The Star
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Thursday March 16 2017
9
in a car culture city Cars beat buses By Tom Doudney THAT CARS and not public transport have been the preferred method of getting around in Christchurch for decades can be illustrated with a single statistic. To find the peak year for public transport patronage in the city, you have to go all the way back to 1945, when 32 million passenger trips were recorded. Currently, patronage is less than half that, at 14 million trips per year, in spite of the population having doubled since then. Patronage began to fall away from the 1950s, as private vehicle use increased. It reached its lowest levels in 1992 when less than seven million trips were recorded. However, numbers were recovering steadily in the early 2000s, as measures were introduced to modernise the bus network. This period saw the introduction of the Metrocard, Orbiter service, real time travel information and the opening of the first central city interchange. By 2010, patronage was at its highest levels (17 million trips)
in travel time race
CHALLENGES: Taking a bus is currently slower and less reliable than going by car. PHOTO: GEOFF SLOAN
since the early 1970s, but things would change again the following year when the February 2011 earthquake struck. The earthquake altered travel patterns and affected the operation of the bus network. Previously, almost all buses went through the central city and the area’s closure post-earthquake was a big disruption. Environment Canterbury’s redesign of the bus network to the current ‘hub and spokes’ model, which focused on con-
necting services in the suburbs with less routes coming directly into the city, was implemented in December 2014. However, numbers which had recovered slightly since 2011 have since continued to fall again, dropping three per cent in the 2015/2016 financial year while patronage for the country as a whole increased by the same percentage. In the 2016/2017 financial year to date, numbers have so far fallen a further 2.5 per cent.
By Tom Doudney CATCHING A bus from the central city to Belfast could you take you 25 minutes longer during afternoon peak hour traffic than if you had gone by car. It’s findings like these, from a city council analysis in November, which illustrate one of the key challenges in getting more people to get on the bus. The analysis of four key routes between the central city and outer suburbs showed car travel was much faster than bus travel, while bike travel was faster than bus travel on three of the routes. Environment Canterbury data suggests that frequency is also a key driver of patronage, with the five lines that run every 15 minutes typically attracting more passengers than routes with longer intervals. Bus journey times are also more variable than other modes of transport. The strategic business case found public transport reliability in Christchurch was “considerably lower” than Wel-
Travel times during afternoon peak traffic •CBD to Belfast via Cranford St: 12 minutes by car, 32 minutes by bike, 37 minutes by bus •CBD to Cashmere via Colombo St: seven minutes by car, 12 minutes by bike, 13 minutes by bus •CBD to New Brighton via Pages Rd: 11 minutes by car, 21 minutes by bike, 34 minutes by bus •CBD to Christchurch Airport via Memorial Ave: 14 minutes by car, 31 minutes by bike, 30 minutes by bus
lington and Auckland where “approximately 95 per cent of services run on time.” In Christchurch, reliability varied between 12 and 50 per cent during late afternoon peak hour traffic for buses heading out of the city. Things were better during the morning peak hour with buses heading into the city being between 50 and 90 per cent reliable.
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