Auckland Transport media release

20 July 2016

One year - almost three million extra trips

In the past year Auckland’s trains have travelled the equivalent of five trips to the moon and back.

The roll-out of electric trains on the Auckland rail network from Papakura to Swanson was completed on 20 July 2015.

Rail Services Manager Craig Inger says it’s been a great year for rail. “We’ve travelled 3.8 million kilometres and added a staggering 2.9 million passenger trips in the year.”

He says we are at just under 17 million passenger trips for the year, an annual increase of 20 percent. “Auckland’s trains are now operating 158,000 services a year, the figures are staggering. When Britomart opened in July 2003 we had just three million passenger trips for the year.”

The busiest time on the trains is between 7.30 and 8 on weekday mornings. “Britomart is our busiest station and at peak in the morning we see 6,500 passengers using the station an hour.”

Mr Inger says punctuality for services has improved quite dramatically from 82 to 96 percent. “This time last year things were pretty bad, we had some challenges with many of our old diesel trains and the level of service wasn’t good enough. Now that we run just electric trains on most of the network punctuality is much better.

“We now have a rail network that we can be proud of and we’d like to thank Aucklanders for supporting us.”

Auckland Mayor Len Brown says this confirms that Aucklanders will get out of their cars and use reliable safe and comfortable public transport. “The CRL, now being constructed, will be the next big thing to make a huge difference in terms of how Aucklanders move around and live their lives.”

There are also station improvements underway at Otahuhu and Pukekohe and a new station is being built at Parnell.

For more on Auckland’s rail services: https://at.govt.nz/bus-train-ferry/train-services/

ENDS

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