February Patronage – very good
ARTA’s monthly business report for February 2010 has been released, and it contains some very positive news in terms of patronage on the Auckland public transport network: Patronage growth on the “Rapid Transit Network”, which is the rail system and the Northern Busway, is growing at a particularly impressive rate.…
21 Comments Further info on Western Line changes
A couple of days ago I wrote a blog post on the changes being proposed to the Western Line’s timetable. I was critical of two aspects of these changes: I criticised the three minute lay-over at Newmarket on the grounds that it just adds to the length (time-wise) of Western Line trips, which have already been inconvenienced in terms of time compared to how things were when the Newmarket West temporary station was in operation.…
Tweaking the Western Line
From Sunday April 11th there are going to be some minor changes to the timetable for the Western Line. These are explained in ARTA’s media release (which I had emailed to me but doesn’t seem to have shown up on either the MAXX website or the ARTA website):
Train timetable tweaked
The Auckland Regional Transport Authority (ARTA) announced today the timetable for Western Line train services will change from Sunday 11 April.…
MAXX website still needs to improve
About a month and a half ago ARTA launched a tweaked “MAXX website”, which is the front-door for people wanting to catch public transport in Auckland. It’s where you can find out timetables, updates about what’s happening in the system and also use the journey planner to work out the best way to get where you want to go, and the next bus/train/ferry that’ll take you there.…
Better know your Public Transport provider: DART
What DART? I hear you say. Surely he means Project DART? But no, I am referring to Auckland’s least know public transport provider; Dial A Ride Transport. You may have seen one of these around town: Dial A Ride Transport was established in 1982 to provide on demand, door to door disability transport services.…
Rail boardings per station
I have been meaning to post this table for ages, because it shows us some quite interesting information on Auckland’s rail network. I’m not sure whether this is an average, or whether it’s just on one particular day, but it does provide us with some useful information.…
How to grow PT patronage
In recent years patronage on public transport across the Auckland region clearly has grown fairly significantly. Boardings in 2009 were the highest for many many years, with rail patronage in particular the highest perhaps ever in Auckland. This is shown in the graph below, which comes from the ARC’s Auckland Regional Land Transport Strategy: Report on Progress 2007/09, which is the document that the interesting article in the NZ Herald last week on how public transport trips are getting longer, was based on.…
Are we finally going to get some QTNs?
For quite a while now ARTA have talked about revolutionising the structure of Auckland’s public transport system into a series of Rapid Transit Networks (RTNs), Quality Transit Networks (QTNs) and Local Connector Networks (LCNs). The Regional Public Transport Plan formalised this changing route structure, but so far we really haven’t seen much of this actually roll out.…
Electrification inching closer
I got emailed an ARTA press release not long ago providing some pretty good news that the rail electrification project is edging closer and closer.
ARTA WELCOMES NEXT STEP IN ELECTRIFICATION PROJECT
The Auckland Regional Transport Authority (ARTA) today welcomed KiwiRail’s release of an Industry Engagement document as part of the process for the delivery of Auckland’s electric train fleet.…
February Rail Statistics – still pathetic
ARTA has released the performance statistics for trains in February, and the result is predictably pathetic. Things have improved slightly in some areas compared to the January statistics, when punctuality on the Western Line was a mere 36%. However, in other respects the February results are even worse than January, as the system operated throughout the whole of February (as opposed to the last couple of weeks of January only).…
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