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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.
Things are still going well, and I’m still enjoying the (mostly) lower stress levels of hardly driving, and still enjoying the benefits of getting work done on the move.
I say mostly, because things can get difficult for workdays or non-CBD events that extend beyond around 8pm. Getting home can be slow, and sometimes I’ve caved in and accepted the offer of a ride, usually to a point along the bus route to home.
That isn’t happening too often tho, so I’ve decided to continue on for December, and I have purchased the December Monthly Discovery pass.
I’m under budget for the month too. I’d allowed $60 (four hours) worth of Cityhop car travel of which I’ve had to use none so far. I’ll carry that allowance over to December.
We’re planning on using a Cityhop car to get to the Airport next month as it’ll be far more direct from our location than either airport bus, and cheaper than a shuttle.
The plan is to pick it up the night before at the overnight 6pm-8am rate of $30, load it up, then next morning drive into the airport and drop it off at Cityhop’s Airport depot.
The December per-workday cost will be higher. I have 14 workdays in December as opposed to 21 in November so the per-day cost is a significant 50% higher.
Since I won’t be using this pass after December 18th, it’s up for sale on Trademe for delivery from that date to help offset the cost. Would this be useful for anyone?
I’ve given up trying to use the laptop on the bus as its hard disc protection system kicks in almost constantly, slowing the laptop right down. It just doesn’t like the bumps. The train on the other hand is far smoother, and I’ve now also used it on the ferry.
I’ll have to see if using it on the Northern Busway is less bumpy than your average road when the opportunity arises.
Whoops, this update’s a bit late. Sorry ’bout that.
Last Wednesday I attended CBT’s discussion session with Supercity mayoral candidate Len Brown. That went well and I was encouraged by what he had to say.
Details can be found on the CBT forum.
Briefly discussed was the idea of subsidised parking.
For readers who have come from CBT, you’ve all seen this before as Josh Arbury has already posted it and some of us went to Julie-Anne Genter’s presentation.
However I believe some people from my work and a couple of friends are reading this too (hi!) – you may find this video of interest. It’s called “How free is your parking?”
Think for a second … How much of the land and buildings that make up Glenfield Mall is used for retail, and how much for carparking? How much would that land be worth? Are we using it efficiently? How much is that land worth, and what else could we be doing with that land if we didn’t park our cars on it?
Here’s an aerial view of the land use in the Manukau CBD (also by Josh Arbury).
Green is public space, red is buildings (retail, office, any productively used land really) and grey is roads and carparking. Note that this doesn’t even count motorway land:
I bet you’ll never look at a carpark the same way again.
Right: Passengers boarding the Northern Express service – at the front and back to speed things up. Clever.
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Today involved travel on the Northern Busway to Constellation Station.
This is my first real use of the Busway this month, and involved a return trip to an address near Constellation.
Busway services were excellent, but I hit one snag.
My journey originated from my regular Northcote client, and there is no bus connection between Birkenhead Transport’s services and the busway unless you cross the Harbour Bridge – twice.
And for non monthly pass users that’s crossing a two-stage boundary – twice.
Instead I hitched a ride with a teacher and friend of mine to Akoranga Station on her way home and continued from there.
There was originally a plan to make use of the service tunnel under the motorway where the toll plazas once stood, to provide a bus station there for transfers with Birkenhead services, with platforms on opposite sides of the motorway linked by the pedestrian tunnel.
The locals for some inexplicable reason got all NIMBY and the station was cancelled. They did not want a scruffy bus station in their neighbourhood. (That the busway stations are anything but scruffy and have been a phenomenal success seems to be beside the point?)
A shame, because it really lets the services on the southwestern North Shore down. Their only link is an infrequent and indirect bus to Takapuna, which has a poor busway “link” of a 400m walk from its nearest point to Smales Farm Station.
These photos and this article (extract below) were in this week’s KiwiRail staff newsletter…
Looking east from Glenveiw Rd along the NAL through Glen Eden station with back to back masts through the Glen Eden Station area.
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Well I’ve made it through two weeks now of delivering without wheels.
So far it’s ended up better than expected.
Most of my travel these past two weeks has been related to the school I contract to in Northcote.
So far the biggest highlight has been working on the move: I was surprised how easy this was on the train, and it is even possible on the bus. I’m using my Toshiba Portege R500 laptop combined with my 3G phone to get online. I have access to my e-mail and job/support tracker, as well as some remote access to clients while on the move.
The Portege has been good but I’d imagine you could do just as well with a modern netbook too.
I think I’m actually getting more work done this way than if I stayed at home doing admin work followed by driving to a site. While the bus/train is slower, being able to work and move at the same time is more than making up for it.
It also means I haven’t had to worry about the cellphone driving ban, another plus.
I’ve also liked the flexibility of being able to go home from the Shore by ferry if I need to relax after a stressful day. This photo is taken from the Bayswater Ferry this evening.
And, I’ve been able to join in after work drinks. I’m a cheap drunk, and just one drink can affect my driving, so I exclusively stuck to the orange juice if I had to drive afterwards. Not anymore!!
As it happens, I’ve not had any significant equipment movements that I haven’t been easily able to get couriered, so I am yet to use Cityhop’s services. Maybe in the next week or two.
The biggest downside has been the link between the “Rapid Transit Network” and home. Outside of the morning and evening peaks, the bus between home and either Kingsland Station or the city detours around St Lukes Mall which is frustratingly slow. My alternative connection, the 008 bus passing Avondale station, seems to be deliberately timed to fail to connect with any train.
I’m also not doing so well on Wednesday evenings. I’m taking beginner French classes at Alliance Française d’Auckland, on Arch Hill, which finish at 8pm. At the moment, I’m depending on a relative taking the same class to drop me off on Sandringham Rd on his way home, or I have to do a V-shaped run into town and back out again which takes over an hour.
I have been lucky and managed to avoid last week’s train signal failures, although I’d have just kept tapping away at the laptop on the train or at Britomart if caught up in something like that.
So, so far so good…
cityhop · drinks · ferry · laptop · Sandringham Rd · signal failure · time savings · train
Jarbury has identified the difference between commuter transport and urban transport on his excellent blog.
This is something I’m finding a little frustrating this month.
Because I’m working as a contractor, I’m sometimes at sites all day, sometimes called out, sometimes working from home, sometimes getting supplies, or like today, sometimes attending presentations or seminars, so I’m using a lot of off-peak services to random destinations. I’m trying to use Auckland’s buses and trains as urban transit.
And it’s the transfers between buses that pass close to home (233, 241, 243, 008) and would connect me to the rail RTN that are proving a big letdown.
I’m near Owairaka Ave. From there there’s route 008 that is a quick connection to Avondale, except it seems to almost always arrive at the station just after the train leaves.
In the peak, half the Owairaka+Sandringham Rd buses express past Kingsland and refuse to stop, and off-peak there’s only two minutes between the scheduled times of the 233 and the train to town.
I’ve had to draw up my own mini-timetable for services between home and the rail line, showing when and where the transfers work and don’t.
The other serious barrier to this kind of integration is ticketing. If it weren’t for my rather expensive Discovery Monthly, I’d have to pay extra for each transfer in the form of a new ticket.
Tonight I’m attending a seminar entitled Why is Public Transport in Auckland so Bad and What Could Fix It? – details here. I’m looking forward to it and hope it will cover this in some detail.
I have cheated my way into an elite club of society.
High-flying businessmen, ministers and other Very Important People are able to get some Very Important Work done while in transit, thanks to being able to sit in the back seat of a limousine while someone else takes care of the driving.
I also managed to get a good chunk of work done in transit today. I wrote this blog post, I was able to organise some of next weeks’ work, answer e-mails, and perform some technical support, all while sitting on board an off-peak train heading into town earlier today, thanks to mobile broadband on my laptop.
Sadly WordPress ate that post and I had to retype it, but all the other work was successful. (WordPress has eaten several posts whether I write them on my laptop or at home, so I’m thinking there may be a bug?)
Because off-peak public transport is slower, I’m having to find ways to be more efficient with my time, and I was surprised at how easy it is to whip out the laptop on the train, jump online, and do some work.
I suppose you could call this a Time Savings Benefit – a term usually used to try and justify motorway building.
