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Auckland City Orakei Ward candidate Cameron Brewer is calling for better connections and better times when it comes to public transport.
He blogs today:
Voters are telling me that the weekend Metrolink bus service from Newmarket to St Heliers finishes too early. On Saturday and Sunday the last bus to St Heliers leaves Newmarket at 4.15pm, compared to 7.45pm on week days. The trip takes 30 minutes and costs $4.40. No one’s complaining about the price, particularly those with gold cards, but they do say it ruins the chance of seeing a matinee movie.
He is keen to hear of any suggestions for Eastern Bays, Remuera, Ellerslie and other areas in the ward.
12 Comments
Ellerslie and Remuera are well served by buses and rail during the off peak. As is Orakei, Meadowbank. It is surprising that the St Heliers buses are so bad on the weekend.
I think this isn’t just an issue for the eastern bays but for all of Auckland. Timetables never seem to match up which can lead to long delays and puts people off using PT. I think ARTA and AT need to focus more on streamlining services, having fewer routes but higher frequencies. It will mean that not everyone is with as easy of a walk to a bus or train but that those services are better and more useful.
Personally I would rather walk an extra 500m and have a good quality service every 10 or 15 mins than have a stop outside my door that only has a bus come past once an hour.
Good to hear he’s apparently taking the “improving PT” a bit more seriously than just mouthing off easy statements.
And weekend services which stop at 4:15pm??? - what the…
One of the biggest failings of Auckland’s PT is that it’s largely useless if you want to go out at night. It’s wonderful for the 9-5 Monday-Friday crowd, but forget it for getting home after a boozy-dinner-and-late-show or a few quiets on a Saturday night. Trains run until midnight-ish, which is good, but a lot of bus routes finish at 11 on a “late” night, if not earlier. The Night Rider services aren’t terribly convenient, timing wise, and if you live only a couple of stages from town the fares are exorbitant.
“Ellerslie and Remuera are well served by buses and rail during the off peak. As is Orakei, Meadowbank. It is surprising that the St Heliers buses are so bad on the weekend.” I don’t consider 1hr frequencies on the Western or Southern train lines on sundays well served though.
As a person who used to live on the 770/771 bus route for many years, I would suggest just dropping the service altogether — apart from the services that originates/terminates at the Remuera/Newmarket schools which would be converted to School Bus services from Newmarket to St Heliers via Eastridge and Mission Bay.
My reasoning is that I don’t see the point in providing a lowly patronaged service when viable connecting options exists for passengers to take Downtown services and transferring to/from the LINK or the train.
Currently in the weekends there is a 30min freq for 767-769 services from St Heliers and combinded with a 15min freq on the LINK bus there exists a decent frequency Newmarket to St Heliers via Downtown service.
@William: The St Heliers buses are pretty good. 30min freq on weekends — same as off-peak weekdays! This is in contrast to other routes which suffers frequency reductions on weekends (e.g. 75- Panmure-Downtown via Mission Bay reduced to hourly on Sundays) It’s the services to Newmarket (not the vastly more frequent Downtown ones) that is the subject of this article.
@Karl: Passengers have always had the option of taking the LINK to Downtown and transferring to the 11pm 769 bus on Fri/Sat and the 10pm bus on Sun. Alternately they could also transfer to the 11.45pm 750 service which duplicates some of the 769 route. So saying services ends at 4.15pm is a bit harsh given the options available to passengers.
Cameron Brewer should have a word to his mate Steven Joyce about properly funding PT and hence allowing ARTA to provide more services - the imminent farebox recovery ratio will result in more and more non-peak hour services getting the axe. Buses don’t run on the smell of an oily rag.
@rtc: Why bother running services if the farebox recovery is low? I want to see less routes like the St Heliers-Newmarket and more frequent services on main trunk routes like St Heliers-Downtown which itself feeds the LINK and Train main trunk routes. The surpluses from running popular services will allow investment into improving said services. Whereas funding loss making services is like pouring money into quicksand.
James, the problem with that attitude is that it means a lot of areas will be unserviced by any form of public transport. If it’s 20 minutes’ walk to the nearest bus stop, people will just drive. If you reduce services to only the ones that are viable economically, you limit yourself to providing services only along a handful of densely-populated corridors. What of all the people who live away from those corridors?
The Western and Southern lines on the weekend services or lack of them suprises me.
Barely adequate in the 90′s when they revived weekend services the authorities had an hourly service on a Saturday using a 2 car railcar.
Fast forward to 2010 with hundreds of millions spent on double tracking, flash stations etc and we still have an hourly service using at times a 2 car railcar , more often than not hopelessly overcrowded. Has this been overlooked??
@Matt: I disagree. Many of the poorly patronaged services are poorly patronaged because there is a higher frequency bus/train/ferry route nearby which is more convenient — the St Heliers to Newmarket route being one of many excellent example of this.
So people would not be left without a bus service but instead would get a better service (as long as the resources allocated to the old route is reallocated instead toward improving services on the alternate route)!
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