This week Auckland Transport announced they were looking to update the Regional Public Transport Plan (RPTP) with a number of developments and one of those was to include the outcomes of the Ferry Development Plan. AT have now published the development plan which provides some more information into to their thinking around ferries.
First up, how ferries perform today. The map below shows where current ferry services run to.
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In the year to the end of March 5.4 million trips were taken on ferries which is up 5% on the year before and close to a peak reached in mid-2012. That patronage makes up around 7% of all public transport trips.
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Around 77% of all ferry patronage comes from just two routes – Devonport and Waiheke -however AT also say that in the morning peak around 49% of trips are coming from other services. That indicates that the Devonport and Waiheke services do well off peak – probably due to tourism. The number of passengers arriving in the city in the current morning peak are shown below.
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The Development Plan is focused on how AT will develop ferries over the next 10 years and covers both infrastructure and services. The modelling for it also considers the impacts over a 30 year period.
The overall takeaway outcome is that there are not any viable opportunities for new ferry routes and that the focus should be on improving the routes we already have. That means increasing capacity and services so that they can handle the predicted demand and provide regular all day service – just like what is being done with the bus and rail networks (note: regular service is different from frequent service so might only be hourly off peak). The additional daily services AT expects to add to each route are shown below and there is a more detailed version on page 21 of the development plan.
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It is expected that between now and 2026 ferry patronage will increase from 5.4 million to around 7.5 million. Much of the growth is expected from just a few of the routes and the growth in AM peak trips is shown below and is based on integrated fares and no surcharge (more on that soon)
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To accommodate that growth more vessels and improvements to existing ferry terminals will be needed – such as the recently announced new terminal at Half Moon Bay. In addition to the terminals, AT want to expand the Park n Ride at a few stations. The capital costs for all of this development is around $34.2 million and almost half of it is for the redevelopment of the downtown ferry terminal. The Benefit Cost Ratio of the terminal improvements are shown below and as you can see the result for Half Moon Bay is crazy high.
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You’ll notice the table has ‘with surcharge’ and ‘no surcharge’ and as mentioned earlier the modelling is based on no surcharge. AT say they want ferries to have integrated fares but that it isn’t possible just yet.
Potential patronage has been modelled assuming integrated fares with and without a ferry surcharge. A surcharge is necessary initially to maintain the affordability of ferry services and to avoid demand for unavailable capacity. In time, as patronage and capacity increase and costs are reduced, the surcharge will be reduced and eliminated.
Included in the development plan is analysis of the current park n ride users which I found quite interesting. As you can see most people make fairly short trips to the ferry but there are some quite long ones, especially to Half Moon Bay. Some seem quite odd such as driving from Albany next to the busway station to Devonport or Bayswater to catch a ferry or from Remuera to Half Moon Bay (perhaps they were going to Waiheke though).
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Lastly AT did look at the options for expanding ferry services including to Browns Bay, Takapuna and Te Atatu. If they were implemented the map below which also includes the SHA areas is how the ferry network would look however the all have BCR’s of less than 1 and as there’s little time savings compared to road-based modes it’s not expected they would attract enough patronage.
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Overall I’d say that the outcome is right, focus on get the existing services working well