Buried deep within the agenda of last week’s Transport Committee meeting is a report on the results of both the annual screenline and congestion surveys. The screenline survey in particular is a very long running (back to the 1980s) survey which counts the number of people crossing various points – most particularly those travelling into the city centre by various modes. In general terms the screenline survey showed a small increase in the number of PT users across most measured points (although a reduced modeshare due to a jump in the number of people driving to the city centre) while the congestion survey showed that congestion in Auckland has been decreasing since 2009 (someone please tell the transport model!).
Public transport modeshare dropped back to just under 50% of vehicular trips into the CBD – still much higher than the other two screenlines at the western and southern edges of the isthmus:
Total PT patronage entering the city centre increased slightly to 34,130 during the morning peak hour. It is worth noting that since 2001 this total has increased from around 21,000 – a 62% increase.
One of the most interesting elements of the screenline survey is the breakdown by street for buses entering the city centre and how this has changed over time:
Fanshawe Street has really asserted itself as clearly the busiest point of entry for bus passenger to the city centre. This is not surprising given investment in the Northern Busway and that for many other areas people have clearly shifted from bus to rail as investment in the rail system has delivered an increasingly attractive travel choice. It’s encouraging to see that Symonds Street has “built up again” in terms of its numbers – after taking quite a hit when a large number of services were diverted to travel over Grafton Bridge. The numbers for Quay Street appear quite strange – big fluctuations up and down in almost every year. Are bus users in the Eastern Beach suburbs just a particularly fickle bunch I wonder?
The rail numbers were down slightly on 2012 – although the report notes that two fewer trains were counted in the 2013 survey (presumably services were slightly late and therefore outside the measurement window), which means that only a small reduction is actually a pretty damn good result.
The ferry information breaks down passengers by the different service they took – which gives us a useful understanding of how dominant Devonport and Waiheke are when it comes to total ferry boardings:
The report also notes key entry point for people walking and cycling – although unfortunately the quality of the table is really poor:
The report doesn’t explain what’s behind the fairly big decline in both walking and cycling between the two surveys in 2012 and 2013 – perhaps the weather was different (this is a once a year survey).
The report also notes results from a survey into congestion and travel time reliability indicators. The overall result is a decline in congestion since 2009:
I’m not surprised that congestion has declined in recent years as traffic growth has stalled while there has been a lot of investment in transport during that time. This reinforces a feeling that we have articulated many times on this blog: that future congestion forecasts are likely overblown. Travel time reliability has also improved in recent times.
This is really interesting and useful information – quite surprising that it was buried so deep.
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And the other conclusion that is loud and clear in these numbers that we have also articulated many times here: built high quality Transit systems and people will choose to use them. Britomart Station and the Northern Busway being the two local examples. Therefore where there are not high quality Transit services [most of Auckland] the proportion of people driving does not represent some perfect choice as the road lobby loves to claim.
I don’t actually think of Britomart as high quality. It was a disaster of meddling and changes and has ended up a compromised, weird little station with odd styling (bits of it are great but other parts look like left overs from the annual Death Star christmas party). I always snigger when I get off the train on platform 5 and, going out the back door, I see they have to have a person standing at the lift so people don’t bypass the ticket gates!
Anyway, the great thing about Britomart is it’s there. It brings people to where they want and needed to go. The old station was obviously too far away. Of course the really funny thing is there used to be a railway station pretty much where Britomart is now way back when (1885?) before the magnificent old Auckland Railway Station was built so in a way we’re going round in circles!
There is probably a joke about the city rail LOOP in there somewhere 🙂
Simon
Oh Simon I agree, but see the impact this hopelessly undersized and shortsighted little station had on ridership and it is easy to see that all the naysayers have no idea about the forces that shape use. And that AK is no different from other cities and is completely shapeable by what we choose to invest in.
The simplistic and frankly pathetic idea that current mode share is somehow permanent or god given or, worse still, ideal, needs to be addressed constantly because it is the unexamined basis of policy and the puffing opinions our most ill informed yet smuggest correspondents and politicians.
Change is, of course, the only unchanging reality. How and to what we can influence to some degree through our decisions.
Ans Wellington is no different, except for scale. $2.4 billion is earmarked to be spent on a Road of National Extravagance in our region, to deliver benefits which are far smaller than the costs. What might that sort of money achieve if applied to a southern extension of our excellent but truncated rail system? One would think that a development with such potential benefit would have planners and politicians falling over themselves to look at options and determine the best way of making it happen. But no. Having our rail system terminate short of where it should go to provide most benefit is just fine, according to our mostly useless leaders who have fallen for the lure of the RoNS.
Whats frustrating is there is no full breakdown combining cars, cycling, walking and PT into one table, to show overall percentages would be very useful.
Would need to count passengers to cars then, tables don’t tell if they did that.
If I can read the tables right 5500 on walking/cycling. If the 34,000 is 47%, then cars are 38,000, and sustainable total is 39,500.
So overall thats 49% cars and 51% sustainable.
However the way the CBD is laid out is to speed cars to the nearest motorway exit, and really needs to be rebuilt to reflect the actual modal share.
Interesting that bus usage hit a high in 1988 that was not surpassed until around 2003 and in population adjusted terms has probably not been surpassed even today… What was the cause for that? Petrol prices? Public transport fares? Car ownership?
….Poor service? Stuck in traffic? Unintegrated system? Cash payments slowing down journey? Intermittent buslanes? No Wifi? Old buses? Disconnected network?…
Maybe collapse of CBD employment after 1987 crash. I have also heard that after that some floors of office buildings were converted to parking, thus lowering the price of parking. Then we had the corporatisation of the ARA which caused a big mess with buses.
Soon after cars got much cheaper with abolition of tarriffs and Japanses imports being allowed.
This is excellent data. To me it just emphasises the need to speed up the feeder services via maximised bus priority/high frequency loops/spread the net out further smarter so they become more accessible to the wider network. 50% mode share obviously do-able with better service. Nail some easy fares and whamo. I realise not as easy as it sounds but a bus priority mandate on the agenda and the hop team guys simplifying things would be a good start/focus over the next month.
What are the time period covered for the tables and graphs. I think the 3rd figure Bus people per entry which shows Fansahwe as 8,006 is for 7-9a.m. (which is 4,003 per hour). It is important to consider this as I think the entry from Northshore to Fanshawe 0600-0700 and 0900 to 1000 would be a higher percentage than the increase percentage 0700-0900.