“A lot of activity will be happening over the Queen’s Birthday weekend with commissioning of the final 3km section of double track from the new Avondale Station to Tititrangi Road in New Lynn, which begins at 7pm on Friday June 4th. In order to complete the final section of double tracking, commissioning will continue throughout the following week. This means a temporary weekday timetable, with different times from Waitakere to New Lynn, will also be in place.

Temporary timetables will operate on the Western Line from the evening of Friday 4 to last service on Sunday 13 June.

Bus replacements will be in place for all Western line stations from:

• Waitakere to Avondale on Friday 4 June from 7pm
• Waitakere to Britomart on Saturdays 5 and 12 June, Monday 7 June
• New Lynn to Britomart on Sundays 6 and 13 June
• Waitakere to Swanson on Tuesday 8 June to Friday 11 June.

Amended rail service times will operate over the period Friday 4 to 13 June

ARTA General Manager Customer Services, Mark Lambert says “We’d like to thank passengers for their continued support and understanding. More and more people are choosing to travel by rail, with patronage in the region dramatically increasing over the last five years. We’d like to thank Aucklanders for making that happen.

“The long weekends are usually a little quieter on the rail network, and therefore are the most opportune time to get on with work that will help improve services even more. This is work that can only be done when the trains are not running.” Mr Lambert said.

“Once this work is complete there will be continuous double tracking from Britomart to Swanson, which will improve reliability for passengers using the Western Line service.

“The new Avondale train station, which has been relocated to the heart of the town, will also be open for passengers from Monday 14 June.

“We would like to remind our passengers that with two tracks in operation, that also means trains will be running in both directions. People should look both ways and be extra vigilant when using level crossings.

“Passengers should look out for RAIL BUS signs at affected stations, and where buses replace trains, normal train fares will apply for the entire journey. Passengers should also allow extra time for their journey.

The number of people cycling in the Auckland region has dramatically increased by 27% compared to last year, according to a survey for the Auckland Regional Transport Authority (ARTA).

Over 12,000 cyclist movements were recorded at 84 sites across the region for the Cycle Monitoring Programme, which is a one day snapshot of cycling in the region taken during the second week of March each year. The sites were monitored at peak times from 6:30am to 9:00am and then again from 4:00pm to 7:00pm.

ARTA’s General Manager of Strategy and Planning, Peter Clark says, “Recent improvements in cycling infrastructure across the region are beginning to have a great impact on increasing the number of people choosing to take their bike.

“One of the most significant rises in cycling numbers we’ve seen since the start of the programme in 2007 was on the North Western Cycleway with an increase of 70%. Over 600 cyclists were counted on the cycleway during the monitoring times this year. The recently opened $3m Kingsland section of the North Western Cycleway is sure to boost cycle numbers even further as this now provides an almost continuous 12km ride from Te Atatu to the Central Business District.

ARTA’s Chief Executive, Fergus Gammie said, ”ARTA and its operators have held public transport fares in Auckland for three years in an environment in which other centres in New Zealand have increased their fares to recoup costs. Fares have been held to encourage transport patronage in Auckland and also in acknowledgement of difficult economic times.

“However, over the last three years the costs associated with running transport fleets have increased by around 11%. For example changing emission standards requiring improved vehicles and increased labour costs have been absorbed by our operators for a long period now, therefore bus, train and some ferry fares will increase from Sunday 21 February to help recoup these costs and hold service levels for our customers”.

It isn’t clear how much of the fare increase will go to the operators and how much will go to the ratepayer, or specifically what the fare increases are for the different modes and ticket types, but this is due to be revealed shortly.

Update: New bus fares are here.

Although KiwiRail has yet to complete a reconfiguration of tracks at Newmarket Junction before passenger trains start calling at the station on January 18, the building itself has been largely finished in time for tomorrow’s open day from 11am until 3pm.

Its focal point is a 1000sq m covered concourse built 5m above three sets of railway tracks, where passengers will converge from four entrances before using escalators, lifts or stairs to reach platforms below.

Each of the four “island” platforms is 180m long, almost four times the reach of Newmarket’s Olympic-size swimming pool.

Personally I’m drawn to the idea of fare caps, which is how I understand it works in London. In this scenario, punters are charged when they get on their first trip, but as they get on subsequent trips during the day they aren’t charged over a certain fare cap amount ($5 for example).

Anyhow, the post got a really great response from loose_shunter, “a fares policy person” over at the Victorian Department of Transport. It’s well thought out and informative, so I’ve posted it here as an article.  ARTA, employ that person!

The first principles decision to make is whether you have a distance or zone-based fare structure? Next, do you choose a time-based or journey-based ticketing product?

In what I’m about to say, I have assumed a zone-based fares structure and a time-based ticketing product (like Melbourne or Perth) because that’s a system I can talk about with some knowledge.

In my mind, the key elements to a possible fares structure for Auckland are as follows:

No financial penalty for multi-modal travel – Customers must not be penalised for transfers between mode. The good Dr Mees is quoted on somebody’s sig about this and it should be a self-evident principle.

Steep price differential between ‘cash’ and ‘stored value’ fares – You’ll never be able to totally get rid of a cash ticket as there will always be tourists (who don’t want to invest in a smartcard or don’t know the system), the ignorant, tinfoil hat wearers (smartcards are a de facto tracking system for the New World Order) or others that don’t want to switch to stored value.

However, to set a premium for the ease and convenience (to both operator and customer) of stored value, cash tickets should show a strong (>20%) price differential above stored value fares. SE Queensland have decided to further raise the difference between cash and stored value while offering incentives to switch to stored value.

2 hour/Daily fare capping – the 2 hour (or 3 hour or whatever time period is chosen) cap should allow a customer to make at the very least a single journey across town for a long distance and a return journey over a short distance. The second time a 2 hour fare is validated, the cap should then roll over to a Daily cap. This is what Melbourne’s fare system does already with the 10×2 hour ticket (the 2nd validation ‘converts’ it to a Daily) and will transfer across to myki. The Daily fare cap should be the equivalent of a return journey for the combination of zone or zones travelled.

Simplify the existing fares structure – This is really important to try and modify customer behaviour before implementing a new ticketing system. Look through the ticketing data, find the tickets which have low sales and get rid of them. Simplify the number of products and develop a standard product range to help reduce confusion and promote a ‘multi-operator/multi-modal’ mindset among customers. This means all the products used by individual operators must go to be standardised on a basic range used across all modes. Melbourne fought this battle in 2003-4 when the plethora of non-standard products used by Connex, M>Train, M>Tram and Yarra and National Bus were gradually washed out of the system over the following 3 years. Once you’ve got a standardised fares structure, lots of other things will flow from it – off-peak weekday pricing, weekend discounts, free travel offers and all the rest can happen once there’s a unified fares system.

The other fundamental questions come down to whether you want to abolish periodical tickets or keep them. You need good ticketing sales data to know how big a segment periodical ticket holders to keep them as part of your new fares structure or the political will to abolish periodicals (as they did in Perth many years ago). If you want to keep periodicals, they need to be created as a separate, stored value ‘pass’ product kept different to stored value. Perth translated the discounts for periodicals to the multi-trip tickets in their old ticketing system and then translated it again to the reload mode on Smartrider (the deepest discount went to ‘autoload’ customers, while stored value customers got the basic discount).

This system, designed and developed by the French Thales Group, is the preferred choice of the Auckland Regional Transport Authority (ARTA) for Auckland.

The path to be followed is similar to that in Denmark, which implemented the system in Copenhagen during 1995, and five years later expanded the project to cover the country.

Buses will have contactless card validators at entry and exit.

Stations will be equipped with similar validators and automatic gates, and have agent-operated point-of-sale terminals, self-service ticket vending and reloading machines.

The NZTA will take responsibility for the system, which could then be rolled out nationally. NZTA are interested in taking over integrated ticketing because a nationally integrated system could also be applied to toll roads, parking meters and car parking buildings, vastly simplifying the systems used for charging motorists as well.

Public transport

• Rail electrification: $1.2 billion
• Central Auckland rail tunnel: $1.5 billion
• Airport rail links: $1.1 billion
• Avondale-Onehunga rail link: $1 billion
• Northern busway extension to Orewa: $400 million
• Bus priority links Henderson-Albany and Panmure-Botany-Manukau centre (figures unavailable)

Roading

• Completing the western ring route: about $2 billion
• Auckland-Manukau Eastern Transport Initiative: $1.3 billion
• Improved airport links: $400 million

Investigations proposed for

• A third Waitemata Harbour crossing.
• A strategic road link to improve freight movements between East Tamaki and the western ring route.