I highlighted this yesterday and now Auckland Transport have officially announced that rail patronage has passed 13 million trips which is up from 11 million in March last year. By my calculation that puts patronage for Feb at about 1.2 million trips although unfortunately AT say they don’t have the exact numbers yet as are validating data from the likes of event travel suggesting the results could go even higher.
In a separate press release from Mayor Len Brown he highlighted that it’s only taken 5 months to go from 12m to 13 million trips. Below shows how long it’s taken to reach other patronage milestones and as you can see, with the exception of the 11 million figure – which was partly impacted by the RWC and change to HOP – there’s been a downward trend meaning that in general it’s taking a shorter and shorter amount of time for new milestones to be reached. There’s obviously a limit to that at some point and it’ll be interesting to see just how low that goes.
At 5 months for the next million trips it suggests we’re going to hit 14 million at around July which seems eminently likely considering that AT say more six-car trains have started rolling out on the eastern line from this week with more coming soon and Len’s press release it notes
… and that will continue to increase with the Southern Line roll-out complete by the end of this month and the Western Line roll-out completing the transition to electric trains by the middle of the year
I certainly can’t wait for them to be rolled out – although I’m getting increasingly concerned that for the Western Line in particular that it simply won’t be enough until AT eventually get around to putting 10 minute frequencies on the line – something that was promised way back in 2010 and has yet to happen.
Along with that headline figure they also highlighted a few other stats, in particular that the average patronage on a weekday in Feb was 51,500, up 10,000 on Feb last year. In addition, now during the morning peak 12,500 people are using trains to get around. I’m not quite sure how many of them are going to Britomart but likely more than half of them.
The electric trains are definitely driving a lot of patronage. AT say that the number of people using trains from stations with fully electric train services is up 50%. At Panmure patronage has doubled and at Manukau it is up a whopping 176% (from a low base). As a comparison patronage at New Lynn which hasn’t seen any real change in services for years was also up strongly on last year at 24%
However while AT and the mayor are celebrating the rail result – and rightly so given the focus on the CRL – they in some ways have buried the lead a bit. In the very last sentence of their release they say:
Overall total public transport boardings have increased by more than 9% for the twelve months to the end of February, an additional 6.6 million boardings taking the annual total to 77 million.
I suspect most cities would think that a 9% growth in patronage across the entire system is a crazy level of increase. Perhaps more impressively total patronage for the previous 12 months at the end of November just passed 75 million trips and here we are 3 months later and the result is 2 million trips higher. In addition it also suggests we’ve now once again reached the (low) level of 50 trips per person per year. The last time Aucklanders each took an average of over 50 trips on PT was in the late 1980’s (as a comparison Wellington has 74 trips per person).
I’m quite interested to see what our reader’s views are for when we will hit the next milestones. My guess is July and December for rail patronage and maybe we’ll see total patronage top 80 million in the next few months. Put your guesses in the comments.
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I suspect a lot of figures are missing thanks to fare evaders, constantly see people showing up to train stations with no interaction with a hop post or ticket machine and getting on. Also in the press release in regards to the STH trains; I assume it was referring to the end of this month (March), right?
1) they need to do more to stop this eg transit police.
2) surely they have an idea of how prevalent this is so those people should still be included in usage figures.
There a simple cost benefit calculation to this. At some point it simply costs more to chase the determined fare-dodger than it’s worth. Anyway, from a broader society view at least that kid [it’s usually kids] isn’t driving unlicensed, nicking a car, or some other more dangerous or destructive thing than sharing a ride that was going anyway… I know this view isn’t popular, paying honestly for something while someone else doesn’t is annoying.
The rollout of gates to major stations will happen, but with so much to do on a system growing at such a rate with budgets under constant attack form the forces of dreary-dom it’s understandable that other things take priority. Especially the important station upgrades to support the New Network and make life safer and more pleasant for the vast majority of honest users.
Yes at a certain point it isn’t worth chasing but at the present there is virtually no enforcement at all. If it was just a bit of missed revenue then that would be one thing, but in reality it means that the trains etc are more full because of these people meaning that fare paying passengers miss out on that seat or have a less pleasant experience. Also fare dodgers would be more likely to be trouble-makers as a generalisation since they already disrespect the law. Do we really want our nice brand new trains covered in graffiti/damaged? And from a PT perspective these people are currently not showing up in the usage stats meaning they could be the difference in future between meeting the 20 million target for CRL.
The scumbags have already vandalized the EMU’s: http://s1.postimg.org/kdv34gw7j/10959953_977824395561889_4484427867393089122_o.jpg
“from a PT perspective these people are currently not showing up in the usage stats meaning they could be the difference in future between meeting the 20 million target for CRL.”
Its not a matter of whether we reach 20 million, its only when we reach it. Yes unticketed journeys don’t count towards the total, but some fare dodging always happens on any PT system around the world.
And at best, those fare dodgers might delay the 20m target by a month or 2 at the numbers we’re getting now.
In Melbourne, I don’t think I have ever been on a train that doesn’t have graffiti on it…taggers might think it’s street art, or train art…
Greg, if these fare evaders make up 10% of passengers then at 20million thats 2 million! That’s a years difference.
Yes there will always be some fare evading but on all the various metro systems I’ve been on around the world I would say they’re pretty on to it. Only exception would be LA which doesn’t have gates or tap etc.
NZTA/AT need to open network network gates fully to bus. Keeping bus blocked in network is so unethical, when there are full buses everywhere. Believe network so bad must be affecting ambulance times, surely bus lanes would help these guys too and all emergency services. When do things override to civil defence, I think now. Road Maintenance could turn tap on to bus fully overnight. Limited bus operational budget, bus owners fighting new network, or buying small buses it is all just ridiculous and starting to magnify bad effects on PT growth.
Bus demand, wants to fly vertical but can’t. Really not helping anyone in all modes, not to mention being fiscally smart with bus operational funds. Sure light rail great in future but what about full scale bus and preferably seperated cycle lane widths marked right now!!
Teams in charge of resurfacing including contract rates for roadmarking, road maintenance, and traffic signals have full capability to change the entire priority on all arterials in no more than ,2 weeks. Tell ops the new strategic fit.
If we can arrange a milling and asphalt milling operation in 5 weeks with all the milling machines in town, and the whole Bitumix paving crews going 24 hrs on all the main streets in the CBD for the APEC conference back in 1999 on Queen St etc in daylight around live pededtrians as night control shut us down surely a large scale roadmarking only and signal repriorisation can be done. Seperated cycling widths 4m and full bus lanes wherever possible. Just saying you have the resources and now demand for change as well as probable emergency services delays currently.
Uh, what? This was particularly incoherent.
OK will try to make clearer. NZTA and AT have contracts in place for roadmarking, signals and road maintenance if they need to.move traffic islands etc. They just need a directive. I looked after Road Maintenance for CBD for Bitumix with a 3 yr contract to Auckland City. We had a directive, fix all roads in the CBD before the APEC summit, this came from the top. At first it seemed like mission impossible, but with efforts across all teams, communications ,parking enforcement and a programme we got there. Actually we built up so much momentum it was hard to slow down. Just comparing that to a remark only and signal works only but no milling asphalt down 35mm or so and rehotmixing and remarking but larger scale and all teams not just central road maintenance.
Got to say also that big scale gets instant results, and is so much cheaper and better use of resources for all parties concerned rather than doing a little bit at a time. A bit like individual capex projects on each mode vs Network wide priority changes. Len Brown just has to say to AT and NZTA maximise Rapid Transit, Bus, Seperated Cycle lane widths ie 1m extra width, and improve pedestrian amenity full scale.
If I was part of the pro-car, pro-motorway lobby I’d focus on the purple line in the bottom graph. It has hardly moved! This suggests that all the hype about growth in PT usage is really just catch-up of a few years of under investment and once that is achieved the annual growth will be back down to keeping up with population growth ~1.8% p.a. So I wouldn’t rush out to spend too much on PT and get ahead of the curve. Better to keep the tarmac flowing, that’s what people want.
Matt loves his zero-rated long time period charts, and they’re great. But to truly see the strength of the current discontinuity we need to show some zoomed in ones.
But anyway it’s what happens at the margin that matters. As a driver I sure as hell don’t want 10,000 new weekday trips on the road in front of me, do you? Every driver should be extremely grateful for every penny spent on the rail network. And they will be even more grateful for the next 10k not on their road, and the 10k after that too. AKL has a long way to catch up to those rich and thriving Canadian cities with well over 100 PT trips per capita.
Also the economics of space means that Transit uptake always be in advance of population growth in a growing city of scale like AKL, the great Jarrett Walker explains why here: http://www.humantransit.org/2015/01/basics-should-i-vote-for-a-transit-tax.html
And here is an example of spending on more motorway space doesn’t work, and doesn’t work expensively: http://www.laweekly.com/news/11-billion-and-five-years-later-the-405-congestion-relief-project-is-a-fail-5415772
The tarmac *does* keep flowing. Problem is, the cars on the tarmac don’t.
yes I think this is a good point Steve.
In a context of 10 years of falling VKT per capita, modest increases in PTKT per capita is a positive outcome.
Agreed but would be interesting graph if added 3rd variable how much money spent last 60 years vs car, and pt to per vkt and per capita.
Not sure why AT isn’t doing everything possible to get rail patronage up as soon as possible to get the government’s money. Some things they could do now (or very soon):
a) Run the entire rail network at full capacity at all times. We must have enough trains to do this now. Yes some trains will be empty and fare box recovery will drop, buts its only temporary until people realise the service is frequent enough to be a genuine option for them.
b) Implement the new bus networks ASAP. Do they really require multi million dollar interchange buildings? Wouldn’t some cheap rain covering do for now?
c) Look at decreasing fares, especially for longer trips where it does get quite expensive.
d) Improve the city link buses so people who don’t work near Britomart have a viable option
e) Any others?
A problem with increasing frequency is that you get increasing problems with level crossings. I think that we will see 25-30 million boardings per annum before the CRL is completed. There are ways to get this traffic through Britomart and Newmarket. The Puhinui-Westfield constraint can also be dealt with, possibly with a third main, but there are still thirty or so level crossings on the electric network, and these need to be dealt with, either by closure or grade separation, and this has to happen before the CRL can be used effectively. At present, only one is scheduled for work.
Imagine going to five minute frequencies, which would mean some crossings closing 24 times/hour. The level of aberrant driver behaviour would escalate dramatically. I know there are those on this site who would regard a Darwinian solution to the driver problem as quite welcome, but the trains do have to stop while all the reports get filled in.
It’s no secret that KiwiRail is short of the ready cash, so someone has to find ($200 million?) the money, and soon.
Level crossings between Westfield and Puhinui must be pretty crazy if there are any, since Eastern’s 10 min frequency joined with Southerns would mean theres a train about every 2.5 minutes at peak (counting both directions).
Level crossings start south of Te Mahia on the Southern.
Eric is right, third main, level crossings getting urgent.
Adding long sections of additional track to the eastern line where more cost effective to accommodate more freight traffic could to the port may be necessary?
Don’t trains have right of way? If so any fixes to crossing surely is out of roading budget which isn’t really suffering.
I agree level crossings are important and need to be dealt with, but to say Auckland is at critical level with its 30 or so crossings is a bit of an over exaggeration.
Melbourne by comparison has over 170 in the metro area, and a lot of those are on lines that have higher frequencies than any Auckland line. The state government is going to be spending a $5b soon on closing the 50 worst ones. Even though they’re certainly a hinderance, this is more for road users than anything than the rail network. It annoys me that this considered spending on public transport, when it’s clearly a roading project.
Sarawia street is the only one that I would consider to be ‘desperate’. Luckily for Auckland, most of the busiest parts of the network are already grade seperated and for the parts that aren’t, most of them are on small side streets and not busy main aterials There are few exceptions to this, but I would suspect no more than about 3 or 4 are truely urgent (St Jude St in Avondale pops to mind as one of those).
Woodward rd on the Western….
Morningside Drive
asquith ave
City Link is ridiculous, needs both end boarding and more capacity, also needs better priority. Its packed like a sardine can almost all the time and is slower than walking at times. Sure its free but that’s no excuse.
An observation about City Link… the last 4 times I’ve been to Auckland, and taken the City Link bus, i’ve been the only white guy on the bus, out of about 40-60 passengers. Not sure what that says really, but it’s interesting nonetheless. My guess is that older, crustier, white men like Brian Leyland (never met him, but I’m making a presumption here…) don’t use public transport, but instead prefer to drive in their own car, probably mostly alone. To that end therefore, he sees no point in public transport subsidies. The younger, browner, less affluent constituents of Auckland though, can’t afford a car / don’t want a car / don’t need a car – and are flocking to use the City Link buses. The future of the city is theirs – not his.
City link is used by people who live in town. A lot of those are Asian, maybe most?
The city link, like the city, is used by humans. What is your point?
I disagree. I see a preponderance of superannuitants on all buses, not just the City link. As for the only white face, well that seems to say more about you than any bus load of people. That City link seems full of tourists, of all hues.
I’ll go out on a limb.
Future population of 2mil with at least 100 PT rides per capita = 200mil boardings pa. Rapid Transit will be carrying an increasing amount of the total, and rail will remain the core of the RTN. 80-100 boarding pa. When? I have no idea about likely population growth rates. But am certain that we are witnessing a stronger and secular shift to more urban forms of habitation, movement, employment, and socialisation. PT will continue to grow strongly regardless of population changes or car sales and other factors. We can inhibit it though by not investing in good networks and systems.
The choice is ours.
Patrick take your 200 million PA figure and fold it at least once 🙂
The real figure will be 2-3 times whatever the PT use per capita as people will be changing modes to complete journeys, so you will have bus/train;/bus journeys (bus/train) as routine and faster than driving anywhere.
AT counts trips not journeys (as thats the thing the Government counts too), so every multi-mode journey (bus/train/bus etc) doubles or triples the trips per capita over that current 50.
If we had a working integrated fare system now, the true level of PT trips would be 75 or 100 trips per capita in short order, then once we get to 2 million pop and 100 trips per capita annually, the actual patronage will be more like 400 to 600 million PT trips annually.
Nice problem to have but are AT and the PT operators scaling up for it?
On Level Crossings – priority #47 (p.108 of Draft RLTP) has a total of $242.7 million pencilled in for level crossing separation BUT this is presently unfunded so the actual budget available remains at zero. There is no narrative to explain how many crossings this would pay for but from the limited documentation available elsewhere I think this would cover up to 10 of the 31 suburban crossings. With a further half dozen or so being possible candidates for closure [e.g. once Walters & Manuroa Roads are grade-separated then nearby Taka Street & Spartan Road could be closed] this would deal with about half the problem within the decade (2015-2025). Please submit to AT requesting a more nuanced approach [rather than the all-or- nothing approach in the draft] so that at least some of the money becomes available in this RLTP even if limited funding means there is not enough to do the lot. Auckland has known about this problem for a decade and has yet to commit to resolving it.
Graeme, you’ll be pleased to know that the Essential Budget includes full funding of Grade Separation as shown in the RLTP.
Not sure how they can do that so cheap, 10 for $200m is a comparative bargain. The Victorian government is looking to spend around $4.5b-$5b on 50 crossings in Melbourne, so about $100m each on average although I do suspect they’re probably ‘gold plating’ these crossings a little bit.
Melbourne has quite a task however, many of those crossings are multiple tracks and/or multi lane highways, they have them in town centres, next to motorway on ramps, etc. Also Melbourne’s flatness means every separation is a high bridge or long underpass, in AK we can sometimes take advantage of the terrain.
Can I ask if the eletrification of the southern line is complete now, and electric trains are running all the way to Papakura?
Yes, however only around 5 services a day, only on weekdays, are EMU’s, the rest are still run as SA’s or ADL’s since those drivers are still being trained.
This is the running times of EMU’s on the STH, weekdays only, credit to Ben Ross!
BRT-PKA 1038-1130
PKA-BRT 1136-1232
BRT-PKA 1238-1330
PKA-BRT 1336-1432
10,000 people extra a day. That’s like 250 busloads, Or a four lane motorway at full capacity for over an hour.
lets say that all growth were cbd peak trips 5000 each way each day, that’s 2500 an hour, to achieve the same with roads we would need 4000 carparks and sn extra lane from seart to town at least
Imagine what the numbers would look like if they counted all the people who simply don’t pay but use the trains.
Patronage growth may well hit a stumbling block fairly soon with services being too full and turning patrons away. The western line train services out of the city are difficult to squeeze into at Grafton at the afternoon peak. One of the trips last week I literally had to squeeze in to let the doors shut. It’s otherwise always standing room only.
Today trying to catch a New North Road/Sandringham bus service out of the city from upper Symonds St was impossible just after 5pm. The services were full and not stopping. One bus stopped at the Dominion Rd stop to let people off, and when the NNR/Sandringham hoard approached to board the driver closed the doors and drove off.
We need to get better frequencies. The trains run only every 15 minutes and if there is a delay in going to 10 minutes I’m not sure how the services will cope. There is a bus every 2-5 minutes, but this is still insufficient. Either more double deckers or a bus every minute.
The western will be getting EMUs later in the year, the big questions are how many services, ie will we finally get the 10min freqs long promised, and how many of them will be 6 car sets?
Buses? Hard to improve on 2min frequencies, is NZ bus buying bigger buses, hard to for those routes if AT are telling them they are to be replaced by LRT in the near term?
I think we can be confident that if there’s the growth to justify LRT, then double deckers can be used on other routes.
Patronage Growth with also take a hit if Auckland Transport can’t get their act together, Today at Glen Innes at 8.35ish an announcement came over the loud speaker saying that the next train had been cancelled, two minutes later a six car EMU rumbles through with lots of space, and then an announcement the following train would be delayed. End result was 60 odd people left late for work, when there was no reason, plus all the others at other stations we didn’t see. How many of those people will drive tomorrow or next week.
Higher patronage would be almost guaranteed if kids were allowed to travel free on weekends with a Hop Card holder. Do it AT!
Why not a variant where you allow kids to travel for a $1 flat fare all day all week? Reason being you want their tag on/off data for planning and patronage purposes.
P.s $1 flat fare with hop card. Get them using it young i say.
Agreed $1 for kids. We also need Senior Citizens to use hop at all times even if free after 9am. Family Pass in weekends on bus and train not $24 try $11 like Perth. $10 all stage day pass like Calgary even $12. Then it looks even more financially viable for all.
I’d let kids go free with HOP card, otherwise $1. The priority is getting them used to public transport and for many kids the $1 is something that they might not have on them every day. Just one bad tag-off can blow away their HOP card funds in a flash.
Stephen F, Perth’s $11 all-day Family Pass also includes ferries, and covers a family of two adults and five kids. It’s just what we need to revitalise weekend public transport in Auckland, and would make family trips to parks, to the museum or MOTAT, to lantern festivals or Christmas parades all affordable by public transport.
Right now it costs my family over $50 to go to MOTAT by PT – and in Devo I’m only ten minutes from Britomart, so it must be even worse for people further out or with more kids. We can do so much better for our families than pricing them out of public transport.
I think $1 works. It’s a nominal charge, and likely to secure more support from AT. The marginal cost is pretty low.
If we smashed the fares and smashed network priority to PT and active modes on all our arterials. Then kaboom!!
In response to your question being “quite interested to see what our reader’s views are for when we will hit the next milestones”. I think for rail 14 million might be in September and 15 Million maybe around January 2015. My cloudy crystal ball is saying this because I think the rapid increase we just saw (5 months to add an extra million) has been influenced by fewer closures over weekends and Christmas recently. I also think capacity issues on the Western line is limiting growth. So we need the electric trains and people to get use of the idea that during peak hours Morningside, Kingsland and Mt Eden station are a viable option (my colleagues at work say they do not take the train because there is no room). So I am expecting 1 or 2 months after we see 6 car trains fully implemented on the Western line that we will hit 14 million
However, AT install some gates at Grafton, New Lynn, Mt Albert and Henderson…then catching fare evades might push us over the14 million mark. Of course if AT discounted evenings and weekend fares as well (where there is more capacity on the trains) I think getting another 1 million could happen. I think growth thought this year and next year will be high (maybe 17.5 million by the end of 2016 depending on Otahuhu Station and the Southern Initiative being in place). But I think things will slow down abit in 2017 (maybe 18.5 million) and 20 million late 2018/mid 2019 (unless of course there are a few initiative put in place or petrol prices spike again (my theory is that PT is elastic to increases in petrol price but somewhat inelastic to price decreases once people get use to it).
This is certain to be the busiest month since the 1950s, with bus services overflowing. There has been a real underpreparation for the latent demand, and we may see constrained growth for a while, held back by lack of service.
Surely farebox recovery must shoot up above 100% when buses are full – and if not, how are we running full services at a loss?
There are many routes during off peak times which have very few people in it. Therefore the profit making peak time services essentially subsidises the loss making off peak services. As there are more loss making services than profit making services, I doubt that farebox recovery would even be close to 100%
It is now the near the end of March, do we have the February PT patronage figures yet?
Yes and post coming shortly
[Not to steal Matts thunder, a quick taste though[:
Rail was just under 13m (the 13m barrier was crossed back in early March as announced the Auckland Conversations event).
See this link for the Monthly stats report if want details:
https://at.govt.nz/media/1043944/Item-9-February-PT-Patronage-monthly-report.pdf
from that report:
“Auckland public transport patronage totalled 77,088,240 passenger trips for the 12 months to
Feb-2015, an increase of +0.8% on the 12 months to Jan-2015 and +9.5% on the 12 months to
Feb-2014. February monthly patronage was 6,683,047, an increase of 608,194 boardings or
+10.0% on Feb-2014, normalised to ~ +11.9% accounting for only special event patronage, as
there were the same number of business and weekend days in Feb-2015 compared to Feb-
2014. Financial year to date patronage has grown by +10.2%.”
and
“Auckland public transport patronage totalled 77,088,240 passengers for the 12 months to
Feb-2015, an increase of +0.8% on the 12 months to Feb-2015 and +9.5% on the 12 months
to Feb-2014 as illustrated in Figure 1. February monthly patronage was 6,683,047, an
increase of 608,194 boardings or +10.0% on Feb-2014, normalised to ~ +11.9%.”
Overall all PT usage up 9.5% on last year, on a rolling 12 months basis compared to a rolling 12 months to Feb 2014, and 8.9% ahead of (woefully low) Statement of Intent targets for 2014/15 Financial year.
Rail is again the stand out for Feb at 34.1% up on Feb 2014, when “normalised” (as compared to Feb last year) and is now 19.5% ahead of a rolling 12 months when compared to the rolling 12 months to end of Feb 2014.
So bring on those March figures, I figure we’re gonna bust the patronage figures and all the old trains at the same time in March.
thanks for that….I though I missed it somewhere. I was wondering about the strange peakinesss (not sure if this is a word) of the graph (especially around the 11 million mark). Is that a rugby world cup thing or is it a capacity issue. If you ignore the 11 million dataset and take the data from the 8 million mark then the rate of increase of passenger number is increasing but the rate of change is beginning to flatten off (like an asymptote). Probably reading too much in the data.
thanks again for complying the information