Auckland rail use up

Auckland Transport announced:

Another record for the Auckland rail network – annual rail patronage has exceeded 14 million for the first time.
 
Auckland Transport’s General Manager AT Metro, Mark Lambert, says this is the highest ever 12-month total. “In March, we reached 13 million passengers and here we are just five months later adding another million trips.”

That’s strong growth.

One of the criteria for early start to the City Rail Loop is being on track to hit 20 million trips well before 2020. If they are adding on a million per five months then they should hit 20 million around 2018.

There is another criteria around CBD employment increasing by 25% over 2012 numbers. These were 98,000 and growth has only around 3,000 so that is well short.

However if I was the Government I’d be seriously looking at an earlier start, based on the rail growth.

Rail patronage in Auckland grew 21.7% in the year to the end of June. That’s two and a half million more passengers than in June last year. Mr Lambert says, “It’s hard to believe but when Britomart Transport Centre opened in 2003, annual patronage was less than three million.”
 
The number using all public transport in Auckland reached 79 million in the year to June, an increase of 9.5% or on average 19,000 extra boardings per day.

Good to see.

I find the more useful figure is average boardings per day. So in 2003 it was around 8,000 passengers a day on rail in Auckland and today it is around 38,000 passengers a day. Very good growth. But of course still a very small proportion of the total Auckland population and/or workforce.