Mapnificent

I think we’re only just beginning to recognise the useful ways in which technology can be combined with public transport to both make the trip nicer and to also analyse the PT system and work out ways in which to improve it. Much of this work is going on outside official agencies – which seem stuck in the dark age when it comes to such matters (try using the MAXX journey planner on a mobile phone, a painful process!)

Back in January we saw Auckland’s entire PT network simulated over the course of a day, in this fantastic video put together by Sciblogs.

An animated map of Auckland’s public transport network from Chris McDowall on Vimeo.

Now there’s a new piece of software, known as “Mapnificent“, that provides an incredibly useful resource: the extent of a city that’s accessible within a certain timeframe via public transport at various different hours of the day. This video explains how it works:

Mapnificent from Stefan Wehrmeyer on Vimeo.

Some of the functions are incredibly useful, I suspect particularly for those searching for houses or working out whether a particular job will be accessible for them via public transport in a feasible way or not. It would be interesting to see, over time, whether real estate agents reckon this is a helpful tool in trying to sell places – it’ll be particularly obvious the parts of the city within say a half-hour PT commute from downtown. If you worked across the road from Britomart train station, and accepted up to a 15 minute walk, you can see in the image below how much of the city would be within 30 minutes of travel time: It’s a surprisingly small portion of the city really, although I guess that’s because of walking times to and from the bus stop or train station. Interesting how effective the Northern Busway is at creating points on the North Shore that are dramatically more accessible than what’s around them. It’s crazy that most of the catchment of Akoranga Station is a golf driving range, and most of Smales Farm’s catchment is a golf course and a massive parking building. If there were ever parts of the city appropriate and attractive for intensification, these are those point. The fantastic speed of trains on the Eastern Line, and I assume the good speed of buses along Remuera Road and Tamaki Drive give that part of the city a surprisingly good score.

Push the time limit out to 60 minutes, and we start to see which parts of the city have particularly bad public transport – in that they can’t even get a peak time trip to Britomart in less than an hour: If you ever wanted a visual representation of why it’s stupid to have focused so much of Auckland’s urban development in Flat Bush, Botany Downs, Dannemora and so forth – then this is that proof. Heck even Beachlands and parts of Waiheke Island are more accessible to the CBD than a vast swathe of southeast Auckland. But there are interesting holes too – Te Atatu Peninsula and Massey are suprisingly excluded, a good argument for the Northwest Busway perhaps?

But Britomart is a really accessible point of downtown. How about if we shifted the focus point to somewhere outside easy walking distance of the current rail network – like the Auckland Town Hall. What impact does that have on what’s accessible in an hour long PT trip or less: Accessibility from the south and west is reduced quite significantly, while that southeast area is now well outside the 60 minute accessibility area (indicating that it would probably take people a lot longer than an hour to get to the town hall from these places. One big advantage of the City Rail Link project is that it will bring much more of the city within a reasonable commute of all the CBD, not just the area around Britomart.

However, if we think public transport to the CBD is bad, remember that only 13% of Auckland’s jobs are in the CBD. Other large employment hubs include around Greenlane/Ellerslie, in East Tamaki, Albany and at the Airport. The 60 minute accessibility zones for these are are pretty terrible (and remember that this is for an hour each way, probably the very limit of acceptability):

I wonder if such maps might make our planner reconsider the merits of decentralising employment. I would also think twice about shifting to Flat Bush any time soon – remembering that the map shows areas within a one hour commute:

The potential uses for this tool are endless. What a fantastic resource!

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