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!

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.

From reading the site and rulebook, I knew that Cityhop had certain amenities available in the car, and some quite reasonable expectations of its users.
- There was a fuelcard and damage logbook in the glovebox.
- There was a carpark building entry/exit pass under the visor, which you use to get into and out of the carpark building.
- Users are expected to return the car with at least a quarter-tank of fuel.

I tried to book the car online while heading towards Britomart on the train. The train arrived at 2:48pm so I was going to book the car from 3pm to 5:30pm.

Technology failed me and my laptop and cellphone refused to co-operate to get me online until I’d ejected the batteries from both as punishment. By then, I’d arrived at Britomart to had to put them away to get off the train. I tried again up in the CPO building. By now it was 2:55.

I booked and got my confirmation e-mail immediately. Cool. Three minutes later I was at the car in the Downtown carpark so I eagerly got the Cityhop card out and touched it against the car reader.

It flashed red and the car stayed locked. So I tried again. Same.

To be fair, I’d only made the booking about three or four minutes before arriving at the car, so this was not unexpected and can hardly be blamed on anyone but me for not booking til the last minute. Had my cellphone worked and had I been able to book it sooner, all would have been well.

A quick call to Cityhop’s support number revealed that they had not yet sent the booking to the car and that they’d do so straight away. Two minutes later, I got the green light and the car unlocked. I was in.

Once inside I decided to spend a minute to familiarise myself with the car. I found the carpark pass under the visor as expected and a folder in the glovebox.

I opened it up to reveal a bit of a mess.

I also noticed that the previous user had left the handbrake off.

It seems users don’t care so much when using something they don’t own – the receipts rammed into the fuelcard pocket showed that some previous users may have been a little careless.

Next I turned the car on, and looked at the fuel gauge. Three bars – low. Starting the engine immediately had it drop to two bars and the fuel icon began flashing. Grr!

But even worse, they’d left the radio tuned to The Rock.

I must emphasise at this point that these circumstances were obviously caused by the previous person who hired the car, not Cityhop themselves.

So. Time to go. I drove to the exit, grabbed the carpark pass and slotted it into the exit barrier machine. It gave me a cryptic message “Wrong presence” (huh?) and the barrier remained firmly down. Tried again. Same.

It turned out that the previous user (who was really starting to get on my nerves by this point) didn’t bother to use the carpark pass when returning the car. They instead hit the button for a normal ticket instead and presumably dumped it. The carpark system was telling me the car never entered therefore it can’t leave.

The carpark attendant had to sort this one out. Finally I was out of the building.

I filled up at the Shell station on Beach Rd (note to self: get the odometer reading before leaving the car) and proceeded up Stanley St to the motorway, where I promptly got stuck in the ramp signal queue for fifteen minutes. I’d forgotten about this “traffic congestion” thing.

Once I’d got past that, I found the Mitsubishi i-car surprisingly nice to drive. Being a 600cc rear-mounted engine, I was expecting it to be gutless, but it felt more like a 1.5 litre car – not grunty, but still able to pick up speed quite well, and quite smoothly.

When I finally made it to my destination at Northcote Point, the client was impressed at the car they saw and it became quite a conversation piece.

Partway through the job I realised I would need to stay for another hour. This was easily sorted with a call to Cityhop to extend the booking.

I think my luck had got better for the afternoon too. The trip back to downtown was far quicker and I was met with green lights all the way along Fanshawe St right into the parking building. The run of green lights helped alleviate the earlier frustration with the car’s last user and the traffic. I parked, unloaded, used the card to lock the car, and happily walked away.

All up I made three phonecalls to Cityhop during the booking – once for the car not letting me in, once about the fuel level, and once to extend the booking. The staff were efficient and friendly.

It is interesting that the booking system has a manual component to it in that the staff have to send it to the car. I guess this means you have to make after-hours bookings before it’s actually after hours. I guess it means Cityhop may not be appropriate for after-hours emergencies.

Overall, I liked the experience. How the previous driver had left the car was a bit annoying, but with shared car services I guess you’ll have to put up with below-par fellow users from time to time. The car was neat and tidy overall, and it ran well, the staff on the phone were friendly and efficient, and I’d definitely continue to use the service.

This has brought me another step closer to deciding to sell my car.

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.

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…

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.

Turns out the monthly pass isn’t available til about eight days before the end of the month, so I’ll have to return to pick it up later. So I had a look at the hire cars. I was a little surprised to see just two, I was expecting more. Anyway, one of each were there on display. Here they are (click for bigger):

I did notice a discrepancy between the price per hour on the car and the sign (both visible in the pics) and the website – $12 per hour vs $15 per hour.

Anyway, today’s travel was good, if unspectacular, the only little amusing point was when the Birkenhead bus driver asked me where she’s supposed to clip when I handed her my Discovery day pass on the trip back into town. My partner and I met back up in town for the trip home, where she noted it would have been a nice walk (and a good exercise) home from the station.

Hit/Miss: Hit! Less than three minutes waiting for anything, connections were smooth, and we were early.

Steps: (oops, forgot the pedometer)

Last week I had to urgently swap a faulty PC from a Northcote School with a replacement one from an Albany supplier, then I got an urgent call to an Epsom school that evening.

By car, it was easy to swap the PC but then I got stuck in very bad traffic getting to the Epsom school, which happens to be quite close to Boston Rd Station.
If it weren’t for the car, I would have lost about 30 minutes having to go from Northcote to town to pick up a CityHop car, return to Northcote, pick up a faulty PC, return it to a supplier in Albany to swap. But, keeping the car to get back to town, by dropping the hire car back off at downtown and shooting up on the train to the Epsom callout I would have got that time back instead of getting stuck in the start of CBD peak traffic.

It’ll be interesting to see how the net gains and losses pan out during November.

Yesterday also involved two return trips to the North Shore, both in traffic.

I’ve figured that to do everything I did yesterday, a train into town plus the hire car again would not have saved any time but would have been far less stressful. The bulk of the traffic was south of the Bridge. I would have used the hire car just for the Shore part of the second trip.

So I need to try to figure out ways to use time better. I’m hoping time on the bus, or train, when they’re not too crowded, could be used to do some admin work on the laptop. This would be better than time behind the wheel where one must 100% concentrate on driving. (Jarbury, could this be a new twist on a time savings benefit?)

I’m also looking forward to the odd trip home on the ferry after stressful days on the Shore.

And of course, walking would be light exercise time. I might get a pedometer to see how much walking I end up doing.

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.

I’m wondering how I’m going to adjust to loss of flexibility of being able to jump in the car to get parts, return faulty items to suppliers and to hop between jobs. I think I’ll just have to plan trips better and further in advance. This will probably help with efficiency, allocating set days of the week to do ‘courier’ work with the hire car instead of making more trips transporting less equipment around per trip.Hopefully it’ll get me into good planning habits too.