Lack of reliability with trains sees Auckland commuters opt for the bus

Auckland's public transport network has been under the pump during 'March Madness' - but trains are lagging behind.

It was halfway through the peak of public transport usage in Auckland, as work and school kicks back into full swing over February and March.

And it has been busy. Since the end of February, more than two million trips have been taken every week on Auckland's public transport network.

Auckland Transport group manager of growth and optimisation Richard Harrison said the busy period has started earlier this year.

"It looks like people are coming back into the office earlier than they have in previous years," Harrison said.

"We've certainly heard a lot of organisations now are encouraging people back into the office two or three days a week, which translates into more public transport trips."

The network is at 90 percent of 2019 levels of public transport usage - and busses have nearly recovered to their full levels, with over 1.6 million weekly boardings since 26 February.

The NX1, Northern Express, has been the most travelled bus route, with over 35,000 trips taken for the months of February and March.

But trains have been the exception to the trend - there have been more than 300,000 weekly train trips taken since mid-February, peaking at more than 370,000 trips in the first week of March.

"Train is lagging and we know we've had some issues there with disruptions on the train network, and we can see that's put people off using trains," Harrison said.

"Train patronage has increased during this period, but not by as much as bus and ferries."

Auckland's train network has been plagued by delays and cancellations since the start of the year, and parts of the network have been closed entirely for KiwiRail's rail rebuild project.

Harrison said the numbers speak for themselves, and people were choosing to use busses over trains.

"It's pretty clear that once people have got trust and confidence in their train network that they'll start using it again.

"You'll hear from customers that the most important thing to them is reliability. They want to know the service is there when they expect it to be. We're working hard with KiwiRail to get back to that."

Public transport usage has been gradually getting back to 2019 levels, but it has not yet increased beyond that.

Harrison said this was because people's travel patterns were changing.

"We've had more people travelling on the network, but they're travelling fewer days," he said.

"Before Covid, people would travel on average 16 days a [month], and through Covid that went down to only 10 days, and now it's back to around 15 days a month."

Auckland Transport has added extra services to the 22, 27, 30, and 75 bus routes, as well as to the WX1 Western Express as required.

It has also added bigger busses to manage capacity, and added extra school bus services where needed.

Harrison said there has been some bus cancellations caused by traffic congestion where busses do not have priority lanes, but it was only 0.5 percent of scheduled services in February and 0.6 percent in March so far.

Harrison expected the busy period to start dropping away from next week as people take leave for Easter.