Today we were at an event with friends at the Hyatt at Waterloo Quadrant.

One of the friends needed new shoes for an upcoming wedding, and it just happened that we had walked up to the Hyatt after my partner bought a good pair on special at Hannah’s Shoes on Queen St, so told her about it.

Our friend didn’t like the idea of the long walk all the way to Queen St, so decided to drive to the one at St Lukes Mall instead, even though she only had 25 minutes before St Lukes closed for the evening.

Long walk?

View Larger Map

While slightly steep, it’s not long.

I think too many of us are afraid to walk anymore.

walking

Today a forklift managed to strike something along Transpower’s Otahuhu-Henderson line, cutting power to west Auckland, the North Shore, and, it would seem, the whole of Northland.

Trains suffered a partial signal failure west of Swanson but were able to more-or-less keep running. If they were electric, this would have been worse.

Relatively fortunately, Auckland City did not lose power.

I start this month-long trial of working without a car next week.

While I was going to look at how I could cope with using PT, my day could completely fall apart if something like this happened again, and for situations like these I’m going to have to retain some sort of access to a fallback vehicle.

Today I was on urgent callout to my Northcote school to ensure we had power to emergency systems (phones, PA system) for as long as possible, and to ensure everything started back up when power was restored. I had to get there quickly.

I drove in.

If today were part of the trial, or if I no longer had my own vehicle, I would have bussed into town and hoped that Cityhop’s systems were unaffected so I could book one of their cars. Today, since the CBD had power it would have worked, but what if the CBD had also lost power, as happened in 2006?

I’d have been screwed, or I would have had to rely on a very expensive taxi ride.

I guess today demonstrated a near-worst case scenario for this trial, showing that I would be more dependent on the city’s infrastructure to work.

power failure · snafu

Auckland’s bus system is a bit all over the place.

If I’m going to successfully get around like this next month, I’m going to have to get freshened up on how it works, what the ‘arterials’ are, and figure out a few tricks along the way.

It looks to be pretty complicated.

For a start, despite a few recent changes (and many future talked about ones), bus and rail still operates pretty much separately. There are few obvious integration points, so those doing more complex trips have to ‘make up their own’ – they must figure out where the present useful crossover points happen to be by coincidence.

Fortunately the Monthly Discovery pass I’ll have for November will mean it will be easier for me to transfer than it is for most people. There is no such thing as an integrated “A” zone pass for the Auckland City area, for example. The otherwise excellent Northern Pass is regionally limited to North Shore trips, with a slight rail extension. A shame really, as the Northern Pass model (based, I believe, on Melbourne’s excellent Metlink fare structure, if not their tickets) would have made a really good interim integrated ticket for Auckland, while we wait for the smartcard system (which is another story).

My local ‘entry point’ on to the rail network is Kingsland station. Kingsland consists of bus stops on Sandringham and New North Roads, with a pretty good station inbetween.

However studying the timetables for the train and connecting Sandringham Rd services reveals that connections are rather poor, and require advance planning.

Sandringham Rd services during the peak consist of many express services that pass, but do not stop at, Kingsland. This could be so easily fixed by recognising the station as a “local interchange” and having all bus services that pass the station, stop there.

This would allow passengers to switch modes here so train commuters can switch to the bus to better access Symonds St, including the university, and allow bus commuters easier access to Newmarket and the lower CBD by way of Britomart.

Instead, I’ve had to collate the existing schedules to draw up my own ‘timetable’ showing optimal connection points for each bus. I will keep that in my wallet.

For other interchanges (or not), I’ll work them out as the need arises to go to different parts of the city.

I’ll be using a combination of the MAXX regional guides and timetables, along with their online journey palnner. I’ve learnt not to rely on the journey planner alone, as sometimes it suggests some way-too-tight connections and not-so-nice walks.

bus · discovery pass · Kingsland · monthly discovery pass · planning · timetables · train · transfers

I’ve now put my money where my mouth is and shelled out the $210 for the Monthly Discovery Pass for November.

That’s $10.00 a day for the month (21 weekdays in November).

Add about four hours of Cityhop car use a month, and that averages out to $13.00 a day.

I’ve figured owning and operating the car amounts to $14.88 per weekday. (or $11.03 without capital costs of $5000 every five years)

Annoyingly, because I will still have the car, even though it’s not going anywhere, it’s still going to cost $7.56 per day during November in registration, depreciation, and insurance.

So, if this works out, I’ve got a pretty good incentive to sell my car. This is probably not a good moment to admit I may be slightly emotionally attached to my car

car · cityhop · monthly discovery pass · running costs

Hit/miss: Hit.
Today’s highlight: The ferry building, and watching a middle-aged lady getting caught trying to fare-dodge.

Today was the second and final day of my partner’s work training, which saw her attending two different sites – one at the bottom of Hobson St, and one at Stanley St. We figured out she walked over 6km today.

Today was also the evening of the CBT drinks and the last night of the Night Lights at the ferry building.

(more…)

bus · CBT · discovery pass · fare dodging · ferry building · train

(edited 6:48am Tuesday October 20, added extra details, plus a hit/miss section)

Today my partner had to go to town as she was on a training course at the Hotel Grand Chancellor at the bottom of Hobson St. So we parked and rode from Baldwin Ave Station. We wnted to allow for bad traffic and ended up catching the train before the one we wanted, and arrived in town half an hour early.

I then carried on to my regular client school in Northcote, but before I did so I thought I’d check out when the November Monthly Discovery passes are available and have a look at the Cityhop cars in the Downtown carpark. (more…)

birkenhead transport · cityhop · discovery pass · monthly discovery pass

I’m continuing to analyse how my day-to-day work will be different without the car. I’m thinking through ways to better manage time and looking forward to some opportunities to both get work done while moving, and to avoid travel stress.

(more…)

bus · cityhop · equipment · stress · time · traffic · train

As mentioned in my first post, I’m going to try laying up the car for November and use rapid transit plus car sharing to get around to clients.

As November 1 draws nearer, I’m often comparing how each day goes and how I would have done the same without a car. What will I miss? What won’t I miss?

I’ll miss the obvious flexibility of being able to jump in the car anytime, but I won’t miss this:

Queued for the ramp signals, SH16 to SH1 northbound link, 4:30pm Thursday October 15.
After the signals it was also stop-start traffic until the Bridge.

(more…)

car · change · cityhop · efficiency · motorway · planning · traffic

By November 1, to lay up the car, I’ve figured I will need:

- a November Discovery Monthly card
- a CityHop membership and card
- a water-resistant backpack or similar loaded with my laptop, umbrella, toolkit.

Actually, that doesn’t seem to be much to get. Have I missed something?

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As I come to being ready to launch Silverstream, I have wondered if I can combine this work with my support of a balanced transport system for Auckland?

I came up with the general idea then asked the forum at Campaign for Better Transport and I got a few mixed results, but I personally believe it’s worth a shot.

Auckland’s passenger transport system has for many years been underfunded to the point where it was generally abysmal. I remember when the last train west left at 6:15pm on a weekday evening.

But it’s eperiencing something of a renaissance. It’s come a long way lately, and parts of it are starting to be pretty good. Britomart, while too small in and of itself, got the ball rolling showing that Auckland does have the potential to build a world-class transport system.

We’ve had big improvements to Auckland’s rail services and we now also have the Northern Busway. As a result, a Rapid Transit Network has emerged, covering the north, west, south and inner east of the city.

While there is a long way to go, is Auckland’s passenger transport system good enough to use it as a carrier to provide a professional service such as Silverstream’s ICT support and managed network service?

I hope to find out, and I will record my progress in this blog.

Here’s the idea as it stands at present:

No company vehicles! Instead myself and staff will use Auckland’s Rapid Transit Network (RTN) plus surrounding services where appropriate, backed up by the services provided by CityHop for urgent travel or moving equipment, and use of taxi services in emergencies.

This will have huge environmental benefits as we won’t be responsible for the pumping out of carbon associated with building, operating, and disposing of vehicles that we’d otherwise have to buy in order to carry out our job.

I aim to lay up the car for the month of November as a trial and I will log my progress and experiences here.

Wish me luck!

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