As the population is increasing and people are getting busier and busier, we are becoming more reliant on our transport modes to get us to a variety of destinations. But as we are all aware, the increase in demand is putting a larger burden onto our current transport system and causing immense amounts of congestion every day. It is even at the point where ‘rush hour’ is almost not a thing anymore in Auckland city. And therefore some of us may think, ‘easy. Just create more roads!’ But of course, reality-wise, it’s not as simple as that.
I am writing this piece after many thoughts from observing our society and learning my CIVIL 758 course this semester. Yes, many of the following words and concepts are acquired from my course book itself (for my fellow 758 classmates who may recognise some of the contents), but I feel like this information is too valuable and important to be kept just between the transport engineers. More people need to be aware of the following and have these in our minds while being active members of society.
First of all, under our “Moving towards Sustainable Transport” section, we learnt the word ‘hypermobility’. ‘Hyper’: over; beyond; above. ‘Mobility’: the ability to move. This is where we build too many highways; more than what we should be using. Building more highways MAY have been the problem solver to congestion, but this actually causes MORE driving and therefore LONGER trips and MORE energy consumption. It essentially means we are building more than what we should be using.
But then I was confused. I’m not too up to date with current event news around me but I was at least VAGUELY aware that there are certain highways that have been proposed and are being built right now. Certain highways that are supposed to ‘revolutionise’ our travel challenges and make our lives better. But then I just got taught a word that totally opposes these ‘great changes’. What??
But wait; it makes sense later on.
Another transport issue is called the ‘transport inequity’. This is the inequality that exists between those who have good access to mobility and those who have limited access to good mobility. This is parallel to the ‘rich get richer & the poor get poorer’ concept.
High dependency to private vehicles is another transport issue. Although we may be able to list many advantages of having access to a private vehicle, more and more disadvantages are rising. Some of these factors are:
- Increase in global warming;
- Affecting physical health, such as obesity;
- Increase in accidents with more cars on the road;
- Transport inequity;
- Inefficient use of energy and natural resources;
- Noise and air pollution; and
- Economical loss with loss of productivity due to more hours spent in traffic.
This dependency can also impact society psychologically.
The dependency has caused people to lose the capacity to function in a participatory society as people exhibit ‘anti-social’ behaviours. This is especially shown through the use of public transport when inside vehicles and in terminals. Such feelings may arise such as loss of community feeling, loss of street life, and reduction of walkable environments (which has lead to unsafe streets). In the more individual level, antisocial behaviour on a bus is like keeping your earphones in or leaving your bag on the empty seat beside you.
Totally relatable, right? Antisocial, yes?
Other factors have made it a challenge to attract people to use public transport. I remember a couple of years ago when the bus drivers’ strike happened, a NZ Herald article quoted that out of the total people in Auckland who commute to and from work every day, 50% use public transport.
When I saw that stats I thought, ‘WOAH 50%!! That’s decent! But WAIT, no it actually isn’t. It still means the other 50% doesn’t, and that’s not good.’
A major barrier that affects the decision to use public transport is the image of public transport to the individuals in society.
Often in many cities, public transport is seen as the mode for the poor or transport-disadvantaged. I have memories of people quoting around me that public transport is for the ‘lower class’, or ‘I’m too cool for public transport’, or that public transport is just downright ‘inefficient and shit’. Many people would be able to relate; Auckland’s public transport system is comparably (to other major cities in the world) inefficient and not easily utilisable.
But only for its own reasons.
And I was able to point this out by comparing Auckland city’s infrastructure to another city that is very similar; Melbourne.
No, I am not mentioning my dear Melbourne just because it has a soft place in my heart. But it is actually what people label as ‘the better version of Auckland’.
But in the particular instance of Auckland city; we, ourselves, are the ones causing this transport disadvantage.
What is the first thing you think of when you’re allowed to complain about Auckland’s public transport system?
Easy. It takes AAAGES to get ANYWHERE and EVERYWHERE. Time is the factor of complaint when it comes to using public transport in Auckland.
But who do most people think of blaming first?
Auckland Transport (AT). Or the higher up New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA). Or just the government itself.
As I write I’m noticing that I’m using too many ‘but’s. BUT BUT BUT it’s not WHO we need to be blaming; rather, it’s WHAT we should be blaming.
Rather than pushing all the blame to people like in AT or NZTA who are actually trying to provide the best for us, we should visualise the topography of Auckland city.
Auckland is surrounded by harbours of water and many of the suburbs are connected in almost linear ways from the CBD due to the way the water is shaped around the land. Suburbs branch out from the centre of Auckland; the CBD. Therefore the transport network also branches out to accommodate the topography and to connect up these suburbs. Some of these branched out routes happen to be winding through a long distance, hence lengthening the travel time if riding from the start of the route. As an East Aucklander, giving an example through describing the East Auckland public transport network is the easiest.
The full route from the city to my house in Eastern Beach takes at least an hour to travel, even on a good traffic day. But then what if YOU were given the power to redesign the particular route? Can you propose a BETTER solution? Can you map out one using your finger?
Or can I just spoil you? By saying there isn’t really one.
Why? Shift the blame onto the shape of Auckland.
But then lets look at Melbourne’s public transport network.
As a near-one mass of land, you can easily see the four-way, gridded road network system.
Within this road network, trams, trains and buses are well-integrated with each other and with the transport system to provide an efficient and reliable service to the public. There are also the bicycle route network and well-connected footpaths providing further connection between the population and their surroundings.
And because of Melbourne’s large population of 4.8 million, the physical number of people using the public transport system is much larger than in Auckland. Therefore it means there is enough people using public transport, to make the provision of the system feasible and practicable. There is enough return out of providing the PT system to the public, and therefore improving factors such as service frequency, rider comfort, connectivity, safety, etc are actually worth to invest in.
In Auckland, the demand is just not high enough to see a good return in these investments to improve the system.
One thing Aucklanders also frequently complain about the public transport is the frequency of the services. Most of our services before our recent PT changes have been frequencies of once every 30 minutes; which you may be able to relate to until last year. And it definitely was a nuisance with timing and stuff, right? I mean, I had to take the 6:08am 552 bus from my house in Eastern Beach if I wanted to make it to an 8am class; because taking the one bus after that at 6:45am would get me to uni 5 minutes too late. And it’s a pain if you miss your bus because to take the next bus available you are delayed by a whole half an hour. It’s definitely not fun!
So we automatically think, ‘we could just have more buses running, more frequently than once every 30 minutes! That would definitely be an incentive for me to use public transport more. Isn’t that an easy solution?’
But the largest barrier to transit operation is really its demand. Without a high demand, fare recovery is low and this leads to lower quality services. Think about it; the population of Aucklanders using PT isn’t decently worthy enough for the operators to be able to increase the frequency of modes. Auckland only has a population of 1.6 million people. Compare this to the public transport system of cities with much larger populations, such as Seoul with 9.9 million and Tokyo with 9.3 million people (I’m just using examples of cities I have been to myself). With more people for the city to serve for, having more frequent services is actually WORTH with high demand and therefore high fare recovery, because people are actually using their public transport system.
So I think we shouldn’t be complaining toooooo much about the conditions of our current public transport system.
Studying transport engineering allows me to see society through a civil engineer’s perspective, especially in the sense of understanding how integrated the public transport system is to our transport and city infrastructure. Yes, even only until a year ago our public transport system was considered to be ‘bad’, but haven’t you been beginning to notice the significant changes AT is implementing one by one? For example, the new East Auckland public transport system that got implemented at the end of last year.
Transfers are what I want to talk about next, regarding the new AT bus systems such as the recent East Auckland one.
Transfers are what defines a successfully integrated public transport system of a city.
This is a basic concept used to explain the usefulness of transfers:
Imagine a city has three primary residential areas and three primary areas of employment and activity:
To design a transport network for the city, it may seem a logical impulse to create direct services from each residential areas to each areas of activity. This would look like below with a total of nine transit lines:
Lets’ say that we can afford to run each route every 30 minutes. Call this the “Direct Service” option.
And then imagine if we had a different way to design the network system. Where, instead of running a direct route from every residential area to every activity area, a direct line is run from each residential area to one activity centre each while making sure each line connects with each other at a strategic point. Shown below:
Now there are three lines instead of nine. Therefore, logically, we can afford to run each line three times as often as the Direct Service option; every 10 minutes.
There is another reason why Aucklanders should reconsider before complaining about our public transport.
Transport disadvantage is caused by many aspiring homeowners who typically settle in urban fringes. These are suburbs like Dannemora, Mission Heights, Silverdale, etc, that started off by forming low-density suburban housing in these areas that have less public transport services accessible. This leads to these low-density suburban housing to have access to fewer transport options than those living closer to the central area. As travel distances from these remote places are longer into the city centre, public transport services are often poor demand-responsive and causes these households to become transport disadvantaged. As these people lack the adequate public transport services, people living in urban fringes become more dependent on their cars. And the same people have complaints about there not being enough public transport access from where they live. Ironic, I think.
Public transport can only be successful and popular if it is well-integrated with the city’s infrastructure.
It takes careful planning and implementation. It can’t happen all at once.
And
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