Statistics released on public train reliability in Wellington are disappointing for those in the Northern Suburbs and Western Hills.

Ohariu is the only electorate that has people relying on TranzMetro’s three major rail routes in Wellington. The Northern Suburbs and Western Hills cannot support Wellington without an effective public transport system.

TranzMetro put up the reliability of their services month to month on their website, but you have to work very hard to find the weekly statistics, which is a far more accurate way to look at how reliable Wellington’s public trains are.

I have received the full data for each week from September 2009 to the third week of July this year and it only confirms what I am hearing: despite improvements, reliability has not improved much. The only time that TranzMetro seems to be able to reach their own targets is at Christmas.

TranzMetro have a performance target of 95% reliability of trains running within three minutes of the scheduled arrival time, which is a higher target than rail services in other cities including Auckland. I commend TranzMetro for setting their expectations for reliability higher than other cities. Now they just have to meet them. After nearly two years, they haven’t by their own standards, and the public is not prepared to pay more in fares during such tough times for no gain.

Attachments:

File	Description	File size
OTP Performance for TranzMetro Wellington.xls		49 Kb