Brian Rudman: On the buses we've been left in the dark

File photo / Brett Phibbs

The day Auckland Transport cracked open the champagne for presiding over more than seven million passenger journeys in a month, a small group of regular passengers joined in a little celebration of rather blacker humour.

A fellow passenger at my stop had smiled at the driver and asked how she could send a message to his boss.

The driver, rather nervously, asked why. "I just wanted to congratulate them for finally managing to get a bus to arrive on time," said the long-suffering customer. A spontaneous round of applause broke out.

It's a shame the AT mandarins celebrating the 7.7 per cent public transport patronage increase in the year to March weren't there. It might have reminded them that the growing army of new recruits to public transport are more likely to be conscripts than volunteers. They've joined up not so much because of the wondrous service Auckland Transport and its various contractors provide but because they can no longer afford to fill their cars with petrol.

That's not to disparage the rebirth of rail, or to ignore the obvious attractions of the dedicated Northern Busway, but the fact remains that of the seven million rides, 5.2 million of them were made on the old workhorses of Auckland Transport, the less-than-five-star, diesel bus fleet.

In the past I've complained, to no avail, about seating, so cramped in parts of the newer buses that it's no longer unusual to spot a modern-sized man having to sit side-saddle to accommodate his knees.

As for the error-ridden "real time" electronic arrival time boards, they remain a continuing joke against the customer. But as the days grow shorter, it's another ongoing irritant that comes to the fore once more.

Winter evenings in a fusty, overheated bus are hardly the most inviting of venues. What makes them 100 times worse is by this time of year, the interiors are too gloomy to read in. For those of us who prefer that pastime to inserting plastic earpieces into one's skull, all that's now left until spring is to listen to the tinny thud of the adjacent iPods and try to zone out.

A colleague says he uses the light on his cellphone to illuminate his book. Another suggests I buy a clip-on reading light. The simpler solution would be to bring the bus fleet into the 21st century and install directional reading lights for each seat.

The national regulations for minimum levels of lighting on passenger vehicles are no help. They have nothing to do with the ability of passengers to read, they're solely focused on ensuring enough light to avoid passengers falling over each other, or down the steps.

An Auckland Transport spokesman said the new buses promised for my route would have brighter lighting than the majority of existing buses. But the regulations say that in the "general saloon, to minimise windscreen reflections, light levels forward of the priority seating area" - wherever that might be - can be no more than 12 lux, and in "the remainder of the saloon" at least 20 lux.

Lux is a measurement of light. Recalling the ease of reading on a recent flight, I checked with Air New Zealand, who says it considers 500 lux a general guideline for reading comfort. Ever obliging, one of its engineers climbed on a waiting plane and measured the ambient light level in the general cabin as 200 lux. In the seating area, it was between 400 lux and 800 lux, depending on the position of the overhead reading light.

A quick Google search revealed that chicken farmers in Britain keep their "standard" chooks in "dim (10 lux) lighting to discourage activity". The more expensive "barn-reared" were kept at a minimum of 20 lux, just "bright enough for birds to be active". Is it just coincidence that Auckland Transport sets similar standards for the increasingly cramped wheeled crates they send us home in?

Directional lighting is hardly brain surgery. Trains do it, planes do it, even long-distance buses do it. Why not Auckland local buses?