All modes of transport will have inconvieniences or “barriers” which can make them unattractive compared to others depending on your sitution. The cost of parking and congestion are two such inconvenience to personal car use.

The point we were discussing here was you assertation that Britomart only serves those in the CBD. This is not correct as it is designed to be a central interchange. Currently there are people who use it as such (have a read of Apl’s post and my earlier post) when we have proper integrated ticketing many more will use it as an interchange point. As they do in cities all over the world. You mentioned in your earlier post that changing modes only works in cities like London and Paris because people only have to 2 – 3 minutes. When i lived in London i would often wait in excess of 10 minutes to transfer, particularly when transferring from tube to bus.

If we can get our trains running at 10 minute frequencies and have our bus, train and ferry timetables better integrated then the travel time factor in changing modes can significantly reduced from the current situation.

As i mentioned i have the made the trips in my previous post a number of times and changing from Northern Express to the trains is pretty easy and frequencies are not bad. Even if you are allowing for only 10 minute frequencies it can still be quicker than driving to your destination. There is no need for metro style frequencies to make this viable.

The main resaon it’s hard for many now is because you have to pay seperate fares, as i said that’s why integrated ticketing is so important it will make this easy. This will make Britomart a more effective central interchange. The other main reason is that bus, rail and ferry timetables are not integrated.

Getting sick of hearing the old worn out argument of Auckland having low density… Our density is 7th out of the 42 metro areas over 1 million in the US, Canada and Australia… Twice that of Perth (where they run 7.5 minute frequencies I might add)…

Admin: Yes, transport had an influence, but the existence of an extensive urban rail system in Sydney has not stopped the growth of other centres for employment. The price of land inevitably means growth goes elsewhere, there is only so much central city employment that can be developed that is affordable with the prices of office space. The lowering of the cost of car travel means that suburban employment becomes more viable because people have cars and can drive to work more locally or across town. Sydney’s interesting in that it did focus on public transport and traffic light enhancements in the 1970s only to find there was enormous pent up demand for good highways, which were built tolled and privately (which is a good thing), which itself provides some limits on traffic growth (no private owner wants gridlocked highways, just high yielding free flow traffic).

I’d be interested to know if anyone did any work on it, but I’d suggest the impact in Auckland if it had long had the rail you are talking about probably would have been to increase the proportion of CBD employment by maybe 50% (on 12%) but it would not have been the proportions of the past. It just is in the nature of growing cities.

It is why I was far more supportive of a bus based solution because it would allow direct cross town services on many more corridors with the right frequency of service. Bear in mind that unless a train carries three bus loads or more, at frequencies of 5 minute intervals, it isn’t worth it.

Note the 1946 plan would never have foreseen containerisation of freight, rail freight in Auckland being largely limited to trainloads of containers, and the rise of 1,2 and 3 car households, plus Auckland being substantially larger than the plan shown.

While Wellington has two main development corridors, Auckland has about three times the population so theoretically we could sustain six main rail corridors quite well (following the Wellington model). At the moment we basically have two and a half.