The Campaign For Better Transport

The new AT Hop card is finally being rolled out on October 28th, but what is happening with the Family Pass?

The Maxx website is still advertising the $24 daily pass:

Unlimited train travel. Available after 9.00am on weekdays and anytime on the weekends and public holidays. Family consists of 1 adult and up to 5 children or 2 adults and up to 4 children travelling together. (Note: the group must include at least one child aged under 16 without ID, or between 16 and 19 years with a valid Student ID card)

But associated with the rollout, this is now only available from manned stations – Britomart, New Lynn and Newmarket. You can’t get the ticket from the new Thales vending machines.

This is ridiculous – no family will be able to afford a day out by train.

And this policy disadvantages any family that doesn’t live near the three stations mentioned. For instance a family of 5 wanting to travel from the new Manukau Station to Britomart return will have to pay  ($6.80 x 2) + ($4 x 3) = $25.60 x 2 = $51.20 return!  The same family of 5 going from Britomart to Manukau return could get the $24 family pass.

Incidentally, Sydney offers the Family Funday Sunday where,  for $2.50 per person, your family can enjoy a fun day out with unlimited travel on Sydney’s buses, trains, light rail and ferries every Sunday.

Come on Auckland Transport – please sort this out by the time the Santa Parade comes to town.

The perennial topic of travel time savings came up in a yesterday’s Herald Sideswipe article:

 A reader writes: “If you live in Whangaparaoa instead of, say, Takapuna, you will spend around 30 minutes extra each way in your car at rush hour. Since in each eight-hour work day most people spend at least a couple of hours doing pretty much nothing (coffee, gossip etc), commuters work an extra day a week, equal to 20 per cent of their salary in lost time/money.”

To me it sounds like the reader might work at the NZTA economics department, as what they describe is the fundamental flaw in how benefit cost ratios are calculated. Anyhow, I responded:

A commuter in Whangaparaoa might spend a lot of time commuting by car, but this isn’t “equal” to 20% of their salary. People choose to commute in their own time, not their employer’s, and the value of this time is up to the individual.

A recent NZTA survey found that 40% of people actually enjoyed their commute – and only 3% specified zero minutes as the ideal commute. Few respondents said they would use the time saved to do work or study. Common responses identified any time savings would be spent on non-work/non-study activities such as sleeping, more time getting ready for work, eating breakfast, family time, household chores and reading.

For additional benefits they could also try the 0897x bus service – tweet and text as much as you like! (phone not included).

The Campaign For Better Transport is proud to be involved with the upcoming film night, featuring the Urbanized documentary. It should be a great night, and it is also a fundraiser for upgrading the server for transportblog.

There are less than 30 tickets left, so be in quick.

Dear Minister

Auckland City Rail Link

Recent comments you have made in Parliament lead me to believe you are receiving inaccurate advice on the expected patronage and benefits of the proposed Auckland City Rail Link.

In Auckland, over 40% of all trips into the CBD each day are made using public transport, by people from all walks of life. They do so because they find taking a bus, ferry or train to be more convenient than driving a car, paying for parking, then driving home again.

The primary benefit of the City Rail Link is to enable patronage to continue to grow over the entire rail network in Auckland, by making the current dead end station at Britomart a through station. Without it, patronage will plateau very soon after the forthcoming introduction of electric trains.

Alternatives such as increasing the capacity of the roading network for sole occupant vehicles, or increasing the number of buses into the central city are not feasible if Auckland’s transport network is to grow in an integrated and sustainable manner.

It is not unreasonable for the NZ Land Transport fund to contribute to the City Rail Link, like any other transport project that relieves congestion.

I attach a briefing paper which we gave to the Associate Minister of Transport at our meeting on the 7^th June, which contains a brief overview and a rationale for the project.

Again, we are more than happy to meet with you when your diary permits, either in Wellington or Auckland. Could you kindly advise of a suitable date – we anticipate a meeting time of an hour would be sufficient.

Yours sincerely,

Cameron Pitches

Convenor,

Campaign for Better Transport

Update 1/8/2012:

Ministerial Secretary Hayley Eaton has replied:

Good Morning Cameron,

Thank you for your request to meet with Hon Gerry Brownlee to discuss the Auckland City Rail Link.

Unfortunately due to heavy diary scheduling the Minister is unable to meet with you.

Thank you once again.

Kind regards,

Our call to roll out the Thales ticketing solution to trains and ferries has been reported by the Herald:

“This is a $98 million project which has been going on for three years – they need to get it in.”

He said Auckland Transport was losing too much revenue on increasingly crowded trains under its paper ticketing system, which would be stemmed by electronic gates at main stations under the new scheme.

Trains suffered a 5.5 per cent fall in patronage last month compared with June of last year, and a 2.9 per cent decline in May.

But Mr Pitches feared branding would be a serious problem, given that Snapper had the Hop imprint on its bus cards, leading to confusion if train and ferry passengers were issued with rival tickets bearing the same name.

The dispute with Snapper shouldn’t delay things any further than it has.

Snapper have responded to the alleged breaches of the Auckland integrated ticketing participation agreement with a press release available on Scoop.

On 18th June 2012, Snapper received a notice from Auckland Transport, alleging various breaches of the participation agreement and a claim for damages. The basis of these claims has not been clarified and the notice incorporates a number of significant errors and inaccuracies. Infratil and Snapper strongly refute the allegations made and we will make our response to the detailed claims known as appropriate.

The release contains a useful outline of the players involved, and also calls into question the readiness of another supplier, Parkeon.

As covered over at Transportblog, the lawyers have been called in in order to get Snapper to make their system fully compliant with the Hop system. Let’s hope this can be sorted out without further delay.

CBT member Munroe Graham writes

150 years ago on 1 May 1862 the first of three tramways opened in Drury. This ran about 4.5 km from a coal mine (the first of significance to be discovered handy to Auckland) in the hills east of Drury to the port, then situated on an estuary leading out to the Manukau Harbour.

This was a horse drawn tramway, but unlike its southern counterpart, the Dun Mountain Railway in Nelson, (which had opened on 3 February 1862 and was thought for a time to be the first railway in New Zealand but actually preceded by the Coal Point railway at Clutha of 1861, itself preceeded by at least one timber logging tramway prior to 1860, for example the Gibbons tramway at Huia), the rails were timber (Rimu), rather than steel and built to standard 1435mm gauge, rather than 914mm, or the current NZ narrow gauge standard of 1027mm. Also, there was never any intention of carrying passengers, whereas in Nelson passenger services commenced on May 3 1862, so that Nelson will celebrate two separate 150 year anniversaries this year, the second being the country’s first dedicated passenger rail service. At Drury passengers were loaded on to a coal truck on opening day and trundled up from the port to the mine head – but that does not count.

Ultimately, the importance of this tramway was that it acted as a trigger for the commencement of a conventional Auckland-Drury railway a few years later and this, although later delayed, represented the commencement of the North Island main trunk line.

The site of the port has been obliterated by the southern motorway and at this stage the writer has not yet been able to determine the exact route of the tram line, or the location of the coal mine which it served. Research has been made somewhat tricky by the fact that Drury has been host to not one, but three separate tramways in its short history and there have been several coal mines in the area, along the Symonds Stream to the north east and in the foothills to the south east.

Munroe proposes an informal BYO picnic gathering of interested people from say midday on Sunday May 6th at Drury Domain, near the Library, where the story, much as set out in this article will be available to view and discuss.