Tag Archives: Public Transport

NSW Labor’s Public Transport Solution – Paint All Buses Blue

Posted on by Brad Heap

The SMH today reports that the state government wants to paint all private buses blue and white, the same livery used on STA buses. The government will pay for the repainting of the buses arguing that it will make buses easier to identify.

Metrobus in sydney

Labor Red Metrobus

Sydney Buses, PMC bodied Mercedes-Benz O405 (Mark 5)

Liberal Blue STA Bus

Buses being different colours depending on location actually makes sense and is used in many different cities around the world. If you see a yellow bus you will know it is most likely going to Castle Hill for instance. Painting them all one colour means you have to stare at the small location display of every bus going by. This isn’t easier, it is in fact a lot harder to identify a bus.

There are some days I wish that NSW Labor was just a comedy group like The Chaser and real governance happened somewhere else. However, these clowns are actually in government and are extremely good at wasting money on silly ideas.

Painting all the buses the same colour will do nothing to improve public transport. Spending money on more buses, bus-lanes, and integrated ticketing will.

The cynic in me wonders if NSW Labor is working with a genius marketer to paint all the buses blue and white to subliminally represent the opposition Liberal Coalition. While the new, flash, and fast state-run Metrobus network has bright Labor red buses.

This is why Auckland will never be a “World-Class” city

Posted on by Brad Heap

Jon C at AKT reports that the platforms at the new Onehunga train station will only be 55m in length, whereas the new electric trains will be 70m long.

KiwiRail says the platforms are of a shorter length because of “constraints on keeping the line away from nearby apartments”, electric trains could run to Onehunga but people would only be able to travel in the front two of the three car trains.

Not only is Auckland 100 years behind most of the developed world in getting an electric rail system (remember that Britomart is the only underground diesel railway station in the world!) we can’t even get the size of the platforms right. This would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

Meanwhile in Sydney next week sees the commencement of the 4th Metrobus route from Bondi to Chatswood with 80,000 people per week capacity. The Metrobus system in Sydney has been a great success with bus running so frequently they don’t need timetables. In Auckland there has been the Link bus for a number of years working on this system, but how about seeing it on routes like the Northern Express, Dominion Road (ARTA are launching the “B.Line” here), Great South Road, New North Road, Great North Road.

There is a reason why “Public Transport” in Auckland has been called an oxymoron and this stuff up in the length of the train platforms is yet another example of it.

The Daily Routine

Posted on by Brad Heap

In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes. – Benjamin Franklin.

This morning I have been cleaning the house and among other rubbish that is being thrown out is a few old bus passes. For some reason I decided to look on the back of my bus pass where each of the trips taken are recorded and it is a little scary how routine my day is:

Trip 1 – On Bus at 8.20
Trip 2 – On Bus at 17.29

Trip 3 – On Bus at 8.28
Trip 4 – On Bus at 17.29

Trip 5 – On Bus at 8.29
Trip 6 – On Bus at 17.20

Trip 7 – On Bus at 8.31
Trip 8 – On Bus at 17.40

The scatter of morning trips is within 11 minutes and three of the four trips are within a 3 minute period on different days. Coming home from uni the spread is over a 20 minute period but two of the four trips are identical times on consecutive days.

The going to uni closeness in times makes a lot of sense I have my morning routine drilled down so well that I can be up at 7.30, showered, breakfast, and walk down to the bus stop within a 10 minute window of variance.

What surprises me more is the pattern in heading home. I try to maintain 9 – 5 hours at uni but the end time is often determined by who I am talking to or what I am working on, it is not the sort of thing you can just stop, I stop when I get to a point in my code I can halt on, or I finish whatever task I was doing, so to manage 4 consecutive days of finishing within a 20 minute window is well scary.

Full Buses Not Good Enough

Posted on by Brad Heap

I am finally on a bus to uni. It has taken 30 minutes to get on board because during the uni break the express busses run a reduced schedule which pushes more people onto the normal non express services. The problem is departing town at 10am there is simply not enough buses to meet the demand so where I catch the bus around 500m after the start of the route the buses just go straight past because they are full.

Now it is good to have a busy public transport system. But it needs to work there needs to be enough buses to meet demand and empty buses going past on other routes or not in service suggests a problem with the timetables.

I want my 30 minutes back.

Auckland Trains On-time Performance Abysmal

Posted on by Brad Heap

Over at Auckland Trains Jon C notes: “the Western Line performance stats for January were 36.1% punctionality. Southern was only 73%.”

In other words on the Western Line 2 in every 3 trains is late. And on the Southern it is better but still 1 in every 4 trains is late. How can this be even remotely acceptable performance?

I did a quick check of the Sydney train performance stats, for January they had a 97.4% on time performance. 1 train in every 40 is late. That is 10x better performance than the best that Auckland can deliver. And yet people in Sydney are constantly moaning about the poor performance of the rail network.

A major shakeup needs to happen with Auckland’s rail network. Being electrified by 2013 is too far away, by then no one will be left to use the service.

Thoughts on Sydney Transport Plan

Posted on by Brad Heap

Jon at Auckland Trains covers from a New Zealand perspective the release of the new transport plan for Sydney.

The main features of her plan:

  • The $4.5 billion Western Express CityRail Service to slash travelling times from western Sydney to the city. It will achieve faster and more frequent services with a goal of up to 50 per cent more services and 17 per cent more passengers on the CityRail network on an average weekday. This will occur through: Separating a dedicated track from all other traffic;
  • Construction of a new five kilometre priority tunnel –City Relief Line – will be built from 2015 in the city to separate western services from inner-city trains to provide shorter journey times;
  • Construction of eight new platforms to increase capacity at Redfern, Central, Town Hall and Wynyard to relieve congestion;
  • New express train services will be introduced for the Blue Mountains, Richmond, Penrith, Blacktown and Parramatta; and Increase CityRail’s capacity on all lines and allow the introduction of express rail services to western Sydney.
  • Start of work on the $6.7 billion North West rail link from Epping to Rouse Hill with six stations at Franklin Road, Castle Hill, Hills Centre, Norwest, Burns Road and Rouse Hill in 2017;
  • A $500 million expansion of the current light rail system – bringing its total length to 16.9 kilometres with up to 20 new stations and almost 10 kilometres of new track – a more than doubling of the distance of the existing route.

I added my two cents to the discussion on his blog:

Having just moved to Sydney from Auckland only three weeks ago I have had to quickly adjust from using a car on a daily basis to having to use a bus on a daily basis and a train about twice a week.

The public transport system here is a lot bigger than Auckland and is a lot better in same ways, having said that at rush hour it is a nightmare.

There are two key problems. The first is the centralisation of all routes at the city centre, there needs to be a lot more cross town services both buses and trains. Second a lot of major bus routes need to be replaced by high capacity trains or light rail.

The shelving of the metro is a good idea. However they need to get all buses off the central CBD and replace them with trams/light rail like Melbourne, they also need to extend the train from Bondi Junction down to the South Sydney Beaches and then back up ANZAC parade to Central, this would reduce massive congestion through this area of Sydney which has been left out of this new plan.

As far as the west and north go I haven’t been there much but the investment needs to go in rail not roads and not buses.

And there you have it, my first blog on Australian politics, albeit a bit of cut and paste.

Is it a slow news day or just a plain weird one?

Posted on by Brad Heap

Three very weird headline news stories from the NZ Herald this afternoon.

West Coast cannabis haul slumps 42pc

The West Coast’s reputation as the second most popular cannabis growing area in New Zealand after Northland may be under threat.

The headline and opening line of the story makes it appear that cannabis is a major export earner for New Zealand.

a “standard fault” caused delays of about half an hour

Auckland commuters on the Western line faced 30-minute delays this morning when a train broke down and had to be pushed down the tracks.

I don’t see how a train breaking down and having to be pushed to another station can be considered a “standard fault” and be treated as such a minor and simple operational issue. It is little wonder Auckland has such poor public transport given the “meh” type response to this sort of issue. The Auckland rail network has only 3 routes on it and yet it seems to have more failures than any other major city that I know.

Hotplate mistaken for a landmine

A tense situation involving an apparent land mine under a Mount Maunganui house was defused after Defence Force bomb disposal unit members identified the mystery object as an old and corroded hotplate.

I know that you can’t take bomb threats/concerns as jokes but really a hotplate as a landmine? And how the hell do you defuse a hotplate!

Walking != Public Transport

Posted on by Brad Heap

Got to love the logic of Auckland politicians sometimes.

Mayor of Auckland City, John Banks today on the release of a report that suggests that Auckland’s Public Transport will not cope with the Rugby World Cup:

“$58 million was being spent on the Eden Park precinct and thousands were expected to walk from the central city well ahead of game kick-offs.” – NZ Herald

Google Maps suggests this is a 3.6km or 47 minute walk (see here). This is quite a long way, not to mention it is up a massive hill to the top of Queen Street, then over a series of major intersections that are not predistrian friendly then down a number of suburban roads. Quite basically the roads are not designed for the foot traffic that Mayor Banks suggests they could handle.

But coming back to the title of this post, walking is not public transport. What is more shocking is that the article where Mayor Banks is quoted also suggests that:

Nearly 2km of roadside parking had to be found around Eden Park for 130 buses and the entire fleet of 38 Auckland trains would be needed on match days.

If all the trains are being pressed into service to get people to Eden Park then how is any going about their daily lives meant to get about. Surely this should have been seen well in advance and more trains be ordered or borrowed or something!

It seems that now a year out from the Cup that there is a sudden realisation that Auckland is not ready for the cup. That either the waterfront stadium should have been built (at least there would be more and easier public transport to it), or North Harbour stadium should have been used. Sure North Harbour does not have train access but it has a dedicated bus way, and plenty of car parking. The closer that you get to the cup the more you realise that what a disaster it will be using Eden Park as the main game venue.

Who wants to start a little wager on how many days into the cup it will be before there is a signal failure at Newmarket or a massive meltdown with the train system that sees many hundreds late for a match?

Auckland Trains vs Sydney Trains

Posted on by Brad Heap

After being in Sydney for around two and a half weeks I am still raving about the public transport system in particular the trains. In the last two and a bit weeks I have probably caught more trains in my entire previous life as well. The locals think I am nuts because apparently the system is meant to be bad.

I will let some photos do the talking.

Auckland trains:

Sydney trains: