Request for information

We had a request to call for information from passengers who happened to have travelled on the 4:00pm boat from town on 23 December and got on the bus at Matiatia. If you had any concerns about the bus passenger loading, could you contact this email address or call 0800 566 366, that would be most appreciated.

Captain Pugwash at the helm

Starflyte on the Friday 6:30pm forgot to pull into Devonport. He realised it mid-channel so a sharp 180-degree turn followed. His cheery announcement at the start of the journey that we'd be on Waiheke in 35mins was a little optimistic. It took an hour.

The 180-min journey to work

The Waiheke Marketplace newspaper ran a piece with commuter experiences on the ferries, sadly it's not online. A slightly different article, but based on the same information appeared in the East & Bays Courier.
It inspired me to fire off the following letter to the editor:

Dear George,

The fluffy piece of salad day journalism by Nicola Murphy and Lyndal Jefferies "Work's a 180-min journey" requires necessary balance. For Waiheke commuters, the journey to and back from work in the city involves one of the most expensive commuter fares in the world. At $4,000 a year, what do you actually get? Boats that rarely arrive at the advertised time causing missed bus and train connections. Cancellations and breakdowns occuring like clockwork, often mid-channel and which require a return and transfer (but, mercifully, a $10 compensation voucher). Those breakdowns are euphemistically referred to by Fullers as "unplanned maintenance" and they come on top of annual boat surveys that seem to take longer every year.
You may think that the Waiheke commute is a damn sight better thing than sitting in a gridlocked motorway every morning, but your 'reverse commuter', Mr Schippers, enjoying the "easy parking" in Devonport, should have mentioned he can actually park for free, a privilege not enjoyed by islanders, who are unique in the Auckland public transport system of not having a free park & ride facility that North Shore busway commuters take for granted. Perhaps this is because the Waiheke Fullers route is actually not a public transport service but communal private transport delivered by a monopoly company.
It's my impression that Fullers actually doesn't like commuters. It prefers the $35 return tourist fares because revenue per passenger is so much juicier. Tourists don't turn up in Winter so boats can be taken out of service at random, and bugger the resulting cramped conditions for the captive daily customer. In Summer, boat charters and private cruises for corporate Christmas parties yield so much more profit it pays to cram commuters onto the smaller vessels, sardine-style.
The vaunted aspects of the boat commute - the community-style interactions between passengers and the opportunity to actually make the time work for you - are a little overdone. There is, for example, no free wi-fi on board, something that is increasingly common on public transport overseas and even on inner city Auckland buses, trains and even Sea Link to Half Moon Bay.
As long as Waiheke is not integrated into the Auckland public transport system (we haven't heard whether Hop will come to Fullers, let alone at $14.50 for a day pass valid for travel across Greater Auckland, a fare touted for travelling a similar distance on other Auckland public transport modes) Fullers - and Sea Link - will continue to abuse their monopoly position and slowly strangle life on Waiheke for all but the well-heeled. The island's gentrification and unaffordability will continue and the only beneficiary is Fullers' bottom line.

UPDATE: The letter (slightly edited) was published, good on ya, George.
UPDATE: The original article has been retracted by the Marketplace after one of the interviewees complained he wasn't actually interviewed for the piece.

Fullers apologises to its Waiheke customers

I found an A5-sized pamphlet on the ferry headed "Customer Announcement: An Apology to Our Waiheke Customers". I can't find it on their website to link to, so I'll paraphrase. It says they had a larger number than expected vessels out of service due to what they call "unplanned maintenance", a euphemism for engine breakdown. Planned maintenance on Adventurer had to be delayed due to the Rugby World Cup and its unusually busy period (didn't they know this event was coming?).

Then for some statistics: in the past 3 years, 13 out of 20 engines have been rebuilt or replaced (several boats have two engines, it's not as if Fullers have a secret fleet stashed away somewhere) at a cost of over $4 million. Regardless, the "unusually high breakdown rates" indicate to me either bad engineering skills or patch-up work to keep costs down in the short term (but of course not in the long term, as any business 101 course will tell you).
But happily we can look forward to the triumphant return of Superflyte on the 6:30pm ex-Auckland sailing (after a spate of sardine-like conditions lately), and Doug Hudson is looking forward to your comments. Leave your feedback here.

You really have to be stupid not to think that the point of catastrophic breakdown of the ferry system in Auckland, i.e. when there are simply not enough vessels to meet the demand, is not far off and that the company is derelict in its investment plans for new capacity. The tragedy is that there is simply no mechanism or regulation in place to ensure that Waiheke is not economically strangled by this private profiteering monopoly company.

The joys of the Outer Link

I found myself inadvertently catching the Outer Link bus from Pt Chevalier to Balmoral (the southern part of the route) and then the next day from Balmoral to the CBD. It's a brand new line with brand new buses so I was glad to try it out. There was no waiting time at the Pt Chev bus stop, the bus had arrived there before I did, so all good. The frequency stated by Maxx is about every 15mins, which I guess in Auckland's bus system is not bad at all - especially on the weekend. It chugged along happily but at frequent intervals there was an announcement that the bus may be waiting a few minutes at some bus stops to prevent it getting too much out of whack with its timetable. This makes for a very slow frustrating progress. It took about 40mins to get from Pt Chev to Balmoral and about 30mins to get to downtown. If you're in Balmoral, it may be faster to catch a Mt Eden bus route.
As you can see in the route diagram, there are some curious "kinks" in the route, i.e. where deviations into side streets happen instead of going straight through. Why there is this lengthy detour through Mt Eden to end up again on Balmoral Road is a mystery to me. Hardly anyone got off or on in that deviation, and it just added to the travel time.
Being a Saturday, I thought it was very well patronised, and best of all, it's free for Waiheke Fullers monthly pass holders (as are the other Link services).

Summertime snafus starting early

The afternoon started ominously with a txt message from Fullers advising that the 17:00 and 18:30 ex-Auckland would be run by Jet Raider. My last experience on that boat didn't end well so I was dreading the worst for getting home in any reasonable amount of time. And again, Fullers didn't disappoint in that department. Superflyte was doing the normal Quickcat services, as Quickcat was chartered for a party on the harbour cruise: the seats were piled high on the wharf to make way for dancing punters. Fullers, being a fully private company unbeholden to its daily paying customers, has the right to take boats out of commuting service when it has the chance of making far more per charter passenger than from those pesky, complaining commuters.

At 18:00 came another txt advising that the 17:40 ex-Waiheke was cancelled (JR came back from Waiheke late and empty). The girl on the wharf tannoy tried to keep our spirits up by announcing the ferry was "about 10 minutes late". Of course Fullers time has no link to real time and we left 20mins late.

Of course, this being Friday and Summertime, the 18:30 sailing has to go via Devonport, come what may, being late or not, having crashed into the Devonport wharf before or not, Fullers' internal infernal route and timetabling has to be obeyed, and off we chugged to Waiheke.
Jet Raider was going suspiciously slow and we arrived about 19:45 at Matiatia, shortly followed by the 19:15 Superflyte. Again, Jet Raider left Waiheke empty. I innocently asked a staff member behind the bar why the boat went at half speed and she was offended by the suggestion that I noticed something like that. She was adamant the boat went full speed but was delayed by the number of passengers.
It's a sign capitalism is based on fear when you can get your employees on the minimum wage to lie and do your PR for you.
It doesn't bode well for the rest of the Summer, but we know our place and the live sheep shipments will blithely continue.

But a good thing that happened and kept the frustrated waiting punters' spirits up on Matiatia wharf was a flash mob carol singalong by V12 and Sister Shout:

A faux discount

For the December and January months, Fullers has offered a $25 discount on the $350 monthly passes, which is about 7%. The reason, ostensibly, is to encourage you to keep on buying a pass instead of pondering alternatives because you may work fewer days in those months. What it certainly is not do is offer compensation for the crappy service over the last few months: Jet Raider still out of service, and some big boats replaced by smaller boats, to get that lovely feeling of being packed in like sardines. Pathetic.

Jet Raider's disastrous return to service

Jet Raider's return to service lasted less than a day with hastily replacements from this morning. The little boat,s such as Starflyte and Adventurer, are now doing the Superflyte service in pairs while Superflyte takes over Quickcat's runs. I don't know where Quickcat has gone. As I said before, they should have taken the opportunity to scuttle the Jet Raider after its August mid-channel breakdown.

International ferry fare comparison update

In August 2008 and October 2010 we did research into various ferry fares around the world. So we are now doing an update and comparison over 3 years.
The Waiheke ferry is still up there among the most expensive in the world, not really a change there. What has changed is an increase in the number of integrated ticketing systems available for all transport modes within a geographical region – even in so-called developing countries like Turkey -  something we are still waiting for in Auckland.

Service	Aug 2008	Oct 2010	Sep 2011	Ride length	Notes
Auckland-Waiheke (NZ)	$344	$330	$350 $19 a trip	35mins	Valid for Waiheke ferry, bus and selected Auckland bus services
Wellington-Eastbourne* (NZ)	$245	$252	$252	20mins
Seattle-Vashon (USA)	US$118/$166	US$3.75/$4.90 a trip	US$3.75/$4.60 a trip	22mins	Orca card prepay
West Seattle-Vashon (USA)	US$55/$78	US$53.50/$70.30	US$3/$3.67 a trip	10mins	Orca card prepay
Seattle-Kingston (USA)		US$275/$361.50	US$250/$305.85 for 40 rides	50mins	Limited service
San Diego-Coronado* (USA)	Free	Free	Free	15mins
New York-Staten Island* (USA)	Free	Free	Free	25mins
Sydney ferries* (AUS)	A$1,280/$1,562 to A$2,200/$2,684 a year	A$41/$53.70 to A$57/$74.40 a week	A$42.20/$53.58 to A$52.80/$67.03 for 10 rides
Boston ferries* (USA)	US$198/$279	US$198/$260.30	US$198/$242.23		All mode travel
Alameda-Oakland* (USA)	US$170/$240	US$170/$223.50	US$170/$207.98	20mins	40 rides within one month
Hong Kong Star Ferry* (HK)	HK$110/$20	HK$125/$21.20	HSK$125/$19.61	9mins
Vancouver Translink (CAN)	C$73/$99 to C$136/$184	C$81/$106.60 to C$151/$198.70	C$81/$99.18 to C$151/$184.90		Zone based, all travel modes
Maine Portland (USA)	US$87/$123.50 to US$127.50/$181	US$82.45/$108.40 to US$125.15/$164.50	US$82.45/$100.87 to US$125.15/$153.11		Various islands
Isle of Wight (UK)	£150.80/$392	£163/$343.70	£171.50/$332.52	22mins
Vlissingen-Breskens* (NL)		€69.50/$130	€69.50/$115.53	20mins
Den Helder-Texel (NL)		€30/$55	€30/$49.87	20mins	15 return tickets on OV- chipcard
Istanbul ferries*			TL1.75/$1.18 a trip		Istanbul card

Notes: All prices are for monthly passes and ferry travel only, unless stated otherwise. The exchange rates are at Aug 2008, Oct 2010 and Sep 2011.
* denotes not an island service, passengers have other (land-based) transport options.

"Fast, reliable and cheap". Yeah, right

An interesting article in the NZ Herald on the length of time of commuting by car; and the dearth and cost of public transport costing Auckland a higher ranking in the world of liveable cities.

Auckland has again been rated bottom of a class of 14 cities for the average number of public transport trips taken annually by its residents.
They took an average of just 44 trips a year, compared with 74 trips by Wellingtonians, 124 by Melbourne residents and 168 by those in Ottawa.
The report noted that Auckland's public transport patronage has risen 8.5 per cent since the study.
Aucklanders also paid the highest average fares of the surveyed cities, of 24c for every kilometre travelled, compared with 17c in Wellington and 11c in Perth.

To which we can easily answer: you city dwellers in Auckland have got it sweet. We, Waihekeans (and you poor tradies trotting over to the island every morning), pay $1 per kilometre travelled.
That's the price we pay for a private monopoly. "Public transport" is an alien concept on the Waitemata.