The Numbers

 

Friday the Auckland Transport Board will conduct its monthly meeting for all things Auckland transport in March. Today the powerful Council Accountability and Performance Committee is meeting (as of now as I am watching the feed live) in which AT will be grilled on the $60 billion Integrated Transport Program and maybe with luck AT-HOP.

 

However I am focusing the March public transport patronage statistics as seen in the embed below:

 

Of note:

• Rail patronage over the rolling 12 months has slipped further by 4.2% to 9,951,686 
• Weekday services up 4.5%
• Western Line patronage up 0.5%
• Southern, Eastern, Manukau and Onehunga Lines down 6.9%
• March Madness was prevalent which does cause a surge as tertiary institutions come back ons-stream. April and May often will level out once that surge is reabsorbed back into the systems

 

While there is some good news with the Western Line and Weekday services (although March Madness might of caused the yearly surge blip as it does) the point being that total patronage is still backsliding DOWN.

 

It is the total patronage over the 12 rolling months we usually look and what NZTA can look to for determining subsidies and further such capital investment such as for example the City Rail Link. So we are still seeing slippage and AT is now for sure not going to meet its Statement of Intent for patronage forecast and revenue.

 

Catch is what is Auckland Transport going to do about it…