The Board Reports ahead of tomorrow’s Auckland Transport board meeting are online, although the normal statistics report seems to not yet have been updated. Helpfully (although in a strangely semi-duplicative way) there’s another report that looks at patronage. Total patronage for May was slightly down on May last year, while rail patronage bucked its downward trend in recent months and actually jumped by almost 10% on the same month last year:
As you can see from the graph above, while rail patronage was up on May last year, it was still significantly below the monthly target that Auckland Transport expected to see happen this year – contributing to the fairly giant gap between actual patronage totals this year and what was in Auckland Transport’s Statement of Intent. I’ll come back to the Statement of Intent later in this post.
More positively, rail patronage in May was even higher than it was in March – somewhat unusual as March is typically the busiest month of the year. Also, average weekday boardings (which in many ways is a better measure as it evens out changes in the number of working days from month to month) noted rail patronage was higher than last year:
Bus patronage, on the other hand, was down by a fairly substantial 6.5%. This represents a change from what’s been going on in the past year or so where bus patronage gains have generally outperformed rail gains – and because bus makes up the majority of PT trips it was the poor performance of bus patronage in May which dragged the total down to a decrease from May 2012:
Once again it seems that Auckland Transport is tracking fairly far behind the Statement of Intent targets (although not to the extent as for rail), which must be a concern given the extremely high priority given to improving public transport use which is highlighted in all of Auckland’s strategic transport documents.
Shifting onto the Statement of Intent, there’s a Board Paper specifically relating to the SOI as it needs to be finalised before the end of AT’s financial year – June 30. The part of this document of most interest relates to the public transport patronage targets – as it has been the huge gap between the SOI targets for 2012/13 which has driven Auckland Transport to finally think about ways of improving their marketing, to finally look at providing better frequencies on the rail network on weekends (the business report hints that we might see half-hourly weekend frequencies on the Western Line later this year at long last).
Unsurprisingly, it seems that Auckland Transport doesn’t like to look bad when it comes to their PT patronage targets and have massively adjusted their targets in the next Statement of Intent so they’re easier to achieve:
With integrated ticketing on the final straight for implementation plus the first of the electric trains coming into service towards the end of the next financial year, both of which should help boost rail patronage significantly, it seems pretty strange for the rail patronage forecast to now be below what was achieved in 2011/12.
Of course the SOI targets need to be in the ballpark of realistic, but in my mind it appears as though Auckland Transport missing the SOI targets for patronage this year by such a wide margin has knocked the complacency out of them about public transport patronage and actually forced quite a bit of clever thinking in the area of marketing, it’s forced a stronger crackdown on rail fare evasion and it’s potentially finally forcing some improvements to weekend frequencies that we’ve been going on about forever.
I’m not sure of the final procedure for approving these targets but I’d be extremely surprised if the Council agrees to such extremely low numbers for rail in particular. These new targets just seem to be a way for Auckland Transport to return to being complacent and put us further and further away from reaching the Auckland Plan target of doubling PT patronage by 2022.
While on the topic of the AT board meeting. Perhaps the most interesting part from the usual business report is the pictures of the interior of the new trains, the first of which it says is due to arrive on September 7th. The second and third trains are due to be shipped in September with them arriving before the end of the year.
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Wow those trains really are coming along nicely!
Real initiatives to get people to leave behind their car and take PT to my recollection have not been made since the train service was substantially upgraded. Buses being the main stay in Auckland have sort of drifted on, fiddling around the edges stuff. Some routes have seen “Link” type services added but by and large nothing much has changed.
One of the major drags on PT is user cost. As per the last fare adjustments AT missed the target, instead of lowering fares a bit all round and then solidly marketing it they tinkered and most notably raised some fares.
Address fare costs and they will make progress.
Check out the regional public transport plan. It is a complete overhaul of the pT network.
It’s hard for AT to lower fares when they have no control over the contracting bus operators. Yes, really. It requires the changes to the Public Transport Management Act to take effect before AT can start to drop fares, and to be fair to AT it was somewhat necessary for them to have rail and bus fares aligned before there could be a proper effort to make public transport more affordable. I doubt we’ll see much real movement on this score until integrated fares arrive, though.
One of the reasons for the reduction in bus patronage is the changes to the Dominion Road 258 and 267 in February which reduced the number of express buses. I see the effects of this new timetable in the morning when there is a lack of express buses and evening when most buses have standing room only
I thought we’d established that the real reason for the apparent plummet in rail boardings was that the introduction of AT HOP proved that the previous figures were bogus. For example: previously they were counting 40 trips per month per monthly pass, when HOP has shown us that it’s more like 25-30. No idea what’s up with the buses.
It would seem we now have the real rail numbers, possibly improved recently because of the clampdown on fare evaders, but also now probably bumping into capacity constraints at the peaks…. so I reckon it’ll bounce around until the new trains are running properly, so for a couple of years. Really grow then and immediately hit the Britomart wall.
Very good to see improvements to the off peak offer as this is where there is network capacity and really needs to happen. Of course all the weekend closures are a problem for this area too, but nights are the other off peak period that needs looking at.
It will be good if we hit the britomart wall straight away and the council can then go to the government and go look we have this system which is taking 1000s of people off of the roads for a congestion free journey, it is full every morning and we can triple the capacity for $2.4b, or we have this system which runs at capacity with severe congestion for that 2 hour peak, to add the same capacity over the entire network would cost $30b, which one will you help us with?
By the time things happen to fix the Britomart bottleneck, though, many people will have been turned off trains, probably irretrievably.
National’s being grossly, unforgivably obstructive and myopic on the matter of the CRL, because their present course could destroy any hope of long-term, consistent patronage growth for a decade by making it increasingly likely that the rail network will be unable to cope with the number of passengers who will want to use it.
could run Henderson – Panmure trains at peak, maybe with general Western trains bypassing Newmarket as an extra capacity option.
Would need more EMU’s for this but could just order the CRL extra’s a few years early.
The constant stream of delays, cancellations and line closures have got to be having a huge effect, as well. Of course you’re going to have zero patronage on a service that doesn’t run.
Oh man are the new EMUs going to have a step up into the carriage? As a parent of a toddler, trains are way easier than buses (or, for that matter, the car) with a pram because they are basically roll-on-roll-off…
Seems a poor format with potential for trips etc for elderly and not so elderly. Unfortunate given so much hype as a “step change” in transport – excuse pun.
My understanding is the central carriage of a 3-car unit has a low floor wilth level entry for wheelchairs, prams, etc.
The step up inside the front and back of the train replaces the present day large gap and step up from the platform to the train door. And as others mention, the centre car will have a lower floor in its midsection at and between the doors.
Mind the steps!! This is a complete fail.
My first thought two, stairs WTF??
There are people out there in wheelchairs as well as lots of prams.
The old trains in Wellington which have stairs are a nightmare – if our fancy new trains have stairs, well that is just stupid.
There are low floor doors in the middle of all the trains.
It’s an infrastructure constraint, annoying yes but they can’t be fully low floor. the middle carriage of each three-carriage set is low floor with level entry.
@BBC – I only use trains off peak, and the mothers with kiddies seem to be a considerable portion of the traveling public. I guess time will tell if the low floor section in the unpowered car is sufficient.
The other thought I have is why not aim to run all the main lines at 5 minute frequency on peak. Gerry B has a report on his desk showing how to do this, and AT is going to look really silly if they can’t match this. Much better service using 3 car trains at 5 minute intervals than 6 car trains at 10 minute intervals. I find that most of the stress in public transport is caused by worrying about connections. With the new EMUs operating at 5 minute frequencies, you could just about throw the timetable away. Now that AT have decided to go with an increased frequency/fewer routes philosophy, why not go the whole hog.
The operating cost of running three-cars at five minutes instead of six-cars at ten minutes would be at least 50% higher.
Furthermore Britomart can’t handle this frequency until fixed. And at many busier points there will already be 5 min frequencies as a result of ten mins on lines further out over lapping.
Where the Southern and MC trains share stations it will be 12 tph each way; 5mins. Where the Southern and O-Line share stations it will be higher than 6tph. And of course until the CRL is built Newmarket and Parnell are going to get almost constant service, 14-16 tph each way!
Patrick, we often talk about the bottlenecks at Britomart, but presumably Newmarket has limitations too? The point switching must be a nightmare with the Western Line trains backing in/out of Newmarket in both directions, plus all the other Southern Line trains. Presumably there is a minimum “headway” on the trains via Newmarket purely to allow the points time to switch? The Britomart to Newmarket trains frequently pause just up from the Parnell tunnel, presumably waiting for the points to switch, as they immediately start moving after a train passes in the opposite direction.
Newmarket is a constriction on the network because it was so thoughtlessly allowed to be narrowed by the very geniuses charged with managing out rail network. Probably the same visionless people still at KiwiRail who have allowed the eastern line’s future expansion to become more difficult and expensive just as the need for more capacity there is becoming urgent… Although even if it did have a fourth track at the station itself [which would help future operations] it is the junctions at either end, especially the one to the western line that are the real problem…. anyway i digress…..
Yes Newmarket is a problem but of course you must know that the CRL reduces that constriction at the same time as it does the same for Britomart by allowing all western line trains going to the city to head there directly… But also Newmarket is currently less of a problem because we can use the eastern line to avoid it for a significant portion of Britomart bound trains.
If however we attempt to deal with capacity problem from the south before the CRL is built by adding west south services, which I suspect we may try to do as the anti-CRL forces are currently enforcing a delay to the project at the very least, then Newmarket will very quickly become a very real constriction on the network as well as Britomart.
Isnt this not possible because of the bottle neck at Britomart? What is the report that Gerry B has?
That is exactly what the CRL would allow. However Gerry B has stated the CRL is not a priority for this government.
And the capital cost would be several billion.
No cycle count data AGAIN? What is wrong with their stats people?
Oh yup, so a 6.5% decrease in bus patronage (frankly, a massive decline) gets a couple of sentences with no analysis, whereas rail, which accounts for, what, 10% of PT trips, gets about four times the space and with analysis, with pretty pictures of new rolling stock… oh RAIL oh YEAH!!!
Just ran two big posts on the bus changes in the New Network… sorry if that’s not enough for you, when there’s new information, or pictures, like there are for the trains we’ll run it. As the new trains are at the core of the new integrated system and are on the verge of arriving you can expect there to be more updates about this.
Both figures are very interesting; rail up 10% and bus down 6.5% and it’s pretty hard to find a general pattern for this. Do you have a theory? Rail has had the most changes, especially around the count. But the bus count down? Maybe it’s as simple as a colder rainier month [IIRC last Autumn was glorious] or the higher exchange rate allowing people to feel more complacent about petrol prices? It really is hard to have a firm view. My gut feeling is that it could just as easily bounce straight back up again, in other words both figures maybe fairly soft? What do you think?
I think that the lower fuel prices should have been mentioned in the article. Most of last may they were over $2.20, atm they are aroung $2.10-$2.15, I realise it isn’t much but it doesn’t take much with fuel costs.
Also in the business report is a little info about the GE automatic train protection system for existing trains. Seems that once that is installed 10 minute headways can become possible on the western line.
An article on interest.co.nz repeating some of the old myths about rail vs bus vs road:
http://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/65065/david-chaston-crunches-numbers-auckland-transport-system-and-finds-fixed-rail-will-be-
I am sure some of us can go on there and point out to Mr Chaston the error of his ways. This would be a good start: http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2012/12/03/myth-busting-roads-dont-need-subsidies/
It is straight from the Gerry Brownlee hymn sheet including the old “19th century technology” chestnut.
Disappointing as you normally see more informed stuff from interest.co.nz.
Yes well aware of that act, the one that stupidly makes loss making Public Transport (for the greater good) provide rate payer money to private operators to make tidy profits providing Public Transport. Its not rocket science that the public are the losers and private operators are the corporate beneficiary.
But having said that AT and its predecessor seem indifferent to the fact that the private vehicle has so many more attractions than a bus. And they only see fares as an upward thing that naturally has not tempted the public away from private vehicles. Apart from the sporadic use bus lanes to beat heavy traffic, fares are one area they can influence, or has the equally stupid fare box system torpedoed that?
FYI Steve N; it’s not the points, they change pretty quickly. They can’t change until there is no train in their block, if one train is following another heading to Britomart it needs to clear two blocks (signals) before the next train can get a signal to proceed. As you have noted with western line trains you must bear in mind the driver has to change ends to continue and the longer the train the longer this will take not to mention he (she) has to head upstream into off loading passengers in busy times.
A western line train heading from Britomart to Newmarket will be held out side Newmarket if the north bound southern line train is running a bit late and then the points can’t change until that train has cleared and then it still it won’t get a signal until its route is set AND the barrier arms are down for the crossing. This can also happen to southern line trains if there is an opposing southern line train using platform four.
This is a time tabling issue that to change alters lots of other parameters and has lots of knock on effects on other parts of the system, not to mention the few connections that DO (sometimes) work will be even less, there are not enough trains to make the system work properly right now, with lot of (new) trains being introduced in the not too distant future enabling increased frequencies this in theory should no longer be an issue.
I hope this helps to shed some light.
I think some reports on the “Northern Busway” are actually just the Northern Express numbers.
This makes the Busway appear to carry much less than it is actually carrying. The 881 service has gone from 8 per day to 48 per day and has been noted to have been a reason NEX numbers have not continue to rise much above 2 million per year. (the 881 has 2,000 boardings a day on weekdays during university term time). The 881 has been successful because of the busway and the NEX providing services at later hours if people need them.