The Herald today reports that the new edition of the Lonely Planet tourist guide for New Zealand doesn’t have particularly kind things to say about Auckland’s public transport system.
Auckland is a more vibrant city after the Rugby World Cup but public transport is a “mess”, says the latest Lonely Planet guide book of New Zealand.
Electronic displays at bus stops “lie” about waiting times, and Auckland Council’s Hop Card – which is facing the scrap heap – is “probably not worth your while”.
While Auckland’s public transport system has obviously improved a lot in recent years, I think it’s useful to have reminders that we have a long way to go – to effectively make up for the decades of neglect the system suffered in the second half of the 20th century.
The opinion of guidebooks like Lonely Planet is important I think, not only because they an important way for New Zealand and Auckland to “sell” ourselves to the world, but also because tourists are a pretty good proxy for other types of people not familiar with the PT system – like car drivers. If we can get the system to be easily understood, user-friendly and seen as a really high quality option from a tourist perspective then I think that means we’re probably going to be a reasonably long way towards having a system that will encourage people to get out of their cars.
Perhaps the most frustrating thing – and it’s something that Lonely Planet’s comments pick up on – is that it’s often the little things that let us down. Of course the Hop Card isn’t that useful, because Auckland Transport went and completely botched its implementation by agreeing to a dirty deal with Snapper. And the card isn’t particularly useful because it only gives a 10% discount on cash fares – in most cities around the world that level of discount is much higher. In fact one of the more recent “initiatives” made the real time information even less useful by displaying it on stupidly small signs that look like parking meters – when one of the real values of a “proper” sign is that you can stay seated in the bus stop and glance up to see how far your service is away.
I’m not sure what it’ll take to fix the small issues that let Auckland’s PT system down.
And secondly, the mythical real time bus information signs are once again a problem that shouldn’t be expensive to fix – just finding a way of ensuring drivers log into the system from what I know. But this has been a problem that has been highlighted for years yet it still seems we are no closer to an enduring solution.
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Surely there is away of automating the GPS system when start the ignition etc? Auckland will probably never reach its true tourism potential as a destination city, rather than a “in transit” point because of the shonky urban planning in general, so is a pretty accurate comment. Think the last LP edition was also on the ball “While geography has been kind, city planning has been less so. Unbridled and ill-conceived development has left the centre of the city with some architectural embarrassments”. Our tourism industry seems to have a 100% pure countryside focus because the urban landscape is a 100% mess!
Side point but thought the “quietly waiting to be noticed, desperately wanting to be liked” comment was amusing- especially the quiet bit! A lot of New Zealanders seem really loud and obnoxious, especially when overseas!Would be fine if could pretend they are Australian, but they always wear All Blacks clothing (like people care where you are from these days!).
This is absolutely right – the problem with bus drivers not signing into the system is a real red herring. Why should they have to? Why isn’t it automatic? What on earth is so difficult about having the GPS hardware work out (or be told via a nightly batch job or a real-time wireless link) what route and service it is performing? This wouldn’t be a million dollar solution but you can be sure that somehow it will end up costing at least that.
Yes – it is an interesting one. Could it be to do with the potential for it to show the true performance of the transport operators and therefore impact their public funding etc or am I just old and cynical?
Helsinki have had a live mapping system for years (http://transport.wspgroup.fi/hklkartta/defaultEn.aspx) as well as the next service indicator online like AT so surely the technology is there. Also wonder why the train system cannot have a live status indicator on the AT website like Metro Melbourne e.g. good service etc. These appear not to be expensive asks….
“While geography has been kind, city planning has been less so. Unbridled and ill-conceived development has left the centre of the city with some architectural embarrassments”. Our tourism industry seems to have a 100% pure countryside focus because the urban landscape is a 100% mess!”
So true. This also perfectly sums up the government’s attitude: Country good, city worthless. Although they also seem happy to oversee the further decline of value in the natural environment with their big-footed rush to champion any kind of smoke-stack and cow-shit expansion in any still undamaged rural corner too.
It’s just that they have a very limited set of ideas around value and possibility. Dim.
Ironically, an assessment such as LP’s which implies an economic consequence (less tourist dollars), may speak more to the incumbent administration than any amount of talk about making a city that is actually a good place for humans to be.
Nah, it won’t. This Government is driven. The facts of the matter, even facts that matter significantly and impact on their ideologically-oriented case, will be ignored unless they ‘feel’ right.
There are plenty of cities with bad urban planning that are popular tourist destinations LA, Tokyo, Berlin. Just because Auckland doesn’t have an old town like Florence or Paris doesn’t mean it can’t become a tourist destination. The reasons why some cities are destinations and others aren’t are complex. Also it’s a bit hyperbolic to say that our urban environment is 100% mess. Auckland may not be the prettiest city in the world but it does have a certain gritty charm.
Just a quick question; you think that Tokyo and Berlin have bad urban planning?
I haven’t been to Berlin but I have spoken to people who have said that the old Soviet areas are still pretty grim. I have been to Tokyo and I can definitely say it is shocking. The city is crisscrossed with elevated motorways and train lines that cut through neighbourhoods and create severance, the city lacks green space, there’s only one place in metropolitan Tokyo where the Bay is accessible by tourists. Even the public transport system is sometimes weird where you have to leave the system and walk down the road to swap lines. I don’t necessarily think that the bad planning is occurring now but it is a city that has experienced a lot of damage and has had to rebuild quickly.
There is a difference between bad planning and ugly environments. Berlin is well planned in terms of transportation and is generally an “efficient” city, though the plattenbau in the East can be a little grotty and imposing, though they are generally well maintained these days (look at some in Marzahn for example). One can certainly not say that it is a badly planned city as nearly everything is “gridded” with full street frontages except for some of the plattenbau areas and when combined with the tram system, U-bahn, S-bahn, bus system and a massive network of segregated cycleways, it is efficient and well planned.
Tokyo, however, is an urban marvel of efficient transportation for me – and I have been there too. Elevated roadways do indeed cross parts of the city, though they don’t create severance as there is full accessibility under and over them – unlike the Southern Motorway for example. The whole point of elevating the train lines/expressways in Tokyo was to ensure that space was as efficiently used as possible. Whilst this might seem ugly to us, it is the height of functionality. As for green space, I wholeheartedly disagree. There is a fair amount of green space in the city, though you’re right, not in the city centre itself – hence the requirement for fast, efficient transportation to allow people to access green space/nature an example is that one can get to Mt Takao within an hour on the Chuo rapid right out in Hachioji (and I did so in fact). When it comes to the public transport system being a bit “weird”, well, that’s the free market playing tricks. As much of the system was developed independently with JR being separate from the private networks and Tokyo Metro and TOEI Subway being separate, this will obviously lead to problems with integration. Different strokes for different folks though I guess as I found Tokyo to be one of the most exciting and appealing places to spend time – I preferred it to Paris (for example) by a long way due to its cleanliness, food, transportation network and immaculate parks.
While I can’t disagree at all with Lonely Planet’s damning assessment of Auckland PT, it’s worth recalling what the situation was like on the trains, for example, a mere decade ago and one can only marvel at how far we’ve come since then. The terminus was a weather swept remnant platform of Auckland’s sold off railway station, 1.16 km away from Queen Street with a bus connection that I once timed as taking 45 minutes from Wellesley Street; most suburban stations consisted of old, unlit, tin sheds (if you were lucky); there was almost no signage indicating station names; there were no PA announcements or PIDs; service was half hourly for a short peak and bi hourly during the day and the last trains left at about 6:30pm. The rolling stock, such as it was, was cold, uncomfortable, often caught fire, ran out of water/petrol, etc, and regularly broke down. Services were constantly disrupted by freight trains, point failures and, of course, a single track line out west. About the only thing that hasn’t changed is Sharon Hunter still regularly blames passengers for not appreciating how lucky they are to have a train service at all. The problem, I suspect, lies with the fact that AT continues to fail to look at things from a passenger perspective, notwithstanding how many focus groups they put together. And then, aside from the glaring example of the HOP fiasco, there’s the issue of doing things on the cheap, like those wretched ‘real time’ bus PIDs you mention and the un-gated train stations, etc, etc.
Doing things “on the cheap”, or rather in a limited cost way, is a reality that AT have no control over. They have a huge wish list of excellent plans and proposals and only the budget for a fraction of it.
A worthwhile observation; you’ve been rather comprehensive! A comparison between 2002 and 2015 should hopefully reveal even further development.
While I agree that Auckland’s PT has a long way to go, Lonely Planet’s comments contains some basic errors:
1. The HOP card is operated by Auckland Transport, not Auckland Council.
2. The HOP card is not facing the scrap-heap (in fact it’s ALIVE!); Snapper is.
“Mediocre but improving rapidly” is how I’d describe Auckland’s PT. “Good but deteriorating rapidly” is how I’d describe the quality of Lonely Planet’s research … 😉
The above is an excerpt from a Herald article — not a direct quote from the lp guide. It looks like the Herald has it wrong, not LP. A “mediocre” reading on your part maybe?
Very good point Dan – yes I did read it wrong and stand corrected.
I came here as a tourist 3 years ago with a LP in my hand. The description of the PT was the same at the time, just without the HOP part. Being that I consider myself VERY smart I thought I could figure out how to use PT in Auckland anyway, and that was the only way to move for me. That’s when I discovered it was a real mess and an enigma way beyond my intellectual possibilities to unfold. Different bus colors, numbers, stages, peak off peak, I bought a Gorider that wouldn’t work in some services, etc. In the end I gave up and walked a lot.
Yes all pretty accurate. Same account I get from tourists and visitors. Too difficult to get anywhere by public transport, too difficult to understand how it all works, no integration of services, no feeder buses to trains. Pre historic in alot of ways. Jsut hang around Britomart and watch the confused tourists.
Bugger the confused tourists, try the confused locals. When I worked in the Britomart complex, if I couldn’t get a train (that 40-something minute wait on the Southern Line between 1900 and 2000 that I keep on bitching about, or they weren’t running) I’d go across to the stop where the H&E and NZ Bus 5x(x) buses leave from. I could also use a 4xx bus, but I have no idea where the stop is. The maps on the stops are useless, and the way that buses are scattered around the bottom of town is farcical. I’m not surprised tourists give up when even people who live here get fed up with the cluster that is bus management around Britomart.
Are you listening, AT? Fix the bus stops in town!
Fixing the bus stops requires a) politicians to support spending some money on buses in the city centre and b) urban designers/architects to get off their high horse and acknowledge that buses are important. So I think it’s more correct to ask: Are you listening AC? Are you listening Mike Lee? Are you listening Christine Fletcher? Are you listening Cameron Brewer?
It’s really strange how Auckland as a city has not been prepared to spend any money on buses. Even Amsterdam, which sits at the heart on an extra-ordinarily extensive tram/metro/heavy rail network has a major downtown bus station. The moral of my incoherent story is a) don’t blame AT; they’re just picking up the pieces and b) buses will NEVER GO AWAY SO WE’D BE BETTER OFF TO PLAN FOR THEIR NEEDS NOW.
They know Matt, and they are working on it. Have you seen the posts on the amazing new network AT have designed, infinitely more functional and user friendly.
There’s no indication that any part of that move will address the shambles of bus stop organisation around Britomart. I guess that some of the pain will be mitigated by the cessation of long-distance bus routes in favour of feeder buses, which will do away with the need for some of the stops, but if the reorganisation will be doing away with the 5xx and 4xx buses that are my alternatives to the train AT had damned sure better be fixing the huge holes in the rail timetable feeding stations between Newmarket and Otahuhu.
The introduction of the EMUs will certainly fix that problem; higher frequency … remember this is a vast and interconnected revolution in every aspect of AK’s PT. As far as I can tell there will be at least as many buses stopping around Britomart but there will be fewer different routes there, therefore it should be with that change alone a much more legible and rational system of stops….
But the domination of the city centre streets by buses is already sub-optimal, Stu likes to blame urbanists and architects for a failure to invest in some additional bus infrastructure but it is pretty clear that politics has a lot to do with it. Stu is a real and passionate supporter of bus transit but there are many public and business figures who claim to support it simply as way of disguising their opposition to any investment in PT infrastructure. How? Like this; they say they support a bus based system for the future of Auckland because when they say bus they mean road, and when they say road they mean car. So they really only mean more spending on roads [along with relentless attacks on any bus priority on those roads from these sources- look at who is behind the Remuera Rd buslane debacle.] not any meaningful investment in busways, buslanes, or bus exchanges.
As I said on Twitter earlier this week, since 2001 the number of people in private vehicles entering the city centre in the AM peak has dropped from 39,000 to 33,000. Meanwhile the number of people using PT has increased from 21,000 to 33,000.
That suggests there’s scope for taking away some space previously allocated to cars.
Matt, it’s a massive consolidation and streamlining of all routes, they will have to totally overhaul the stopping arrangements at Britomart.
Yes! Fix the bus stops! I’ve been living in Auckland (on and off) most of my life, and I would have no idea where to get a bus to a part of Auckland that isn’t Dominion Rd, Mangere, or the Inner and Outer Loops. The rest of the city I’d have to blindly wander around central Auckland for, or go all the way down to Britomart and wait for a person there to try and give me instructions (left, right, down that street, up that one…). It isn’t good enough, and it’s a major constraint on my bus use.
Even as a resident already using the services, the current state of play around HOP cards is perplexing! I have no idea when or if my ‘bus HOP’ card will work on the trains, when or if I will need both cards, where to get the new one, etc. As a long-time user, I should find this stuff easy, but I don’t. If you were here for a few days only, I’d suggest giving the HOP card a miss, using the Link buses in town, ferry for Devonport or Waiheke (obviously!) and hiring a car if you want to go further afield. In spite of the rate at which improvements are being made, I reckon that will remain the best advice for tourists for the foreseeable future. I don’t think I’d offer different advice for any other city in New Zealand though…
Auckland is the gateway for NZ and NZ lifestyle. I think that Auckland and NZ in general is an awesome place that could attract droves of educated and eager young professionals; not just to tour but to actually live. High wages do not mean absolutely everything; nor how many tv’s people own.
C’mon AC, AT! We know what need fixing. Let’s do this.
If the drivers were all issued with a hop card (or similar) that had to be read by the bus before it would start this could then be linked to the operators driver roster and then to the gps system to ensure accuracy of bus info displays.
Not sure that making the system more complicated is the right way to go about doing it! Link it to the ticketing machine (when the new Thales ones arrive) rather than having to link to staff rosters that are prone to [last minute] change. Really though, I’m not sure how the system could be made simpler…
Bus driver gets in bus.
Starts bus.
Punches route number into GPS.
Easy, right? Issues sound like staff ones to me (as opposed to procedural issues), not sure how the above procedure could be made any more easy,
Surely if AT can´t track it, then the company could have its subsidy for that service not paid? That would surely make the bus companies jump into line, hitting them on the balance sheet?
On the very short lived blog on the person who went onto secondment to AT, I´m sure he showed screen shots of the tracking systems AT already have in place. Is there a cached version out there somewhere on the interweb?
You mean this Pete: http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2011/09/07/secrecy-hurts-the-transport-debate/
And this one too: http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2011/08/29/tracking-aucklands-buses/
Yes, that is the one, thanks Mr Anderson. OIA time on that system?
Would probably be commercially sensitive – at least in terms of details. I suspect an email to someone at Auckland Transport might be able to clear up what information does and does not exist and also to get our heads around how the real time system actually works.
A gps doesn’t send info. It needs to use either the mobile network or a custom wireless network/satellite to do that. Bit more complicated, but done by heaps of private vehicle fleets.
Now that every bus in Auckland will eventually be fitted with Thales kit, does that also mean every bus will be tracked by a common AT-controlled tracking system?