We’ve talked before about the importance of speeding up buses. Just briefly speeding up buses:
- Makes buses more time competitive with other modes and with the right infrastructure can make them faster than other modes. That means they’re more attractive to potential users and therefore generate more patronage.
- Makes buses more efficient as they can complete their routes faster. That in turn can mean they potentially run more services for the same operational cost or alternatively run the same level of service but less cost. Either way we get a better result for the money we invest in PT.
When it comes to the actual task of speeding up buses there are a couple of key ways we can do that. The one we talk the most about is the introduction of bus infrastructure either bus lanes or dedicated busways but that isn’t the only way. Buses can also be sped up by reducing how long they spend at bus stops. Dwell times for individual stops might seem small but when combined can end up being a very significant portion of any bus journey and so improving them can have a lot of positive outcomes.
Thankfully we’ve already made some improvements to dwell times which has primarily come through the introduction of HOP – although more work is needed to get the percentage of people using it up. With HOP I’ve easily seen 5 or more board a bus in the same amount of time it takes for a a single person to buy a paper ticket and an entire bus can be fully loaded 1-2 minutes if no one is paying with cash. However dwell times could still be sped up further and there are a couple of key ways we could do that. They are
Ensuring buses have larger doors on both the front and the back – In a bid presumably to squeeze more seats in buses we’ve also seen bus doors shrink. On many buses such as the stupidly small ADL buses NZ Bus use an entire line of people paying by HOP can be held up by a single person paying by cash because depending on where they stand it can be difficult to get past them. The same issue can occur at the back door where only one person at a time can tag off and disembark. Both of these issues are noticeably reduced on buses with double doors and multiple HOP card readers such as on many of the Northern Express buses.
Another way to improve boarding times would be to allow people to do so from the rear doors, potentially halving dwell times. Currently this only occurs on some Northern Express services – such as those leaving town in the afternoon – and only because Ritchies pay for someone to stand at the back door watching people tag on.
All door boarding is something that Muni in San Francisco allowed in 2012 and as CityLab reports, it’s been a huge success.
Well, the “final” results of San Francisco’s all-door program are in, and they’re spectacular. All-door boarding reduced the average dwell time from nearly 4 seconds to 2.5 seconds among all Muni buses—a dip of 38 percent. More than half of all passengers used the rear door to enter, and time-consuming fare payments at the front door declined 4 percent. As a result, overall bus speeds improved.
Here’s the crux of the dwell finding, in one chart:
Of course fare evasion is always likely to be a concern with such a scheme however interestingly on Muni as a percentage it actually improved from all door boarding.
Most impressive, though, was that fare evasion didn’t increase. Muni added a rear-door smartcard reader and hired 13 new fare inspectors to spot-check rider proof-of-purchase. Pre-implementation studies had found fare evasion as high as 9.5 percent; after all-door boarding was implement, evasion was at 8 percent. As mobile fare technology improves, especially through contactless smartphone payments, boarding through any door should become even easier.
I don’t think fare evasion would be as high on our buses however this certainly shows all door boarding isn’t necessarily going to make things worse.
Overall it seems like something Auckland Transport should definitely be considering.
You can see the full Muni Report here.
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When Hop was being introduced rear door tag on was enabled, but it was disabled for fairly obvious reasons.
“Muni … hired 13 new fare inspectors …”
Yeah, those reasons. When did you last see an inspector on a bus ?
The main reason I prrsonally dont use HOP at times is because I have to either walk 20 mins and back to topup, online topup doesnt work for me since i cant see the future and topup the day before. I dont use autotopup since last time I did AT charged me $200 worth of $10 topups for no reason and then disabled the card, leaving me stranded in the middle of nowhere unable to tag on! Dispite 100s of emails that are replied to weeks later I still get stone walled with the “unable to access the database to reenable the card” rubbish.
So if this is my experiance you can see why some people either occasionly pay by cash due to lack of nearby topup locations (snapper had plenty of these btw, but AT culled most of them) or they might want to boycott it all together (if i wasnt concerned with the cost, this would be me).
Think this needs to be sorted so that more people can use the system and therefor speed up buses.
After an initial bad experience with auto-topup where I linked to a credit card and as it approached expiry HOP blocked my card I now can report to a seamless and completely positive experience with the system. It just can’t cope with credit cards, they shouldn’t accept auto-topup with them.
It’s a great feeling of liberation knowing that where ever and whenever i am in Auckland I know I can get on to any part of the PT system without worrying about cash. And as a parent I know my kids can also get home no matter if they have money. This is also why I don’t want HOP to be able to be used for buying other stuff, I choose to fund their mobility [while at school] but I have no wish to keep them and their friends in junk food. If they want that they have to budget and make sacrifices in other areas.
The main thing I would like to change is I’d love to see the card become unnecessary by being imbedded in my phone… I like most people are more likely to have my phone with me than a wallet.
I’ve had trouble-free auto top ups using a credit card for two years – although the card hasn’t reached its expiry during that time.
To be fair, AT has fairly recently improved the auto top up to now send a confirmation e-mail once it has done so. I understand it was attempting to charge an expired credit card three times before it blocked the Hop card. Hopefully the first e-mail following the decline will highlight the transaction failure. I’m not brave enough to let me credit card expire to try it out though!
I’m not sure why AT chose to block the Hop card for a declined top up. Surely there is no harm in just stopping the top up re-trys and letting the Hop card continue until it runs out of credit – in which case the owner can review their top up method. The only valid reason for blocking a Hop card itself would be if it’s stolen.
Yeah that would make sense but that card expires in 2017…
Another thing that slows down boarding is when people need to ask the driver “does this bus go to x?”. Perhaps better signage at bus stops would help, or big magnetic notices stuck on the bus near the door. For example, in Wellington people will ask something like “does the bus go past Taranaki St?” Usually these requests are for intermediate stops, because it’s obvious from the sign on the front where the bus is going – Miramar/Lyall Bay etc. Big notices saying via Willis/Cuba St/Courtenay might help minimise these kinds of questions. Then there was the moron bus driver last week, asked by several passengers “does this bus go to Courtenay Place?” His response “I think so” was so unhelpful, passengers were taken aback and confused. He even said at one point “there’s only one way through town” which is untrue.
Personally I think the best way is to increase the cash price to put more onto HOP.
All door boarding would then only be needed at main stops normally the first stop of a CBD route.
It isn’t appropriate for all stops due to the unwritten (unknown) rule of board at the front, exit at the rear.
London doesn’t even allow cash fares on buses anymore. That’s probably the next step.
AT have said in the past they want to move forward no change and eventually no cash on buses
That has to be a long way off in my opinion as HOP would need to be over 95%. The first step is to increase the differential. London had the cash fare at twice the Oyster fare, which no double helped Oyster usage. Add that the the fact PT is much more commonly used there so a much higher % of the population would have a Oyster card.
Needs more stores and NFC topups, mobile market share is dominated by NFC enabled phones, snapper had it, so can AT.
Also Wifi on the new EMUs would require HOP, if AT hurried up and turned it on then that might convince a few more people to get HOP. H&E’s new buses are going to have wifi, hopefully through HOP too.
This is a regular occurrence on the 27x….. most likely at Symonds Street opposite K Road
Tourist: does this bus go to Mt Eden?
Driver: yes. Do want the mountain or the village?
Tourist: ???
=== lengthy explanation follows explaining the difference between the mountain and the village. Likely outcome is tourist wants to exit at mountain ===
Tourist: How much does it cost?
Driver: $$$
=== tourist then scrabbles at length with unfamiliar change ===
Variations
————-
– Multiple tourists in a group all paying for their tickets individually
– Tourists try to manipulate backpacks the size of a small apartment in a rush hour packed bus
– Tourist asks for Mt Eden Road instead of Mt Eden. Arguments about the merits of various parts of Mt Eden Road as driver suspects prospective passenger of trying to pay for 1 stage instead of 2
hahaha…so true
If that information was provided at bus stops, it wouldn’t be an issue. The bus service isn’t just for locals.
Lots of good points.
My bugbear (apologies to NZ Bus) is the bus not having priority to pull out of the stop. This is common overseas and should be introduced here a.s.a.p.
My second priority would be to greatly increase the fare differential; about double for cash should do it.
In Welly, (not too sure about Auckland) it is a common courtesy for drivers to let the bus pull out and there is usually no issues with bus delays caused by people not letting buses in. However there are a few idiot cyclists who overtake buses just as they are pulling out. I definitely agree with your second point, although I think we should get rid of cash fares.
Auckland, driver and courtesy don’t fit in the same phrase. Many times I saw drivers trying to outmuscle buses exiting bus stops.
You may want to re read the road code. …..
I can’t see anything in the road code; perhaps you could enlighten me as to where one could locate this reference?
Julie Anne Genter has a private member’s bill to address this issue: https://home.greens.org.nz/bills/land-transport-give-way-buses-bill
I have sat on a bus on Manukau Road, on more than one occasion, where 20+ cars went by without giving way.
London has open slather on boarding buses but then they also have draconian penalties for fare evaders.
How on earth do people even fare evade on a bus with front door only loading? In Melbourne, I think you have to get a myki card to use any bus, tram or train, so that would be the next step once all the issues with Hop has been sorted.
Common fair evasion I see:
* People asking/paying for just one stage and staying on past that.
* At a busy stop the person will just go through without tagging on while the driver is taking cash from someone else.
* People with expired/bad cards waving it a few times then “giving up” and keeping on going.
* Older people using Gold cards before 9am or pretending they don’t have their Gold card on them (when they don’t have one)
Most the last three methods are mainly from the “usual bums” while the first is tried by a wider range of younger people (say under 20)
Yup, those ‘new’ ADL buses are turning out to be real dogs: too small; too cramped; too narrow; and the air conditioning too weak. One can speculate as to why NZ Bus selected a bus designed primarily for the provincial British market, one that is shrinking rapidly thanks largely to the impact of the unfettered privatisation of bus services. For future contracts AT should be able to specify what it expects operators to provide, inter alia, facilities such as double doors, front and back, and decently wide aisles.
The ADL buses are okay, but they are used for the wrong purpose. IMO NZ Bus should use them as feeder buses for the NEX and the rail services, and routes that never get full. Obviously, some numpty thought it would be good to use them in some of the most popular routes.
Agree.
AT can do that now. That is how the NEX was 51 seats and double doors back and front.
Harder to do with commercial registrations.
PTOM specifies requirements. Allows smaller buses and operators will use when allowed as it reduces opex/capex for same income.
Hopefully AT will only allow small buses where suitable or ensure a higher frequency.
No-one has remarked on people exiting at the front of the bus, and holding up the people wanting to get on. There are all the signs about not taking up more than your space, but none telling you to get out the back door. That would save significant time, sometimes. Another delay is seniors having to get tickets. I gather the wish is to make the Goldcard a HOP, but in the meantime why not promote to oldies to load the concession onto a HOP card?
And visitor cards are apparently promoted at the airport, but I’m looking fwd to seeing them promoted much more widely.
Sometimes the front door is faster. Eg for stops like the university in the morning half the bus might be getting off. People 1/3 of the way into the bus (from the front) will usually get off a lot quicker if they go out through the front door rather than try to use the rear one.
There are always exceptions to the rule. Some stops during peak hour are predominantly (solely) exits so using both doors makes sense. If half the bus is exiting, then use both, but if just a few of you, and you can see others are getting on, then use the back.
GWRC’s planned integrated ticketing system needs to move away from the expensive gating of railway stations and extend the multi door fast entry to bus services. $40 million of the $75 million budgeted amount is for gating at three railway stations.
However, I agree the exiting passengers should do so by the backdoor except in the case of disabled passengers.
On a typical Wellington crowded bus it is not practical to say passengers should only exit by the back door. Eg: exiting a 2 or 6 at Pirie St in the morning outside the bus tunnel. Public buses are packed full with schoolgirls because GWRC won’t put more school buses on.
$40 million to gate 3 railway stations….are the machines made out of gold leaf or something…I’d rather improve traffic and bus flow at the Basin by building Option C instead of gating 3 stations at that price.
I lived in Rome for more than a year and the buses have three doors; front, middle, and rear. The general rule was that one entered in the front or rear and exit in the middle. There are no cash fares and either one has to buy a one use card (or a day pass) or the yearly pass for 250 euro. The buses had few seats, like the metro, and standing was the norm. I would say fare evasion was fairly common for certain groups but there were inspectors; which I only saw once on the bus. However, Rome decided that moving people was far more important than collecting a few fares. Also the yearly pass was so cheap that it made sense that everyone had one. Perhaps for the really busy routes buses like in Rome make more sense.
I was thinking the same thing, having been in Italy a few times. Take out seats on some buses on the shorter busiest routes like Mt Eden Rd. Most people end up standing anyway, and evenings or weekends when it’s not busy, you can get a seat. Do what busy cities do, since Auckland is reaching that stage.
Double doors front and rear, retire the ADL buses, and move toward exact fare required in the future. In Italy you either buy tickets from a machine on the bus, from a tobacconist, or swipe a card. You don’t bother the driver. I have seen random inspectors on buses around the place.
Not having a ticket in Italy is a criminal offence. And yearly or monthly abbonamenti are very good value. In Auckland you have to make your calculations very well and maybe at the end of the year you save a couple of bucks.
In my experience this was the case all over Continental Europe on buses and trams/light rail. The driver’s only job is to drive the bus/tram. If you are lucky he/she might answer your questions about destinations.
Inspectors were the only safeguard for fare evasion and if you got pinged it was bad news. Compulsory ID cards made this much easier for enforcement and I have never understood the Anglo Saxon reluctance to have these. They make life a lot easier.
This is how it will be in NZ eventually with inspectors as it is a cheap and easy way to increase capacity. The current system is not scaleable – it only works at low levels of use and the current rapid growth will make that redundant very soon.
Of course low annual/monthly prices also help. At NZ$250 per annum for unlimited travel in Prague, it was idiocy not to get one.
This is all good but much less effective at reducing peak hours transit times than introducing bus lanes / busways – I hope building or painting these on all arterial routes becomes AT’s 1st priority.
Yes use the rear door definitely works just like the trains. What we need is more inspectors and recording camera on the rear doors.
Also could put inspectors on main bus stations to random check people who has just hop off.
All public buses in Swiss cities are all doors boarding. When I return back to NZ I am always reminded of the slow processing of passengers with just one door open.
However, in Switzerland citizens are very honest with having a prepurchased ticket or monthly-annual pass. In NZ, well look at the massive numbers of fare evaders on our AT trains now.
I think it is more about the annual/monthly prices being so low rather than Swiss being any more honest. When it is so cost effective to buy an annual pass, why wouldn’t you?
To prepare for multi-door entry, we need to change the NZ law to make it the passenger’s responsibility to have a valid ticket, not the company’s to check that you have the right ticket. Speed loading must not include driver or swipe-card checks of tickets. We will need higher-priced cash ticket machines on bus/trams for tourists or casual riders. And the law needs to authorise large instant fines for not having a ticket, or wrong fare etc. A 100 euro instant fine is common in Germany – where random checks by multiple mufti-dressed inspectors who get on through multi-doors and start checking as soon as the bus/tram starts moving.
But to balance this we also need sensible monthly/annual commuter tickets that also offer benefits such as free weekend travel for partners and children on any commuter monthly ticket.
And as Paul Bruce said – we need to stop the stupid waste of money on installing auto-ticket gates on rail stations and major bus stops. This is unnecessary and a waste of money – BUT we will need a period of education and high fines to change the habits of Kiwis who will try to cheat the system.
fare integration is coming… will some news on this soon.
Definitely time for all door boarding, hopefully combined with a large increase (and enforcement) in fines for fare evaders.
I’ve only ever seen warnings given for fare evasion.
I hate fare evasion however when theres a genuine issue they need to verify it and let them finish their journey. I have been kicked off once for not tagging on when all the posts and machine were without power, an hour until the next train (night, back before 30 min freq). Not acceptable imo.
Showing my age here, but the front door is always the entrance and the back door is always the exit. I hate trying to board a bus and some moron tries to push past me to get off. Try that with someone smaller than me, boyo.
I thought it was courtesy to let people disembark before you board?
Au contraire: the rude people are those exiting the front door.
It is polite to exit the bus from the back door. I have often seen idiots walk from the seats at the back door to exit at the front and then when on the street they proceed to walk back in the direction of the back door.
Front door exiting is a bad RECENT habit in Auckland and should be stopped now.
The problem with exiting from the back door is, the driver has to open the back door first. Luckily usually at least a few of your fellow passengers in front will notice and tell the driver before he drives off to the next stop.
That’s the reason I often alight at the front, and I always make sure to either sit or stand near a door, just so I know I’ll be able to get off before the driver takes off again. Poor etiquette, sure, but when you become used to having to yell at the driver to open the door (or even to stop the bus), your habits change.
Fix the buses and customers’ habits will improve.
What about buying modern articulated buses with three doors? And/or buses with Longitude seatings?
One of the great benefits of privatisation (when the big reds and the ybc were replaced by private contractors) was that the requirement for ‘exact fares’ was dropped. Speeding boarding (and alighting) is a desirable objective but not at the expense of user friendliness. In some circumstances having ‘loaders’ to assist boarding – or even conductors – is low tech and effective – and if the cost of gating railway stations (more user-unfriendliness) is to go by, cheaper.
There was no requirement (at least by Big Reds) for exact fares, so their absence today is hardly a benefit of privatisation – let alone a “great” one!
No sorry, that is not right. All over the world cash fares on the bus are non-existent and you need a ticket to get on first.
What you are supporting is only appropriate when you imagine a system used by a lot of casual users. Casual users are a tiny minority on most transport systems and are rapidly becoming the same in Auckland as PT use explodes.
All door boarding -yes. A transit authority that doesn’t allow it simply isn’t serious about running an efficient service.
Agree.
concerns about fare evasion are minor compared to benefits in terms of travel-time and additional patronage.
Japan seems to do very well with rear door loading. You swipe on or take a ticket from a machine that registers the boarding point. A display on the bus tells you what the charges are so you can get the right change from a change machine during the journey. Everyone swipes off or feeds their ticket plus the correct change into a machine beside the driver. Driver gets to check everyone as they disembark – both boarding and alighting go quickly and smoothly.
The future of Auckland land public transport is bus. Forget about central rail loop – its a folly that can’t be paid for. (Don’t bother answering that Patrick Reynolds). Introduce a massive increase in bus frequency. First year of initiative is free to all passengers. After 1st year introduce payment for travel. No cash anywhere, cards only. Discount monthly / annual season cards. Have option for pay as you go for travel on one off journeys / travel through extra zones.Enter a bus with big doors anywhere you like: front, middle, back. Get off anywhere you like. Provide buses with more standing and fewer seats. Smaller buses for routes with smaller loads. Double decker buses for heavier loads. Bus lanes need to be everywhere. Lights phased to prioritise buses. Educate drivers to be passenger friendly. On board commentary about route / next stop. Change law to make it offense to travel without valid card. Buses to have priority pulling out of stops.End of story.
“The future of Auckland land public transport is bus. Forget about central rail loop – its a folly that can’t be paid for”.
I suggest you educate yourself Shard.
Have you noticed that it is a *Link* not a *Loop*? Where do you propose to put thousands of extra buses downtown? How do you anticipate the city functioning when every arterial road and city street has to have double bus lanes in each direction? How do you imagine moving around the city when there are a million additional residents?
‘The future of Auckland land public transport is bus’
This sentence only makes sense if somehow time reverses and ‘the future’ means ‘the past’. A place where there are fewer people in Auckland every year, and the city is slowly emptier and more and more like the thinly spread out provincial town it used to be.
The past of Auckland land public transport is bus, the future is everything; bus, train, tram, ferry. We need to use everything we’ve got as efficiently as we can.
Auckland is now a city and needs city infrastructure, and will it continue to need it more and more urgently as each month passes. The story doesn’t end.
Shard you need to turn around, face the front, and actually consider the future and not the past.
And yet experts who looked at all the options (including bus tunnels) completely disagree with you:
http://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/EN/AboutCouncil/representativesbodies/MayorofAuckland/Documents/CCFASexecsummary.pdf
You are just misinformed or ideologically opposed to rail which is blinding your ability to assess actual facts.
The CRL has been planned since the 1920s as the Morningside Deviation. It is the absolute necessary step for a well functioning transport system.
Even cities like Curitiba which leads the world in rapid bus transit is realising it needs more than buses as its streets are clogged with (full) buses. The fact is the city streets just don’t have capacity for this many buses. http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/5001/lessons-from-a-south-american-bus-rapid-transit-system/
Curitiba is now planning to build a metro (much like Auckland will have after the CRL is finished) to deal with capacity issues:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curitiba#Transportation
And that is without taking into account the pollution from diesel buses, a problem not easily solved.
“(Don’t bother answering that Patrick Reynolds).” Translation: I don’t want to listen to anyone who disagrees with me.
“End of story.” Translation: “I’m now sticking my fingers in my ears and going mehmehmehmeh, as I am 9 years old”.
My bus is a mix of commuters and more ‘casual’ bus users, and boarding can be a struggle if someone is taking ages to pay, and aren’t standing to the left, so we all have to wait to tag on – such a hassle. If you’re going to pay cash/ask the driver questions, at least try to let people past.
Linz, the buses in my proposal don’t all go downtown – that’s so backward looking. They cross town in all directions and connect with other travel infrastructure intelligently.
Patrick, i knew you couldn’t resist a go but at least you didn’t spout too much pseudo planning babble. There’s no need to rewrite my post in your own words unless you want to have everything your own way of course? I’m being realistic. Indebting the future of Auckland ratepayers to create an inner city rail link is head in the sand thinking – incredibly difficult sources of funding needs to be invested far and wide. And by the way, its far safer to travel facing backwards.
Problem is you simply can’t replace even the current rail trips with buses without clogging up the streets. Just for the trains that stop at Britomart at the peak you’d need ~180 buses. More for all the people going to other stations along the network. It’s the bus congestion as to why AT are looking seriously at light rail. A bus only solution is indebting future Aucklanders to walls of buses and an inefficient transport network where the rail network has huge capacity available – more than double what it is doing – that can’t be tapped into because one short 3km tunnel is missing
Oh ok shard you won’t turn around to look where we’re heading, but still it’s nonsense that we can’t afford the CRL. It’s starting this year, it’s in the budget. The gov has agreed to fund 50% of the capex, meh,
We can’t afford the cost of not doing it; a disconnected, dull, and economically underperforming wider city [and bus swamped].
“They cross town in all directions and connect with other travel infrastructure intelligently.” – so kind of like the trains after the CRL is finished?
And if you don’t think that is true, then you definitely don’t understand what the CRL actually is. There is heaps of info on this blog to educate yourself with.
Why don’t we have ticket machines at the busier bus stops?
A couple of points here.
Matt L – I’m not suggesting replacing the rail, so 180 buses at Britomart? I don’t think that is a reasonable argument.
Goosold – so the CRL will provide trains in all directions will it? I don’t think so. Not without buses.
Patrick – budgets change, it’s not written in stone. The govt’s position is a vote winner but I’d wager on the tunnel getting as far as Hobson st and then stopping. We live in uncertain times,…
If the link is ever made, it would be nice. It completes a circle and would provide a better service to a wider catchment. But, the link will not serve enough of Auckland to justify the cost compared to a radically changed bus network.I know you lot think I’m uneducated and backward looking but I am a realistic. You are playing with monopoly money.
That 180 buses is just based on now, within a few years it’ll be double that and the CRL is double that again
Yes the CRL provides trains in multiple directions. Your other comments suggest you think it will go in a circle, it won’t. This is the latest running pattern AT are working towards
Your’re right, the CRL won’t make it to Hobson St but that’s because it was never planned to. It goes up Albert St. As for the bus network, that radical change is on the way with the New Network being rolled out next year. The link below is just for the high frequency routes which will have a bus at least every 15 minutes 7am-7pm every day of the week. That’s a massive improvement and made possible by eliminating a lot of waste. Under that there are a lot of other services too.
https://at.govt.nz/media/594493/New-Network-Map.pdf
https://at.govt.nz/projects-roadworks/new-public-transport-network/
So peculiar this argument. A rail line must be everywhere to be worth building, yet we all understand that each road only goes from A to B. In practice of course both are simply parts of networks, and of course should be evaluated by their impacts on their respective networks. For example the Waterview project has good network effects; it joins SH20 to SH16.
So it is with the CRL, it transforms the whole of the current rail system from a 20 train per hour limit to a huge 48 tph one [not something Waterview does; it simply floods the existing m’way system with more traffic], it enables the through-routing of all trains from all parts of the network. In fact it upgrades our current in-and-out suburban system into a proper Metro. Auckland gets a Metro system for just the cost of 3.4km of tunnels and a couple of new stations. This is such a huge network effect that it leaves all other available transport investments in the whole country for dead. To replicate this capacity would require new four lane motorways from each of the west, south and east. This is neither possible nor affordable. And of course it opens up the possibility of extending the network to the Shore and the Southwest/Airport.
Oh it doesn’t reach every part of the city, only about 75% of it, well that’ll do for starters. Currently the rail system carries over 50 000 rides each weekday, these people not driving is what keeps our roads as functional as they are. Post CRL this number will at least quadruple, you like driving?; you need this to happen in our growing city.
Every other city of AKL’s size would jump at the great fortune we have to link these lines and the reap great benefit it brings for the cost.
Four years after you poster about all door boarding, we don’t have it here. Having moved from LA where buses now have it, I miss it! I’m on the City link in Auckland now. Think of the extra possibilities:
– inner city buses run faster
– any suburban bus, particularly high frequency lines, run substantially faster
– arterial routes like the Northern Express run much, much faster
– less bus bunching as a result of shorter dwell times, leading to more reliability
Would be a win on many fronts!
While we’re at it, Northern Express stations should have passengers tagging on and off as they entering the station, like on the train, rather than tagging on and off when they get on the bus itself. (Or has that already been implemented? It’s been a while since I’ve taken northern express)