Well for Christchurch Bus and for Auckland Rail users it is. Christchurch is launching its New Bus Network today:
PDF here. We are very keen to hear back from users about they think of this. In fact we’ed be very keen to run a guest post or two from interested PT users in Christchurch. Here’s what Christchurch Metro say about it:
Our city has changed, and so must we. Public transport is a valuable asset to a modern, vibrant city. It helps to keep us, and our economy, moving, and so this new network has been developed to cover our emerging city. The core of the new network features five high-frequency, direct services running across town.
Also today the new Auckland Rail timetables, especially for the Eastern and Southern lines in Auckland begin, as Matt described last month here:
This means the beginning of an all EMU service on the Eastern Line, and the beginning of our much more legible and frequent turn-up-and-go Metro-style rail Rapid Transit running pattern. This is the next step in the great upgrade of rail services for Auckland that is already being met with enthusiasm by Auckland travellers. Early next year the Southern Line with get its Electric Trains, followed by the Western Line towards the end, which will also come with frequency increases. Next year will also see the beginning of the roll out of the radical upgrade of the Bus system that is the New Network. Today will also see the beginning of regular use of electric six car sets on the network.
Again we are keen to hear from users how the new services are going.
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There seemed to be quite a few cancellations this morning on the Eastern Line so not the best start. I only noticed one 6 car EMU which was heading away from Britomart at around 7.30. I think they really need to be all 6 car between 7.30 and 9.30.
I am moving to Christchurch in January without a car, so I could fill in the Christchurch transport experiences/news from that point on.
Carless in CHCH! You’ll be a rare beast. That would be great, thanks.
I moved down to ChCh without a car back in March, although I made sure I considered PT when choosing where to live. Haven’t caught a bus this morning yet (half hour walk to work), but usually bus back home on two different services, one a 3 minute trip to the exchange and another 10 min journey home. I’ve been relatively unaffected by the change, the only benefit really being a slightly more direct trip to the airport on the Purple Line when the old 3 service detoured through the industrial zone northeast of the airport first. Still need to do a transfer though.
As you can tell, transferring is already a way of life with ChCh buses, but the main thing is that they have integrated fares!! $2.50 gets you on any bus service within suburban ChCh within a two-hour window. Additionally, there is a $5 daily cap. On Saturday for example, I bussed into the city for some xmas shopping, then a couple of hours later bussed to Westfield Riccarton, then later bussed home. Then in the evening I bussed to the other side of the city to go to the cinemas and then back home again. A total of five bus trips (two which were in the order of half an hour each) for $5.
One thing they could improve is upping the frequency at peak. 15 min all day frequency is great but is stretched thin at peak. 10 min frequencies at these times would be better, especially in the morning when you have school kids also (part of the reason I choose to walk in the morning).
And as a old frequent user of the south and eastern lines, I am very interested to hear how the timetable change has been received there.
Another big issue are bus stops. Due to the governance model, the regional council has changed the routes, however most of the new routes (that didn’t replace old routes) have no bus stops yet, which are placed by the territorial authorities. Some of these routes have 1 or 2 km without any bus stops.
So why did we spend millions on a new ticketting system that still doesn’t do integrated fares, when we could have just rolled out Christchurchs system.
It’s coming. It will be a hell of a lot more complicated to implement for Auckland than for Christchurch.
Yeah, ChCh benefits from having 90+% of the trips being within one stage. There’s only a tag on and no tag off. It gets messy when there’s multiple stages, you have to tell the driver for 2 or 3 zone trips not only on that single trip, but on all connecting trips. That wouldn’t work at Auckland at all.
So how are the 10% of multizone trips handled?
As I said, by telling your driver that stage you require each time you take a bus, even if you are on a connecting single stage bus. If you transfer from a 2/3 stage bus to a 1 stage bus without telling them you pay twice. The caps are all based on same-stage journeys, so if you take different stage journeys you need to ask for the higher stage cost in order to get the caps. I expect a lot of 2/3 stage users get caught out on this and overpay regularly. But the single stage journeys are easy (expect when the driver forgets to set the machine back to 1 stage after someone asked for 2/3 stages!). HOP works way better with multi-stage trips.
So CHCH has integrated fares but not integrated ticketing? Still paper tickets?
There’s integrated ticketing. MetroCard is the equivalent to the HOP card and provides discounts and unlimited transfers. The paper tickets still allow a single free transfer. All the ticketing (even the paper ticketing) is managed through Metro, even though there are two different bus companies.
There’s three bus companies in Chch, no – Go Bus, Leopard, and Red Bus?
The buses that have more than one stage are pretty specific – airport, Rolleston, and Kaiapoi, basically.
Go Bus bought out Leopard Bus’s routes
Ah! I hadn’t realised that – been a while as well.
What is the hold up with integrated fares in Auckland?
Surely we bought a system capable of implementing whatever fare structure they come up with – so what’s taking so long?
I can’t understand why they didn’t just simplify the whole thing from the outset of HOP instead of implementing one system and then changing to another?
the existing operator contracts required it basically.
Nick they must have been long contracts, the idea of integrated ticketing and fares has been around for as long as I remember it would have been pretty dumb to sign contracts that didn’t allow for it?
Wouldn’t it have been cheaper to buy the operators out of the contracts than to implement two systems? And are we are still waiting for these contracts to expire?
Yes some contracts are very long, as long as the life of a bus. But also recall we have non contracted services, where the operator has a bill from parliament saying they can do what they like, charge what ey like, and how they like. Unfortunately before PTOM they could only proceed with a system that allowed for all and sundry individual operator fare products. Maybe they should have mothballed the ticket system until some time around 2016, but I think we are better off already. It’s always one step at s time, whether we like it or not.
A few comments here:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/63928731/Huge-Christchurch-bus-shake-up-kicks-off
Seems a lot of people didn’t notice the notification of the changes. Plenty of other complaints about lose of service from some (or having to make 4-6 transfers), but hard to tell how real they are. Also usual teething problems.
I love how the core network is made up of crosstown routes to make transfers easy.
I hate how my dominion rd busses stop at midtown and i have to walk 15 mins to connect with the northern express.
I think some time in the distant future they will extend Dominion road buses to Wynyard. Simple obvious changes seem to need about 5 years of design and consultation. But even then I don’t think there will be one place to catch any bus or train, you will still need to know a bunch of different places to catch different services.
I noticed catching the 258 into town the other night that almost everyone on Mt Eden Road didn’t catch the 258 and instead caught the 277 behind it – shows what a big percentage of people want to go downtown instead of midtown, especially at night.
Western line services from Britomart half an hour late this morning (07:07 cancelled). Maybe teething problems. Hopefully the new timetable will be effective.
Hmm, if there is a train every 15 minutes, and they are running 30mins late, isn’t that late running invisible to the user? I.e. you turn up at 8am for the 8am train, at 8am a train arrives and you get on it, only it was scheduled for 7:30.
Train was cancelled. Waited for next scheduled service. Half an hour extra time taken up.
1/2 an hour? Once upon a time that would have been an hour at least. Progress 🙂
I rocked up to Meadowbank as an EMU was leaving (seem to do that a lot!) 10 mins later another EMU arrives, not even half full. Nice and comfortable. SO far so good.
TB gets a brief mention here – perhaps someone would like to respond to the writer?
http://enzedtransport.blogspot.co.nz/2014/12/huge-christchurch-bus-shake-up-kicks-off.html
What a lol-fest. This guy obviously doesn’t know how to measure. All buses that enter the city centre (within the avenues) go to the Exchange. There is only one service within 1 km of this exchange that doesn’t go there, which is the 140, running along Moorhouse Ave, but this route actually passes all of the high frequency routes as they enter the city. And the nearest hub is 3 km from the central station (excluding the hospital, which is all the same routes that enter the city anyway).
Can’t disagree with him about Gerry though.
Bit daft, everything runs on a radial route via the city centre exchange, except a couple of local crosstown routes. Does he expect the crosstown buses to also go the the city centre? Why ride a crosstown to the city centre when every main road has a radial route on it already?
Wish auckland buses ran crosstown like that, I hate living in the city just to have to get 2 buses (around 35min travel or even worse at night) including 10 min of walking to get somewhere it takes 10 min by car door to door.