Auckland Transport August 2014 Board Meeting

Written by Ben Ross - Talking Auckland

And on the discussion?

 

Electric Train at Britomart Source: pic.twitter.com/vjQZfMUeex
Electric Train at Britomart
Source: pic.twitter.com/vjQZfMUeex

 

Three major items in the open session and one in the closed session that caught my attention.

First of all the Agendas

Open Session

 

The Closed Session

Of note in that Agenda item is Mill Road decision. I am guessing the Auckland Transport Board is preparing to approve the Notice of Requirement processes for the northern end of the project which you can see here: https://at.govt.nz/projects-roadworks/the-mill-road-corridor/

Still in light of the Southern Motorway upgrade happening next year Auckland Transport are honestly wasting $210m pursuing the existing option of a four lane road for the northern section. Something like below would be more cost effective for now:

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So I wonder if Mill Road will be one of the 80 projects deferred by Auckland Transport per Council’s requests for the 2015-2025 Long Term Plan.

 

Monthly Public Transport Patronage

Good growth in rail and bus patronage but rail is above the Statement of Intent targets.

 

The Parking Discussion – Initial Feedback

 

The CEO’s Report

I will tease some important comments from this report

Some of the key points I noted:

In regards to rail electrification

  • Provisional acceptance of 17 Units was achieved in July. Units 6 & 7 have been made available for service from early August.
  • During late July, issues were experienced with the overhead line power supply on the Onehunga Line. A decision was made to remove the EMUs from service until further testing could be undertaken for service delivery and customer experience reasons. EMUs were returned to service on the Onehunga Line in early August to enable further in-service testing and to progressively test units out of service on both the Onehunga and Manukau/Eastern Line for a targeted progressive EMU introduction in August on the Manukau/Eastern Line. At the date of preparation of the report, testing was continuing.
  • From early August, the first phase of optimisation of the European Train Control System (ETCS, the train/signalling safety management system) application was implemented on the EMUs on the Onehunga Line to improve run-time performance through improvements to train stopping distance (speed curve) applications.
  • The Manukau Line and the south NIMT (Wiri through to Papakura) were energised in July and overhead line interface and platform clearance tests undertaken. This identified works at a number of stations between Manukau and Britomart that are being scheduled.
  •  Finalisation with KiwiRail and Transdev of the new timetable to support the increased frequency of Manukau services and the introduction of an EMU weekend timetable was progressed in July and early August. This provides 6 trains per hour from Manukau in the peak period and 3 trains per hour in the interpeak and off-peak, with weekends going to a 30 minute service plan. When the timetable commences, diesel shuttle services will run an hourly service between Pukekohe and Papakura on Saturdays and Sundays and connect with arriving/departing EMUs at Papakura. The target date for the timetable introduction is early November following progressive replacement within the existing timetable of diesel rolling stock with EMUs on the Manukau Line. 

 

Two things noted:

  1. The Electric Train grounding last month has been noted. I still have my Local Government Official Information and Meets Act request with AT over the grounding. Once the response is sent back (if AT do not deny the request entirely) I will get it up into the blog.
  2. New timetable is out (well-meant to be) in November. In this new timetable with the Electric Trains on the Manukau Line and by the looks of Southern Line in the weekend we get the following:
    1. Manukau Line steps up to 6 trains an hour in the peak (so every 10 mins) and 3 trains an hour in the off-peak (every 20 mins) with 30 minute frequencies in the weekend.
    2. Pukekohe to Papakura finally gets hourly weekend services with a diesel shuttle between the two stations linking up with an Electric Train at Papakura to go further north

 

So some improvements coming down this way indeed. Sadly though Auckland Transport is going to be deferring 80 transport investment projects. One of them is the Pukekohe-Papakura Electrification extension. More on this next week.

 

5 thoughts on “Auckland Transport August 2014 Board Meeting”

  1. Havn’t all modes except Ferry exceeded SOI targets – A positive variance means that we are ahead.

    2. Hi, can you please indicate where the SOI’s for the new FY are in the negative?

      In the PT Stats report, Pg 2, Table 1 indicate a positive variance of 8.9%, while Pg 6, Fig 5 indicates that for the new FY we are 86,000 pax ahead of the SOI.

      Also of note is that the SOI for ‘other bus’ indicates that of the 270, ~270,000 increase require, we are already ~230,000 of the way there – Which means that only ~40,000 pax growth in bus services is required over the next 11 months to meet SOI.

    3. This can be further examined on Pg 13 – 15 of the report, where the ‘Variance: Month to Target’ column, shows we are ahead by 86,000 in July for rail and ahead by 188,000 for ‘Other Bus’

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