The NRL Nines has undoubtedly been a fantastic event for Auckland that is quickly becoming one of Auckland’s best. News from Auckland Transport today has highlighted another area where the event is succeeding, in PT use.
The NRL Nines, held at Eden Park, was a huge success, both on the field and for public transport.
Over the two days of league matches a record 67% of the crowd (41,964) used special event buses or trains to get and from the stadium.
That is an increase of around 13% on last year’s numbers and far surpasses other events held at the park, says Auckland Transport’s operations manager for special events, Logan Christian.
Ten years ago virtually no one used public transport to get to and from major events, he says. “That all changed with the provision of special services for Rugby World Cup (2011) and other big matches, but until now we have not cracked the 60% mark.”
He says public transport patronage is usually between 50-55%.
“Clearly Nines fans got the message that buses and trains are the fastest and most hassle-free way to go.”
On the Sunday there were some train delays on the western line due to a car accident at a level crossing near New Lynn and a signalling issue at Kingsland but these were dealt with quickly by Auckland Transport’s Operations Centre (ATOC).
The next major event at Eden Park is the ICC Cricket World Cup match between New Zealand and Australia on February 28.
“We are hopeful that we will see even better numbers for that game and throughout the major events season of 2015”, Mr Christian says.
A great result so well done AT and all those who attended
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Can you guys tell me why a lot of events have free NEX travel with tickets but not for busses in other parts of the City?
It’s basically because the special way the NEX and rail are contracted allows AT to easily do that, they’re also the four busiest regional routes so it makes sense to do one each North, South, East and West.
In addition to the rapid transit lines they also had free special event buses from Pakuranga, Manukau, Botany and Takapuna.
Is that also why Pacifika doesn’t have special event buses from Newmarket any more like it used to, cos NZ Bus charges too much to run them (or doesn’t make enough money from it) and/or won’t play ball with AT?
One of Eden Park’s few saving graces is its access to PT relative to Albany and Mt Smart. It also seems to work better for all day events like the Nines where the crowd arrival and departure can be dispersed throughout the day rather than concentrated around a two hour event period.
Would also be interested to know what percentage walked as there was a lot of brisk marchers up Dom Rd in the mornings and a fair few shufflers on the way back in the evenings.
Shouldn’t the aim be for the service on the western line (and the rest of the Rapid Transit Network) to be so frequent that ‘special event services’ aren’t needed at all on game days?Perhaps there may need to be additional services and/or longer trains around event times, but that service to usual customers isn’t disrupted but rather augmented?
PS And well done everyone.
Additionally; talk about latent demand! Build it and they will come, what other good things are invisible in Auckland simply because the service isn’t there yet?
I think the special event services refers mostly to buses, not trains.
Certainly the EMU’s on the Eastern Line on the Sunday ran to a normal half hourly Sunday Timetable, the trains were full, but not too full. No special services.
Britomart was busy, but no worse than a normal weekday. Everything just worked.
Be even better when all trains are EMUs for both capacity and for passenger experience.
As many people will be trying modern RTN systems for the first time when they go to the game like this, and if it can get them there on time – AND *just as importantly), get them back home again at the end of the day, reasonably quickly, then they are just likely to start using PT for other things too.
This.
I caught the train out of Vancouver on Saturday night – there was a Canucks game on but there were no special services – the normal train service gets busy but copes fine. It’s ‘only’ an 18,000 people capacity stadium but everyone arrives by train, bus or foot.
Glad to not have the usual whinging herald article about how it was all a massive cockup though!
Providing free travel on the NEX services for special events is a good idea but unfortunately they never put on any additional services. So the regular users are inconvenienced by overcrowding or getting left behind and the event goers are left with a poor impression of public transport.
This may be a dumb question but how do they measure the numbers taking PT for this event?
I ask because normally for these events a ticket gets free travel, so it’s not like there is an electronic measure available.
It can be worked out, if a bus is full, but HOP only shows 5 paying passengers, then ipso facto the rest are “game ticket” holders so take those 5 of a “full bus load” of people and thats the number of PT users going to the game by PT for that bus load.
Same for the trains, they can calculate how many train loads they delivered to the Kingsland or Morningside train station similarly as well.
It is an estimate, but a reasonably accurate one. And I think probably at least as, if not more accurate than those crowd attendance figures you see at a lot of games.
They do it electronically; ticket collectors come round as normal, and scan the barcode on the game tickets.
On the NEX they just show the driver their event ticket. I’m pretty sure the driver doesn’t log any data on the ticket machine so as far as I can tell there is no official record of how many people used the service.
I have never had my game ticket scanned whilst catching the train to Eden park.
Any idea when full EMU weekend services start? It’d be a good look to have them running for Cricket World Cup games at Eden Park