As I noted in a post a couple of days ago, there are significant overcrowding problems on many of the buses connecting the North Shore with the city centre. Auckland Council’s transport committee came up with a number of fairly urgent recommendations, while I also had my suggestions about how to improve the attractiveness of other North Shore bus services by making them easier to understand.
I have often posted the graph below before, which outlines how the number of people catching the bus over the harbour at peak times has increased dramatically over the past few years. These days, we’re seeing around a third of people crossing the bridge at peak times being on the bus (8000 on the bus and around 16,000 by car).
Interestingly, I was looking through Auckland Transport’s ‘Half Year Report’ – which is actually just a two month report on what happened in November and December 2010 due to them not coming into existence until November 1 – and one figure really stood out. One of their performance targets is to monitor the number of public transport and vehicular trips across the harbour bridge during peak period each morning. The results of this monitoring are pretty damn interesting actually:
Compared to the earlier graph, we can see a massive leap in the number of PT trips across the Harbour Bridge, from around 8000 to around 11,000. This is reflected in the results being significantly higher than the performance target. According to the results figure above, over 40% of trips across the Harbour Bridge during peak times are now taken by public transport – a pretty amazing figure considering that buses from the North Shore only serve the CBD and Newmarket.
What’s also amazing is how much higher the result is compared to the performance target, which is probably what Auckland Transport were expecting (or a bit lower than their expectations as everyone likes to always beat the target). But I can’t imagine that there was an expectation that 3,500 more people than expected would be using the bus to cross the Harbour Bridge at peak times. No wonder the buses are crowded!
These figures highlight the importance of improving the efficiency of bus services between the North Shore and the CBD. They also strengthen argument for providing dedicated bus lanes through St Mary’s Bay and possibly even over the Harbour Bridge (after all, setting aside one of five lanes at peak times to carry 40% of people is hardly unfair). The figures also clearly show how successful the Northern Busway is, and how we need to ensure that success isn’t put at risk by allowing cars onto the busway – as NZTA seem to be keen on proposing. After all, nearly 12,000 people crossing the harbour bridge on the bus in the morning peak is almost equivalent to three lanes worth of general traffic – a pretty impressive feat.
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It is good to see but one thing I would be careful of is saying how much above AT’s goals the usage was. Reading through the SOI they met their overall PT target in their first month of operation and the increase in patronage is almost twice what was required of them. This has led me to believe that their targets aren’t very accurate or challenging.
Yes that is true Matt, but the thing that’s interesting is how far above the general trend for the past few years (7000-8000) was seen in the “results for period”. Carrying 6000 passengers an hour on buses over the Harbour Bridge is mightily impressive.
Yes on that part I agree (I just don’t agree on the targets that were set)
Isn’t it time AT put pressure on NZTA to make sure the massive new St Mary’s Bay motorway contains more than a single bus lane heading into the city, the current lack of bus lanes is completely ridiculous
Double bus lanes? would that be a worldwide first?
I mean a bus lane for both North and South bound traffic, at present there’s only a short South bound section, none for buses heading across the bridge and none on the bridge itself.
What is the official designation of the southbound outside lane on the bridge currently? The signs say Shelley Beach Rd or bus lane only, but a number of people use it only to move back to lane 2 on the other side of the bridge. If this was policed a bit better it would help.
Don’t allow cars on the busway. Totally defeats the purpose of the busway in the first place.
It can also be dangerous. We’ve had a few accidents with cars on the busway driving into portals…
It would be great if Auckland Transport would report on the “profitability” of the Northern Express. Given that it is gross contracted and Auckland Transport keeps the revenue, I would expect that it isn’t requiring much subsidy at all, especially since for roading “track access fees” don’t apply.
If NZTA is so keen on carpooling why don’t they introduce a HOV/ T3/T2 lane on the northern motorway? There is room for it on what was the old bus shoulder lane.
AT is probably constrained in setting their targets by the fact that the NZTA won’t give them any more money to subsidize PT fares.
It’s easy to say “provide more buses” but who will pick up the bill for subsidizing the services if the govt won’t? The council? By contrast, people who drive over the Harbour Bridge are 100% subsidized for all their costs by our govt. It’s an insane system, I know, but it’s the system that AT is operating in right now so what else can they do?