Rail performance stats getting better
It’s heartening to see that the performance statistics of Auckland’s rail system are slowly but surely improving. As shown in the diagram below, on the Western Line in particular we’ve got from three months of sub-50% punctuality statistics for January, February and March, to a much better result of 72.7%.…
13 Comments Onehunga Line: slow progress
There’s an item in the agenda of the upcoming (on Wednesday) ARC Transport and Urban Development Committee meeting about the Onehunga Branch Line and the progress that is being made towards ensuring that the line can be opened in the not too distant future.…
Real-time rail displays happening… eventually
Buried away in the March 2010 ARTA monthly business report is a promising update on the likelihood that we’re edging towards getting some real-time information signs at our railway stations. It has been a very long-lasting bugbear of mine that we have managed to put in place real-time information displays for the bus network – which must be a fairly difficult task of using GPS to locate buses, estimating the time it will take them from their current location to you, ensuring that you can display buses heading to a variety of destinations on a fairly simple sign, and so forth.…
Spectacular patronage stats for March
The March ARTA monthly business report has (finally) been released, and the information it contains is pretty awesome from a patronage perspective. Here’s a brief summary of what’s contained in the whole report: Considering that on-time performance of the rail system was so poor in March, with only two-thirds of trains actually reaching their destination less than 5 minutes late (and only half on the Western Line), having such high patronage is a pretty impressive achievement.…
MAXX website bizarreness
About a month ago I posted about the completely nonsensical results that the new MAXX website was giving to me when trying to make what seemed to be relatively obvious and simple journeys. On that occasion, somehow one of the suggested options included three different Link Bus trips for a simple “Herne Bay to CBD” trip.…
Integrated Ticketing: The Sooner The Better
One of the things that has been a big disappointment for me is seeing the shape the new Auckland Transport will take. Not only because of its structure and lack of accountability to those paying rates (which will hopefully change in the final form of the third Auckland Bill) but also because we will lose the Auckland Regional Transport Authority which, despite some grumbling from transport advocates, has started to move Auckland in the right direction since it was formed in 2004.…
Progress on Auckland’s PT
I learned quite a few interesting and useful things about the progress of various public transport projects throughout Auckland today, as well as various other aspects of how things are going. I will briefly outline what I can remember, but feel free to ask for further information on anything in particular in the comments thread: Resource consent for building the Onehunga Station was received last week, and construction has just begun on this station (the first step being to demolish existing buildings on the site).…
ARTA cracking down on fare evaders
As the ticketing system on Auckland’s rail system is basically unchanged from how it would have worked 60 years ago, rather unsurprisingly a lot of people manage to avoid paying for their rides. ARTA have estimated that fare evaders cost the system around $1.5 million a year – which is fairly significant.…
Integrated Ticketing v Integrated Fares Policy
After a whole pile of news about integrated ticketing at the end of last year, things have gone quiet in recent times. I have been assured that progress is being made (I wonder why it is that we get suspicious about public transport projects being forgotten about if we don’t hear regularly about their progress?)…
Simplifying Timetables
As regular readers of this blog would well know, there are quite a few things about Auckland’s public transport system that annoy me. But perhaps what annoys me the most are things that wouldn’t cost much to fix, or those where the benefits of an improvement seem so significant that you can’t quite believe nobody’s done it yet.…
Processing...