TAG | cityhop
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
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.
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
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 
(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.
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.
car · change · cityhop · efficiency · motorway · planning · traffic
