Over the years there have been a wide range of patronage targets for public transport. There are high level targets in the 30 year Auckland Plan, 10 years of annual targets in the Long Term plan which are updated every three years and three years of annual targets updated annually in both the council’s Annual Plan and Auckland Transport’s Statement of Intent. Of course there is also the government’s target to start construction of the CRL earlier than 2020.

The targets are important as they are used to monitor how AT are performing – not that I’m sure anything happens if the targets aren’t met. We’ve talked before about patronage targets. In particular how following the drop in patronage in the 2012/13 year AT pushed for the targets to be lowered which the council agreed to in 2014. That left the ridiculous situation where the rail target to the end of June this year was only 12.1 million trips, an increase of just 700k over the year before despite the roll out of electric trains happening. As it happens patronage is currently at 13.5 million trips and predicted to reach 13.8 million by the end of June.

AT pushing to have the targets reduced has also been used by the Ministry of Transport to justify their position that Auckland won’t meet the CRL targets of 20 million trips prior to 2020. A bit of an own goal really.

On to the point of the post. Just over a week ago the council agreed on new patronage targets that would go into their Long Term Plan which were revised from the earlier drafts. You can see the figures that were agreed by the councillors which are slightly different from those originally on the agenda.

2015-25 LTP agreed patronage targets

As you can see, by 2025 the target is for patronage to be 110.7 million trips which is a bit short of the 140 million trips by 2022 the Auckland Plan envisioned – although to be a little bit fair some projects like the CRL were expected sooner. Given the time-frame and PT growth I think we can expect in Auckland through all the changes planned I think that 110 million tips is a bit light. Based on current population projections it would represent a per capita usage of less than 60 trips per year (currently we’re just over 50).  As an example over the next few years the last of the electric trains will roll out along with the New Network and integrated fares. Those alone should see big boosts to patronage numbers and as the charts below show. The problem is only the rail network seems to have any step change factored in.

Of course around 2022 or 2023 we should also see the City Rail Link open and again we should see significant boosts in numbers, especially on the rail network. One of the reasons for this might be because while the LTP’s are a 10 year document, the focus is only really on the first three years till the next revision.

So here are the charts showing the changes and how they compare to the previous targets from the 2012-22 LTP plus the 2013 and 2014 versions of Auckland Transport’s Statement of Intent. As mentioned only the rail network sees any significant change from figures previously expected and if we meet the new target the CRL patronage target will be achieved some time around 2018.

2015-25 LTP agreed patronage targets - Charts

And below is an indication of the how much change is expected in each year. I find it odd that patronage would drop off just as the new network is likely being completed as that alone should provide a big boost from more people transferring from bus to train.

2015-25 LTP Targets - annual change

Slightly related, a presentation I saw recently contained a version of this next chart showing what level patronage could be at over the next 30 years out to 2046. I think it shows quite well the impact the CRL and light rail – even though buses will still dominate the modes.

Future patronage projection

What do you think of the targets, are they ambitious enough?

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24 comments

  1. Who comes up with these numbers – the council or AT? If it’s AT then of course they’re going to be stupidly low as management probably has bonuses attached to hitting them and of course they want their bonus.

    1. Yes it all seems a bit pointless having targets when the only result of missing them is they get rivised down. Why not just wait and set the ‘targets’ for a period at the end if that period? No need for revisionism then.

  2. The 45km of buslanes alone are likely to significantly improve the speed and reliability and therefore utility and attractiveness of core bus routes.

    Those and other changes, if executed well, make bus numbers look light.

    If AT don’t sort the rail reliability and especially those terrible dwell times they may find rail takes longer to attract more users. The trains should spend no more than 30 sec at each station. Fix it AT; you’re wasting your customers’ lives.

    1. Increasing speed and reliability will not increase patronage unless there are more buses for people to ride. A late bus is not good, but a no bus (because it went straight past my stop) is worse.

      1. If 6 buses operate on a route that takes 1 hour to do the round trip, and the trip time improves to 40 minutes, assuming that the six buses still operate, what is the % improvement in capacity?

        Answer: The six buses can operate a capacity of six busloads in the first instance, and nine busloads in the second. The 33% time saving means a 50% capacity increase at no extra cost.

  3. That final graph shows how much of a negative impact the whole privatisation of PT that occurred around 1990 was for PT. Imagine if this hadn’t of happened and that even modest growth had occurred in the 1990-2000 timeframe where our numbers would be now! I would estimate they would be about 20 million pa higher (or even no growth over that time would mean 10 million more now). Most of this was in the bus network but there were also falls in the rail and ferry network. You could almost call it Auckland’s PT lost decade.

    1. Wasn’t 1990 that the buses were sold off that was about 1994, prior to that the bus service got very curtailed, they had regular bus driver strikes to boot, which made buses very unreliable.

      And really limited the services in evenings and weekends to try and “save money”.
      [Even had no Sunday buses at all at one stage, and if I recall all evening buses ended before 10pm], and all this was before selling off in the guise of reducing costs.
      Things were back on the up from that point though for both buses and trains when the old Yellow’s were sold off en-masse to Stagecoach.

      And from there the services improved and patronage kept going up as finally ARTA came into being and actually started managing the whole PT process a bit better than the old ARA did/was allowed to.

  4. When I thought about why we have targets the answer I came up with was that it is so the next generation of investment can be planned and budgeted for.

    So for me the targets are interesting, but what they lead to are more interesting.

    My thought is that it is probably better to talk about at what level the next projects for whatever mode will be initiated, For this I think there needs to be a multitude of dimensions to the decision making process and some transparency from AT/AC would reduce the skepticism of stakeholders, particularly funders like ratepayers and central government, in their various forms.

    Some of the candidates for measures, which may not be applicable for all projects:
    Farebox recovery
    Patronage Projection
    BCR
    Percentage of population within 500m of RTN

    What other measures do people think are important?

  5. We’re going to need a lot more trains if those figures are to be believed. We’ll also need to start training more drivers, immediately.

    I don’t believe either of these are happening, and therefore I don’t believe that the projections can be sustained. More likely that we’ll see delays and dips in growth, with a long term upward trend.

    1. And where this growth will occur especially means:

      More trains South [electrification to Puke]
      More services on all lines incl. East and Onehunga
      AMETI through to Botany and west to Man City
      NW Busway
      N Busway extension
      Airport Rapid Transit

  6. I can’t help but remark on the very predictable fact that projections always show continuous growth. If you look at the same period before, i.e., pre-2015, there is no reason to believe that ridership will rise every year for 30 years.

    1. With investment in more/better services, you’d expect growth to be increasing, or you’d have to question the investment case.

    2. It has been non stop growth for 15 years with trivial investment, what makes you think that more investment will reduce growth?

    3. Steve it is likely because the city is intensifying, services are radically improving, and AKL has around the lowest number of rides per capita among comparable cities. From 44 in 2011 to just over 50 this year. Sydney and Melbourne are around the 120/130 mark, IIRC.

      Basically AKL is becoming a city, and there is no reason for it to not exhibit the same basic functions as cities everywhere. We could stop or slow this growth by just not providing for it; but it is completely natural otherwise.

      It may top out at around 100, who knows? But that’s a doubling, and on a bigger population base. Time to get investin’.

  7. I like the new targets. Also excited about 2017 (just 2 years away) for the first stage of Light rail to open. Also they have the CRL opening in 2022, which I think will take 5 years to construct meaning a 2017 construction start, which is good. Will this still occur if there is no government money on the table then (its not impossible National can get reelected in 2017)?

  8. I wondered about LRT in 2017 too. The first system in a new city typically take a decade from the go-ahead, maybe more for the first system in a new country.

    1. It really wouldn’t, units could be here in less than 2 years if we buy standard, tracks on Queen Street could be laid just as fast.

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