Auckland Airport is such a hard place to get to without paying through the nose for the privilege.

We’re on holiday with family in Tahiti at the moment so I saw the trip to the airport as an opportunity to try out Cityhop to get there.

While all other Cityhop locations require to return the car to the same spot you picked it up from, when I first signed up and looked around their member booking system, I noticed that if you selected The Strand as a pick-up point, the system allowed you to drop off at Auckland Airport and vice versa. “Fantastic!” I thought – we could use it for our Christmas holiday – grab a car from their Strand depot the night before, load it up, and drive in to the airport for our 8am check-in, drop it off and fly out. Do the reverse when we get back.

Their 6pm to 8am overnight rate for hiring a car is $30 – which seemed very competitive for getting two people to the airport and very convenient in that we can load up the car the night before.

Except there were some problems:
– The airport car isn’t a swipe-in car. You need to pick the key up from the Jucy Rentals depot, your booking can’t start after 5pm. Weekdays they close at 6pm, weekends 5pm, yet this is not an option when booking. Add to that for some reason it’s not always available?
– The overnight rate starts at 6pm, not 5pm, so the overnight rate is not possible without paying an additional $15 for the hour between (5pm-6pm).

I also hit another problem. I logged on to Cityhop’s site, and booked the car – pick up from the Strand at 6pm Saturday, drop off at Auckland Airport at 8am Sunday. The system said the booking was subject to confirmation which would happen as soon as possible.

Seven minutes later I got an e-mail advising my booking had been cancelled. Five minutes after that I got a call to advise that I cannot drop the car off in a different location from the pick-up point, that the booking system was wrong, and that they’ve now corrected it by removing that option.

A quick online check showed that they had indeed removed that option. The rep who called me wasn’t sure why it was there in the first place. My guess is that someone there wanted it to be an option, but it didn’t work out, and they forgot to remove it.

Apparently I was the first person to try this which is a surprise.

Unlike the usual way of working, I had to go to the Jucy office to pick up the key for the car. And the car was a manual which could be problematic for some people (I saw it as a learning opportunity and got in some manual driving lessons with family prior to picking up the car. I’m a fast learner!).

All up it looks like Airport services are an idea that Cityhop has neither committed to nor closed down. I’m not really sure where it’s at or who it’s for.

It has potential to be a good service – all they need is a car that can be picked up and dropped of anytime like all their other sites. Perhaps a reserved parking space at the domestic terminal?

As it currently stands I’m not sure if I’ll be in a rush to use it again for Airport-related journeys.

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Looks like there’s a points failure for the trains around the city.

As I type, I’m on a train stuck outside Mainline Steam. Prior to that we spent about 10 minutes at Newmarket W, 15 at Boston Rd.

Mobile internet is keeping me sane and allowing me to get some work done, but for a while that wouldn’t go either. I think it’s time I rebuilt my own laptop to clean it out.

Snail race: Who's gonna go first, us or them?

… and now at 10:05am we’re stopped in the tunnel. No view here.

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Yesterday was a bit of a challenge. It involved:
- picking up a laptop in Northcote Point that had been loaned out to a customer,
- a scheduled day visit to St Mary’s School (my aforementioned “school in Northcote”)
- a site visit west of Highbury,
- dropping off a repaired laptop in Milford to a site I’d never visited before.

This meant during part of the day I was carrying three laptops including my own.

I ended up tackling it by catching the usual bus + train into town and picking up a Cityhop car from the Downtown carpark. With that I completed the Northcote work, dropped all my bags off at St Mary’s and returned the car with just one minute to spare on the booking (phew!). Back to the school by bus for the day, then, after leaving one of the laptops stored at the school to lighten the load, I shared a ride with one of the staff to Highbury.

From there the Maxx Journey Planner told me to catch the 5pm 555 from Highbury to Smales Farm and switch to an 863X Express bus to Milford. I had decided not to use another Cityhop booking as it was peak traffic and involved going to the CBD and back in that traffic, making it too pricey for this particular job.

Besides, I thought it would be a good challenge to try to get to a new location I’ve never been to before by bus. And a challenge it certainly proved to be, with a few lessons to go along with it.

The 555 was quite late so I’d missed the express. My cellphone had run out of juice too so I was cut off from Maxx’s website, text service and call centre to figure out the next step, so I rushingly checked the at-station timetables. Too rushed – I caught the wrong bus on the Milford loop (803/804) and ended up in Takapuna instead, losing half an hour.

Eventually I made it by more carefully studying the at-stop timetables in Takapuna and catching what I recall to be an 839 bus and having a longer walk at the end. On my way back by fluke I successfully navigated a back street and an alleyway to the right stop for the last Milford loop bus of the day back to Smales Farm, and got home from there.

Lessons learned today:
- If you’re going to push your cellphone by using it for mobile e-mail, and Bluetooth+3G for mobile data, charge the battery every single night.
- Don’t rush reading timetables.
- Study route options for an area in good time before leaving if it’s in an unfamiliar area!

cityhop · highbury · journey planner · maxx · milford · milford loop · takapuna

I caved in and drove today after 38 days of no journeys as a single-occupant car driver (not counting two Cityhop trips).

The moment of weakness came after I missed a bus today leaving home.

I promise to repent and start again from tomorrow.

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Well it finally happened. I found a reason to use the Cityhop car.

I had a client at Northcote Point who needed urgent assistance yesterday. They were 900m from the nearest bus stop of decent frequency, and too far from the ferry terminal for that to be an option.

This was finally a chance to try the Cityhop service. This is how it went.

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cityhop · downtown · northcote point · traffic