Anyone is able to make equipment to that can read the HOP cards which are designed to a national int

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Earlier this year I did a comparison between catching a train from my local station and driving to work at peak time. This is a similar look at the journey off peak. I had arranged with some friends to meet them for lunch today in town and the experience highlights perfectly just how far we have yet to go to truly have an alternative to getting around travel agencies online by car.
I was meeting my friends at 12:00 near the bottom of Albert St which is just a short walk away from Britomart. As I have mentioned before I live near a train station and only have a 5-10 minute walk to get there which is great. travel agencies online The first thing I did was to have a quick look at the timetable shows that I was in luck as despite having a pretty crappy off peak frequency of only one train every half hour, one was due to arrive at Britomart at 12:00. Being only a couple of minutes late by the time I walked to my destination would have been ok but the real problem is at the other end where I catch the train, Sturges Rd. You see that train leaves my station at 11:13 so combined with the walk to the station, I m looking at close to an hour all up to get into town. On top of that I also have the train fares to consider which with an AT HOP card come in at around $6 each way. I also knew I would be there for about an hour or so had a look at the first train to leave after 1pm, it was due to depart Britomart at 1:23. Add on another hour and a further $6 to get home and I m looking at almost 2½ hours travelling and $12 all up.
By comparison my other option was to drive.  The presence of the North Western motorway means an off peak trips only takes 20-25 minutes to get to Auckland Transports downtown carpark. The new parking system introduced late last month for the city centre means that the AT controlled car parks only cost $3 per hour off peak and so knowing I would be just a little bit over I budgeted for $6 in parking costs. There would also be roughly $7 in petrol and other associated costs.
At a most simple level the decision came down to the difference between spending 2½ hours travelling and paying $12 to do so or hoping in my car spending an hour (or less) travelling and paying ~$13 in parking and fuel costs. So the costs are similar but there is a huge amount of difference in the amount of time needed for each mode. Even as someone who is very enthusiastic about public transport its very hard to justify using it in this situation (at the peak is a different story).
I like to maintain that most people are pretty rational and will make generally logical decisions travel agencies online so taking taking 1½ times longer to make a journey via PT is never going to be attractive. This is why it is so important that Auckland Transport works to find ways to improve PT infrastructure as a key way to make PT a more attractive option, both on and off peak. By my estimation, with the CRL my trip would have been around 35-40 minutes including the walking, combining that with the higher travel agencies online frequencies proposed in the RPTP and it would have made a huge difference in my decision because travel agencies online there is always that risk of random congestion or an accident that holds things up .
On the issue of parking though, it would have been so much easier and more useful if I could have paid for my parking with my AT HOP card. Lets hope AT can get on to that once they have got the system rolled out to buses next year and it would also be a good way to get the card into the hands of drivers making it easier for them to convert to using PT in the future.
My car is fairly standard travel agencies online and does about 550km on a tank of gas which is ~55L, thats 0.1L per km. 36km would then use 3.6L of fuel at a price of something like 2.07 per L last time I filled up means ~$7.5 worth of fuel.
Right, but the costs of owning the car need to be taken into account somewhere. Also, just owning the thing isn t that expensive there is some depreciation and a few fixed costs (insurance, reg) but most of the costs come from using it.
Yes I was initially thinking roughly travel agencies online $6 of fuel and another $1 for wear and tear. A quick calculation, if you did say 10k kms per year and had an average of $500 per year (my car is about 5 years old and has never had a bill that much yet) for wear and tear/maintenance you would be paying ~5c per km. That would work out to roughly $1.80 for this 36km journey. Perhaps instead I should say it cost $9 in fuel and other costs, $7.5 for fuel and another $1.5 for maintenance.
Yes and the savings really accrue to a place that supports less can use and lower rates of car ownership. Because if households are able to say go down from two cars to one, or three to two, they will have considerably more disposable even after paying our very expensive Transit rates. And that money is likely to be spent locally, and not go to Japanese car firms or the back pockets of Arabian princes.
Example from US: from 2005-2009 Washington DC (which has a good subway system) population grew by 15, 862 but car registrations fell by 15, 000. This reduction in car has been calculated as as much as 127 million being retained in the local economy travel agencies online each year.
AA quotes total all up cost of around $0.50 per Km for average small family car. So for return journey it would be around $20 in car costs. Either way with average NZ wage at $20 hour, and city workers generally earning more than that, saving $20 but consuming more than a hour on slow PT is a silly waste of a life
Bike parking would be very easy to implement at the station too. There is a 170 space park n ride and the few times I have been there during the day there tends to be ~50 carparks empty. Taking a few away and putting in a protected bike storage area would be great (I don t have a bike so am limited to walking or driving there).
It hasn t had a big bill yet, but it will one day! But yes, there are huge upfront costs in car ownership that people never take into account. (even the cost of having to make room to store one on your property is massive travel agencies online but you get that whether or not you own one).
But did you consider that by having a car and living further out your mortgage is way lower (lower than the car cost by many a factor usually even when factoring in the owning and driving costs of said car),
Perhaps this is why we have such a track record of urban sprawl unless you price the time spent in a car travelling to and from your lower cost house in the burbs, you will seem to be better off by doing so.
A house out in the suburbs and spending an hour driving each way each day only appears cheaper travel agencies online if you ignore the waste of 2 hours of your time a day, not to mention the elevated stress levels which can have all sorts of negative health outcomes.
but just remember, when you bought your house out in the burbs, travel agencies online it wasn t a two hour each way commute was it? more like 30-45 minutes tops and petrol was way cheaper then too, and your mortgage interest rate probably wasn t much below 10% so it was by all measures cost effective to do this. Now that your have a two hour commute and no decent transport options you have to keep using your car regardless of petrol prices as you can t (even now) afford a place closer to town. And wiser folks won t buy your place as they see your folly for what it is.
- so you have now been hoist by your own petard and are now a victim of the stampede to the burbs you and your neighbours have caused by (short term gain, but longer term pain) using your car to lower your mortgage.
My mortgage is way lower purely because travel agencies online I don t live in the suburbs. I could never afford the standard of place I live in if I was forced to pay for a whole plot of land for it to sit on. I share the cost (and value) of the land with 39 other owners and mostly just pay for the dwelling itself.
I can also walk to work, the supermarket and most other things within ten minutes so I really travel agencies online don t need a car. So that has saved me about five grand a year in the first instance, but it also allows me to rent out my parking space for $60 a week. The way I figure it going carless in the city has saved me $8,000 a year. That s about a third of my mortgage payments, or in other words I could afford to service a place 50% more expensive by doing away with the car. Or another way to think of it, it s the same as a twelve grand pay rise less tax.
Matt, you talked about how useful it would be for the HOP card to be able to be used as an additional payment method at AT-run car parking buildings in the CBD such as Victoria St and Civic etc. What s the bet however that the HOP card can only be used with Thales equipment and not with the Skidata equipment in use at AT cark parks. It would be nice to say that the HOP card can be read by equipment other than Thales-produced devices travel agencies online in particular by the Skidata barrier gates and payment travel agencies online machines but I wonder if this is possible in reality. Can someone out there give a definitive yay or nay on this?
Anyone is able to make equipment to that can read the HOP cards which are designed to a national interoperability standard travel agencies online that the NZTA is in charge of so it. I am aware that it is on AT s wish list of things to do and I m also aware that they are about to replace the on street parking meters (which are apparently obsolete and breaking down quite regularly) and the tender travel agencies online docs specify that they must be able to accept AT HOP cards.
Well once we have the new capacity networks up and running; new trains, new bu