Westie humour

Something about this platform sign makes me smile every time I go past it. It's a pity it's on the city bound side of the platform so I only see it in the morning - probably not the best time to be thinking about beer.

Maori Wardens

After the incident last week where the teenage girl got her arm caught in a carriage door, Mark Lambert, who appeared on TVNZ's Close Up stated one of the measures Veolia Transport were taking to assist the safety of passengers was that there would be Maori Wardens riding on the trains during peak hours to help move passengers away from doors.

I can confirm I've started seeing them in the evening. Their job appears to be to politely ask passengers standing near the door to move down the aisles leaving the entry and exit points clear.

The issue I have with this is that this has always been the protocol, and for the most part people already do this. But unfortunately over-crowding on peak hour trains means the aisles are already full leaving no standing room other than by the doors. At one stop I hear a Warden announcing "Please move away from the doors if you can... if you can't, don't worry", which translates to "I know you can't move, this carriage is full to over-flowing but I have to be seen to be doing the job I'm getting paid for, so I'm announcing this anyway!"

I often have to stand if I don't get to the train a bit early and can definitely say, if there is an option to move down the aisle, I'll always take it for the very simple reason that it's a more comfortable place to stand. If you end up stuck by the doors, often you can't reach any handles and people really get crammed into this space making it normal to get a face full of another passengers hair ...or bad breath... the list goes on but you get the idea.

The Maori Wardens obviously aren't doing any harm and it can't hurt to prompt the few passengers who have recently started riding the trains and don't know the etiquette yet, but really it's a minor gesture and does not solve the over-crowding problem.

North Island Main Trunk Centenary

Last Friday, 08/08/08 was the 100th anniversary of the Parliamentary Special train trip to meet the Great White Fleet, from Wellington to Auckland.

Seeing as momentum is building in the media on the electrification of Auckland's rail newtork, I thought I'd include a link to Auckland Regional Council chairman Mike Lee's speech to the attendees of the function held that evening in celebration of the anniversary.

He spoke of the important impact rail has had in New Zealand over the past 100 years including the contibution to both world wars and the growth of trade and the ecomony. Further to that he honoured the men who laid the tracks between Wellington and Auckland through 700kms of some of New Zealand's most rugged terrain, and likened that achievement to the difficulties Auckland is about to face in electrifying the rail, completing the Western loop tunnel from Britomart to Mt Eden and extending rail out to the airport.

Last month we restored passenger services to Helensville after an interregnum of nearly 30 years, next year with our friends in Ontrack we will recommission the Onehunga Branch line and resume passenger services.
We are closer than anyone has been ever before to electrifying Auckland’s rail network.
Today I wrote to the Minister of Transport formally applying for fuel tax support the purchase of a brand new fleet of electric multiple units and a raft of other capital improvements to public transport. And in my letter I formally advised the Minister of our determination to get on with building the CBD tunnel loop linking Britomart to the western line at Mt Eden and also our determination to push ahead with extending rail to Auckland international airport as quickly as possible.

How auspicious it is then ladies and gentlemen – that in this most important centennial year – we are witnessing the renaissance of New Zealand rail. Surely that is the best way to remember those heroic New Zealanders who built the Main Trunk Line 100 years ago.

We look to the past with pride and to the future with great optimism.

If Mike Lee has any say in the matter, I believe we'll start hearing more and more about the progress these projects are making rather than just hearing about them as things we are planning to achieve.

As someone riding the Western Line everyday, I can't wait for a tunnel to Mt Eden to get underway.

Two weeks ago my father in-law made a last minute decision to fly over from the Gold Coast to see the Bledisloe Cup match at Eden Park. Seeing as he was going to stay with us, we had to work out a plan to get him to our place in the Waitakeres from the Airport. His flight came in at about noon and both my wife and I work so dropping everything with one days notice to go collect him was not going to be an option.

Being a resourceful Kiwi (he was born here) he caught a shuttle to downtown, then jumped on a train from Britomart out to Henderson, were he stepped out of the station, across the road and into the RSA, where he spent a couple of hours chatting with locals.

I got a call when I got home (about 6pm) asking if I would pop down and pick him up. The reason I mentioned all this was even if that was a relatively straight forward trip, how much easier and cheaper would it have been if he could have boarded a train from the Airport that transported him all the way to Henderson (even if, via the city)?

The sooner these expansion projects happen the better. Auckland's adoption of the rail has grown at an exponential rate, passenger numbers that were projected to be achieved by 2012 have already been overtaken, so if the infrastructure does not continue to expand to meet the demand, momentum could slow, people could lose interest and seek alternatives, the government's investment in the rail could be devalued and we'll just have another thing to grumble about.

Let's go, we are already behind!

Who's running the show?

I had an uneventful trip into town this morning. That is to say, everything ran smoothly. As our train circled around Vector Arena on its approach to Britomart, we were greeted with a blast of sunshine just cresting the horizon. It reminded me the days are starting to get longer and the darkness of my winter commute has passed for another year.

With nothing of note going on that I would be able to comment on, I got to thinking about one of the more frustrating things about Auckland's rail network... There does not seem to be any single group to take responsibilty for the service when it's not performing.

Who deals with complaints, or accepts blame when things go wrong? Who can give assurances that systems are being put in place to prevent issues reoccuring?

In previous posts I've been pointing the finger of blame at Veolia Transport when things go wrong... I have since discovered what is likely to be the most compelling reason why no-one accepts responsibility when the trains are late or breakdown...

So many different groups are involved in the process of running our rail network, all each has to do to avoid responsiblilty is point the finger at the next guy.

Lets take a look at who owns/operates what:

• The signals and tracks are owned by the Crown and operated by the Government agency Ontrack.
• All the diesel-units and carriages are owned by Auckland Regional Council but maintained by Toll.
• Locomotives owned and maintained by Toll.
• Train services contracted by Auckland Regional Transport Authority and run by Veolia Transport.
• Locomotive drivers employed by Toll, managed by Veolia.
• The diesel-unit drivers and all other train staff are employed by Veolia.

It's no wonder there is little or no accountability when things go wrong. The bureaucracy going on here can't be efficient. I doubt even they understand who is to blame when things go wrong. With no accountability the service will continue to suffer, not only do they need to complete the infrastrucure, they need to simplify the operation.

The administration costs of operating Auckland's rail network must be rediculous, and you can guarantee the money would be better spent contributing to the infrastructure upgrades.

Intercoms and txt notifications

Occasionally, while I've been waiting at Glen Eden, I've heard updates come over an intercom on the platform, telling everyone about a delay on our next service to Britomart "via Glen Innes"... what, wait a minute! Did they say Glen Innes?

-yes

So presumably the MC at the Central Control switch board gets confused about Auckland geography.... regularly. But this confirms there is a system to notify passengers standing on platforms about delays. The platform intercom never made a peep this morning. I guess it's possible the people in Glen Innes knew exactly what was going on though!

After this morning, I did some research on the web and discovered I could subscribe to a txt service provided by Veolia Transport, that will send notifications to my cell phone if there were going to be delays on my service.

For 20c I was able to subscibe to a message service for "Morning Commuter Peak" on the Western Line, and for another 20c I could get the afternoon commuter peak messages.

Apparently this has been on offer since 2004. I wonder why it's not more widely known, or maybe it is and I just didn't know. If it was so widely known though, why were so many people turning up for trains that weren't moving this morning?

I have my doubts about whether I'll ever get a useful txt, I guess in time I'll see if my 40c was well spent...

Com' on Veolia, prove me wrong.

Readers, I'll keep you posted.

What do you mean, you ran out of gas?

Did anyone catch Close Up last night? If you missed it you can catch-up with it on TVNZ ondemand but in summary it was a report about the status of public transport, in particular the rail network and how Aucklanders are about to be hit with a 10c fuel tax on the promise that we'll get a state of the art public transport system.

Mike Hoskings laid into Mark Lambert, ARTA's General Manager of Customer Services, about the state of the over-crowding on trains during peak hour and the dangers and discomfort it causes. Last week a teenage girl got her arm caught in a door as a result of being forced through crowding to stand too close to the door. Blind people with seeing-eye-dogs not being able to get near enough to a hand railing to hold on to, let alone a seat. I think the list went on for quite a while.

Mark Lambert, who should have been a politician with the way he dodged answering the tough questions, tried to explain that all major cities experience crowding during peak hours on their public transport, and that Veolia Transport had already addressed this issue on the southern line by adding more services and increasing carriages.

The report clearly demonstrated in a fairly unbiased fashion the lack of satisfaction rail passengers have with the public transport service.

That was on the telly last night, this morning I parked in Glen Eden at 7am and my train arrived at 7.05, right on time. I boarded and sat there... and nothing happened. Then people who had just boarded with me started getting off again. Word was spreading that a train ahead of our one had run out of gas and was blocking the line.

Run out of gas?! How is that even possible? Surely in the year 2008 we have devised a guage for train diesel tanks which can turn on a little red light when they start getting low... I know they've been adding them to cars for as long as I can remember. I think even lawn mowers have them now!

So the friendly staff (no really, they were quite helpful this morning) had started to offer passengers their options, either catch the bus departing from right next to the train station in about 5mins, get back in their cars and drive themselves (for those with cars in Glen Eden) or to wait for an indefinite time because they didn't know how long it was going to take to clear the blockage. I overheard other passengers mention something about an hour wait, so I guess that's why the majority of people opted to try their luck with option one or two.

The leaving passengers were being given pass credits to be used another time. The majority left... I stayed. If for no other reason than to see just how long we were going to have to wait, and how hard the staff would work to keep us informed.

At about 7:30 only a handful of people remained in each carriage, and the odd passenger was arriving to be greeted by staff with the explanation about the delay. By then staff were telling people the "response service" was departing from, I think he said, Papakura... and could be about half an hour away.

Then at about 7.45 the staff got word from somewhere/someone that we would be moving in about 5mins.

Sure enough we did, a mostly empty train, running 45mins late headed towards Britomart.

We came to another stop just after Fruitvale Rd (the next platform on the line) where we waited another 5-10mins. An announcement came over the intercom (barely audible without the keen ears of a fox) that we had to wait for another service heading West to go past. A result of the double tracking project in New Lynn already mentioned in a previous post. Then we were off again.

Of course every platform along the Western Line was crammed full of passengers waiting for a train, and seeing as we were the first functional train they had seen in the past hour, they all expected to be picked up by us. So we duely stopped, open the doors and loaded them on. Within two stops we were full to overflowing, at which point at all stops there after, passengers were being turned away and asked to wait for the next one.

Well done Veolia!

Fortunately my boss shows understanding about these things, so my arriving to work at 8.45am was not the end of the world... I'm sure not everyone would get the same response. Overall, my commute was about 2hrs worth this morning. The staff were polite and as helpful as they could be given they were not being kept well informed.

So Mark Lambert, what do you have to say to all us Western Line passengers today? I expect you'll be very quiet today.

Nasal offensive

Last night, my train home ran perfectly to time. It's as though someone at Veolia Transport knew I was starting this blog and decided they should make an effort to keep everything running smoothly.

Not that I'm complaining! This is how rail transport should operate. Nice work.

However something worthy of mention did occur yesterday evening, but was of no fault of the train or staff, but rather a fellow passenger. The event I'm refering to can be categorised under Personal Hygiene!

Soon after I had seated myself and started reading a book (the train was due to depart Britomart in about 5 more minutes), I noticed a stench. The carriage was filling fast as it always does at that time, and it's normal for me to zone-out of my surroundings.

Sometimes I wonder at my ability to sit next to someone for a 40min trip on the train and not remember a single thing about them afterwards. If someone asked me to describe the person who had sat next to me on that trip, I'd have difficulty even defining what gender they were, let alone what they looked like. I'd be hopeless if the Police needed a description for a crime commited.

But one thing can make a person stand out in a crowded train carriage of commuters... poor hygiene! Think teenage boy's bedroom mixed with spicy armpits and a hint of urine. I was certain the smell was coming from behind me, which meant I was powerless to act on it. I was already locked in my seat by another passenger who had sat down beside (a person who, as I write this, I could not tell you the first thing about).

Turning around to get a look at what I was having to deal with wasn't an option either. I find making eye contact with strangers on the train uncomfortable, as though I've been caught staring. So I was forced to try and breathe shallow and take my mind off it. My anonymous co-pilot (the passenger seated beside me) might well have been thinking the same thing, or worse, that I might have been responsible fo it.

Needless to say, the trip wasn't so pleasant. I thought I remembered being told by a wine connoisseur friend of mine that humans can only smell an odour for about 10-15 seconds before the olfactory sense reaches a kind of saturation, preventing the smell from being registered after that. My stinky friend proved that theory wrong, managing to offend me with a nasal assault all the way to New Lynn.

The lesson to be learnt here is to have a bit of self respect... clean and deodorise! Especially if you are intending to close yourself into a cramped space for any extended period with other people. Even if you think you smell fine, stop and ask yourself when was the last time you put your work clothes through the wash and did you put on deodorant that morning... if not for yourself, do it for the rest us forced to remain within an arms reach of you.

Stinky bastard!