March is now over and so too is March Madness – though public transport will likely stay busy at least until school holidays in a few weeks.
So how did PT perform in March …. pretty well it turned out.
Just prior to March I wrote about how average weekday trips exceeded 330k for the first time since the pandemic, reaching 91% of pre-pandemic levels for the same time period. That trend continued and in the final week of February, when Universities were back, usage soared to over 360k before settling back down to around 355k and it’s held at level throughout March. That keeps us sitting at around 90% of pre-pandemic levels. It will be interesting to see how this holds up following Easter.
One thing to note here is that the data doesn’t include ridership from special event or exempt services (such as the Waiheke Ferry and the SkyDrive airport express bus). That means tens of thousands of trips related to the Pink concert aren’t included in these numbers.
Weekend usage has been even better, being at or above pre-pandemic levels and the weekend of the 9th and 10th of March set a new record for weekend usage, averaging over 150k trips per day. Though I do wonder if a bit of Pink concert usage is sprinkled in here.
Breaking this down by mode presents a similar picture to what we saw prior to March, with buses and ferries at, or close to 2019 levels. Trains have improved and are now regularly back over 70% of 2019 but there have continued to be challenges, such as the Rail Network Rebuild resulting in reduced frequencies on the Western Line.
Despite the relatively good result for March, and a decent additional chunk of ridership to be added to the total from special event services, the actual monthly result, when it arrives, is not likely to look quite as good. That’s simply because of both Easter and that there five weekends in March mean there were three fewer working days.
In total the data above represents just almost 8.55 million trips while the same data for March 2019 was nearly 9.70 million trips. Based on the difference between weekday and weekend usage, that’s somewhere in the vicinity of 650k trips. That difference will eventually come out in the wash of annual numbers.
Getting PT usage back to 100 million trips has been a key goal for Auckland Transport and they want the monthly results to be at a level to be able to achieve that by the middle of the year. Their growth plan to achieve it includes 77 different initiatives, not of of which are funded, and in an update to the board last week they said they’ve completed 14 of those and have 42 others in progress.
Some of the interesting comments from that include:
- Completed projects include initiatives that ensure we; stay connected to bus drivers, capture special patronage, boost service reliability, and give customers better information about services that may not be operating, promote service improvements, improve bus run times, and increase capacity for all routes with capacity concerns ahead of March 2024.
- We have completed development on an improved corporate subsidy product called Fareshare, which was launched on 1 March 2024. The three existing corporate customers have now transitioned to the new system and AT has received enquiries from several large employers interested in offering public transport as an employee benefit. The team is actively engaged with 24 prospective organisations.
- The “Move down the bus” campaign is live across approximately 250 vehicles on 16 applicable routes. The campaign utilises on-board signage and audio messaging, Passenger Information Displays, the AT mobile application and signage at applicable bus stops along these busy routes to encourage passengers to move down the bus and use every seat.
The Fareshare product is something I’ve wanted to see for a long time so I’m quite excited to see what impact it has, especially now that PT is exempt from Fringe Benefit Tax too.
The report to the board also includes a few stats from February which are interesting. That is that while ridership is still down on pre-pandemic levels, the number of people using public transport is up – the difference being more working from home means each person is using PT less than before on average.
The bars on the top chart looks at a count of HOP cards while the second one a unique count of customers those HOP cards are tied to (based on their MyAT account. On that second graph, they also segment customers by:
- Existing: seen on the PT network within the previous 3 months.
- Winback: last seen on the PT network more than 3 months prior
- New: not seen on the PT network before.
Their normal board report also includes some interesting bits of information.
Western Express: WX1 patronage has grown substantially (more than network average) since January 2024; additional WX1 trips were added at short notice along existing school bus and public urban routes to address capacity concerns and meet March morning peak demand. We are now regularly hitting 3,300 passenger boardings per day on this service.
This is a good start and puts the WX1 on track for around 1 million annual trips. That might not sound like much on a network we want to be back to over 100 million trips but it is better than the Northern Express did when it was just an interim service before the busway proper opened. However the next part won’t help.
Major delays to customers on Te Atatu Road: due to chronic traffic congestion and lack of bus priority, passengers are experiencing 40-minute delays during the afternoon school peak on Te Atatu Road southbound, for a service that is advertised as every 10 minutes.
NZTA has opposed the Te Atatu Road southbound bus lane due to congestion concerns onto SH16.
AT has added an additional service to run from Old Te Atatu Road to Henderson from 11 March 2024. We also have AT ambassadors at the affected stops to assist passengers.
If the above measures do not solve the problem, AT will investigate adding more trips in the school afternoon peak.
So we can’t speed up buses to make them more attractive and therefore get more use helping to ease congestion, because Waka Kotahi are worried about the impacts it will have on congestion.
Dynamic lanes: Following consultation on the construction and delivery sequencing of Maioro Street and Great North Road dynamic bus lanes, we are working on recommendations.
The Main Highway, Ellerslie, dynamic bus lane trial technology is being procured for implementation in May 2024. The trial will be changing the existing fixed 7.00am – 10.00 am bus lane to a bus lane that can be activated or deactivated based on real-time congestion. This will involve installing digital bus lane signs and queue detection technology. The test will be trialled in three phases.
If this trial is successful, management will seek NZTA Traffic Control Device (TCD) approval so that this application can be enforced. This will enable roll-out across Auckland and allow more responsive management to the demands of various modes on the network. This may also be a useful tool in easily creating temporary bus priority lanes for events and emergencies.
The Main Highway trial suggests we could get bus lanes that can be turned on during other parts of the day, and not just peak times. That would certain be a very welcome change and a great use of technology.
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“So we can’t speed up buses to make them more attractive and therefore get more use helping to ease congestion, because Waka Kotahi are worried about the impacts it will have on congestion.”
If only there was an example of somewhere that a motorway bus lane took a high proportion of traffic of the road and eased congestion…?
*off
Yes, nuts.
Entirely consistent with the draft GPS on transport, so expect more of this sort of thing. (It also cuts PT funding on the basis of the now-vanishing covid patronage reduction.)
When I see this comment about WK worried about motorway congestion. My simplistic view is that we could turn any state highway that runs through an urban area over to the local council to decide how traffic flows are managed to, from, and on the highway. WK can build, maintain but leave optimisation to the locals. Especially in complex environments like Auckland where an agency is already setup to do this.
Or do the reverse have WK manage the flows. As a general rule based on observation and history the fewer things AT is in charge of the better outcomes will be.
Yes and the delays for passengers on WX1 and associated routes means that larger and larger numbers of people are stranded on the small low lying bus islands as the tide of cars encroaches – I’m afraid there will be an accident there very soon.
“That means tens of thousands of trips related to the Pink concert aren’t included in these numbers.”
So an extraordinary event that boosts ridership isn’t counted. But one that reduces ridership (floods) does?
Just to be clear, it is counted in the official monthly numbers, which is what counts towards overall PT performance, it just isn’t included in the daily data AT started publishing since COVID which is what is used to get weekly usage used above.
Vinny maybe not doing dumb things like placing bus stops in motorway offramps could help that. Sadly if there is an accident rather than blame ‘boneheaded design’ somebody will probably blame ‘cars’ can conclude they need to be slowed down more and an even higher raised table crossing be built in the offramp…
“NZTA has opposed the Te Atatu Road southbound bus lane due to congestion concerns onto SH16.”
Bloody hell!
This shows why traffic engineers should never be left in charge of anything, ever. They simply cannot see the big picture.
Stagger the implementation – T2 or T3 to begin, Manukau Road has great benefits for buses without being dedicated bus lane.
Once / if buses start to get delayed from too many T2 or T3 vehicles, make it a bus lane.
Hopefully AT have tried this, as their staff know this also.
Other good news Te Huia had it’s busiest month outside of the school holidays. The extra services on Thursday, Friday and Saturday are proving popular.
Hard to say whether that will make any difference with the current government, however it least it will make the decision to can it a bit harder.
Bishop had previously promised to axe Te Huia, unless there were extraordinary increases in patronage. He was not a fan.
Luxon called it a “white elephant” a few days ago. Has any government figure ever been on it?
Isn’t that what they called the northern busway too?
So losing $90/person/trip but making it up on volume?
There’s never going to be an easier PT canning decision than the end of Te Huia.
The Te Atatu Road bus improvement proposals (T2 lane consultation) was massively watered down from what it could/should have been. Te Atatu Road already enjoys the honour of being configured to maximise motorway flow. Light phasing especially in Te Atatu South after 4pm is horrific all so we can get just a few more cars flowing off the motorway.
While I imagine NZTA’s opposition to the T2 lanes carried a lot of weight, there were also sadly a lot of submitters who also opposed the T2 options with very little thought to how things could get better under the status quo.
Yes that is one of the biggest hurdles we face – I assume many of the submitters saw the option as do something that makes your driving more difficult and stopped there. Good public transport with priority lanes will actually free up roads for those who must drive. As someone who rides a bicycle to commute I always see many stuck in cars who seemingly are unable to envision other options. Maybe like our frequent rail closures we should try a road closure – open only to PT and walking and Cycling and show how things could be better!
This would be true if you’re adding extra priority lanes, not halving a road’s vehicle capacity to add a bus lane with the net bus ridership not compensating for that decrease in capacity.
All temporarily closing roads for cycling only would do is show how extremely well having way more capacity than demand for a mode works to reduce congestion for that mode.
Yes and the problem is not the submitters but the decision making process. They should use modern democracy methods. In fact they’ve been directed to, in the TERP
Seems like the “win back” numbers are getting better.
Anyone know where they implemented ‘bus booster’ to prioritise late-running buses through intersections?
they should just run the reds – like the rest of Auckland…
Tuesday last week (26th March) I got on the 6.50 am 394 bus at Pukekohe,
to go to Papakura Station.
I got there just in time to catch the 8.56 am train to Britomart.
This must be some sort of record ?
wow – what a time to be alive.
Thats a 2 hour bus trip for what $5 ? – fantastic
No busses where i live, i have to envy your slow bus.
Even better – as it is a train replacement, it is free !
The old diesel trains could do it in 16 minutes.
According to google this is 20.6 km if you follow the main road, or 18.8 km if you walk some back roads. Would have been faster to put on some appropriate footwear and run.
I have noticed an increasing number of people getting on busses with no credit on their HOP cards, especially at night. The drivers have presumably been advised not to confront them and just wave them on and they don’t seem to have the inspectors anymore. I guess the rest of us are paying for them indirectly and the PT usage understates the actual numbers by some unknown amount, maybe 5%.
Yes, I’ve noticed that this is now rife, and kids often just go for the rear door to enter and not tag on. I certainly don’t blame the drivers for not confronting passengers. I recently saw a team of inspectors confront an adult who had got on the bus without paying, and she just point-blank refused to get off. The bus stayed stationary for some minutes while they argued the point, and then another passenger paid her fare. Best solution would be to make PT free, I reckon.
Kids who fail to tag on has been an ongoing issue.
Back in the days of cash fares, school kids would take $20 from mum, intended for topping up their HOP card, then they would wave it at the bus driver saying, “I only have $20” then the driver would wave them on.
You would see the same kid repeat this for several days.
In Australia, ticket inspectors/authorised officers have the legal power to remove and detain fare evaders. And other troublemakers. Here they are virtually untoucheable and know it. That’s no way to run a PT system.
Perhaps make paying at supermarkets optional too for those that really don’t like paying at the checkout. Extend the same policy to vape shops and jewellery stores. I’m sure you’ll see a huge reduction in crime. I’m amazed the last Labour government did’t adopt a policy of not punishing thieving as a crime reduction strategy. Oh, Wait.
Bus drivers just need a fast line to cops so they can not immediately confront, but drive on and have the cops meet the bus, remove and charge the perps. First offence an ankle bracelet, second offence a trip to the big house or a boot camp. Then lets see how popular that form of thieving remains.
If you make PT free you will kill it for the middle class. It will become a hangout for vagrants and antisocial behaviour will be an order of magnitude worse than it is now. It’s literally the worst thing you could do for PT in Auckland.
Yes ive been on a 13 on Te Atatu, half the patrons especially uniformed school kids just blatantly walk on and/or swipe on and get an error and give an excuse to the driver. Result is on the app the bus shows half full when it’s actually overloaded.
Subsequently everyone is oblivious to the demand and there is never a push to increase bus sizes or frequency as it appears to be fine.
Later some patronage falls away because many don’t want to be squeezed into a undersized musty bus every morning.
*shrug*
“Major delays to customers on Te Atatu Road: due to chronic traffic congestion”
Unleash a bus lane on Te Atatu Road for the Western Express WX1. This will fix traffic congestion on SH 16 connection.
It will make the WX1 Bus service fast, reliable & practical to use. Will improve traffic flow on Te Atatu SH16 connection.
Gives people choices & options for transport travel solutions.
Agree, and also include priority for WX1 on Te Atatū off ramp coming from Westgate. Currently bus can be stuck in traffic leaving motorway for ages.
Providing WX1 bus services continuous/dedicated buslanes & priority measures is the answer for effective transit.
But it might inconvenience some car drivers and therefore is out of the question.
But look at the numbers, 3.3k trips/day, total, both directions. That’s well under what using the same amount of road space for even a normal lane would yield. Even the ‘successful’ northern busway lanes currently carry less people per day per lane than a standard motorway lane could. Of course the theoretical capacity is higher but to reach that you need riders who want to use the service.
Great dodgy stat. Less users of the Northern Busway between midnight and 6am than the motorway? What a shock. Now do peak time only
“Even the ‘successful’ northern busway lanes currently carry less people per day per lane than a standard motorway lane could.”
Not dodgy at all. They’re AT’s numbers for ridership compared to the actual recognised capacity of a motorway lane. And the one thing you know for sure is a motorway lane will be fully utilised at peak times unlike the busway.
Sure the motorway lanes will be fully occupied at peak, and moving at a glacial pace with mostly single occupant vehicles, unlike the bus lanes
There’s no doubt the theoretical capacity of a lane full of full buses is greater than the theoretical capacity of a lane full of cars. But full is the operative word here. Turning the northern busway into a pair of T2/ZEV lanes that changed direction morning and night while still running buses on it in the direction it was set to would be a capacity increase not a decrease over current usage even thought it is fairly ‘successful’ as bus systems in Auckland go.
Sure, and then all those cars would be stuck on the bridge and capacity would go down… We would have to provide MORE parking in the CBD and roads in suburbs adjacent to the busway would be under more pressure, too. I don’t think you have thought this through.
Yes, it is along the same old line of “just one more lane will fix it”.
Grant it’s a well established result that if you have sufficient motorway capacity you don’t have congestion. The whole ‘Induced Demand’ argument is based on a premise that somehow new demand is infinitely created by adding lanes rather than that existing pent up demand is satisfied and that there’s a limit to that. The only places ‘one more lane’ doesn’t fix it is where you needed two or more to satisfy demand. And of course spreading out commuting peaks, encouraging mode shifts, having greater diversity of desired origins and destinations reducing the need for long commutes to single choke points or dissuading people from travelling at all are viable strategies. And building one more lane is not always physically or economically feasible. But also It’s not either/or, multiple strategies can be used. And thats not an issue here. What we are talking about here is better using existing already built unused capacity not building ‘two more lanes’. And it could still be used for buses with more buses added if the number of buses currently plying the route are inadequate for customer demand.
JohnBGoode I’m well aware we’re talking about the theoretical throughput of just one element of the system and in making that change you also need to look how to get vehicles efficiently on and off the busway. This is a problem that doesn’t need to be solved when it’s operating at a vehicle every couple of minutes or less. But it’s a cop out to say the busway doesn’t have the problems you mention precisely because it is so under-utilised. Of course we’re at the point where a second harbour crossing is really needed and conveniently enough the busway takes you just about to the starting point of the new proposed road tunnels. Also not every vehicle needs to cross the bridge, but since you bring the bridge up, successful as the busway is, each vehicle lane on the bridge currently runs at a greater per day passenger throughput than each busway lane does. I agree a dedicated busway with enough buses plying it could theoretically carry more people per lane. But that’s also not reality today and the current busway itself and the strategy for how and where they are loaded and unloaded would have to be substantially modified to reach say a bus every 10 seconds goal to get good utilisation of the busway corridor itself. And running at that headway would there be enough willing riders to fill those buses?
If you take away the busway for busses only, you literally create demand of all those people who previously caught the bus but now choose to drive because they will be stuck in the same traffic anyway.
With substantial new development in green field areas on the North Shore, there will be demand to fill every (reasonable) number of motorway lanes into the city if you build them. The only way to reduce this is a viable public transport alternative that is not stuck in traffic with the rest of them. Ideally a train but the busway is the next best thing and, luckily, already exists!
And this is not even taking into account the environmental benefits of more PT over more cars. Yes, even 100% EVs would not be great due to noise, parking spaces, microplastics from tyres, to just name a few.
Who said “take away” the busways. Just mix the buses in a couple of T2s lanes to better use available capacity and have the counter commute buses just use the motorway. And a T2 lane should nearly halve the number of cars vs a normal motorway lane and flow faster than it. And it’s still possible to control the number of vehicles entering it to avoid congestion, either by tolling or lights and HOV/ZEV restrictions. There’s not that many buses in the big scheme of things compared to other vehicle movements. You seem to be saying unless you make cars slower, people won’t use buses? Shouldn’t you be able to sell bus usage on its own merits like not needing to drive yourself and the environmental advantages you mention?
A single busway run at capacity could theoretically exceed the number of trips currently taken on the entire Auckland rail network and is much more flexible and adaptable infrastructure especially with respect to origin and destination of individual buses using it while still providing a fast trunk service. So I don’t see where the fascination with trains vs busways is since no train line in Auckland will run anywhere near theoretical capacity even post CRL. Busways are quicker and cheaper to get done and are much easier to overlay on existing infrastructure for parts of the trip (e.g the bridge today). They have more than enough potential capacity for Auckland and cost less to run in the long term. All a train does is make people feel we’re all growed up like a real European city. Many European cities would likely choose different layouts and options with a clean sheet of paper vs accomodating a couple of thousand years of existing urban design.
How does this Main Highway dynamic bus lane work? Isn’t a car park out of hours?
More details on Fareshare? If employees aren’t aware of it they won’t push their employers to take it up.
Fareshare has been widely publicized:
Go here: https://at.govt.nz/about-us/sustainability/travelwise-for-business/about-fareshare
Does Auckland Transport employ anyone for improving trips for bus travellers? As well for train, ferry, cyclists & walkers?
Bus improvements, such as more bus shelters, buslanes, more frequent services & priority measures would ensure viable transport.
It’s against AT’s hidden remit to improve anything for anyone, even car users. Any improvements to Auckland’s transport network since the formation of AT have been unfortunate unexpected side effects. Should any improvements be observed at the end of a project AT has people it can immediately task to remedy the situation.
” Any improvements to Auckland’s transport network since the formation of AT have been unfortunate unexpected side effects”
Would you include these projects into your statement:
– Electric trains
– New train stations at Panmure, New Lynn, Otahuhu
– New fleet of low emission buses
– Electric buses, on several routes including Tamaki Link, City Link, Airport Link
– Double decker buses
– Improvements to the Britomart station, ready for the CRL
– New bus routes that run every 15 mins from 7.00ma to 7.00pm seven days per week
– Northern Busway
– Silverdale bus station
– AT Mobile app new features, including real time bus tracking
– Improvements to the HOP top up system
– Electric ferries
– Improvements to ferry terminals
AT used to have a dedicated team that rolled out and promoted improvements to these items. That team used to manage its own budget.
When AT implemented a new “Customer Experience” Team, all of the experienced staff in the previous team were made redundant. Any new PT improvement project then had to go through a lengthly “agile sprint” and had to lobby for funding.
Unfortunately Agile was not the correct methodology for developing business improvements, or for assessing new products and services.
Many of the external “agile coaches” who supervised the agile workshops, had no knowledge of PT, and many of the previous PT subject matter experts were ignored.
For more info on why Agile has been a failure, go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUb1M6wGHYU
AND
Your video is more a comment on how agile teams do agile wrong rather than the value of the methodology.
The fact that you use the words ‘lengthy agile sprint’ indicate whoever’s running the process hasn’t got a clue what agile methodologies are. I suspect your failure in its use falls into that camp of implementing ‘Agile’ because it sounds good as a buzzword rather than buying into what it really means. Also agree it’s not necessarily the best process for some types of projects.
Also for relatively moribund organisations like local government you know that change, moving quickly, very quick visibility of progress or lack of it and discarding and reformulating plans when new information comes to hand are some of the things their employees are most scared of. I pity those Agile consultants. It’d be like trying to round up sloths and turn them into racehorses.