Since completion of the roll out of electric trains on the Auckland rail network from Swanson to Papakura on July 20, 2015, there have more than 2.9 million passenger trips added.
When Britomart station opened in 2003, there were 3 million passengers trips in that year; now the total is nearing 17 million passenger trips, an annual increase of 20%.
In the last 12 months, Auckland’s trains have travelled the equivalent of five trips to the moon and back.
“We’ve travelled 3.8 million km, adding a staggering 2.9 million passenger trips in the year,” says Rail services manager Craig Inger.
“Auckland’s trains are now operating 158,000 services a year; the figures are staggering,” he says.
The busiest time on the trains is between 7.30am and 8am on weekday mornings.
“Britomart is our most active station and at the peak in the morning we see 6,500 passengers using the station an hour,” says Inger.
Inger says service punctuality improved dramatically from 82 to 96%.
“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 are much better,” says Inger.
“We now have a rail system that we can be proud of, and we’d like to thank Aucklanders for supporting us,” he says.
There are station improvements underway at Otahuhu and Pukekohe, and a new station is being built at Parnell.
