The changeover of NZ Bus buses to HOP has long been expected to be an issue – primarily due to the confusion of having two different cards both called HOP – and it hasn’t taken long for issues to start to emerge.
Central Auckland bus passengers are having to carry two smartcards – both confusingly called Hop – to guarantee cash-free travel for the next few weeks.
Auckland Transport says that passengers travelling on central routes should keep carrying the purple Snapper Hop card introduced in 2011 by NZ Bus, as well as its own new dark-blue AT Hop card, during a transition between separate ticketing systems.
That is because some North Star buses, which are operated by NZ Bus from North Shore and were switched from Snapper to Auckland Transport’s new $100 million AT Hop system last week, are also being used at odd hours to make up numbers on central city runs – causing confusion and inconvenience to passengers not armed with both cards.
Westmere resident Richard Dale is unhappy at being kicked off a bus after heading to the city on a Snapper Hop card but being asked to produce an AT Hop for a return trip three hours later on the same 020 route via Richmond Rd.
“The driver refused to let me on with my Snapper card and, because I didn’t have any cash, kicked me off,” he said.
From memory we had exactly the same problem when the current Snapper system was rolled out and only gets more confusing as the system is rolled out to locations where there are some buses on some routes with the old system and some on the new system. This is primarily on routes where some of the buses are of one brand (e.g. waka pacific) that need to travel through an area that is served by other buses (e.g. metrolink buses.)
The good news is that at the AT Board meeting the other day it was mentioned that AT had come to an agreement with NZ Bus to minimise the use of buses branded from one area on routes usually run with different brands i.e. running a Northstar bus on an isthmus route.
The next NZ Bus brands to change will be Link and Metrolink buses. AT have just announced the dates those buses will change being the 10th and 24th of November. However this time far from reducing it, AT are taking things to a whole other level of confusion as only some of the Metrolink buses will swap over in the next change with the rest happening two weeks later.
At least at the moment if you are standing on the side of the road and you can see a Northstar bus you are able to tell if you need a Snapper HOP or an AT HOP card. However in the two weeks in between the swap-overs for Metrolink there will be little to highlight just what you will need until the bus doors open. As such AT is now saying that people should hold on to their old snapper cards until the changeover has been completed. That means potentially needing to have two separate cards each with money stored on them just in case the bus that turns up doesn’t have the right system. It makes you wonder if anyone at any point in time sat down and thought what customers would think of such a process. I also wonder if they have thought through what happens at the other end of the process from telling everyone they now need to keep two cards topped up because they also say this:
So let me get this clear, because AT aren’t swapping all of the Metrolink buses over at the same time they tell now need to tell people that they should keep their old Snapper HOP card topped up just in case the bus that turns up doesn’t have the right equipment. After the changeover, if you have extra money on the old snapper card – because AT told you to do so – it can’t be refunded and can instead you have to go to one of the few retailers scattered around the region that can transfer the balance. I can see a lot of complaints coming from this process in about a month.
It is also a bit odd that Metrolink has been split up as back in 2011 when the link and Metrolink fleets were rolled on to snapper they were done over a single weekend. Another point worth noting is that NZ Bus/Snapper managed to get the current system rolled out to all buses en the NZ Bus fleet over roughly a one month period. They rolled out to Northstar in late May, two weeks later they converted the Go West and Waka Pacific fleets and then two weeks after that the Link and Metrolink buses. I understand AT want to get the Go West and Waka Pacific fleets changed before Christmas so by comparison it is probably taking about two months for AT to do the same thing. Based on what we have seen so far it would seem that despite the other issues we had with the company around the whole HOP debacle, that Snapper at least managed get some their system rolled out to buses with fairly minimal overall hassle.
Still at least we’re finally getting the system rolled out to some more buses, even if it is months late. I so can’t wait for the project to be finished and we have all buses on a single system.
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It’s a nonsense. When you think things couldn’t go worse, AT manages to make it worse.
Surely by now enough operators are on AT HOP that they could big bang the remaining NZ Bus fleet one weekend and then every other operator 2 weeks later?
The whole two cards thing I can live with as that’s been the only way to catch a train and a bus for quite some time now, however, what really annoys me is the attitude in regards to getting refunds. All stations such as Britomart should provide the option to hand in your snapper card and get the balance back in cash or transferred to your ATHOP and they should also provide an address where you can simply post the card with your bank account details and get the money. It shouldn’t be up to the enduser to search out the few selected outlets where this is possible. This aspect is a complete shambles.
Agreed. It’s like they want to treat the customer as badly as possible.
Survival of the fittest.
advantage if u go to wellington… the purple hop is basically the snapper in disguise therefore you can use it there
Generally I agree, but it is possible to go to Britomart and swap the balance to the new ATHOP card. I know people are doing that now.
This is possible is it? At the usual ticket counter? Good to know as I have around $40 on my old snapper hop that I’ll want to transfer in due course. The shop next door to where I live tops up Snapper cards but doesn’t have an AT machine so can’t provide that service.
Yes, why not set up an online means of transferring the balances? It really seems that AT wants to make it as difficult as possible for people to transfer their balances. With Richies it will basically be impossible to transfer any remaining balances. The same was true for Birkenhead transport even though those were just cardboard tickets. Why they couldn’t just keep clipping those tickets till they were all used up beats me. Even with the three week grace period they allowed I now people who still had unused rides.
Teething problems are to be expected with a big project like this but a little bit of thought into how to make the transition easier for users would go a long way. As an example I recently had trouble tagging off with AT Hop where the machine was having problems and I had to try a couple of times to get the green light indicating success. When I checked online recently I had two tag offs in the space of 6 seconds and an extra $5.04 charge. Never mind the insanity of them having set up the machine so that this was possible (when is this ever going to be anything but a mistake or the result of some malfunction?), the process of getting a refund really beggars belief. The online form allows you only about 20 words to explain your problem and gives no indication that they have received your request.
Call the call centre and the operator agrees that the problem is pretty obvious (2 tag offs in 6 seconds) but does AT allow them to make a refund then and there? No, has to go to a dispute resolution team and take up to 10 working days! AT really seems to be more focussed on the bottom line than ensuring a smooth customer experience.
” It makes you wonder if anyone at any point in time sat down and thought what customers would think of such a process. ”
That comment really sums it up for me – and the balance issue is already causing angst amongst people I know. There are NO retailers on the Shore where you can transfer your balance from the old card to the new one. You either have to travel into town or to a shop up in Orewa. Not so bad perhaps if you commute into the city anyway but inconvenient to say the least if you don’t (an example being the many schoolchildren who use the bus). Parents I have spoken to are extremely annoyed (it is their money after all – and not every family on the Shore is wealthy and can afford to throw away cash).
AT seems to has gone out of their way to make it as difficult as possible. It strikes me as a process run by the techies who are focussed on what works best for the equipment rather than the people using it. I can only hope AT bring a greater customer focus once the changeover is completed (preferably before that!)
As a techie, I resent that.
Failure to allow proper fail over / change over.
Telecom south island cell network
Diagnostic medlab / lab tests
Novopay
Is there any reason they couldn’t carry 2 machines on the bus? Or are they reprogramming the same machines?
Nope, there are 2 machines sat there.
Cathy Casey has promised to ask the responsible person at AT why there are so few retailers in the whole of Auckland.
Oh joy. Since the two buses I can catch are the 005 and the Outer Link, I guess I’m going to be one of those poeple who has to carry two cards around. It’s not even clear whether the buses will be switched over on a route by route or bus by bus basis – will some 005 buses have AT HOP and some have Snapper Hop between.
There’s probably some tech reason why it wasn’t possible, but wouldn’t the changeover have been easier if you could tag on with either card (using the different readers) during the transition period? It would give people more opportunity to run down their existing balances, and reduce the chances of being caught with the wrong card.
One other flaw in their Metrolink rollout is that the whole point of a weekend changeover is that if you do half your buses on Saturday (running the old system on the ones on the road on Saturday) then do the other half on Sunday (with the other half that got changed over Saturday now on the road), your effective changeover is “overnight”. Bang. Done.
If for whatever reason (justified or not) you can’t achieve this, there’s no point in splitting the same strategy across multiple weekends – if you’re going to have two ticketing systems, you might as well change all the buses over as quickly as you can to minimise the time the two ticketing systems co-exist.
If Metrolink changed over as many buses as they can on the first weekend, then changed the remaining buses over interpeak and/or evenings/overnight on each weekday following, you’d still have two different ticketing systems, but it would be for a shorter period of time – most likely just one week instead of two.
You know Matt I love it how you see the positive side or silver lining in what looks like a rather messy and not well
managed transfer by AT from HOP card to HOP card ………..new bus driver on my route was wondering aloud several times this week
why I use cash at the moment – wondering if I should print this out for him 🙂
I’m always and optimist 😉
Being charitable to AT, I read this as NZ Bus are playing hard-ball with AT and not allowing buses (and/or not resourcing up to allow, said buses) to be off the road over one weekend like last time, hence the split changeover dates and mass confusion that will ensue.
When the rollover to Purple Hop came along NZ Bus had an incentive to be involved and did co-operate, but this no longer is that the case as the AT HOP rollout on NZ Bus buses is the kiss of death of a NZ Bus sister company “Snapper” and therefore there is no reason for NZ Bus to make it easy for AT to change over.
Last time I suggested that NZ Bus were not playing ball in the rollout, Zane Fulljames turned up in this very comments box and cursed me. But yeah, I wonder why EVERYONE is blaming AT.
What a bloody disaster. Heads must surely roll at Auckland Transport over this mess!
C’mon, get real! Like heads are gonna roll. If anything, senior management will probably get a pay rise. This is NZ after all, accountability is non existent for our masters
99% of the MetrolInk and Link buses I travel on have had both AT HOP and HOP SNAPPER bus readers installed. So isn’t the changeover simple as the driver’s console needs to be changed or re configured.
This sort of corporate bureaucratic insanity will hobble public transport in Auckland until central government allows the governance and ownership models of public transport in Auckland to be reformed into something that approaches common sense.
Everything is split to primarily serve nonsensical neo-liberal ideological models rather than Public Transport needs. Transdev operates the Auckland passenger rail network on behalf of Auckland Transport who are in turn an unresponsive and apparently corrupt organisation top heavy with bloated salaries. Kiwirail have a slice of the action somewhere. Hopelessly muddled and splintered bus services run by three or four companies blight and frustrate integration. The Ferries are run by someone else again. And of course central government via the Ministry of Transport and imperial fiat constantly sticks it’s oar in.
The whole thing is a hopeless dogs breakfast and needs urgent reform.
I agree .In about 4 sentences you’ve explained the whole scene quite well. Passengers are just an inconvenience.
Exactly. Would be interesting to know what the legal and consulting costs have been, not to mention contract monitoring costs and wider “greedy fingers in the till” investigations etc. So many cities abroad have some degree of public ownership/control of public transport and an excellent level of service. Not in Auckland – perhaps the slogan should be “where passengers and tax/ratepayers are an afterthought”.
One interesting thing is that the new ATHOP cards will always allow refunds, in fact AT is required to give refunds on demand. The money is being held on your behalf which meant AT had to apply for a Securities Act exemption (as holding money on someone’s behalf is a “debt security” under the Act):
http://www.fma.govt.nz/laws-we-enforce/legislation/exemption-notices/current-exemption-notices/securities-act-exemptions/securities-act-(auckland-transport)-exemption-notice-2011/
I had to look into this recently as a client was creating a similar system where money is held on behalf of a customer. Snapper however created drafted their terms and conditions so that the money is not held on your behalf but is basically paid to Snapper. That is why only transfers are possible:
http://www.snapper.co.nz/terms-of-use/
If I was AT’s lawyer, I would have recommended sticking with Snapper’s approach. Securities Act exemptions are expensive.
completely agree. AT should not be holding money on people’s behalf.
Well that is better for the customer in that you can get your money back as of right if you leave Auckland or stop using Auckland PT for some reason. You cant do that with Snapper.
The real issue for me is AT spending large amounts of taxpayers’ money for a big law firm to obtain an exemption. As I say, that is not cheap. Plus the exemption then required a lot of compliance as you can see from the exemption.
Snapper’s option is much cheaper on compliance and I really dont think most users think that the money is still theirs once paid. AT is free to pay money back if they wish, it just cant be stated as held on behalf of the user and refundable by right.
Presumably the need for AT to get an exemption is a transitional measure,
As (AT) HOP is designed to become a national payment system so you can use the one card everywhere for transit payments not like now where you have a card for each area/transport operator.
And as currently only AT are using/issuing HOP cards, its AT directly holding the money on your behalf hence the exemption.
Down the track, when (and if) HOP is rolled out nationally then presumably NZTA or whomever issues the HOP cards then will be the party who hold the money on your behalf, so it will be the Government giving itself an exemption.
And AT will merely become a HOP operator and receive the monies from (or issue refunds to ) NZTA for travel you pay for using the HOP card in the Auckland area.
Thats the first time I have heard HOP is intended to be a national scheme. Has that been announced? I dont know why Chch for example would give up its excellent system MetroCard (that operates flawlessly) to take on a dubious one like HOP.
It would be cheaper to get the exemption transferred, but even NZTA will need an exemption and the ongoing compliance costs are not cheap.
Still seems an unnecessary complication to me. Did anybody (until now) ever notice that you werent entitled to refunds as of right from Snapper? I didnt.
HOP isn’t supposed to be a national scheme, it is built according to the new national standard developed by NZTA however, so it’s part of the national scheme. Any new card systems, and whatever eventually replaces MetroCard would presumably have to meet the national standard too.
Does the national standard mean that cards from one city should be able to work in another, like the way I can (right now) use my Hop Classic in (the good bits of) Wellington?
I am beginning to wander if private operators should be working in the public transport system at all . Obviously for quick changes or something that works for the passengers to make the service better this is clearly an issue. I think we are heading for a full circle as think the tail is wagging the dog.
Privatisation of PT has never worked in any city I have lived in. It was a disaster in London and Britain in general. The best PT systems I have ever used have all been owned by one government body. That allows complete integration and quick chnage. Competition has no place in a system that has its success judged by factors other than primarily profit.
The private operators should be phased out as the contracts come up for renewal.
I agree, but wouldn’t it cost AT a fortune to buy hundreds/thousands of bus and multiple ferries?
Well if the lawyers did their job, there should be a right to buy all the running stock off NZBus or whoever on expiry.
well if Nz bus can’t use their buses who are they going to sell them to? AT would be the only buyer and so pay very little. Or Nzbus could just lease the buses to AT until AT buys its own fleet.
What a bloody shambles! Does AT have a ‘Customer Alienation’ department or something? Really makes you wonder, especially when they harp on about improving the customer experience as one of their main objectives.
Their website is also a mess, I tried to apply for an AT HOP card but the website just didn’t load anything. Horrible things.
I want to know when the airport bus (Onehunga to Manukau) will except either card. I carry both now, because I catch more public transport in Wellington than Auckland, so I’ve had a Snapper card for long than a HOP card, using either of them to get to the airport would be nice.
On a side note, I’m working in Sydney, commuting by train and the last time I took a train in Auckland I was stunned by the lack of acceleration out of stations, so I think that those who haven’t experienced modern electric trains are going to be pleasantly surprised by the enhanced service. Will there be an option to add non driving carriages into the 3 car units to make them 4 or 5 car units, instead of coupling two 3 cars to make 6 car units ?
Sydney’s changeover to Opal (the brand for integrated card based payments) for trains has been slow, limited and seemingly disorganised, reminds me of the comments I hear about the Auckland HOP rollout.
On the trains the answer is no. The trains were bought for the CRL which has a gradient such that 2 engine cars are needed per 3 carriages. Plus, our stations are set up for 6 carriages anyway.
The other issue here is, routes like Sandringham road where multiple different brands show up. I tend to be on a go west in the morning and metrolink in the evening. So even after metrolink change over I will still have to have both cards
Also, this is occurring right in the middle of University exams…is AT going to have a sufficient marketing campaign to so students are aware? As many wont be taking busses after today (last day of semester). This could really screw some people over for their exams
I doubt they will think to contact the university and get a mass announcement sent out.
Should be okay; uni students probably carry some cash with them, and once they’re on the bus they can see the information regarding the changeover.
Will be interesting too see if this slows buses down. Will be a real mess for 2 weeks, can see lots of arguments happening.
Lucky I mostly catch the Link buses so will be easy for me, but could become super PR nightmare.
Interesting to note is NorthStar buses ran late for a week or 2 after AT HOP intro with people having to pay cash?
And if they don’t carry cash and end up late for an exam because the bus refused their card?
Could get Auckland Transport in contact with the unis around Auckland, and get the unis to send emails to the students (they all have some login thingy). I presume that over the exam period some of them will go online to check for some info/file and see the email and then pass the info on to their friends.
Okay. Why are all you guys blaming AT and not, for example, NZ Bus for this drawn-out changeover? Is Zane Fulljames somewhere cackling with glee?
I’m sure both parties are to blame somewhat. NZ Bus is certainly in no hurry to try and make the transition to AT Hop from Snapper. I used to think NZ bus was the main culprit for all the Snapper + AT Hop debacle were they were going to be compatible then not etc but AT’s performance with the roll out on all the other bus companies I’m not so sure any more.
Of course we can blame our lovely National government for forcing Snapper Hop on Auckland even after they lost the tender for integrated ticketing. As a favour for the good mates at Infratil of course. This debacle wouldn’t have been quite as bad without two incompatible Hop cards!
Just tolerate it for few more month! At this point it’s quite confusing to carry two or more cards, especially for those who catches Waka-Pacific and Metrolink co-operated services.
The sentiment in the office towards HOP, and towards buses generally, is tending towards negative. I always simply listen, because I want to know what others think. Such opinion won’t help static patronage figures. (These aren’t talkback reactionares, but quite progressive types – one even trained as a transport planner!)
It will take improvements (fare decreases, improved frequency, improved real or relative speeds, improved comfort, improved communicationsr) in order to restore the quality of buses in the public mind. Things drift back to equilibrium, but that process is often a slow one.
The biggest problem with Metrolink is that there are two completely separate depots (City/Panmure and Onehunga) which are both metrolink branded but will be done separately because only one depot at a time is being done.
When Northstar got done the bare minumum of buses were made available for running services on Saturday while the techies swarmed over all the others, the yard was still full of orange vests at midnight on Saturday and it was still going on on Sunday morning when the first athop buses went out on the road. I don’t think the issue is buses not being made available so much as there are only so many techies available to do the changing and only so many hours in a weekend – even with the card readers and BDC wiring pre-installed it might not take a huge amount of time to do a bus but it does take time – by the time you do the unwiring, uninstalling, installing, wiring, configuring, testing and cleanup you’d be doing heroically well to do three buses an hour so even with 4 or 5 teams there’s no way you could do more than one depot in a weekend.
Obviously everything was slow for the first few days after the change while we learnt where the buttons were but hey it’s just a ticket machine, it’s not like we’ve never seen one before. The things slowing us down now are the processing speed of the machines (not so much quad-core as 286) and those godawful printers (sorry, p-r-i-n-t-e-r-s) which are integrated so the BDC can’t just send the job to the printer then do other stuff like snapper did, with these everything has to go on hold while the tickets print (sorry, p-r-i-n-PAPERJAM!).
AT require us to record the use of northern passes and for whatever reason every time we record a northern pass the machine p-r-i-n-t-s a ticket. We have to do this at the stop where the pass is used so after everyone has rushed on the bus just sits there while the BDC p-r-i-n-tPAPERJAM! a ticket for every northern pass that was just used. The more northern passes there are the slower the loading is, isn’t technology great.
If the machines were twice as fast and spooled their print jobs they’d be quite nice to use, and the faster card readers mean on a peak trip with no cash / northern passes you can load people almost as fast as they can walk on, once it’s up and running it should be fine. Ish.
So explain how this cutover is so different from rollout of Snapper to Purple HOP cards? Same process, same timeframes?
So why can’t it be done now when it could before.
Simplest answer I can see is that NZ Bus don’t want to co-operate.
Exactly. This is not perfect and maybe the implementation could’ve been done better and yes, people will be inconvenienced for a while but in 3-4 months when everything is up and running most of the people complaining on here won’t even remember what all the fuss was about!
From my (admittedly anecdotal) point of view as a regular passenger, the drivers have to unjam and reprint tickets on the Thales ticket machines no more nor less frequently than the Snapper ticket machines. And the whole Northern Pass thing is temporary.
Ultimately, most benefit will be achieved when more people are using the (blue) HOP card, not requiring the driver to waste time issuing tickets at all. For that to happen, the integrated zonal fares will be a good pull factor, hopefully along with bigger discounts off cash fares than the measly 10% currently on offer. Hopefully this will happen early, rather than late, 2014.
I agree, the slow down at the moment are the large numbers of people still paying by cash. The AT machines also thankfully don’t constantly bleat out messages about “please take your ticket” the annoying overly loud beeps when a driver enters anything.
Greg if it’s NZBus holding things up why haven’t AT used the time in between doing the NZBus depots to convert H&E and Ritchies and Airbus ? If your thinking is correct then the last NZBus depot would be the very last thing to get converted.
Couldn’t NZBus mix and match between depots over the change-over weekends. For example get WakaPacfic buses to run services on the Saturday, and Already converted North Star buses to run things on Sunday?
Yeh the lack of AT HOP on Airbus is really silly. Just a handful of buses, orphan system and AT branding.
Should of been done first.
Going to catch it next week, really frustrating when you have both a Snapper and AT HOP and can’t use either of them.
GM,
While I can’t comment why AT aren’t rolling out HOP to those other operators right now, I believe that the timetables for changeovers are mutually agreed with the operator and AT.
And all previous changovers have been over a single weekend. And that was the expectation that a given operator is either using the old or new card, not some of each.
However, that aside, this post is about the changeover from Purple HOP to AT HOP on NZ Bus operated buses (Link and MetroLink). And in particular why NZ Bus are taking 3 weekends to do a changeover of the MetroLink buses – when previously they did their *whole* fleet in much less time back in 2011 whe nthe changeover from Snapper to Purple HOP happened.
Yes, NZ Bus may be only doing 1 depot at a time, but thats not a valid excuse.
Really all the MetroLink buses should all be done in 1 weekend to avoid the need to the carrying of old and new cards for most of November for the sole purpose of ensuring you can use the card on a MetroLink branded bus turns up.
The changeover for the other NZ Bus brands (Go West, Waka etc) will also presumably be a similar mess too by the sound of it.
From where I sit AT is in a impossible position – if NZ Bus says “we can’t changeover all [Brand X] buses on 1 weekend we need 3 or more to do it”.
Either AT can the changeover (to when?) or they have to accept an extended rollout and the disruption caused.
But that doesn’t make it right or acceptable and this has the smell of NZ Bus politics all over it.
If you have evidence otherwise, lets see it.
Auckland = giant clusterfuck.
The branded bus systems are a nonsense anyway – they’re still the same operator. Why the hell can’t they be changed all at once? A logistical challenge yes, but so much better than this almighty mess. How is this possible? Oh, wait…Auckland.
I can live with the hassle of carrying two cards – since it’s temporary and it may be a necessary step towards the transition to the truly integrated ticketing and eventually the integrated fare system. But what annoys me most is the 25 cent transaction fee – which is staying with the AT Hop card, and is charged for online transactions! Why should I still be charged for online top-up? Oyster card didn’t incur any top up charges – online or in person. Even in NZ, none of the service providers or large businesses that I have dealt with – Trade Me, Vodafone, Telecom, PowerShop and numerous banks, you name it – charged online transactions, but the AT Hop card. I don’t really see the logic behind it? If the Government and AT really want to see more people using the PT in Auckland, they had better get rid of the 25 cent transaction fee for top ups.
Strangely, Auto-topup does not incure the 25cent fee (I have set it up on my AT Hop card). But a one-off topup online, or at a retailer does attract the 25cent fee.