I love the proposed new PT network that Auckland Transport has announced but if there is one Achilles heel to it, it is that the general public might not comprehend just how much of an improvement the network is. People get very attached to their specific routes so anything that suggest changes to that can cause people to become concerned and opposed. What is often not realised is how much the new network opens up the possibility of new trips to places around the region using PT, by this I mean that people might consider using PT to get to work but not to a friends house or to an event they might regularly attend.
This issue is greatly helped by the metro style PT map that AT have put out but I do wonder if they could go a little further to really highlight the difference. The great thing is that a tool already exists that they could use to show this change, all it would require is a little bit of tweaking. The tool is something we have covered before and is called Mapnificent. What it does is use the PT timetable data that Auckland Transport provides to google to work out how far you could get from a set location within a certain time frame. There are also a lot of other really cool features of the tool which are explained in the video from the developer below:
What’s great is that Mapnificent already works for Auckland. Here is how far you can get from Britomart within 25 minutes, notice the distance achieved with the Southern/Eastern lines and the Northern Express. The marker can be moved to any spot in the city and will adjust it self from there while a slider lets you change the time frame.
It might require some modification but a tool like this showing just how far people can get from a set location with both the new and old networks could be invaluable in highlight just how much more connectivity this new network would deliver. AT have already worked out what the frequencies of the new network will be at peak/off peak times so I imagine it shouldn’t be that hard to turn that into a timetable that could be feed into this. I really think that this could be an absolutely great tool for them to use to show just how much impact this new network will have, especially for trips that don’t begin or end in the CBD. So how about it AT?
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Matt, does the calculation take account of frequency – ie on average you’ll wait half the interval for the next service?
Ah, I see from the original thread that it does not.
Richard see this link – http://blog.stefanwehrmeyer.com/post/1448498820/a-mapnificent-world
“There is a major heuristic involved: how can Mapnificent know how long a trip takes when it doesn’t even know the exact time the next bus/train/helicopter departs from a stop? It really can’t know for sure. To compensate for this lack of knowledge Mapnificent makes some assumptions.
It assumes that you will time your journey in a way that you don’t have to wait for your first transport option.”
This means a before/after comparison on this tool will end up looking worse in most cases.
Hmm, so it doesn’t account for the “if I left right now” aspect. So underestimates actual trip times, and won’t account for the big savings that comes from frequency.
Is the settings you Set Time Of Day and Weekday. That might help.
Great work Matt.
Huh… this is what my Masters thesis in 1996 was about which I had to do in an excruciating combination of Java, ArcMap 3, and Avenue: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/136588100240976 Unfortunately, you probably can’t access that link. Here’s an image (ugly though it is) from the work:
http://www.southosullivan.com/uoa/GlasgowPTIsochrones.png
which was done for the Glasgow system. It’s really important to consider start time and average wait time between services to make this work as a reasonable approximation, and as Feijoa points out this is quite likely to make the new network look worse in many cases. My maps actually used the rail timetable and bus frequencies, but not bus stops, data for which were unavailable – instead a generated bus stops ‘on the fly’ along known bus routes.
BTW if you are interested in a copy of the paper, let me know, and I’ll send you one
Mapnificent is pretty cool regardless of limitations. It’s really noticeable how badly served the Western Line is by the Britomart – Newmarket alignment. You need to be taking a trip of 35-40 minutes as far as Sunnyvale (more or less) before the train offers a clear advantage over the bus.
Yeah the West is the one location where the RTN doesn’t have a clear advantage. I have a calculator to work out how fast the EMUs will take and 25 minutes would see the train at about Mt Albert so just starting to show some benefit but with the CRL a trip from Britomart would be at about New Lynn so it would be starting to get to those levels seen in the south and east.
fascinating that it reduces the walk catchment with longer in-vehicle times,
minor niggle, it omitted ferry trips to/from Northcote Point