Brief Notes from Peru

The weather has again taken a strange turn, perhaps even more extreme than in 2010. Lima should be starting to cloud over by now, but until my last day there it continued hot and sunny. The afternoon we went to the coast, you could see the sea fog trying to come in but burning up before it got on shore. Meanwhile, by April, skies above Arequipa should be cloudless but there's still a lot of cloud and haze around the mountains, with big cumulonimbus puffing up in the afternoons. The January to March period apparently saw the heaviest rains for many a year, so intense they damaged some of the streets in the city centre. Rain and even snow continues in the sierra and there is apparently likely to make some crop harvests late or significantly reduced.

Both Lima and Arequipa, especially the former, have seen rapid and significant modernisation of their vehicle fleet, which seems to have had a notable impact on pollution levels.

The issues of great debate in the national media continue to relate to exploitation of natural resources. The most prominent controversy at the moment relates to plans for a mine known as Conga in the northern department of Cajamarca, part of the mining project Yanacocha. This project was approved by the previous government but is opposed by the majority of locals in Cajamarca -- including the regional government -- because of fears of the impact it will have on water sources (four highland lagoons are slated to be used for depositing tailings from the mine). The current government ordered a review by a panel of international experts, which has recently been completed. Barely three days later, President Ollanta Humala announced that the project would go ahead, but with stronger conditions related to direct generation of employment, water storage and protection of the environment, as recommended in the international expert report. Early indications are that many in Cajamarca are not happy with this compromise, so debate and protest are likely to continue.

Impressions of El Metropolitano

I'm a minor conossieur of urban transport issues, and, as I've written on a number of occasions before, one of Lima's greatest problems has been the lack of the mass transit system that is enjoyed by pretty much every other Latin American city of a similar size, as well as by several that are smaller.

 Therefore, it's great to have an opportunity to finally try out El Metropolitano, Lima's new guided busway system. Similar in conception to Bogotá's Transmilenio, it at present has a single line running through the city centre from Independencia in the north to Chorrillos in the south.

On Thursday I  and a friend rode El Metropolitano from the central city to the end of the line at Chorrillos, from where we found our way to the beach to eat cebiche, and then doubled back to Barranco to pick up El Metropolitano back into the centre. On Friday I took a couple more rides around rush hour. On the strength of my experience so far, I'm giving El Metropolitano a B/B+.

 In making an evaluation, I'm not including any consideration of the extent or coverage of El Metropolitano, which is obviously inadequate at the moment but will hopefully be improved over time. I'm only taking into account the features of the service that currently exist. Details below.

The Good

• The buses are modern, clean, quiet and internally uncluttered with seats that are comfortable enough and leave enough space for those standing; there are also plenty of grips to hold onto if you're standing.
• Although I haven't tested how it handles the peak of a Lima summer, the bus was comfortable enough in Thursday's 25 degrees.
• The payment system is straightforward: you purchase a single card and load money on to it at the same machines, which are available at all stops. These are easy to use, although I would recommend having coins to pay with.
• It's good value: a single journey is S/. 1.50 (about $0.75 NZD) regardless of where you get off.
• The platforms are simple and unobtrusive. The barriers are easy to negotiate with your card: the single price allows the added benefit that you only have to zap in when you enter and not when you get off. When you zap through the barrier it shows how much money you have remaining on your card.  The boarding and getting off processes are relatively efficient, through electronic doors in the platform barrier that align with the bus doors.
• Although there's only one line, there are some minor variations through the centre of the city and three different express services.
• It's clear that the infrastructure and investment required for this service has been much less than for a train or metro. Expansion along existing road networks is feasible without prohibitively grand public works. Yet El Metropolitano moves with similar speed and smoothness to a metro. If Tony Randall reads this, I'd say it provides support for consideration of guided busways as a serious public transport alternative.

The Bad

• The buses are crowded, with standing room only in the central section of the route even during the middle of the day. At rush hour they're packed like sardines. I'll acknowledge that many metros around the world can also be very crowded, but this is usually only in the central four or five stations of a line and only during rush hours. From my experience, I'd say that around a third of the entire route is standing-only for most of the day. I wonder whether this is due to a deliberate trade-off to keep prices low in return for a level of discomfort assumed to be tolerated by Peruvians. If so, I think this is short-sighted.
• Unlike trains or metros, El Metropolitano has to stop at traffic lights, although this is not much of an impediment on the stretch immediately south of the centre, where it runs through its own bus tunnel for a while (similar to Brisbane!), then follows the expressway.
• The ticket machines don't give change. You can understand that this keeps things simpler, but beware of trying to buy a card or top it up with a large-denomination note.
• There is an almost amusing paucity of information, including some of the easiest things to get right. On Wednesday I wandered down to the central station to see if I could find out something about the service in general. I asked in vain if anyone had a pocket map or pamphlet that explained the services. "Hmm, I think there used to be something like that but not any more" was the general reply. El Metropolitano has a website that does explain many aspects of the service, but nowhere does it tell you the pricing system! (I had to ask at the station to find this out).
• Unlike almost all metros, there is no stylized map in the interior of the buses that helps you map your progress, and, importantly, realize very early if you're going in the wrong direction. On the station platforms, there are helpful stylized maps of the different route variations (eg, showing the stations that the express services stop at). But unlike most metros, there are no street maps of the area surrounding the station. It's assumed you'll just know where to go. Therefore, although El Metropolitano is an improvement to public transport in Lima, it does not yet provide the more intangible services of security and orientation to the stranger and citizen, which are offered by the best mass transit systems

New Blog Reading

My new favourite blog is The Realignment Project, which presents a progressive, social democatic vision (In the US context) that is both broad and detailed. Its co-founders are Steven Attewell and Daraka Larimore-Hall, two PhD students at the University of California Santa Barbara who are also active in the Democractic Party. 

Their discussion of inequality is a good starting point, but I particularly like their posts on the politics or urban design and transport, such as High-Speed Rail in an Age of Ideology and Public Sector Aesthetics - Why They Matter. 

More on Wellington Transport: the Bus Review

The Wellington Regional Council is undertaking a second round of consultation on its review of bus services. After a first round of consultation, it has prepared some proposals for how to reorganise routes to respond to people's desires for greater frequency and more services in the evening and on weekends, within the current budget.

The WRC reports that it has followed "best practice public transport design principles" in designing the new routes. The main change is that routes are divided into three tiers: 'core', 'secondary' and 'peak only'. The core routes would run along main corridors with a 15-minute frequency, 7 days, early morning to late evening. The secondary routes are more suburban-oriented branches and loops, most with an all-week 30-minute frequency. The peak-only routes are a combination of local loops to fringe areas and more direct routes from suburbs to the CBD in peak hours.

The trade off for the increased hours and frequency is that more journeys will require a change of buses than at present, many through major connection points such as the Cable Car, Wellington Station, Johnsonville, Kilbirnie, Brookly and Karori Tunnel. WRC says connections will be free for travel on the same company, and major connection points will offer shelter

After having a look and applying the proposed new system to places I or people I know have lived, I'm cautiously positive. The Brooklyn area in particular would be much better served than at present. On the other hand, some of the idiosyncratic northwest-southeast routes will go: it would no longer be possible to get a bus from right outside by house in Northland to a couple of blocks away from my friends' house in Berhampore.

Nevertheless, I think the trade offs are probably worth it. Frequency and extended hours are a major selling point of a public transport system, making a difference between it being a convenient, consumer-centred service and something you're relegated to when you don't have a car. One of the things that I like about the metro systems in large international cities is that you can just show up at the station and be confident that the next train will be along soon. It's a different experience from having to organize your day around being at bus stops at very specific times or facing an interminable wait in the wind and rain.

So, I'll provide a qualified endorsement of the WRC's proposal, with the following conditions:

-- the frequencies and extended hours are as promised
-- the connections are as seamless as they promise
-- cash-paying passengers get the same transfer rights, i.e. it isn't some mysterious process available only to those with a Snapper card
-- the Cable Car should also be a free transfer

Now for Something on Wellington Transport Geography

Following my previous partly-informed comments about urban development in Christchurch, I'll add some thoughts on the place where I actually live.

Many of the discussions of transport and urban planning in Wellington seem to divide along broad ideological lines. On the one hand are those who have an "all cars all of the time" mentality and want to build as many motorways, flyovers, tunnels and bypasses as it will take, with those not travelling in cars little more than an afterthought. On the other hand are those who would like to see a complete alternative infrastructure, often emphasizing light rail (I'm not sure what the deal is with light rail -- for me, it hardly grabs the imagination like, say, fast inter-city trains or a metro system).

I don't mean to go all Matthew Yglesias here, but there are some technical improvements that don't require commitment to any one vision of the world.A simple thing that would clearly improve central Wellington would be some kind of bridge or underpass across the northern end of Waterloo/Customouse/Jervois Quay, preferably at Whitmore St opposite the Lynx ferry terminal. Wellington has an impressive waterfront, a mostly public space with good recreational opportunities. It is well linked to the central city at the Courtenay Place / Cuba St end by the City to Sea bridge. However, Wellington's CBD also has a centre of gravity at its northern end, which is home to the government sector, the railiway station and the stadium. This connection of this area with the waterfront is severed by four lanes of traffic roaring along Waterloo Quay.  To cross to the waterfront, one has to wait for the lights or a break in the traffic, which sometimes takes several minutes.

I mostly notice this as an annoyance when going for runs, which tend to start from a base in the northern end of the city. But it's also a clear flaw in what is otherwise, by New Zealand standards, a relatively pedestrian-friendly urban layout. Wellington's city centre is mostly well connected to the hills and water to its south, east and west. The northern CBD-waterfront gap is one of the kinks in this flow. Another, of course, is the ugly bottleneck at the Basin Reserve.

Observations on My Vacations 2: The Continuing Dominance of the Automobile

One day when I was down south for the holidays, I drove my rental car from my parents' place in Rolleston to my sister's in Kaiapoi. The plan was to take my nephew and niece for a swim and maybe to a movie.

The pool in Kaiapoi  was closed so we drove out to Rangiora. From there we headed across to the Shirley mall, targeting a showing of Puss in Boots. It turned out the cinema was closed by the earthquakes, so instead we had lunch at the mall, then headed back to Northlands mall to catch The Adventures of Tintin (NB: may be a little scary for some younger children). After that, we drove back to Kaiapoi, and from there I drove the rental back to Rolleston.

The day was a sweeping, somewhat dizzying tour across northern Christchurch and its environs. I sat back while my sister navigated 80km/h ring roads, wide boulevards and spacious, multi-storey car parks. I conclude: the geography of doing things in Christchurch is a series of bubbles linked by automobiles.

It's a contrast to Wellington, where the geography is stacked vertically, and for most of the places I have to go the quickest way to get there is walking, with the bus a fall-back option if I really need to get over the other side of town.

There's some kind of path-dependency going on here, but I'm not sure what it is. Is everything desgned around cars because things are so far apart, or is the other way around? At any rate, there's mutual reinforcement -- and, as the previous post pointed out, the evolution of this urban shape has been cemented by the earthquakes.

I can kind of see how this state of affairs has evolved. A factor in the South Island, even more so than in the north, is that once you have a car there's much else that is opened up: back country, mountains, coastlines, resort towns. As reported in my previous post, I made flying visits to Queenstown and Hanmer Springs, and was able to appreciate that an automobile not only gets you to the main destination, but from there to the remote spot at the start of the track or the climb. It's also an extremely useful mobile storage device once you've checked out of your accommodation. 

I also understand that another fundamental factor that drives the sprawl.is the yearning for a back yard.

Yet, although this may have come about because of choices, the default settings now close them off. An increasing amount of urban planning doesn't even consider the non car-driver. For example, as Riccarton Mall has slowly eaten up the surrounding streets, it's become gradually more impregnable to pedestrians. On foot, you can't really get in from the west, and from the south you have to negotiate a car park with no apparent pedestrian entrance.   The same is true in my home town of Rolleston, which has mushroomed from a tiny village to a bustling district centre of 8,000 in less than 15 years . There's a single new commercial space right at the centre of a very spread-out residential area. It's a given that most people will "drive to the shops". There's no safe and obvious way for a pedestrian to enter some of the spaces there, either.  You don't quite get arrested for walking yet, but in some environments it's not far off

Christchurch apparently used to be known as the "city of cyclists". I remember seeing a photo of from the 1960s or 1970s with a great phalanx of cyclists pushing off from an intersection either in the early morning or late afternoon (I assume they were commuters). The place is still as flat as it's always been, but these days peddling two wheels is a lonely and not particularly safe trade.

Even if this were sustainable, it would be really unfortunate, and it's not even inevitable. You can have the "freeways between suburban pods" urban model and still make the in-between spaces much friendlier. Designate the corridors along which the "inter-hub" traffic can move swiftly; then in the "local" bits, reduce the speed limit, narrow the streets, put in dedicated bus and cycle ways. A classic example is Amsterdam, where you can still drive your car in the city -- you just have to give priority to the cyclists and the trams. But even Brisbane, a truly enormous sprawl that's not known for urban sophistication, has dedicated busways, kilometres of cycleways, and a walking path along much of the length of its river. There are other ways to do things.

Observations on My Vacations, 1: The Transformation of Christchurch

I've just spent approximately three weeks in the South Island, including Christmas, New Year, two weddings and trips to Hanmer Springs and Queenstown. As usual, this has inspired me to have partially-informed opinions on things, about some of which I intend to write a series of posts. The posts will be, probably in this order:

• The Transformation of Christchurch
• The Continuing Dominance of the Motor Vehicle
• The Cafeterisation of Provincial New Zealand

The Transformation of Christchurch

Any discussion of Christchurch these days immediately devolves to the series of earthquakes that have battered the area. This is fair enough, given the human tragedy and unplanned destruction that has occurred. However, in the longer term, I think the earthquake will be seen as accelerating a transformation that was already happening.

I visit Christchurch on average a couple of times every year, and have the opportunity to draw a contrast both with my more youthful memories and with Wellington. Every time, I get something of a shock at the sprawl, the acres of space dedicated to car parks, the aircraft carrier-sized big box retailers, Riccarton Mall slowly consuming the surrounding streets.

The days are long gone when Christchurch was an "English" market town ordered around its central square. Rather, it has become a loosely ordered regional connurbation that links the port and airport with intensifying farming on the plains, giant malls, sprawling suburbs, clusters of services and manufacturing, and the satellite towns to the north, west and south that are gradually merging with the outer suburbs. Its role model is Auckland, and beyond that, the ribboned cities of the American west and south.

Public discussion of the "rebuild" of Christchurch has tended to focus on what might be made of the central city. But I think that's something of a distraction. The earthquakes that have so undermined the swampy centre and east have pushed traffic and activity to the west, onto the gravelly ground of the plains, ensuring that the city's centre of gravity will ultimately settle there.

The string of further sizeable quakes that kicked off on December 23 have solidified this process. Already, ideas about the "rebuild" are being scaled down and there's talk about the temporary "pop-up mall" in shipping containers on Cashel St becoming a semi-permanent feature.

There may well be something attractive to come out of a central city redevelopment If the opportunity is not taken to create a space completely friendly to pedestrians and cyclists, there's truly no hope for humanity. However, this is unlikely to be the city's commercial heart. To obtain any sort of insurance, permanent structures in the area will need to have the highest level of earthquake safety, making them expensive to build, own, and of course rent. The central city will be unlikely to be abuzz with small businesses; nor will it be a bohemian den of students and artists.

I can see it eventually becoming an "old town" of parks and gardens, some government services, boutique retailers, maybe some bars and cafes. It should be friendly to tourists and local visitors alike. Hopefully there'll be ruins that are preserved and turned into museums and memorials and the condemned land in the northeast will be transformed into landscaped recreational space. Meanwhile, the mallification of the city will continue apace, and it's most dynamic activity will be based around distributed centres in Riccarton, Papanui, maybe Sydenham/Addington.

I actually like some of the longer-term changes that are in the works, in that they acknowledge what the city has become and make something coherent out of it. The new express route linking Rolleston with the southern motorway will make sense of the weight of population that's shifted there and end the pretence that a country road gently working its way through the outer suburbs can support the roaring semi-trailers, the tourists and the burgeoning commuter traffic. The four-laning of Russley Rd and the proposed flyover at Memorial Ave will eventually create a genuine north-south bypass. These road systems should produce a better functioning regional hub that links the northern and southern hinterlands.

How sustainable this is going to be as oil gets inexorably more expensive, I don't know. For that reason, but also because I'd just like to see it, I hope there are some plans for the parallel development of alternative transport options. If the satellite towns are going to continue to grow, these could improve the viability of a commuter rail service along the existing lines. As new motorways are developed, this could create the space for protected cycle routes along the older roads. However, given the apparently universal assumption that everyone has a car and drives it everywhere, all the time, I'm not getting my hopes up.

Important Stuff Out There

Just links today, but on some matters that I think are pretty important:

Gordon Campbell has a typically excellent post on the Government's decision to consider implementation of the Welfare Working Group's recommendations.

Terence Wood describes NZAID's rapid move away from international best practice under Murray McCully.

The Auckland Transport Blog assesses the Government-commissioned Ministry of Transport review of Auckland's proposed inner-city rail loop, and the Auckland Council's commissioned review of its own business case.

David Haywood proposes the "Copenhagenization" of Christchurch, in the sense of making it live up to its bicycle-friendly potential in the post-reconstruction period.

Dispatches in Transit

When it was my turn to step forward to the Peruvian immigration desk, the official was pulling the surgical mask far enough away her face to be able to speak into a cellphone. She was talking to her daughter. It seemed that a particular tradesman was supposed to turn up at their house by 8 pm that evening but had never arrived. There was now a new appointment, for around 10am the next morning. "Don't worry, mi hijita", she said. Your papá will be there as well". Back in Peru, I thought, grinning as the official stamped my passport. "Have a good trip", she said. "Thanks for waiting".

My taxi driver to the centre of Lima also had a surgical mask on. As we drove away from the aiport he pulled it off with a grunt of annoyance. "Can't stand wearing this thing", he told me. "The muncipality makes us, or we get fined".

Earlier in the day, at Santiago airport where I stopped over for 7 hours before the connecting flight to Lima, there were also official precautions against the H1N1 influenza. Everyone who got off the plane, whether entering Chile or in transit, was redirected into a little side room where they had to fill out a form giving contact details and declaring any flu-like symptoms, and then join a rapidly growing line to have a photo taken by a single masked official. The official repeated the same mantra over and over: Permanezca inmovil. Mire directamente a la cámara. Gracias. Puede continuar. ("Stay still. Look directly at the camera. Thank you. You can continue"). After the first twenty or thirty photos everything became more efficient, and the official had to cut himself off: Permanezca inmovil. Mir--Gracias!

I couldn't help wondering what the Chilean authorities were going to do with all that data (starting with around 300 passengers on just one full Airbus). With the forms being handed out and collected separately, it just required a couple to get out of order to frustrate any matching process with the photos. As for contact details, the only useful thing on my form was my email, which I think was probably illegible.

Peru was less counter-productively obsessive. All passengers getting off had to fill out a form about symptoms, and there were two nurses from the Callao health service waiting bashfully by the plane door to offer "advice or assistance", but no compulsory photo session. The masks, however, were just as ubiquitous.

My taxi driver from the aiport was friendly enough, but not very talkative. I told him it was first time in Peru for over two years; I imagined quite a bit had changed. He laughed briefly. "Nothing much has changed", he said. " You'll see". He looked dead tired, and said he had been working since 7 am, and would continue until dawn."Why do they make you work such long hours?", I asked. "I requested it", he said. He told me that he earned a fixed rate of 950 soles per month, around $300 USD. The extra hours would get a bonus, but according to my driver, shaking his head sadly, "it's not enough".

The Winding Road to the Airport

OK, so here are the reasons why Wellington's aiport bus service is much worse than it needs to be.

1. As mentioned in the previous post, you can almost run from the city to the aiport in the time the bus takes to get there. Contributing to this is the 5 or 6 minutes it can take to crawl down Courtenay Place during busy times. This is a problem with the wider transport system and city layout, which is kind of off limits for this post. However, the real drag is the byzantine route the bus takes once it passes through the Mt Victoria tunnel.

Instead of continuing on the direct Cobham Drive-Calabar Road route, the bus veers off on a circumlocution through Kilbirnie, stopping to pick up and drop off local passengers, then takes a scenic loop around Lyall Bay and into the back entrance to the airport through a tunnel apparently explicitly designed for buses. The logic completely escapes me. Why must the airport bus act as a local shopping trolley when the area is already covered by several other services? Why would you build a special tunnel to open up a much slower route?

2. In addition to not being an express airport bus, this is not even a city to airport bus. Rather, it is an Upper Hutt to aiport bus, run by the same company which operates services in the Hutt Valley itself, and from the Hutt to the city. I'm presuming somebody thought this was an appropriate combination of routes when they were handing out concessions.

This means that the Flyer has to work its way in from the Hutt Valley, negotiating Wellington's fickle motorway traffic, and as a result is never ever on time. The half hour intervals it is supposed to arrive are pure fiction. From bitter experience, I've found that you must try to catch the bus before the one that will get you to the aiport to check in on time. When the orange no. 91 does show up, you usually have no way of knowing whether it's erratically early or lamentably late.

3. For all its problems, the bus does get you to and from the airport. Except when it stops running, which is well before the last planes of the evening. During the week, the last bus is at 8:30, while the flights run until nearly midnight. Arrive after this hour, as I have done several times, and you can take a shuttle, which when there is no bus competition will try to charge you at least $18 just to the city, or you can pay $30 for a taxi.

4. The one good point of the Airport Flyer used to be that it had nice spacious luggage racks in the front. Those lugging big backpacks or cumbersome suitcases could dispense with them after boarding and enjoy a reasonably comfortable seat. When I took my most recent trip, I got on to what I found was a slightly newer coach, with more seats, but no luggage rack. With the need to negotiate a steep step half way down the bus and battle along a narrow aisle, I and several other passengers stumbled, staggered, and nearly injured ourselves in the search for a seat.

Reluctant as I am to claim a conspiracy, it's hard to find another plausible explanation. The infrequency, unreliability and poor value of the aiport bus mainly benefits the shuttle services and the taxi companies. The airport company is also unlikely to be too concerned about poor public transport, as it can charge access to the shuttles and taxis, and makes money out of car parking.

But let's take a reality check. Aren't I making a big deal out of nothing here? Why should we care about a bus that runs to the airport, anyway? If you can afford to fly, you can afford to get a taxi, right?

I beg to differ. The airport is the gateway to the city, and is the first experience travellers have of a place. Backpackers, families visting relatives, and others on a budget also travel by air, and failure to offer decent public transport shows a fundamental disdain for their experiences. The $30 it takes to get a taxi into town is not a pittance: two week's coffee, several family meals, or a monthly internet package.

Furthermore, an important constituency of Wellington airport is business travellers and public servants. The fact that transport usually doesn't come from their pocket perhaps encourages the expectation that 'everyone just gets a taxi'. But with Wellington's compressed business district, a single route could easily serve almost all of these people. As economic times get tougher, aren't there potential savings here for taxpayers and shareholders?

In any case, the main point of this post was to point out the ways in which bad public transport is not the inevitable result of difficult geography, smaller population and lower GDP. The really frustrating things about the Wellington aiport service are the route, schedule and vehicles. If public transport is to be improved, these details would be a good place to start, which would at least demonstrate that the idea of a public service is taken half seriously.

Categories: New Zealand, Wellington,public transport,Brisbane,

The Public Transport Gap

When I was in better shape and used to go for longer runs, it took me about 30 minutes to make my way from Te Papa on the Wellington waterfront to the roundabout at the end of Cobham Drive, from where it's only another few minutes to the international aiport (though my route didn't take me that way).

When I recently took the bus from central Wellington to the airport to fly south for Christmas, the ironically-named Airport Flyer took roughly 35 minutes to cover the same distance.

Brisbane's airport is around twice the distance to its city centre as Wellington's, but when I landed there on my way to visit my girlfriend Paola, the trip downtown in the express train took hardly a quarter of an hour.

[Cost of 35-minute ride in bumpy, claustrophobic bus that was a quarter hour late: $6.50
Cost of 15-minute journey in smooth, comfortable, air-conditioned express train that swished up to the platform exactly on schedule: $14]

Every time I go to Australia I get a fresh reminder of how much better their urban public transport is than ours. I only know Melbourne and Brisbane, but I'm reliably informed that Sydney and Adelaide also have excellent public transport for their respective sizes.

Brisbane has six to eight train lines (depending on how you count) spidering out from the city, and linking the Sunshine Coast to the Gold Coast. Its bus network is supported by dedicated busways that run north, south and east of the centre. And while Melbourne has its trams as a showpiece, Brisbane has its ferries.

The 'City Cats' are fast, rakish-looking vessels that trek their way along the inner-city route between the University of Queensland and Apollo Rd near the mouth of the Brisbane river. They have rows of comfortable seats inside, with a big screen showing news and weather. But in all but the most inclement weather, most people prefer to sit outside on the front and back decks, taking in the views and the breeze. The trip along the river is so pleasant that many tourists (including yours truly) ride up and down and treat it as a pleasure cruise.

The great thing is that all services are linked under the Queensland government's TransLink umbrella, enabling a single ticket to take you across all the different transport modes and allowing steep discounts on bulk purchases. For example, just $23 buys a weekly ticket that will give you unlimited travel on any train, bus or ferry within zones 1 and 2 (an area at least the size of Wellington City and Lower Hutt combined).

Compare this with the motley collection of transport providers in the Wellington area and the stingy deals on offer. There are no weekly tickets; the best you can do is a monthly ticket for about $100 for either bus or train, covering about the equivalent area of Brisbane's zones 1 and 2. There are only a couple of combined bus and train offers with very limited conditions, and the Eastbourne and Seatoun ferries are right out of the picture.

I'm also doing Wellington the favour of pretending to compare like with like. To be fair we should note the rather more modern, fast and comfortable nature of Brisbane's transport. The train and ferry services are also supported by an entire infrastructure of stations with broad platforms, seating, shelter, ticket machines, water fountains, and route and timetable maps. Most of the train stations even have staff.

My uncle and aunt who live in Brisbane say that the public transport has been rather neglected over the years, the congestion on the artertial routes is terrible, and the local government is trying to address the problems through misguided, delayed, poorly organised attempts to build more highways. That sounds pretty familiar: I guess everything is relative.

At this point, defenders of the New Zealand status quo will point out the differences in geography, population and economics that mean public transport just can't reach the same standards as in Australian cities. With 1.9 million people, Brisbane is larger than any New Zealand city, while Sydney and Melbourne are much larger and denser again. They also all sit on large areas of relatively flat land, allowing transport to be organised in an efficient, hub-and-spokes system. And of course, Australia is 'richer' than us and can spend more -- though I would point out that Queensland is not one of the wealthiest states and the per-capita income is probably not dissimilar to Wellington, New Zealand's richest place.

I remain convinced that public transport can be a lot better in New Zealand's largest cities, and that its current state is as much a result of attitudes as of intrinsic limitations. But let's accept for argument's sake that we can't match Australia. I can still make a case that the Wellington airport route is a special embarassment. That will be the topic of the next post.