The Auckland Transport board meet today and other than the outstanding patronage results, here are the other items on the on the agenda or in the public reports of note. Firstly the closed session which once again contains quite a few interesting topics including:
- Newmarket Crossing – This is the Sarawia St level crossing issue.
- Penlink Designation – AT have been looking to make changes to the existing designation to Penlink although hopefully this doesn’t mean it is moving any closer to actually being built.
- CCFAS2 – AT are being very secretive about just what the second CCFAS is looking at.
- Integrated Fares Business Case
- Amendments to Statement of Intent 2014-17 – perhaps they’re correcting for the really low rail patronage targets.
- Parking Consultation Analysis – the feedback from the draft parking strategy consultation a few months ago.
- CBD/West Transport – I’m not sure what this is about but I was told it is confidential as involves property acquisitions (or the potential for them).
On to the items that are in the public session. From the board report:
AT are responsible for developing a region wide wayfinding system. Some of it has started to appear and they say the next stage will see precinct specific signage go through user testing and stakeholder feedback in January and February next year.
Construction of the Wolverton to Maioro cycle route will happen over the year end school holidays
AT say after reviewing feedback to the consultation on cycling routes through Wynyard they are now looking at alternative options. You may recall these are the cycling routes that many of the local marine businesses complained about claiming the loss of parking would destroy their businesses despite them having off street parking and the on-street parks being empty a large amount of the time.
AT are still working on the new Otahuhu Bus-Train interchange however they seem to be getting more vague about when it will be completed. This is important as the roll out of new network for South Auckland is reliant on the completion of this interchange and when announced at the end of last year was planned for mid-2015. In August they said the bus portion was targeted for completion in July 2015 with the rail upgrade completed by the December 2015. In September they said the target for completion was by the end September 2015 although this wasn’t specific to modes like August was. Now they are saying the interchange is scheduled for completion in the last quarter of 2015 and aligned to the new network. This suggests a delay both for the interchange and for the bus network rollout.
There are now 29 of a total 57 EMU’s now in Auckland with 24 unit’s with provisional acceptance (up from 20 in the September report). They say two more are due to arrive in November and another seven in December. Regular train users will have seen the EMUs start to be stabled at the old Auckland Railway station as Wiri only has the capacity to store 28 trains.
There is more detail about the upcoming timetable change which will be the first major one for a number of years. It will come in on the 8th December and as we found out last month all services from Pukekohe or Papakura will go via Newmarket and all services from Manukau will be via Glen Innes. The services on the Manukau line will increase to 10 minute frequencies and should also hopefully include some longer trains. Now AT are also stating that weekend trains to Onehunga will also see improvement moving to a 30 minute frequency (it would be good if they did 30 minute frequencies on weekdays too). Early testing of electric trains on the Western line has also commenced after Kiwirail finally finished in September, over a year late.
The first stage of AMETI is now effectively complete. The new road parallel to the rail line and which includes a 220m tunnel next to the station, named Te Horeta Rd, opens to traffic this Sunday 2nd November and there’s a public open day on Saturday 1st from 11am to 3pm. A separate paper to the board shows some before and after photos. AT say there is still expected to be some minor works on the project till early next year and that the final cost for this stage is expected to be $212 million compared to the project budget of $239 million. Here is a video from AT of the road.
HOP use as a percentage of all trips remained at 71% after jumping strongly in July and August following the change in fares from early July despite AT selling 15,000 new ones in September. AT say that now almost 420,000 have been sold with around 56% of them registered. The exact figures aren’t clear but it appears that HOP use for rail and bus is approximately 79% and 69% respectively. We’re now almost two years since HOP first started rolling out so this got me thinking about how the uptake of HOP compares to similar situations overseas. Back in May 2013 AT received this report from Deloitte doing just that. In the absence of the actual data behind the graphs, I’ve manually added approximately where HOP is and as you can see the result looks pretty good. I would suggest to AT staff that they might want to highlight this fact.
In a good move AT now have an agreement in place with Budgetary Agencies which allows them to give out a free HOP card as part of the assistance they give to clients.
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Matt, AT says this in this month Transport Indicators section of the Board reports:
“66.7% of all trips in September 2014 were made with AT HOP; up from 66.4% in August 2014. In September 2014, 67.9% of bus trips used AT HOP, 75.4% of train trips used AT HOP and 23.7% of ferry trips used AT HOP”
So, on that basis, you’re figures for HO{P uptake are slighty too high.
But even so I’d say that given the Monthly stats report shows HOP paper singles are about 20% of all rail trips currently and has been like that for 18 months solid, so with HOP rail usage at 75% is getting pretty much to the maximum possible without something to entice those paper ticket users to a HOP.
The only way to drive that figure up is probably make that 20% “rump” of paper HOP singles users switch to HOP with some more attractive incentives?
Might also explain why HOP usage is so low for Ferry users? – No incentive to use it.
BTW You can find this figure of HOP usage by mode in the recent Monthly Transport indicators report each month – so you could fill in the gaps in your graph using previous versions of these reports to get the rail and bus HOP usage split.
The 71% comes from the business report (near the end) which includes other HOP data such as revenues. Odd that they’re different
Hmm maybe this report only counts “HOP card” (i.e. HOP singles paid by HOP card) and ignores one or both of: HOP “monthly” or HOP “other” type journeys?
Hence the diff.?
The reason Hop use is so low for ferry users is that it is not possible to put monthly or ten trip tickets on the Hop card. You have to use a separate card (Captain’s Club Card! – sounds like something I would have got at Cobb & Co as a kid) and then load on the monthly.
I use the ferry at least 10 times per week and none of those will register as Hop journeys.
There really needs to be some pressure on Fullers to integrate so that the Hop monthly pass includes ferries and ferry monthly passes can be loaded on to the Hop card. It is a real pain having to carry around two cards.
For the HOP card adoption, we had HOP-Snapper cards introduced out three and a half years ago, which was then supplanted by AT HOP. Auckland’s had already been introduced to smart cards on PT before the AT HOP card was released. The curve for Auckland would probably look the same as other cities if Snapper was added.
All of the bus operators had their own cards and Snapper HOP however only worked on a single bus company. As such AT Hop represents the first multi-modal ticket, so including in usage of all the predecessors doesn’t make much sense.
So this ‘new road’ that they seem so pleased about cost double what electrification to Pukekohe will cost and half the cost of the new trains. It seems like extremely poor value for money, especially when you consider how uni-modal it is, and the large amount of land that’s now been wasted to build it. Land that could have easily fit hundreds of apartments in a TOD right next to Panmure Train Station and Town Centre.
The train station itself looks a pretty minor part of a project that from the flyovers looks to be dominated by huge swathes of new roads. Will work well as a transfer between bus and rail, but other than that it doesn’t seem like it will result in any good place making. New Lynn is looking like a model of urban planning c.f. this.
I agree. AMETI has been a huge investment for what seems like not much at all.
I heard the other day about an AT Hop card holder whose credit card had expired. The card was linked to an auto topup of an AT Hop card, and when the top up did not occur, the AT Hop card was black-listed and could no longer be used, even though it had credit on it. Has this happened to anyone else, and does anyone know why AT do this?
Known issue apparently, which reminds me my HOP card auto-top up has an expired credit card on it, but seems really hard to update the credit card on their site for some reason.
This happened to me. I strongly recommend that HOP is not linked to a credit card and that AT should strongly suggest that too. Or find a solution.
I just turned auto-topup off on all my HOP cards (yep I carry two – with different balances on them – so I can be more immune to HOP reader caused problems if I don’t have cash for a paper ticket on me).
And if for example the HOP reader won’t read either card I can bet the problem is with the HOP reader/system not my cards.
Pain the arse to have to do AT’s work for them and manage your own balances like this.
There is good news above as Auckland rediscovers its latent modes, but the fly through shows how we have a huge distance to go in understanding how to integrate Transit stations and their surroundings to much more productive effect. Like at New Lynn, it seems we can only upgrade a train station by spending millions on new roads, roads which then ensure that very little development near and adjacent to the new or improved station can take place. This is an enormous lost opportunity, especially as it follows decades of hiding or severing access to the rail network with motorways and other roads, so to be continuing it now as we upgrade these places seems foolish, or half-baked at best.
At least the bus connection is good at both these stations and that justifies some of the new roadwork, but for Panmure itself to benefit directly from the new station it needs to be connected into the built and walking fabric directly. New commercial and residential opportunities need to be maximised in close proximity to the new resource, with as little separation by traffic and parking as possible.
I’m surprised that there isn’t an item on route protection for rail to the airport. This is coming to a head with the design of Kirkbride Road not currently accommodating a future rail corridor in its design.
Doesn’t really surprise me, I doubt AT themselves want anything to do with rail to the airport so anything that makes it more expensive and tilts their study in the favour of doing nothing and maintaining the status quo of expensive airbuses will be fine for them.
I’m interested to see what the access charge for the airport station will be, even thought airport company have said they’re not going to contribute to the costs of building the station and associated infrastructure.
Access charges and cost are details for the future.
The airport rail route needs designation.
It should have been done years ago before any of the development occurred along SH20A and SH20B. Some of these buildings will now create additional expense, as will the Kirkbridge Rd interchange.
It needs doing before any of the East-West link plans get in the way. I believe pretty much all of these involve more road construction around Onehunga and will cross the rail corridor in some way. How hard can it be to designate a route under the motorway bridges, across the harbour and along side the motorway?
why do you think airbuses are expensive? Brisbane’s AirTrain is AUD $16 and Sydney’s rail is about the same.
I think you’re conflating two issues. One is whether an airpoint link is subsidised, the other is whether its bus/rail. AT could, for example, decide to run a subsidised service right now if we wanted to. Or go to AirBus and offer to subsidise their services.
And in Auckland’s case there is a subsidised alternative: Train to Papatoetoe and then 380 to Airport. Integrated fares and higher frequencies will make this route even more viable. And ultimately if people use this option to access the airport then there will be pressure on the airbus to drop their fares and/or offer a HOP discount.
Excellent summary. Thanks
It doesn’t sound like the major train timetable change is happening in December after all. Apparently February at the earliest.
I thought the December timetable change included increased frequency on the weekends. Is that now gone? I hope not, because with changing all services via GI to Manukau, then weekend freq. south of Homai decrease to hourly only.
With the removal of Southern trains from the GI line, in Weekends you’d be right you’d get only 1 per hour.
And this change was set for 8 December, so it would be in place for 2 weeks before the Xmas shutdown for 2 weeks.
But from Geoffs comment sounds like the whole no southern Trains on GI line and increased Manukau services is not happening.
If the Southern trains stay on the GI line then no increase in Manukau trains is needed in the weekend.
But as Geoff alludes to that 6 trains per hour in peaks on the GI line does play havoc with/is impacted by the freight trains that also use those lines to get to/from POAL.
Maybe the AT board realise its a bit more complicated than they thought?
Isn’t the increased freq on the eastern accomodated by switching Papkura and Papatoetoe services all to the southern line trains? And therefore also means an increase in freq on that route?