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The Deputy Auditor-General has urged Auckland Transport to prioritise improving passenger experiences and managing disruptions.
His report says Auckland Transport needs better planning, monitoring, and communication regarding service goals and disruptions.
Unplanned disruptions cause major frustration, so consistent prioritisation and impact assessment are needed.
The Deputy Auditor-General has strongly criticised Auckland Transport (AT) for poor planning of the city’s transport services - including out-of-date manual systems which cannot cope with major events, slow or non-existent notifications of bus delays and cancellations, and multiple occasions when children were left stranded because school bus services did not arrive.
The report urges AT to improve its focus on passengers’ experiences and disruption management and update its systems to serve the public better.
Although passenger satisfaction improved over the last few years, research indicates that public transport in Auckland is still a last resort for many, Deputy Auditor-General Andrew McConnell said.
“Auckland Transport has carried out significant work to improve reliability and safety during the last two years, but there is still more to do,” McConnell said.
Andrew McConnell. Photo / Supplied
McConnell said it was difficult to form a clear view of the projects AT wants to complete, its timelines for completion, and how activities contribute to actually completing goals.
The audit also found that AT needed to improve how it informed passengers about disruptions, and it needed to make reporting more accessible and useful to both Auckland Council and the public.
“Although communications about planned disruptions are generally well managed, unplanned disruptions are a major cause of frustration for those using public transport.
“Auckland Transport needs to be more consistent in how it prioritises responses to disruptions, and how it assesses the impact of disruptions on passengers,” McConnell said.
The Deputy Auditor-General is urging Auckland Transport (AT) to improve its focus on passengers’ experiences, including how it manages disruptions.
The audit also suggests AT should ensure that its performance measures better reflect passenger experience and are connected to its reliability and safety goals.
AT “collects a lot of information about the timeliness of its services but does not report this information in a way that reflects how people use these services,” McConnell said.
“For example, its measure of bus punctuality considers timeliness at only the first and last stops of a route, but passengers might not ride a bus from the first stop to the last.
“Auckland Transport could also improve its data collection and analysis to gain more insights into personal safety.”
The Deputy Auditor-General is urging Auckland Transport (AT) to improve its focus on passengers’ experiences and disruption management, as public transport remains a last resort. Photo / Michael Craig
Auckland Transport’s communication system for informing passengers about unplanned disruptions was highly complicated and almost totally manual, the report said.
“In 2023, Auckland Transport commissioned a ‘disruption communication system map’. The consultants who developed the map described the communications system as the most complex they had ever mapped, based on the large numbers of people and actions involved.
“For example, informing the public about an unplanned rail disruption could involve up to 20 different people at Auckland Transport, KiwiRail, and Auckland One Rail.”
The report said AT’s Command Centre could not automatically generate text alerts or notifications.
“Similarly, Auckland Transport lacks an automated process for generating and communicating detours to bus services when disruptions occur.
The Deputy Auditor-General is urging Auckland Transport (AT) to improve its focus on passengers’ experiences and disruption management, as public transport remains a last resort. Photo / Jason Oxenham
“Instead, Day of Operations staff must decide on an alternative route for bus operators to use and manually update it into Command Centre through a separate mobile app called Remix.”
The report said that between 2021 and 2024 Auckland Transport’s processes and systems for communicating unplanned disruptions were sometimes quickly overwhelmed when a major disruption affected multiple services.
“For example, in August 2023, when a gas leak in downtown Auckland disrupted multiple bus services, incident reporting noted significant customer impact and delayed communications because of the time it took staff to manually enter detours and redirections for each affected bus.
The Deputy Auditor-General is urging Auckland Transport (AT) to improve its focus on passengers’ experiences and disruption management, as public transport remains a last resort. Photo / Michael Craig
“Auckland Transport does not communicate about some major disruptions at all. We saw many examples in Auckland Transport’s incident reporting of significant disruptions where no public communications were issued. Where reasons were provided for this, they included that the disruption occurred outside of shift hours or that Auckland Transport was not notified of the disruption in a timely way.”
AT relied on timely information from other services, which often did not occur.
“For example, in June 2023, a bus operator took three hours to notify the Day of Operations team that it had cancelled all services on a particular route for the remainder of the day because of weather conditions.”
The Deputy Auditor-General is urging Auckland Transport (AT) to improve its focus on passengers’ experiences and disruption management, as public transport remains a last resort. Photo / Alex Burton
AT also lacked timely knowledge of most roadworks affecting bus services.
“As a result, it communicates only a small percentage of these disruptions.”
The report said AT’s system for ranking disruptions as low, medium or high priority was not fit for purpose and resulted in AT giving incorrect advice to the public.
AT also failed to deal adequately with disruptions to school bus services.
“Auckland Transport’s incident reporting from 2021 to 2024 includes multiple instances of children being stranded because school bus services did not arrive at the expected start time or did not depart the first stop.
“Caregivers and parents were unable to confirm their child’s whereabouts because bus operators did not communicate about the disruptions in a timely manner.”
AT Director for Public Transport and Active Modes, Stacey van der Putten said, “Auckland Transport welcomes the Auditor-General’s report following its performance audit of how well we work to ensure the reliability of bus, train and ferry services.
“Doing better when it comes to both safety and reliability is important to us as we seek to continually improve how our customers experience public transport.”
She said the report is comprehensive and shows where AT have made good progress in recent years.
“There are also recommendations that provide clear direction for us to build upon the progress we’ve made.
“Work is already underway to address the detail in the recommendations and we’re confident this will result in greater service improvements for Aucklanders,“ Putten said.
Five recommendations for AT - audit
More clearly describe the difference planned actions will make to its goals for public transport reliability and safety, how it will monitor the progress of those actions, and how it will mitigate risks to achieving these goals;
Develop criteria to determine when it will review its responses to disruptions, and define how it will use what it learns from those reviews to inform ongoing improvements;
Improve processes for managing unplanned disruptions to services, including for school bus services, and consider ways to better inform the public about unplanned disruptions;
Review the information it holds about passengers’ experiences to help inform service improvements and improve performance reporting (to allow the public, Auckland Council, and others to better understand how reliable public transport is in Auckland); and
Increase the accessibility of information available to the public about how Auckland’s public transport services are performing.
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