According to a document sent to us anonymously Auckland Transport are planing all sorts of ways to move its staff around. One in particular stood out.
The document says because:
- congestion delays can occur at any time on the road network
- public transport is too slow and infrequent
- senior executive time is so valuable
Only real solution is to be able to rise above all of this by AT leasing a corporate Helicopter!
The document goes on to mention additional advantages of this form of transport for selected team members and significant guests, as well as offering speed and efficiency:
- would enable an excellent overview of the city’s transport needs especially congestion issues and network constraints
- oversight of progress on the delivery of important projects
- excellent opportunity for hosting important stakeholders
- brands the organisation as a future focused transport innovator
And that the author expects the government would likely be supportive because of the ‘decongestion benefits of removing staff cars from roads’ and as ‘the time savings are impressive’. Also noting that the current Minister in particular loves rides in ‘this sort of vehicle’. And that a recent meeting with the Minister in Auckland had to be curtailed early because of uncertainty on how long it might take for the crown limo to get to the airport in rush-hour traffic. Such an investment would ‘give certainty to this sort of vital journey’.
Informal enquiries already suggest that NZTA would share both costs and use, proving again the efficiencies of having both organisations in the same building. However the document goes on to mention that it is a great shame that consideration of this wasn’t given when leasing city office space as the HSBC building, unlike the Council’s new office tower, doesn’t have a helipad on the roof, meaning that transfers will still have to be made to the Mechanics Bay Heliport for city operations. Even better would be for a Helipad to be added to Queens Wharf plans, suggests the idea be proposed as adding rescue and disaster resilience to the centre city.
No problem making space at the Henderson office for landing and support because of the large and low value staff car park there.
The author warns that Auckland MoT staff are likely to be jealous of this and that any announcement may also alert senior Council staff to the idea too [and their helipad], so it is important that the idea be kept under wraps until it is actioned. Suggests waiting until planned on-road staff shuttles are in place then implementing the Heli-Shuttle simply as a natural progression from these.
A sort of Super-Shuttle I guess.
No mention of the costs of this proposal in the document. But the author recommends the Eurocopter EC-130 which seat six + pilot and sell for about USD 2.1 million. A number of these are operated by Advance Flight in Onehunga and are available for lease.
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In all seriousness, the media coverage about the shuttle is a PR disaster for public transport. The shuttle story has been the talk of the town and the common perception is: “I knew it, told you so. PT is so crappy in this town even AT admit it’s too bad for their own staff to use.”
For an organisation that should be the key advocate for PT and presumably has patronage targets in their KPIs, AT staff have totally mishandled the messaging around this day after day. Good luck convincing people in future that it’s not only poor tragic people that use PT because they have no alternative. Brownlee Joyce and co will nod their heads as it’s the proof they need.
It makes me very angry as the momentum has been lost.
I agree with your definition of the problem but disagree with the solution. The PR disaster was having people lie to the public encouraging them to use trains and buses when clearly it is not the best way to get around. The answer isn’t top get rid of the shuttle but to stop trying to bullshit people.
Your right, instead they should give the public free shuttles between every two points they might want to go. Let’s not bullshit people eh, shuttle vans are obviously the best way to get around.
Medium heli’s are around $3/Km to operate. It’s about 13 Km from Henderson to CBD (as the bird flies), so with 6 pax, that’s only $6.50 per person and only 5 minutes compared to $5.60 and 45 minutes on the train!
Anyway, I am sure they have Lync, Skype, Hangouts …whatever. Surely a good cam and large desk mounted screen would be more appropriate
Personal jetpacks offer better privacy for the very important mid-level manager.
Although matter transportation devices aka “teleport” offers more range and the advantage of instantaneous transmission.of subject between the origin and destination sites.
And for those occasions when the distance is too great or the need to remain at one location is required for those oh so important face to face conversations, then remote telepresence aka “Holodeck” offers a superior solution again.
This is the funniest thing I’ve read all week. Thank you very much Mr Reynolds! After a hard days work in the garden today, I can now lie back and laugh all the way through to bedtime! This joke just keeps getting better and better!
I’d hate to be thought of as superficial but if AT are thinking about this operational strategic option with the minister in mind, might I suggest something a little more robust, such as this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mil_Mi-26. I’m sure it would fit into the envelope of a pragmatic operational decision required of decisions made by senior management at AT.
If AT thinks this story will die they’re clearly misjudged this again….
Yep!
You’re nearly three months late, Patrick. Or slightly more than nine months early.
If AT has sufficient demand to keep a helicopter busy all day, there is something wrong.
If not, the pilot isn’t going to sit around waiting for $0 per hour.
This won’t be cheap.
The building I work in has a helipad which hasn’t been used for at least 6-7 years.
wonder if the business case for the shuttle was evaluated against helicopter options?
I’m sure they did and the Helicopter had a BCR ratio better than almost all of the current RoNS projects have…
it’s not 1 April, but it could be . . . .
maybe not, from the aerials, ASB has a helipad on the roof
Maybe this “shuttle / helicopter / anything but PT” for staff policy is just history repeating itself on the ASB helipad. I can just see the smirking banker leaving in the chopper, just like the TSB bank advert, having exorcised the public sector by privatising anything profitable/efficient, leaving the punters to live with the slow train….. :-0
The idea of AT staff queuing for the helishuttle puts me in mind of this image and its variants: http://mcgarnagle.com/2012/04/20/the-saigon-evacuation/
Who do they think they are………waste of senior executives time at huge cost. Chop their pay to reasonable levels for the job they do and that will solve the problem not a helicopter.
+1
I think this is a really important point. I’m sceptical whenever AT starts talking about “how valuable their time is”. To me that’s code for “our staff are more important than the general public.” Who are left using slow, old public transport of course. That’s the message here, to which AT’s senior management currently seem oblivious/impervious.
Personally, I also happen to think that, over the course of a day, 10 minutes is “productive noise”. It’s the time it takes to brush your teeth and put on your socks and shoes, i.e. not a biggie.
In my experience as a manager, most people have bursts of productivity where they are very productive for a period (say up to an hour) and then they need to relax a bit and do something more mundane (like reading/checking what they’ve just produced). In which case, 10 minutes extra on the train is just some necessary “less productive” downtime, which in turn enables more productive activity later in the day.
Put another way, watching the minute hand on the clock is not necessarily the best way to be productive. Overall time-management across the day/week is much more crucial. To provide a case in point, if AT was really serious about saving staff time they’d really cut down on the number of long internal emails sent to staff. You could save way more time focusing on such issues than trying to squeeze down journey times between offices.
Anyway, that’s my personal view of the issue in particular and time management in general … now I’d better get back to work! 😉
Oh the wonders of photoshop. And today we heard another slight of hand from National. All that money they took away from the regions to fund RoNS they’re now giving back courtesy of asset sales. I guess they actually think people will swallow this stuff.
Unfortunately many people do swallow it, hook, line and sinker. Remember when the asset sales were to pay down debt?
Borrow money to fund the projects, use the fund to pay back the debt. Nothing to see here.
Just buy a couple of those reverse bungies, remove the seatbelts, then aim them in the general direction of AT’s offices. Easy.
Better hope AT doesn’t get ideas, this is an influential site after all!
At least the initials on the side of the helicopter is accurate. Aerial Transport:)
Says a lot about my opinion about AT that I actually thought for a few seconds this was for real. #nearlyfooled
Says a lot about my opinion about AT that I actually thought for a few seconds this was for real.
Umm, if it’s NOT real, someone is about to get their arses sued off.
Do you mean because it is libellous? This is clearly satire and noone is meant to think it is real.
You’re hired Goose! My defence is: ROFLcopter!
ROFLcopter of Local Significance.
Why is it clearly satire?
I am clearly “no one”, because it’s not clear to me, even having read it 3 times.
And this would be the first time I’ve encountered such “satire” here, which places it out of context.
There is at least one private individual in New Zealand who finds it worth while to lease a private aircraft for business travel due to the time and cost savings. Therefore it’s not unreasonable to conclude that for a group of people it becomes more effective
I see nothing in the article which is clearly over the top.
The closest being the fact the suggested model costs 2.1 million to buy.
And tossing that figure in is not atypical of the sort of slantwise reporting that we find so often, even from mainstream papers.
But since it talks about leasing instead, you would actually have to know what the lease and operational costs would be before you could even begin to know if that was relevant.
Pete’s comment from earlier, assuming he knows what he talks about, makes it reasonably cost effective, though you would have to factor in lower occupancy, and waiting times.
Thanks Roger, so I got the tone right? Satire can only work if it has some plausibility.
I would argue that AT are the ones taking the piss, I simply took their apparent inability to undertake joined up thinking and overinflated self-importance to its logical conclusion….
@Patrick I’d say you made it a bit too mild. Hence why I still don’t see it as satire.
Reading The Onion there is always a point where you go “no way”.
This article doesn’t do that to me
I would honestly be surprised if they had not considered it as a back of the envelope calculation makes the cost / time savings similar to that of the shuttle.
OK.
http://www.pilotmikekc.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/robinson-r22-ownership-cost-calculation.jpg
http://www.careers.govt.nz/jobs/transport-logistics/helicopter-pilot/about-the-job
As a rough calculation from that, it would cost < $220,000pa to operate
If they are prepared to spend $120,000 to save 5-10 minutes per trip, why would double that be unreasonable to save 15-20?
I foreshadowed it earlier in the year -National would sell assets that produce great returns (eg power companies) and invest in assets (some would call them liabilities and they would seem entitled to given they will be that) such as roads that will produce absolutely no revenue. Economic genius!
The very clever thing is that there was an online poll just last week that showed people thought country roads badly needed upgrading. It just goes to show that not everyone going to the country owns a four wheel drive, or knows that they have a function other than intimidating other road users.
AT embarrassing itself again, when are they going to move away from this childish behavior.
Yes I heard that any AT employee who has their own HOP card won’t be allowed on the helicopter so the other users won’t have to sit by the type of people who use buses and trains.
you mean the helicopter is not integrated with the HOP system? Outrageous!
Imagine how much money you would lose if you forgot to tag off!
I think there should be tag-off posts on BOTH sides of the helicopter pad. Think of the travel time savings of those six executive high-fliers not having to wait to tag off like the peons in a line. It clearly is worth the minor cost of adding an extra tag-off post or two.
Oh dear! Listening to the AT Chair supporting his CEO over this issue (on RNZ morning report) reminded me of a physician trying to keep a corpse warm. Immediate transfer of the patient to the Hospital Emergency Department is clearly required.
Shuttle buses and helicopters. What’s next- Corporate Jet. If this helicopter story is a joke then why have AT not come out to refute the story. I have not seen any replies yet from them.