{"id":460403,"date":"2026-06-04T09:47:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T09:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/460403\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T09:47:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T09:47:09","slug":"a-trump-bump-on-public-transport-and-cycleways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/460403\/","title":{"rendered":"A ‘Trump Bump’ on Public Transport and Cycleways?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is now over three months since the fuel crisis started as a result of the Straight of Hormuz being closed. And, while petrol prices have largely disappeared from the headlines, the data shows we\u2019re definitely seeing what you might call a \u201cTrump Bump\u201d in public transport and cycling numbers.<\/p>\n

Public Transport<\/p>\n

After PT ridership stagnated somewhat in 2025, in early 2026 we were seeing some small signs of growth with usage tracking slightly up before the Iran war started at the end of February.<\/p>\n

It took until mid-March before fuel prices started to rise but while there was some immediate impact on PT use, it wasn\u2019t until April that it became clearly visible. It\u2019s worth noting that late March ridership was dampened in part due to a significant rain event on Thursday 26 March, which reduced PT use on that day by at least 100,000 trips.<\/p>\n

You can see the impact on this chart below, which tracks average weekday usage. (I\u2019ve removed the Thursday mentioned above from the data.) Prior to the fuel crisis, ridership was tracking around 86% of pre-COVID levels. Now it\u2019s more like 94%.<\/p>\n

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The rise is even more significant on weekends, where usage had already been tracking above pre-COVID levels for a few years. Now, since fuel prices increased, ridership gone up another level to reach record highs\u00a0 \u2013and is now around 24% up on 2019 numbers.<\/p>\n

While weekend usage is still only a fraction of weekday use (around 40% at the moment), it is a good indicator that people are starting to use PT for a wider range of trips.<\/p>\n

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Combined public transport use (bus, train, ferry) is getting close to those pre-COVID levels, which is most evident when we look at usage by mode.<\/p>\n

In both February and March 2026, bus usage exceeded pre-COVID levels. March was the highest level of bus usage on record, with over 7.5 million trips \u2013 and as mentioned above, it would have been over 7.6 million had it not been for that major rain event. By comparison, the previous record for bus usage was March 2019, with 7.4 million trips.<\/p>\n

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With annual bus usage sitting at 71.1 million, we\u2019re still a little bit behind the February 2020 peak of 75.3 million \u2013 but if current trends continue, we could see that reached later this year or early next year.<\/p>\n

Auckland Transport has provided some more insights<\/a> into where the usage is coming from, in this piece by 1News<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The agency says students and weekend travellers are driving much of the growth, with bus use up 6% compared to the same time last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cParticularly buses and it\u2019s students actually that are using it more and more now,\u201d Auckland Transport interim chief executive Stacey van der Putten said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve seen a 35% increase year on year of use of that tertiary concession.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026..<\/p>\n

Auckland Transport said one of the biggest increases was being seen on weekends as more people return to the city centre for shopping, events and social activities.<\/p>\n

As we\u2019ve highlighted before, the mode that is perhaps holding Auckland back the most is rail. That\u2019s because for the last six years, patronage has continued to suffer due to significant disruption from the rebuild works and more recently CRL testing.<\/p>\n

As such, ridership is sitting at just under 14 million trips annual, which is around 63% of pre-COVID levels (22 million).<\/p>\n

To give an idea of the scale of that reduction: if rail was back to say 90-95% of pre-COVID levels, which it may have been if not for the disruption, that would be adding an extra 6-7 million trips to annual ridership figures.<\/p>\n

March was one of the few months with little disruption on the lines, and usage did reach a post-COVID high of 1.6 million trips, or about 76% of what was seen in March 2019. Since the disruption over April we\u2019re now more regularly seeing weekly data in the 75% range. This gives some hope that once the disruption truly ends, we could see usage quickly get back to what we\u2019ve seen before \u2013 and then actually begin to grow as a result of the CRL.<\/p>\n

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These numbers suggest there might be at least a million more trips being taken on public transport at the moment than there would have been had current world events not happened. That\u2019s a significant amount, and likely provides a lot more fare revenue for Auckland Transport to help off-set costs. I wonder how much higher ridership might be, had the government actually tried to encourage \u2013 or even taken active steps to enable \u2013 more people to use public transport?<\/p>\n

Cycling<\/p>\n

Cycling numbers are a bit trickier to assess, when it comes to the story of who\u2019s actually riding in Auckland, and where.<\/p>\n

There are now over 80 counters on on cycleways all around the region, and more keep getting added \u2013 but even so, they\u2019ll never pick up every trip (especially all the local trips to schools and shops). And some trips may be picked up on multiple counters (which is also true for almost every driving trip).<\/p>\n

Spot the wheeled mobility enabled by street design that won\u2019t be picked up by official cycle counters, because there aren\u2019t any on this street. Image: Jolisa Gracewood<\/p>\n

In its reporting, Auckland Transport typically refers to a subset of 26 counters for which they have the most history. Those 26 are in a variety of places, including leisure routes in suburbs, but a tighter \u201ccity cordon\u201d subset of these can also be used to home on on trips to the city centre.<\/p>\n

Both the 26 counter measure and the city centre cordon counts show that March numbers were very slightly down on March 2025. This was also impacted by that severe weather event in late March, with many of the bigger counters, such as the Northwestern Cycleway, Quay St and Tamaki Drive all down by 1k to 1.5k trips.<\/p>\n

However that changed completely in April: ridership was up significantly, with the 26-counter metric increasing by 20% on the same time last year.<\/p>\n

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Also in April, some cycleways saw very significant increases, such as Karangahape Rd which was up 32% in April compared to last year \u2013 likely as a result of Gt North Rd being completed. And Quay St, which was already the busiest counter, increased by 29% compared to April last year.<\/p>\n

Note: Another useful place to keep an eye on cycleway data is\u00a0 Dr Tim Welch\u2019s dashboard here,<\/a> and MRCagney also runs a walking and cycling dashboard<\/a>. Both use the Auckland Transport counters.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s certainly some interesting trends emerging, and it will be fascinating to see how they continue in the weeks and months ahead.<\/p>\n

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