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Monday, November 27, 2023

Kevin: Hey Stacey, Here’s Your Hop Card


Auckland Transport wants shopping centres to proactively manage traffic during Black Friday sales and the Christmas shopping period.

Of course they do.

The call follows some shoppers waiting more than three hours to leave the Westfield Mall in Newmarket on Saturday.

[…] AT’s executive general public transport services Stacey van der Putten told Morning Report they will have staff on from 9am Friday helping to optimise the flow of traffic, including through the use of traffic light timings.

But she said shopping malls can also help by proactively managing onsite parking and having clear signage when car parks are full.

They can also encourage shoppers to use public transport, van der Putten said.

“Public transport is really really well serviced into those shopping centres. So shopping centres encouraging people to do that means that they can get more people into their facilities.”

Cough, sputter. Ah, no, it’s not.

[…] “Where practical we are encouraging people to look at alternative travel and public transport is a really good option for people to consider.”

Sure, if you don’t mind spending half your time waiting for the bus that takes twice as long to get to where you want to go.

And then there’s Sylvia Park

Auckland shoppers experienced long delays at Sylvia Park shopping complex this evening, while Westfield has put plans in place to prevent chaos at their malls over the Black Friday weekend.

[…] In response to potential Black Friday gridlock in the coming days, Westfield said staff will be out in force to help alleviate delays.

Westfield also said, in the event of extended delays in the carpark, “PA announcements to advise of any delays, water and food for customers in their vehicles, and coffee vouchers to customers who choose to leave their car and re-enter the centre.”

That’s great if you need to take a leak, or worse, take a dump.

Despite what AT says, public transport in Auckland is broken and will always be broken. For example the train to Sylvia Park is out of commission (and the one to Newmarket as far as I know). And even if they were working they’d be sardine cans. Same for buses.

Here’s the deal, Stacey: if you think public transport is so great, then buy yourself a hop card and hand over your car.

But then again, public transport is for other people.

Kevin is a Libertarian and pragmatic anarchist. His favourite saying: “There but for the grace of God go I.” This article was first published HERE

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just try carting all the Christmas prezzies home on the bus, including the walk uphill from the bus stop to your house. Even Santa has a sleigh. Don’t tell me he and the elves are supposed to switch to buses and trains too?
WW

Rob said...

The second group of the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: "I'm from Auckland Transport, and I'm here to help."

Anonymous said...

I catch the akl trains and I am hoping beyond hope that they stop the endless announcements in te reo that no one understands. It is like bullying.

Anonymous said...

have you also noticed that most of the places have a long narrative in maori (westfield newmarket or grafton station includes not just the name but also some history, geography and civics lessons) but that doesn't apply to english - why is that?

another thing - why are all maori announcements in a sweet female voice (i rarely hear such soft language from actual females speaking among themselves) but english announcements are in a curt male voice? is there some social engineering experiment going on?