Auckland Transport (AT) has successfully delivered on 18 of 19 targets set out for 2023/24 year, including maintaining travel times, improving public transport reliability, road safety and AT’s carbon emissions.
Revealed in the AT 2023/24 Annual Report, the only target that AT did not meet this year was that AT listens and responds to Aucklanders.
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“AT is focused on getting the basics right and regaining the trust and confidence of Aucklanders by making simple, practical changes,” AT board chair Richard Leggat says.
Despite the one downfall, Leggat says he is proud of all of the achievements over the past year.
“Reading the Annual Report reinforced to me just how much AT has delivered in the face of wider social and economic changes and challenges,” he says.
“AT is focused on getting the basics right and regaining the trust and confidence of Aucklanders by making simple, practical changes.”
A highlight of the year was seeing public transport patronage returning towards pre-covid levels.
“Public transport trips in Auckland increased by 22%, from 71 million trips last year to 87 million trips this year,” Leggat says.
The impressive increases comes after AT recruited 578 bus drivers by August 2023, launched the Western Express bus service (which has already had over 500,000 passenger trips), added 90 new electric buses to the existing fleet, reached 40 frequent public transport routes, and fitted 30 new intersections with bus booster technology, enabling late-running buses to get green lights.
AT has also introduced some significant cost-saving measures this year, which included an organisational redesign to better serve the needs of Aucklanders and the removal of 2,600 redundant road cones, signs and sandbags from the network at savings of approximately $1.3 million.
Over a billion dollars was invested into making progress on practical things that make a difference for Aucklanders, such as resurfacing 407kms of sealed roads, constructing 46kms of new roads, repairing 564 of the 821 significantly flood-damaged sites and investing $1.043 billion of direct capital budget.