to provide two independent an competing PT networks.
I don’t think it’s exaggerating to say that the fate of the City Rail Link project may rest in sorting out the above issues as soon as possible. Time to get off your ass and do something Auckland Transport!
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What a timely and relevant post. I was reading it while on the Britomart-bound Western line and we have just been notified of a major breakdown at Newmarket. Delays ensue.
Timely foresure … Have to look hear to find out there is a breakdown since there isn’t even speakers to tell you at waitakere…
Hi Peter,
Great post building well on what Matt had to say.
An approach that could help support your point call to action is to try and identify the specific actions that have led people to step onto buses. and break it down by route if possible. If it shows that buses are going patronage on routes that are in direct competition to trains that means the bus company is delivering better value and the punters are choosing to go that way. So maybe there is competition in the PT space.
Cheers and keep up the goos work.
You assume we have a clue what bus patronage on different routes is. We do not, unfortunately.
“which have now brought rail fares into line with bus fares. While this makes sense from a logical point of view”
Increasing rail fares to subsidize the buses was not logical. It just annoyed the rail users.
As Ari says below, per boarding subsidies for rail are much higher than bus, so the fare changes probably reduce the cross-subsidisation from bus to rail. Not that I have an issue with cross-subsidisation by the way.
What “cross-subsidisation”? Bus companies get to keep the fares on profitable routes as well as being subsidised for “unprofitable” ones. There’s no pass-through to AT of bus fares, so there cannot possibly be cross-subsidisation of rail.
Geoff, Surely you are joking. Rail subsidies are astronomical compared to bus subsidies (when capital costs are properly accounted for). The rail uses should thank the ratepayers and taxpayers every time they step onto the train.
And every single road user should be thanking every rail user who’s one less person occupying the road corridors. Everyone wins.
It’s a nonsense to assume every rail user would otherwise be a car driver, the majority would either have ridden a bus or not taken the trip, some would have shared rides with motorists. Subsidies for rail based on reducing congestion are only valid in the proportions by which rail users replace car drivers, at peak times.
Actually they aren’t swan. The subsidy per passenger is higher on rail, but only because rail trips are much longer on average. The subsidy per passnger-km is almost identical. Given the high operating costs of our old trains and the high staffing requirements of our ticketing system, we can expect the subsidy per rail passenger-km to drop substantially below bus soon.
EDIT: Sorry I just realised you’re including capital costs. How did you factor in the capital costs of all the roads and motorways that buses run on? If you have a figure for how much the Auckland road network cost to construct I’d love to hear it!
I think that rail is subsidised way more than buses.
Remember that subsidies for buses includes the costs of rolling stock, whereas it does not currently for rail (although it will post-electrification).
Plus the rail capex is astronomically high compared to bus capex. Yes roads gets a lot of investment, but most of that is highways that are not used by buses. And a reasonable argument could be made that the local roads would exist with/without buses so that the marginal CAPEX cost of buses would be fairly close to zero I would think.
But on the other hand the congestion benefits of rail are greater because it tends to compete more with cars and also running services do not contribute to congestion. It’s a complex story and it would be nice if someone (NZTA, MoT, AT) spent some good money on research looking into the relative costs, if only to inform future investment priorities.
I was talking about subsidy of OPEX, admittedly based on some quite old figures from ARTA.
Back in 08/09 ARTA subsidised each bus passenger-km to the tune of 31c, and each train passenger-km to the tune of 36c, so almost identical (ferry was 61c per passenger-km by the way).
http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/rlts-progress.jpg
Obviously talking about capital costs and sunk investments opens up a whole other kettle of fish (it’s also a reasonable argument that all our rail lines were built for freight, and would exist without suburban passenger trains too).
Nick – I haven’t seen subsidies broken down by mode for a while but overall they have come down since then and have been sitting around the 26/27c per km mark
I’m saying that the cost of the buses is included in the per km subsidy for buses, but the cost of trains is not included in the per km subsidy for trains. That applies to the ARTA statistics as well.
So it’s not a discussion of OPEX versus CAPEX, but about making sure that you define OPEX consistently for both buses and trains.
Nick R,
a) buses pay road user charges
b) buses make up (I;m guessing) less than 1% of all road traffic. (bar the busway).
c) The cost of buses is inlcuded in the subsidy/ticket price
On a) and b), whatever subsidy for road users there is on top of RUC’s/ petrol tax, buses are only liable for a very small percentage. Rail on the other hand… Also, in a subsidy free world (i.e. road pricing), buses would thrive from mode shift out of cars – both increasing patronage and decreasing on-road congestion. Rail on the other hand wont attract too many punters at $20 a pop.
Uh, in a subsidy-free world, bus fares would go up dramatically, just like the costs of using cars, because they’ve got plenty of externalities that aren’t captured at present: they burn a high-pollution fuel, for example, and a lot of them are really dirty.
Matt, Evidence?
Even at, say $200 an hour of pigovian taxes (a price that would price a huge amount of cars and trucks off the road and industry out of business), it would still only be $5 a ticket, so the cost of a bus trip would be well below that of rail.
$5/ticket? Really? That’s based on every bus running at full occupancy for every hour of every journey, which simply doesn’t happen. Assuming we at least allow bus operators to cross-subsidise within their own routes there’s still going to have to be significant margin on the peak travel to compensate for all the off-peak vehicle hours that occur with a half-dozen (or fewer) passengers aboard. Alternatively buses go off the road entirely outside peak time, at which point the massive cost of storage comes into play. Remember, there are no subsidies so the operators have to find stabling for every single bus or pay the road operators the appropriate fee for occupying three or four parking spaces that could otherwise be generating revenue. That cost will exist even if buses continue to operate as they do at present, because we’ve done away with subsidies entirely and there are many more buses in the fleet in order to meet peak demand than are necessary for servicing the off-peak.
This “wonderful” subsidy-free world you envisage will bugger upeveryone, not just rail. It’ll screw truckies completely (no more free parking of the B-train on the street), destroy the concept of the working poor (who won’t be able to afford to travel to work), and generally grind society to a halt.
But the economic purism???? Won’t anyone think of the poor economic purism???
Do people think that the equalisation of fares has driven people from trains to buses?
If so then maybe this would not happen if the bus network was configured in a way that it did not compete with the rail network so much … therein may lie the solution to part of this problem.
You realize we already have a market based economy in most industry sectors right. Putting up a straw man where society grinds to a halt is not a real argument. You are just deflecting the main point. Rail is not viable without massive subsidy. It is a sick puppy.
Mr Anderson. You are right. Stupid economic pursists. Speaking of which, can you spot my $10k? I can’t be bothered going to work next month. It’s only money right?
That’s rubbish Swan. I know a number of economists and they realise there’s theory and then there’s reality. In another thread you yourself even suggested that the numbers you come up with when trying to accurate price the road and rail network are stupidly high and you suggested lowering them. Why was a reality check OK then, but not now?
Much of the value of our transport infrastructure gets captured in the land value around it (i.e. your land isn’t going to be worth much if you can’t get to it) therefore there’s a very logical reason for us to subsidise transport.
@Swan your statement is somewhat debatable on many grounds. However the relevant point is that roads are somewhere where the free market certainly doesn’t exist, so rail needs to be on even footing. In a pure free market economy new roads would not be built, certainly not motorways. Why add new capacity when you can just charge people more to drive on existing roads? Also many road projects that cost money actually reduce revenue, i.e. by reducing distance and grade, hence reducing petrol consumption.
The standard argument that roads aren’t a free market and therefore it doesn’t matter that rail massively subsidised is just an excuse. Should sea kayaks also be put on an even footing. Road users largely pay their way. It is only in local roads that a subsidy from the general public to road users. Most of the subsidy is between road users themselves – between peak and off peak drivers. Rail users on the other hand don’t come close to paying their way. Fares don’t even cover operating costs. This is for a service that has very high capital costs and supposedly low operating costs. So there is basically no comparison between rail and road subsidies.
The next argument is that road users benefit from rail use through decongestion. This is true but only comes about as a result of a lack of road pricing. And it doesn’t justify getting money from the general public at all.
Then there is an argument about a lack of pricing of emissions. Well lets tax emmisions. Actually taxing emmisions would do far more to lower emmisions than just plowing money into rail. That was what I was intending to show with my thought experiment above. Buses will still be viable up to very high levels of charging for emmisions – levels that would have a dramatic effect on air quality.
Luke C, I am not arguing for a free market in roading. It is a natural monopoly in general ( although roads like penlink could be built privately). Just that we should have a more effective pricing model that prevents congestion and prices up to the marginal cost of providing extra road space. I agree that not many new motorways would get built under such a model (at the present time in Auckland). I see no reason why VPT wouldn’t have been built though, for example.
Mr Anderson, I have tried in this thread and others to put up some guesstimated figures to counter the argument that “everything is subsidised, so rail is no different”. Rail is very different indeed.
The “exit rail” option was analysed in quite some detail as part of the business case for Project DART and electrification. It was found to be the least cost effective option due to the road widening required to carry everyone currently and in the future projected to be on rai.
You say we should just price roofs properly
But Peter M, during that process did they look at road pricing?
Look at the recent work done on the harbour bridge for example. It basically came to the conclusion that if you charged people crossing the harbour for the cost of a new crossing (I think it was in the region of $6), you wouldnt need a new crossing! So the equilibrium price is no new crossing. No need to widen anything.
I find it hard to believe that, if everyone was on buses (or even if 50% of people were on buses for that matter), we would need any new transport infrastructure for some time in Auckland.
The high rail subsidies are for things other than the basic operational cost of a train, and Auckland in particular has become expensive because of the fragmented party approach. That’s why back in NZR days the fares were very low despite there being no subsidy at all. Rail’s operating costs are lower than buses, and the fares always reflected that. Trains have always had cheaper fares than buses, or at least they did up until 2012.
Geoff, I’ve no reason to disagree with you, but the fact is we have spent well over $1b on rail capital costs in Auckland in the last decade, and are proposing to spend a lot more. We either don’t spend the money, or someone has to pay for it.
Geoff – rail’s operating costs are not lower than buses. 1) Rail’s OPEX does not include rolling stock whereas bus does 2) Depreciation on rail’s CAPEX (which is really OPEX) is enormous compared to buses. That’s not to say that rail is not worthwhile, because it may indeed deliver higher benefits than buses, e.g. congestion reduction etc. But from the data I’ve seen it’s quite clear that buses have lower OPEX, What data do you have?
Perhaps from another point of view it is removing/reducing the existing subsidy on rail fares.
I think this shows the clapped-out, unreliable, insufficiently numbered, slow old diesel fleet has taken our patronage just about as far as it can, so now the numbers have stagnated. IMHO this was inevitable.
I think AT has done well to get numbers as high as it has. I wouldn’t be surprised if Auckland has the world’s most frequent and well patronised diesel locomotive hauled suburban or metro rail service.
I don’t think there are many more ways we can squeeze more out of the current system, although one operational improvement would be removing the conflicting fare collection versus door operating responsibilities of train managers. (This was raised by Matt L on the CBT forum earlier this week)
Better service frequencies using existing resources would help. I’ve highlighted repeatedly how thoroughly awful services on the Newmarket-Otahuhu section of the Southern Line are, and this could be fixed fairly easily by re-routing something from the Eastern Line to the Southern Line. Or even just having the promised half-hourly Onehunga services, which would obviously make it impossible for there to be a 48-minute gap between services on that section in the weekday mid-evening.
Seriously, the more I think about it the more furious it makes me that services on that section are so terrible. It demonstrates that there’s nobody paying attention to the overall impact of routing decisions on service frequencies through any given section of track, and that bodes very ill for service quality generally.
Off-peak services is an easy win, but there’s just nothing happening. I realise that the current rolling stock are so ancient and clapped-out that they need intensive maintenance, but if that has to be done using overnight maintenance crews then that’s what has to happen.
Actually that’s a good point. My observations would really only be true of peak patronage.
Off-peak could still has a lot of improvement potential and that is where AT should look for gains in the meantime.
And true to your point, I would have caught an off-peak West line train to a job today if it weren’t for the fact that stopping off by Jaycar near Grafton Station for some needed supplies will delay me by 30 minutes rather than just 15. So I’m driving.
As a Western line commuter, I have noticed a plateau this year. At peak times we may be bumping up against the natural ceiling given the service quality. I think the low hanging fruit is in fare collection (roll out Hop), integrated ticketing/bus feeder routes, and off peak services – especially at weekends.
Spare a thought for the people commuting from Pukekohe, we can’t even really look forward to the electrification, if anything it will increase our commute time as we will need to change trains at Papakura to continue our journey. Add to that waits of up to an hour close to peak time. Plus no services in the weekend is hardly inspiring people to jump on board and start using trains.
Indeed, the lack of weekend trains is disappointing. Mind you, ARTNL announced in 2003 their three year plan that would see the mature timetable, including weekend and night trains to Swanson, introduced in 2006. Who would have thought that in 2012 they still wouldn’t have any trains to Swanson on Sundays? A full six years late on delivery, and counting. The truth is, they could have done it ages ago, as it’s not complicated or expensive, and in fact stats show weekend trains out west are popular. They don’t do it, because of a mindset that rail in Auckland is only about 9 to 5, Mon-Fri workers. This same mindset is now restricting the scope of the CRL project to remove any components that threaten to create a network with wider purpose beyond that mindset.
AT needs a new team in charge of rail. The current lot are not delivering on the mayor’s vision of a proper networked system.
Well said!
Things are so bad that I have gotten to the point where I am genuinely surprised if my train arrives at Britomart within 5 minutes. Almost always my trains are 10 minutes late and there is simply no urgency or care about these delays.
Front line staff are sometimes the fault as the other day I had a TM who kept collecting fares instead of opening the doors which delayed us at every station. Another day a while ago we were severely delayed because the TM refused to open up some of the carriages on the train. As a result the train was overcrowded which slowed it down and left people on the platform.
While those are specific examples, I think a large part of the problem comes from the top. I suspect that the front line staff are pretty disillusioned as often they will see the issues but are powerless to do anything about them.
We keep hearing stories about trains dumping passengers out on to platforms then being run express to their destination. It appears to be primarily about Veolia maintaining their KPI’s so they get paid but at expense of the people actually trying to rely on services.
Almost all studies have confirmed that the two most important things with PT are frequency and reliability and at the moment we don’t have either with our rail network.
I wonder if the intended impending arrival of HOP if having an effect on TM’s and on board staff. I heard a while back here there was a hiring freeze, therefore anyone leaving means they are not replaced, so less staff to go around. Also morale will be very low if they know many of them are going to be laid off soonish, which may end up in people caring less about the job they do. Many will be looking for other jobs, and if they find one will leave, so staff position may deteriorate very badly. Hopefully with HOP and fare gates patronage may get a nice little jump due to more people being picked up.
I suspect the issue is economic, and also structural. Rail doesn’t hit enough work areas – in an efficient no train change way. It’s too CBD focussed. CBD employment is dropping, just look at continued telecom lay offs. Also Office trend is going to make rail connections worse in the future – even with CRL. Rail really misses growth in North Shore commutters and also students – I suspect that’s why bus continues to increase – feeding University from west/south better.
But those factors do not explain the slowdown in growth do they? I mean, they are all essentially fixed in time, i.e. they have always existed and will therefore affect the relative starting point for bus/rail patronage, but they will not explain why the growth rates have changed over time (unless, perhaps, there is a major change in the importance of those factors – such as a surge in uni enrolments).
To explain the slowdown in rail growth you really to look at things that have changed recently, which might have divergent impacts on buses/rails. Fares is a good suggestion. Maybe the recent improvements to the bus network is another. But the catchment differences you refer to are structural and don’t really have a temporal dimension …
Do AT publish any stats on how full services are and trends? Could the lack of growth be that peak services are too full? I don’t catch the train to know, but I would have thought this would be available.
“Time to get off your ass and do something Auckland Transport!”
Unlikely!
why such negativism?
There seems to be a dip every July- seasonal issues? People might prefer driving or taking buses in winter than standing in the cold on rail platforms.
Also related to school and university holidays. The inverse of the reason that there’s a huge blip upwards in March. This week is the first week of term for many schools, the first week of semester for Auckland, Massey and AUT, and Unitec goes back next Monday. That means that well over half of July has none of the educational traffic that makes up a huge part of demand for public transport.
Spending 2 billion+ on a rail link seems pointless if there’s no one to ride it
11m people a year isn’t no one, and that’s just where this year’s patronage trend is going (up from 2.5m in 2003). Unless we’re starting to see a huge reversal – rather than a flattening that could be ascribed to services reaching capacity on the Western Line and people not being enticed onto rail on the Southern Line due to very, very poor service frequencies in the morning peak and the evening shoulder – there will be at least 11m people affected by the rail link just by being rail users.
In reality, the arrival of the EMUs should bring a heap of new passengers on board and we should also see far, far fewer delays due to rolling stock faults.
Well the last of the interim rolling stock was put into service prior to the world cup. There was a big patronage spike during the cup and since then its flattened but hasn’t really dropped away. That reflects a couple of things. Ordinary use has replaced the cup related traffic, and the price increase has probably stunted demand. But if they hadn’t raised the prices and stunted demand where would we be by now? The peak hour services would be bursting at the seams without any hope of respite until the EMUs start to enter service 18 months away.
Right now they probably don’t want to grow patronage because it will just drag down the operation performance of the network. Sure there might be room to add a few off peak services and gain a small amount of patronage there, but only if it can be implemented without impacting on the ability to service and maintain the old rolling stock and without encouraging additional peak demand that there wont be capacity for.
So the question that raises is why there is not sufficient interim rolling stock to allow the former growth trend to have continued from late 2011 until late 2013? For the answer to that one we probably need to look back to late 2008, when ARTA were already part way through a procurement process for the EMUs and had planned sufficient interim rolling stock for their original procurement timeline. The incoming government stopped that in its tracks and handed it over to Kiwirail to restart the procurement process. After a couple of years of delaying they finally delivered the procurement of the EMUs back to Auckland Council and Auckland Transport gift wrapped in just enough government funding and additional rolling stock to ensure that no one called them out on the delaying and it would spin as a positive rather than a negative in the 2011 election.
So yeah, patronage growth is going to be flat for a while because the rolling stock procurement got delayed, but don’t let it be spun as a long term trend rather than the short term blip that it is or someone will try and use it as an excuse to kill the CRL.
I don’t think we’ll see much improve until the EMU’s come into service. Time is ticking away there, this time next year it’ll be all eyes won’t it!
Hopefully that will be route by route like they say it will be, and the likes of the western line will be up in the 95% + range.
I predict the next three or four years to be hell on the Auckland rail network. Then we’ll have a few more years relief after the EMUs have arrived. Hell will return if the CRL isn’t up and running by 2021.
Shouldn’t be that long. Some of the EMUs will be up and running in 18 months. That will mean the ability to redeploy some of the diesel to boost peak time frequency or make trains longer.
Only Onehunga will be running with EMUs in 18 months time. It will be quite some time after that when the western line will be all EMUs, and towards 2016 for the southern and eastern lines. So it’s still quite some time off.
Hell-fire, brimstone, and damnation. This blog is sounding more like WhaleOil every day …
Was just thinking that myself reading through the comments down to this level of the thread anyhow 😛
Is it time for Veolia to pay penalties in the same way that their operations would in the UK? I use First Great Western & Arriva Trains a lot and even though their on time performance is miles better then any part of NZs network they get hammered (and I often get refunds 🙂 and for those who don’t know, Arriva Trains network is very similar to AKL, ungated stations, ticket collectors on the trains etc ).
I think OTP would improve overnight if it did.
Maybe it’s time for AT or KiwiRail to take over the rail contract from Veolia? One less organisation involved in delivering rail services = much lower transaction costs and increased transparency. I just can’t see how Veolia can add sufficient value to make their involvement worthwhile. Maybe someone should talk to the Unions about getting them in behind a move to take the contract back in-house? They would benefit I think, as would AT from greater transparency.
P.s. I support moving it in-house because Auckland’s network is not large enough to support multiple operators (i.e. competition) and so the inefficiencies of competitive tendering and private delivery are likely to outweigh the gains.
Wait, these are patronage CHANGE figures. The real story here is – during the world cup the patronage skyrocketed (4 average months gain in 2 months) and since then it has stayed the same! even though there are not 50,000 tourists using the trains.
There was NOT a huge month on month loss in December and January – that’s amazing.
As for the delay causes, remember “Operations” includes “heavy loadings” and that’s part of the issue. More efficient Train Manager style might help but that’s really not a corporate Veolia issue.
Unfortunately I think you’re misinterpreting how the numbers are calculated: The figures are month-on-month, i.e. we’re comparing June 2012 to June 2011, and May 2012 to May 2011. The RWC kicked off in September (I think?!?) so it’ll be another few months before we get a month on month comparison that is impacted by the RWC,
@Stu Donovan. (unless, perhaps, there is a major change in the importance of those factors – such as a surge in uni enrolments).
I was thinking about this actually. Was thinking that the government’s more aggressive policy in terms of limiting the number of FTEs they will fund at universities plus the fact that they are cracking down on all the dodgy English language schools (quite a few of which are in the CBD) may have led to student numbers growing more slowly than in past years. I think we are also getting fewer international students. Combined with the increases in fares in April which disproportionately affected train users and students (so a double whammy if you are a student who takes the train) this might have contributed to drop in patronage since March (excluding the blip in April). March is when uni starts and we know that students are both high public transport users and price sensitive. But too lazy to go and actually look up enrolment figures at Unitec, Auckland Uni, AUT and see if they grew much more slowly this year than in past years.
Yes, that is a possible explanation – because those factors have changed over time. You could examine whether it was true by segregating the passenger data by adult/student ticket sales and seeing if there was a slowdown in the latter that coincided with the general slowdown.
Personally I’m not convinced that the changes to tertiary entitlements is really sufficiently important to bring about such a marked slowdown in patronage growth, but I may be wrong. On the other hand, don’t ask what I think caused the slowdown, because honestly I have not the foggiest :).
To which tracking petrol price movements might also have something to play as well.
I remember when petrol was north of $2.18/litre and trains were packed while the motorway was empty. Now petrol hovering around the $2/litre mark (average) the reverse has happened – empty trains and crowded motorways.
But as I said that is just one part.
As for the other parts – no comment 😛
For my example of timetabling wonders. There is a 06:24 from Onehunga and then a 06:29 Southern. Then nothing until the 06:54 Onehunga service followed again five minutes later by the 07:01 Southern. I understand it has impacts for other scheduled services but I wish there was some way to smooth these arrivals rather than five minutes apart and then nothing for nearly half an hour.
I was going to call Vieola about this during my holiday but didn’t get to it.
And then you get to Newmarket and the eastern line train is just pulling out and you wait another fifteen minutes for the next one.
I’ve also made comment that I think that patronage may be constrained to the amount of walk-up customers without further development of park n ride facilities. In some areas there are only so many people within walking distance of the stations. Unless the bus connection changes this but I have my doubts.
What’s happened is that the current timetable has maxed out at the number of passengers it can reasonably serve (or attract). Once they increase frequencies and put on more trains, the numbers will resume their previous climb. There is demand for service if they provide it, but a crappy timetable like we have now can only do so much.
Exactly. It seems that what we’re seeing is the approach of a service limit: The capacity as constrained by current operational standards and frequencies. As observed by many above the ridership will probably bounce around on a bumpy plateaux unless there are meaningful improvements to frequencies and reliability.
Question is; is there any will to improve things before the EMUs arrive? I hope so.
Very good post and a lot of useful comments.
Playing devil’s advocate here. Rather than thinking why has it not gone up should we think–
Why should the useage have gone up?
I am looking for the answer here as I do not know all rail network changes
I would expect an increase if
1) Services increase.
2) Quality increased (more comfortable seats, better temperature control)
3) Cheaper prices
4) Alternative options dropped (car driving prices went up, bus service decrease
5) Increase in population size
6) More advertising
If these do not apply, or other aspects I have not thought of, we should not just assume it will rise.
The rises of the last 9 years have probably been as a result of work done – such as the reopening of Onehunga line, Britomart, extra services, HOP cards.
If no changes are made we should not expect people to change their actions just because we would like them to.
Indeed, and none of these are happening, even population growth is flat-ish as so many are not seeing such a bright future in NZ in the current situation and under current management.
Maybe the market for peak hour weekday commuter travel to Britomart is saturated?
Time to look at boosting off peak and weekend frequencies to a turn up and go level perhaps?
@ Stuart. yeah, I am not confident the changes in tertiary ed policy and student pricing would be enough to drive it either. It could also be that popn growth is slowing but are you sure Patrick that is happening in Auckland? My expectation would be that if popn growth is flattish across all of NZ, then it would probably still be growing in Auckland (albeit at lower rates), while actually dropping in Christchurch and rural areas.
Interestingly – it seems like there might be a slow down in cycling rates happening too. in fact, rather depressingly, the last manual cycle count which was done in March suggests that there was actually a small drop compared to 2011. But the monthly counts are showing a small but steady increase on the same time last year so who knows what’s really happening. Too much statistical noise to really tell but it does seem like maybe growth is slowing overall.
It is hard to get perspective on this because I hear a lot about small improvements to cycling infrastructure which are happening around the city. So I feel like there’s a lot going on and I keep on expecting the numbers to rise. But then if you take a step back and actually look at some of Auckland’s main streets you can see that they are still pretty horrific from a walking/cycling perspective.
Referring to the peak – if you interleave a 20 minute pattern with a 30 minute pattern, you will always get one of the 30 minute services nicely positioned with respect to the 20 minute services and the other one not. If you want all the Onehunga services to work well with the Southern services either the Onehunga goes to 20 minute frequency (and the branch doesn’t really allow that) or the Southern goes to 30 or 15 minute frequency – either of which then give issues interleaving the Southern with the Eastern and Manukau services
Shouldn’t be any problem with a 20min frequency on the Onehunga Branch. It takes less than that to go “there and back” from Penrose junction.
I’m curious that the response of this blog to stabilising patronage is to decide that there “desperately needs” to be action to induce more rail demand (who cares whether they are new trips, shift from bus, shift from cycling or from cars) to justify the totemic “we must build this project or we miss out a great opportunity” CRL project.
The argument is regularly presented here that road traffic demand has stabilised, so there is no reason to build more highway capacity, yet when rail demand growth stalls, it is a panic as the “party line” is threatened.
Could it just be plausible that stable demand means that large capital expenditure, designed to meet demand, should be delayed further until demand requires it, rather than constantly seeking to induce demand of either a transport mode that generates significant external costs (e.g. private motoring) or one that users don’t come remotely close to paying the cost of providing (rail)?
Why apply different standards to different modes? People who use rail aren’t special and are only deserving of special subsidy if they would otherwise have driven (travel by bus, bike, walking or carsharing imposes little measurable marginal cost on others). Indeed, as they are most likely to be employed in the CBD, they are more likely to be on a higher income than commuters to other areas. For example, the informal van loads of largely Pacific Island workers who get driven around south and west Auckland get not a drop of subsidy for their commutes, but more than a few on this blog would gleefully impose a regional fuel tax upon those commuters, so some suited people can get an option to get a train from Takapuna to an underground station in downtown Auckland.
Is there really significant untapped demand for trips by public transport on the routes rail serves? Or will electrification effectively deliver the right capacity and optimal level of service for this city with relatively dispersed employment patterns, significant numbers of commuters for which rail isn’t a practical option and without rapid economic and population growth?
it is great to see that people are using rail to travel too Manukau, does anyone know when services via the southern line are planned to start?
Need to build a rather expensive southern connection first. Not sure if this is in the long term plan at all.
I have been toying with the idea of running services to Papakura as expresses from Puhinui, with only stops at Manurewa. This would improve travel time for the majority of passengers on the line. Then the Manukau south line services to Papakura/Drury could stop at all the intermediate stations, including a new one at Addison, maybe even a new Wiri one too, and would keep Te Mahia open as well. People at small stations south of Manukau could change at Manukau or Puhinui. I think this could allow higher frequencies of the south line services to Manukau that would otherwise be the case, which would make it very useful as a local connection to Manukau which is only major shopping centre for a rather large and growing population.
Not 100% sure of the idea, I know there could be capacity and timetabling issues, but this is a longer term plan. Would be good to hear others thoughts.