Riding the bus with new users

On Friday I decided to take the kids to watch their first ever rugby game. It was a double-header with the Matatū playing the Manawa at 4pm, then the Crusaders versus Chiefs at 7pm.

Our house is very accessible to the stadium by bus. We live about 400m from a Halswell Road bus stop, where you can jump on a high-frequency Number 7 bus and 5 minutes later be deposited on the front steps of the stadium. My wife doesn’t know it yet but this was the main reason we shifted here.

Naturally I planned on bussing to the game. I put out the word to a few friends and nek minnit there were 14 people from 4 different families all wanting to assemble at our house and then catch the bus in together. None of them were regular bus users like us but they were all very enthusiastic about catching the bus together to the game. The attraction was a combination of (a) the social aspect of a bus ride together, (b) the excitement for the kids (c) avoiding the stress of car parking and (d) I think a vague undeveloped idea that riding public transport was a good thing to do.

Catching the bus with people who aren’t used to it revealed a few problems that hadn’t occurred to me before. Here’s how our night went:

• The first spanner in the works was that the normally high frequency buses were running at lower frequencies because it was a public holiday (Good Friday). This made the night considerably more stressful knowing that if we missed the bus it would be a half hour wait for the next one (instead of 15 minutes).
• Despite that, the timetable actually aligned with the game pretty well. The walk to the bus was fine and the bus turned up on time – all going well at this point.
• Then we came to pay. Me and my kids just tapped on with our metro cards as we always do – it’s the easiest thing in the world. But none of the others had metro cards, and the bus driver was not going to make life easy for them. My mate had a conversation that went something like this:
  “1 adult and 2 kids please”
  “Yep”
  My mate hands over a $20 note. Driver gives him a look of absolute disdain.
  “I don’t have any change”
  “Uh OK. Do you take card then?”
  “Yep”
  My mate takes out his credit card and tries to tap it on the card reader. Again the driver gives him a look of absolute disdain.
  “No not cards like that. Metro cards.”
  “I don’t have a metro card”
  The driver doesn’t reply. My mate stands there awkwardly, unsure what to do now he’s exhausted all his payment options. The driver stares awkwardly back at him. Eventually I come to the rescue by getting him and his family put onto my metro card. Once we’re settled in our seats, my mate has a big whinge about why they make it so difficult to pay.
• Everyone enjoys the 5 minute trip – the kids are all lined up across the back seat and the adults are chatting to each other further forward. Several other passengers are clearly headed for the rugby too and there’s a good vibe on the bus.
• 5 minutes later we hop off and walk 400m to the stadium.
• The rest of the night goes well. I was nervous that the half-hour frequency might mean a long wait at the end of the night but by pure fluke the timing worked well again.
• I paid for all 14 of us on my metro card on the way home. This was much easier.

The main lesson for me was that we desperately need to make it easier for new users to pay. My mate’s experience was atrocious and it would’ve been even worse if he didn’t have me to bail him out. There’s no excuse for that to be happening in a modern public transport system. The good news is that this will be getting fixed fairly shortly. Waka Kotahi has been developing a new ticketing system at a nationwide level and Christchurch will be the first city to get it later this year. It means people will be able to pay with eftpos and credit cards, as well as things like google and apple pay. It can’t come soon enough.

Secondly we need higher frequencies. Fortunately this also is on the way. Ecan recently approved an uplift of the frequencies on Route 7 as part of a broader scheme to improve bus frequencies across the city.

There were a lot of positives to take out though. Everything else about catching the bus to the rugby was great – convenient, fast, nice vehicles that ran on time, with high quality bus shelters at both ends.

There are definitely some things they could do specifically for big events that many other cities do but we don’t: free bus rides when you show your event ticket, additional event buses, better information (they devote a whole section of their gameday email to car parking but don’t say anything about the bus).

All up I feel that Christchurch public transport is not a million miles off the mark: if it can successfully implement a modern payment system and higher frequencies, then those two things alone will go a long way in creating a better user experience, especially for people trying out the buses for the first time. And personally I think we could get a lot better with special event-based services too.