I didn’t think it would start out that way because I’d missed my initial bus (a 241 starting at Owairaka).

I got on the following 233 – a bus that dillies around the St Lukes mall. Not content with that, I jumped off at the point on Sandringham Rd where the two sets of routes join up and got on the next bus to turn up – a 246.

Not only did that bus pass the St Lukes one, it also passed the 241 I had missed to start with.

I got off this bus at Kingsland Station and ran onto the train that was there, which then proceeded to pass the bus I’d just got off.

If I hadn’t missed the initial bus, I’d not have made it on the train. That was the fastest PT trip I’d had in from our Mt Albert home, ever.

Coming home in the evening I figured it couldn’t get any better than that.

It did

Non-stop to Kingsland with just me on board (single-occupant train?). Outside we're bypassing Newmarket.

Arriving at Britomart off my North Shore bus, I headed down the escalator at 4:48 to find a train on Platform 5 going straight to Kingsland at 4:50, non stop. And a whole carriage, just for me!

We passed a lot of confused people at Boston Rd and Mt Eden wondering why the train wasn’t stopping.

Once at Kingsland, the wait for my bus was a whole thirty seconds.

If only it could be like that every day…

Ok, so the train was for the rugby, but at 4:50, two and a half hours before kick-off, few others were there to use it. I think there were about five or six others in the carriage behind. Nobody in the two cars in front.

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…

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.

Day two (Monday) involved no transport, working from the home office.

Day three involved travel to Takapuna for some admin work, then Northcote. It all went pretty smoothly with the commute starting at 7:45am, arriving at Takapuna by 8:45am, sorted out mail, banking, then on to Northcote by 9:35am for the rest of the day. With all the trips plus the “leakage inspection” at Britomart (Where do they get these names from?) All up today I showed my pass a total of nine times.

The increasing prominence of the real-time displays at bus stops is handy as you aren’t having to be so alert for your bus – just start looking for it when the display says it’s less than two minutes away. Just gotta wait for my home bus stop’s turn to get one installed. A shame the system is still completely absent for all train stations besides Britomart.

Tomorrow will involve trips to return or swap equipment with suppliers in the CBD and “Central Park” in Ellerslie, and then french class at Alliance Française, so there will be a fair bit of travel.

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.

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.

Once again we parked and rode at Baldwin Ave Station. Today’s travel was to Northcote, then Takapuna, then back to town to meet up with my partner between her two courses, then down to the train to meet up with the CBT folk.

Northcote to Takapuna is a little slow but overall ok. Bendybus from Takapuna to town made some worrying noises at every little bump and the driver could’ve caused an accident at Fanshawe/Hobson by turning from the right lane on Fanshawe to the left lane on Hobson. Red lights seemed to be merely a suggestion to this guy too.

Next up was the CBT trip. It was nice to meet you guys, and I wish I could have stayed for the whole thing but my partner was still in town and we needed to get dinner and have a look at the Ferry building. Hopped off to turn around at Henderson.

Following dinner we checked out the Ferry building’s night lights display. This was much better than the Town Hall and the building looked fantastic. You had to be there to get the full effect. Quay St was closed to traffic for the event.

We headed back to on the last train west at 9:33pm. Most seats were full. We were amused to watch a middle-aged lady caught out trying to fare-dodge on the last train home by pretending to read a magazine, then looking so indignant when dobbed in by pretty much everyone around her.

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.