This would be amazing for anyone heading out to the bays or Wellington Airport, no intersections or lights to worry about, and it would make life so much easier for the CBD as well, not having so much through traffic in the CBD.
This would be amazing for anyone heading out to the bays or Wellington Airport, no intersections or lights to worry about, and it would make life so much easier for the CBD as well, not having so much through traffic in the CBD.
That’s not what I asked you.
I’m pointing out why I won’t be taking the bus if I’m heading out that way.
So then don’t, I didn’t say it must replace every single trip for it to have value
The whole point of my reply was pointing out why public transport isn’t an option for me, and why, no matter how good it gets, we will need to upgrade our road infrastructure eventually.
Absolutely nobody has said it won’t help.
I think their point is that we don’t necessarily need to upgrade road infrastructure. The majority of the people on roads could be using public transport.
Not the ones carrying kayaks or plumbing vans or disabled people that can’t get to a bus or train stop. But imagine how much better traffic would be for those people if all the other people were on public transport!
Thank you. Doesn’t even have to be the majority, there’s studies out there that suggest moving as little as 10-15% of trips out of cars can take traffic from jammed up to free flowing. Although the more the better, motorways are expensive as hell and car dependency creates all sorts of wider problems.
Given what a mess Wellington traffic is, especially getting in and out of the city, I don’t think many people are driving at the moment when public transport is an option.
I honestly think most of the people who could use PT are already on it, at least in and out of the city.
Public transport is expensive. If you are a couple working in Wellington, it’s cheaper to drive in one car and pay for parking than it is to both take the train.
And these days with second hand Leafs being cheap, even on your own it’s probably cheaper to drive. Public transport seems priced so that just enough people use it.
Auckland transport estimated about $300m extra funding a year would allow free public transport (assuming no additional services). I remember leading into the election last year there was controversy because National devided to spend 7B on roads people didn’t think were necessary.
We could take that money, and pay for free public transport in Auckland for 20 years, and still have 1B left over for extra pothole fixing. This is money currently allocated to roads that no one wants.
I don’t think we have reached the peak of public transport usage, not by a long way. Though I am admitedly only talking about one side of the story. I could write another comment about things I’ve not talked about here that mean free for all probably isn’t the right answer, but my point was just that subsidising public transport further is still a good payoff. Currently using public transport as a user is not a financial no-brainer, so many people who could use it still aren’t.
And despite that, a public transport journey is heavily subsidised, and the leaf driver is actually paying their own way via RUCs.
I don’t understand how public transport is so expensive.
That’s a good point. Pre-COVID there were about 70,000 journeys on trains alone per day in Wellington (based on something I remember reading years back when trains were broken). If those people are paying say $5 per trip, and the regional council and local councils pay $5 per trip (I seem to recall council subsidies being about half?), then that’s $700,000 per day in revenue.
If we assume weekends are lower lets just look at about 250 work days a year. That’s $175m per year to run the trains.
It would be interesting to know where the bulk of that sits. Is it cost of staff? Bill from Kiwirail for using lines? Debt costs for borrowing to buy units?
Depending on what exactly the bulk of the cost is would change what’s worthwhile. Mostly staff cost? That would probably grow mostly proportionally as you add more passengers. Mostly kiwirail costs? The more trains you run the less it should cost per trip.
Though we could run free PT for 50 years if we don’t build that $10B tunnel…
I suspect labour costs are the single biggest driver, you’re not being paid to drive your car after all.