Lyndon Walker

A few years back I was staying in an outer suburb of Sydney with friends. We were catching a train to the city but missed it narrowly. My friends were bemused when I ran down the ramp to try to catch it. Of course my experience of public transport was from Auckland, where missing a bus or train would mean an hour wait. The next train came 5 minutes later. I was astounded.

Aucklanders have suffered from poor transport for far too long, and it need not be so. One of the keys to supplying good public transport services is to have the right services supplied at the right places and the right times. This might seem tricky but in fact the last census recorded the home and work locations of every person in Auckland. Statistics New Zealand has mapped all of this data and will provide it for free. FREE! A redesign of bus routes and public transport services could dramatically improve services but we have yet to see any use made of the census data. Next year we will have another census. I hope we won’t see the data wasted again when it could be used to improve the state of transport in Auckland.