Subscribe to RSSHenderson On Sundays
Marketing has been launched for the extension of Western Line trips to Henderson on Sundays, from June 20.
“Sunday is a great day for a trip to town,” is the theme accompanied by a happy family photo.
The new Sunday timetable is another plus.
But if we really want to encourage travel at the weekends, it’s time we really had an extended timetable with more frequent trains.
I almost gave up on Saturday night waiting for a train. On Sundays, an hour between is just too long, especially if you just miss one.
Let’s really start encouraging weekend train travel and run a minimum of half hour services.
And, while not wanting to be negative amid good news , let’s hope the service can get extended beyond Henderson.
9 Comments
With the large number of proposed line closures for the rest of this year, I’m not sure we’ll be seeing better than hourly trains until after the wires are all up
Although, in saying that, remember that the Western Line will have its wires up well before the 2013 network-wide completion date, even if no trains are using it.
Veolia’s planned network disruptions (this goes up to Jan 16, 2011):
http://www.veoliatransport.co.nz/planned-service-disruptions
Its a shame there isn’t at least half hour frequencies out west. Whenever I catch the train on weekends there are decent number of people using it.
I also think it is stupid not to extend the timetable to Swanson, there is no way I’m going to drive to Henderson to catch the train.
Oops, clarification: “even if no trains are using it” should read “even if no electric trains are there to use it and we continue with diesels”.
Agreed, this is the reason I don’t use trains in the weekends. Frequencies, and i’m sure alot feel the same.
Weekend trains in Wellington seem to be popular. They run half hourly until around 7-8pm (from memory). Off peak trains should have the same timetable as weekend and evening services. I know that the train is going to turn up at Linden station at .12 and .42 daily.
I don’t think ARTA had any intention of extending services beyond New Lynn, and only did so for operational reasons (no crossover at New Lynn). Basically, they had no choice.
The first train used to depart New Lynn at 7:30am. Now it’s 7:53am, because the staff shift times were not changed, meaning the empty service has to go further after still leaving Otahuhu at the same time, so the first public service now runs 23 minutes later.
Geoff, what do you base that on? Are you saying that ARTA would have wanted to just abandon their new feature stations like Henderson? Sounds a bit too ridiculous to me as an idea from ARTA, but maybe you are referring to canning Sunday services only?
Ingolfson - there was nothing stopping them from having Sunday services to Henderson before. The work was going on at New Lynn so the trains would have been impacting/preventing track work anyway.
Yep, half hourly more sensible. Not ventured to Henderson or beyond yet so not sure what’s out there to be seen, ahh the excitment of the unknown so long as they don’t have a bloody spider sculpture a la Avondale, I’d hate to be an arachnophobe living there!