Ferry patronage up to March 2011

The monthly patronage figures are out. Spectacular growth in March where in other years the end of Summer sag usually starts. Must be all those oldies going for a free daytrip.
April and May will be more interesting to see the effect of the April price hike. As seen in September last year it can affect passenger numbers drastically.

Ferries patronage figures February 2011

There has been a record 12.6% increase in ferry patronage in the year on year February figure:

Remember this is the whole ferry system, not just Waiheke, even though we provide the bulk of the patronage. It'll be interesting to see what the effect of the fare rise will be in April's figures. In August/September they went down!

Ferry patronage down again in September

From the ARTA Monthly Business Report:

Ferry patronage for September is -2.4% (8,199 boardings) lower than last September, for the financial year to date patronage is down by -0.4% (4,106 boardings) compared to the same period in the 2009/10 financial year.
In September 2009 a promotion was run whereby a number of ferries offered free travel, resulting in a patronage increase of 7.6% for that month. Although ferry patronage this September is down on the September 2009, it has increased by 5.1% over the last two years compared to September 2008.

Of course, this is for all ferries in Auckland, not just Fullers or the Waiheke service although I suspect that we make up the bulk of the overall patronage.

Please check the monthly graph in the report (page 8) for a historical comparison going back 4 years. The Winter months seem to have a bedrock of 300,000 commuter movements a month, topped up by 150,000 tourist movements a month over Summer. But it doesn't seem to vary much year after year. Perhaps the ferry breakdowns over Winter cause the dips, blows softened by fare promotions (but not for everybody).