Better buses
Several recent posts have extolled the merits of “better buses” for Auckland. These posts have generally focused on the following issues: Corridor infrastructure – as discussed in this post, there are strong arguments in favour of expanding Auckland’s bus lane network so as to improve bus speeds/reliability.…
158 Comments Dec 2012 and Jan 2013 Patronage
It has been a long time since we have seen any PT patronage numbers but with the AT board meeting next week, they have finally been released. December saw a continuation of the same trends from late last year with total patronage down 7% compared to December 2011 (bus -8%, rail -7% and ferry -4%).…
The importance of speed!
There’s a lot I agree with in Stu’s post yesterday about being careful how we look to grow the public transport market and focusing on low-hanging fruit before trying to convince rich people to give up the BMW’s by building super-expensive light-rail lines everywhere.…
Growing public transport patronage – Expansion or retention?
Peter M’s recent post on “Making light rail make sense” threw up a lot of interesting comments.
One of the more interesting arguments went something along the lines of “many people will never catch a bus so we should invest in rail“. …
Making ferries make sense
Sunday’s launch of the Hobsonville/Beach Haven ferry seems to have got some, such as the perennial mischief-maker Cameron Brewer, excited about ferries and thinking that they can fix all of Auckland’s Transport problems. On the plus side, he also seems to have become a fan of bus lanes which is something to store away in the memory banks:
“Yesterday’s opening of the new ferry terminals for Beach Haven and Hobsonville Point was a great day for Auckland, but the claim that ferries would play a much greater role in Auckland’s transport future was a bit disingenuous.…
What makes people give up using PT?
Each year public transport patronage peaks in March – university students are back, school is not yet on holiday, there are typically no public holidays (except if Easter is particularly early) and it’s a 31 day month. However, the same is largely true for May and August yet patronage in March is much higher than those two other months – how come?…
Are the fares too damn high?
For most of the last year we have found ourselves somewhat puzzled by the stalling and even declines experienced by rail patronage in particular – but more recently general public transport patronage. This can be seen in the dip in 12 month rolling patronage totals up to November last year:
Auckland Transport have provided a multitude of excuses for the patronage dip over the past few months – some more plausible than others (they blamed the World Cup for some of the declines in August and November, even though the World Cup was only in September & October 2011).…
New Stats Pages
Many of the people who read this blog, including some of the authors have sometimes an unhealthy obsession with numbers. We are often referring to various stats and it can can sometimes be hard to find things again. With that in mind (and thanks to a suggestion from John P I think) we have now created a series of pages that are linked to directly from the homepage with a number of key transport related graphs.…
Analysing station rankings
The railway station boarding data finally released by Auckland Transport the other day allows some interesting analysis of which stations have experienced the most growth over time. I’ve put all the data together into one place, building on an earlier spreadsheet:
In terms of sheer numerical growth, Britomart is by far the winner – with Newmarket, Papatoetoe, New Lynn and Glen Innes other stations which have at least 1,000 more daily boardings now than they did back in 2003.…
Rail Patronage vs Projections
With the release of the station boarding data in the post yesterday by Mr Anderson, and the recent sluggish patronage growth, its perhaps worthwhile looking at how things are going compared to projections. Again we can look at the supporting report for a lot of information as AT/AC attempted to answer one part of Steven Joyce’s question relating to evidence of patronage growth, particularly in the morning peak.…
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