NZ Trains
If I’m going to write about Auckland’s trains, then I need to be fair about it – because sometimes, good things happen, and they need to be mentioned.
Yesterday the new timetables for the Western Line kicked into effect. For anyone who lives beyond Henderson there are huge improvements to the regularity of the services – the previous wait of 40 minutes between trains has been reduced to 15 minutes during peak times. That’s a big difference, and it’s really going to make taking the train a much more viable option.
There were a few changes to other services, as well as...
The standard of Veolia transport's SMS notifications has always been a bit questionable, however one from this morning is in line to win some kind of award: "Due to operational problems the Western Line services had been delay by approxed 25 minutes both direction train". Huh? A massive thanks to the person who drove the wrong way around a roundabout at New Lynn this morning, before ignoring the warning barriers and crashing into a train, therefore delaying all the trains.. words fail me.
Ok, it's not that exciting really, but it was pretty funny.
One of the neat things about riding to almost the end of the line is that you never have to worry about missing your stop - unless a lot of alcohol is involved. Unfortunately that's not the case for every other passenger.
The "express" train (both of them - the one in the morning, and the one in the evening!) skips all stops between Newmarket and New Lynn. What that means is that a few people also use it for transportation between Britomart and Newmarket, because a train is a...
Rail campaigner banned for collecting names in support of the Airport train extension. "If the rail operator is not for airport rail extensions, what hope has Auckland got?" What hope indeed. Thank you for travelling with Veolia Transport! Link: Campaign for Better Transport Link: Rail campaigner banned for collecting names (Warning: Herald article - may contain errors) Tags: NZ
Friday's piece of fun on the train was so enjoyable that it needs to be written about.
That's my little shot across the bow to give everyone who doesn't care about Veolia Transport / Ontrack related whining the chance to look away.
It started off with me sipping a beer in a Mt Eden pub watching the Black Caps game after visiting my father in hospital. I checked my phone for any delay related SMS messages, and as it was clear I headed off to the station. Upon reaching the station the messages began to come in, one or two via text,...
It's crap. The past couple of weeks have felt like Auckland's train services have taken some giant strides backwards. Lets summarise (I'm sitting here right now stranded due to the lack of a train, so it's a good time to do so). It started with the recent release of some new timetables. "New timetables!" thinks I, "More services? Maybe rush hour will be less of a pain in the rear! Yay!". But no, there are no changes at all on the timetable other than the new late night (if you call 9.30pm departure) weekday train being officially listed now....
In a somewhat strange and sneaky move, the Western line train service has been quietly improved while I wasn't watching! There is now an extra train running in the evenings on Weekdays, making late(r) night drinking sessions semi viable. Amazing that they did it without much publicity - they really should be making more of an effort to mention when things improve (especially after today's points failure at Britomart, but lets not mention that). It also seems we're a step closer to having a "real" train system, I.e. one with swipe gates and actual tickets! We live in interesting...
Frost by itself isn't anything too amazing or interesting. However, when it's in Auckland, and when you can scoop it into a pile and almost make a snowball out of it, then you can say "It's cold today" and feel somewhat justified.
Tags: NZ, NZ Trains
I threw the leg times for an end to end trip (specifically, the first train of the morning) on the Western line in both directions into a quick Excel spreadsheet, and can now reveal the following useless statistics:
There are 18 stations and therefore 17 legs along the western line.
The most common leg time is 3 minutes. There are 9 eastbound legs which take 3 minutes, and 12 westbound.
There are 7 legs in which the durations for the eastbound and westbound legs differ.
Of the 7...
I was looking through the new timetable for the Western line and thought I'd noticed a screw up in the train times. The trip duration eastbound looked like it took longer than it used to.
That was until I checked the old timetable, and realised that apparently it takes less time to travel from Britomart to Waitakere as it does to travel from Waitakere to Britomart. I'd never noticed this before!
The eastbound trip end to end (non express) is listed at taking exactly an hour, whereas the return trip is listed as taking 57 minutes...
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About me
My name is Ross Hawkins and I'm a developer, consultant, business owner and writer based in Auckland,
New Zealand (pictured below!). My current work revolves around ASP.NET, C#, jQuery, Ajax,
SQL Server, and a mix of other Microsoft development technologies.
I also have about 15 years of experience with IBM Lotus Notes/Domino and associated technologies. While Notes/Domino
is no longer my primary focus I still like to dabble and keep my skills up to date.
I own and run 2 businesses - Hawkins Consulting Services,
and Ignition Development.
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