NZ In Tranzit

Just keeping the engine on idle till I get back from holiday; trying to photograph public transport in ways different, interesting or artistic is a sideline challenge of having a camera for the first time in over a decade (and my first dgital) ; this at Hamilton's Transport Centre

The erstwhile (whatever that means!) rabbit has not gone to ground but rather hopping around the North Island on bus and trains, visiting friends and relatives and catching up on places some last visited over 40 years ago. Of course those floppy ears and beady eyes never stop checking out the environment, not least public transport systems of all sorts encountered upon the way. Heaps of material to digest, and an ever mounting stock of photos, to grace the NZ in Tranzit blog, when he ge ts back to work . I write this merely to quell the anxiety of those who can live without the regular input of pure carrot gold transit commentary!

Getting a consistent frequency and even spread of services across each hour is a key factor in quality benchmarks from a consumer viewpoint. Not such a problem on Wilmslow Road in Manchester, claimed to be Europe's busiest bus corridor with buses every 30 seconds at some times in some sections. [Even so it appears one old codger losing his specs in the doorwell of a bus can bring everything to a halt!] Photo Wikimedia Commons Recently I raised, again, the issue of quality control in public transport planning, particular in regard to south Christchurch Saturday night and Sunday services.  This article takes that thinking a little further I gave up cars ten years ago, after my kids became adults. I also often lived without a car, in three different cities before they were born, whilst I was still in my twenties. So I am an expert in this field! I am not entirely joking. Who knows better the quality of a bus service than the consumer? Anyone catching...

Thanks to Simon Atkinson - a well known Christchurch bus user, bus enthusiast and worker for better mobility access for disabled  persons, who passed on this  photo he took of one of the latest Designline Go-Wellington trolley buses last year. Considering what a tiny country we are, in terms of population, city size and public transport use, it is not unimpressive that the bus design is local; as are the carbon fibre poles which I believe have virtually eliminated the (well remembered!) tendency of Wellington trolley buses to regularly come off the overhead wires. These allow buses to change lanes or drive easily around obstacles without losing contact. I imagine few Christchurch people would be happy about returning to a mass of overhead wires in the central city area but given their greater pulling power, smoother acceleration and less intrusive presence in built up areas, the possibility of using trolley buses on one or two Christchurch busways...

Red Bus About to head east from Hornby Mall, to city, New Brighton and Southshore - a meaningless photo not related to the article below! My thinking is a fruit shop sells a range of fruit and veges - its nice to have a good clean shop, friendly service, good prices etc. But in the end what is being sold in the specific bit of fruit or specific vegetable. If that item is rotten, old, stale, gone sour, it's crap - the shop is selling crap. It doesn't matter how friendly the service; how modern the shop, the product is still crap. A transit authority exists to provide trips by public transport - it may be "mass" transit but the actual product at bottom line is selling/providing each trip a passenger makes to give him or her the best possible total journey. The bus, tram or train trip itself - each one for each passenger - is the ultimate product. It should be designed with great care and thought (if part of a patterned, same minutes past the hour service, this too shou...

My niece heading south to a polytech course, stayed over in Christchurch last weekend. She needed to buy some items for her specialised course from a discount supplier in Christchurch. I checked out the location of this discount shop - oops right down in the heart of the Parkhouse Road industrial enclave. No direct bus service into that area, and probably wouldn't be anyway on the weekends, even if Metro did run bus services to this major industrial/office park area. On the other hand the Metrostar would carry us right across the city to near that area; and I happen to know that tucked away behind Alloy Street, near Sockburn roundabout there is a footbridge across the railway line, that will cut walking distances in half. It is perhaps the most hidden, least signposted piece of non-vehicular  infrastructure in the city - even when we got to the entrance alleyway I had to stare hard at the pattern of wirenetting fences to figure out where the actual pathway was. Wh...