|
|
By admin, on April 26th, 2010 One particularly interesting element of the NZTA Research Report into creating better public transport networks that has been the focus of a few posts recently is the comparison made between Auckland and Vancouver. While Vancouver is a larger city than Auckland, with a population of over 2 million, as the graph below shows there are a number of similarities in terms of its urban density and the strength of its CBD (in terms of its regional share of employment) that would show it to be a good test case for looking at what Auckland ‘could’ be. On the two “urban form” measures, it could well be argued that Auckland is more suitable for public transport than Vancouver – as it has higher densities and a stronger urban core. But if we look at the statistics we find that Vancouver hugely outperforms Auckland on all measures. Public transport modeshare for commuting trips is 16.5% against Auckland’s 7%, while boarding per capita per year are over three times as high in Vancouver as they are in Auckland – indicating that public transport is much more popular for off-peak travel there than it is here.
So what’s the difference here? Well for a start Vancouver avoided building masses of motorways, and in particular didn’t build any motorways within close proximity to its CBD. That is clearly shown in the map below: What the map above also shows is that Vancouver’s rail system (the red lines) is not particularly extensive either. So it’s not as though they have managed to achieve such results through massive investment in a world-class 20-line subway system. The “West Coast Express” commuter train is actually somewhat irrelevant in the above map, as it only does a few runs each day and is used by even fewer people than Auckland’s rail lines – which means that until recently Vancouver only really had one and a half railway lines serving the whole city. Even now, while the SkyTrain is extremely popular, the vast majority of public transport users in Vancouver ride the bus.
So how on earth has Vancouver got such excellent public transport statistics out of what seems to be such little investment in expensive infrastructure like underground railway lines? And how come it seems to emerge near the top of every “quality of life” survey when logic tells us it should be choking in traffic congestion due to there being so few major transport corridors – roads or rail? The answer is in its superbly organised public transport system as a whole, but particularly in the structure of its bus system. Here’s a map showing the bus routes throughout a fairly central part of Vancouver: This is an almost perfect example of the network effect that I have talked about so much recently. The bus routes form a grid, enabling “anywhere to anywhere” travel throughout this part of the city, while express high-frequency “B-Line” services (sound familiar?) supplement the base network to provide access along particularly high patronage corridors.
Here’s what the NZTA research paper has to say about the comparison between the two cities:
Vancouver outperformed Auckland in public transport’s share of work trips, and by an even greater margin when per-capita trip-making was analysed. Interestingly, Vancouver’s much larger patronage was carried on a network that consisted of fewer bus and rail lines (routes) than were provided in Auckland (see figure 3.2). Vancouver had a relatively ‘sparse’ network made up of heavily trafficked lines; Auckland had a very dense and complex network consisting of many, mainly low-volume, lines. For example, Vancouver’s #98 B-Line express bus route carried more than 20,000 passengers a day, while Auckland’s ‘Northern Express’ busway service carried about the same number per week (2004 figures, from Translink 2005). Vancouver’s busiest B-Line service was route #99B, an inner-city crosssuburban route serving the University of British Columbia, with 31,000 passengers per day.
It gives us a hint of what the benefits of applying a network based system in Auckland might be. Clearly low urban densities and a weak CBD are not a barrier to far higher public transport statistics, and does not mean you have to build motorways like crazy for your city to work. Vancouver has done it, why not Auckland?
By admin, on April 26th, 2010 The graph below shows a comparison between the world’s likely demand for liquid fuels (including oil) over the next 20 years (the blue line) and the various components that will make up the supply of liquid fuels over that time. The emerging gap is alarming, as “Unidentified Projects” would actually be more accurately described as “unfulfilled demand” – meaning quite literally a demand for oil that will not be able to be met.
Perhaps what is most interesting about this graph is that it doesn’t come from a peak oil thinktank or an environment group – it comes from the USA Department of Energy. It is their official forecast for the supply of liquid fuels over the next 20 years. Forget wondering when peak oil might happen in the future – the answer to that question is: it’s already happened.
As anyone who has ever done even the most basic study of economics would know, what happens when demand is greater than supply is that prices go up. This prices enough people out of the market to bring the level of demand back down to what is actually supplied – as you can’t exactly consume something which doesn’t exist. An interesting analysis of the possible effects of peak oil can be found here (Hat Tip, AKT).
From the same source it’s interesting to look at how the split of where that oil goes is estimated to change over the next 20 years:
 Transportation is projected to become an increasingly large consumer of liquid fuels over this time – largely due to rising car ownership in developing world countries. This is likely to place even more pressure on the supply of transportation-grade fuels – potentially pushing up their price even further.
So what does all this mean? Well for a start we can bank on petrol being a heck of a lot more expensive than it is now in the relatively near future. Secondly, as we get towards 2030 it might actually be somewhat difficult to even secure a reliable supply of liquid fuel for our vehicles – as there will be such a huge gap between the high level of worldwide demand and the available level of fuel supplies. In short, the days of the petrol-powered vehicle are limited.
Now the answer may be electric vehicles, but they still require a lot of oil in their manufacturing while the roads they drive along also require a tremendous amount of oil to build. Furthermore, electric vehicles are incredibly expensive at the moment and it may be a while before their prices truly come down. Given that last time petrol prices cracked $2 a litre here in New Zealand traffic volumes fell quite significantly, one does wonder how sensible it is to be spending $11 billion on state highways over the next decade.
By Nick R, on April 25th, 2010 Hi all,
Joshua has kindly given me a login for the blog so that I can join him and Jeremy in making regular posts on transport topics. It is probably a good idea that I introduce myself as you may be seeing a bit more of my thoughts in the future, so here goes:
My name is Nicolas Reid, some readers may know me as Nick R from the comments pages, the CBT forums and various other blogs. I spent the first 25 years of my life growing up in Auckland but I have been based in Melbourne for the last few years. I have a background in organisational psychology and ergonomics and worked in New Zealand as an ergonomics consultant and a injury prevention researcher. Currently I work as a researcher at the Monash University Accident Research Centre, where I divide my time between injury data surveillance and ‘human factors’ crash prevention research. I am also very passionate about public transport, urban design and other planning issues, so I have been working on a planning masters at RMIT here in Melbourne. In about six months I should be able to graduate and make the move to work as a professional planner and one day not too far from now I plan to be an ethical, socially responsible property developer (if such a thing can exist). As a researcher I’m very interested in using reliable data and evidence based methods to separate informed conclusions from hearsay and ideology.
I am a member of the Campaign for Better Transport, and I’m a former car nut who now lives an almost car free lifestyle (it’s not that I hate cars, quite the opposite, I just find it easier to get by without owning one these days). I’m also something of a cyclist, although I think I like building bikes and pulling them apart more than I actually like riding them.
By Nick R, on April 25th, 2010 Like Jeremy and the Admin I am a big fan of Paul Mees’s writings on the network effect, particularly his latest book ‘Transport for Suburbia’. I recently studied a transport planning paper with him which basically followed the same flavour of the book: through the use of a network and transfers you can gain the go-anywhere convenience of the car while keeping the move-lots-of-people-in-the-same vehicle efficiency of public transport. Now Paul is the first to admit he didn’t invent this principle, it has been around as long as vehicles have, but perhaps he is the first to get it all down in one place as a cohesive mechanism that can allow fast, effective public transport to be provided for all manner of trips in a city in a cost effective manner. I thought I’d have a go at putting the theory into practice, using the North Shore of Auckland as a test case.
Why the Shore? Well it already has the busway in place with a series of interchange stations, and more importantly it has its own integrated ticket (the Northern Pass) which allows for unlimited free transfers in a given amount of time. So it’s a great place to start for an integrated bus network. Auckland actually has the legal means to create an integrated network through the gross contracting provision of the PTMA (provided it isn’t repealed), plus it has the organisational means to do so through ARTA or whatever the successor organisation is in the unitary council.
One thing Dr Mees promotes is a clean slate approach, ignoring all the historical reasons for bus routing (things like routes established by competing companies decades ago, for example) and going for what suits best here and now. So I’ll be taking a more or less clean slate approach.
So lets begin by putting the busway on the map, with fast frequencies and regular interchange station this is pretty much perfect the way it is. For better coverage I have added the busway station at the end of Onewa Rd that was planned by never built, plus the proposed new busway station at Rosedale Rd. Also shown is a black line indicating some motorway based BRT along the Upper Harbour Motorway for an express connection to West Auckland, plus the main ferry terminals are also shown.
For the second step I have added in four more major north-south routes. These are basically rationalisations of the existing services on Beach Rd, East Coast Rd, Glenfield Rd, plus a new service between the Busway and Glenfield Rd. Nothing especially revolutionary here, just streamlining the various infrequent routes into four major trunk routes. For example the 858 and 839 have been combined to form a single Beach Rd route with double the frequency. I have jigged these slightly away from a true north-south row so that they each interchange with the busway at some point, and so they can interchange with each other at appropriate points like at the regional centres of Takapuna and Albany. I have also extended the Beach Rd route (it doesn’t really matter which one) all the way to the city to provide enough capacity across the harbour.
For the third step let’s add in some lateral feeders to the busway. For this I have simply extended some routes on an approximately east-west axis along arterial roads from each busway station. As well as getting people to the busway, these routes provide cross town services and link together the major north-south routes. That’s three trip types provided for and three sources of patronage to hopefully keep the buses reasonably full all day long.
Lets have a look at the busway and the feeders and do some sums. Each of those crosstown routes averages around 10km in length. At typical bus speeds of 20km an hour it would take you half an hour to go end to end, or 15 minutes to get from one end to the busway station (which are more or less in the middle of each route).
So if we assume each route has a ten minute frequency then the average wait time for any given bus would be five minutes. An average scenario for making a trip anywhere on the Shore using the busway and these red feeders would be something like this:
1. A five minute wait for a feeder bus at your origin.
2. Fifteen minutes on a feeder to get to the nearest busway station.
3. A five minute wait for a busway bus.
4. A busway trip of about ten minutes to the busway station closest to your destination.
5. A five minute wait for the feeder bus.
6. Fifteen minutes on a feeder bus to your destination.
All up, this is a maximum average travel time of 55 minutes to get between any two points on one of the red lines. That doesn’t sound too amazing, but it is pretty much a worst case scenario that is certainly a lot better than currently. If someone today told you they could go from say Northcross to Birkdale in under an hour by bus you’d have to call them a liar!
So that’s just with the busway and feeders, add in those arterials and the trip times would probably get a lot shorter. Lets view this as an integral network with all the parts in place so we can see the real grid effect:
According to Google maps those lines represent 157km of trunk bus routes (excluding the off-road busway and the motorway-based Upper Harbour BRT), multiply that by two for both directions and that give 314km of one-way bus route.
Let’s assume again an average on road bus speed of 20km an hour once traffic lights and stops are take into account, i.e. one bus can cover 20km of route each hour. If we wanted to service the full 314km of route on an hourly basis we can therefore divide the route length by 20. This gives us 15.7, or in real terms we would need sixteen buses to cover that above system with one-hour frequencies.
Now one hour isn’t nearly good enough for transfers, not unless we had a very well co-ordinated pulse timetabling system which to be honest probably requires a level of planning and coordinating that Auckland can only dream of. So let us run with the other option, high frequency. With a bus every ten minutes (at least) on each line transfers should be quite easy, as the average wait time would only be five minutes at worst. So for one bus every ten minutes we need six buses an hour, so multiplying out 16 buses by 6 gives us 96.
Therefore to run the above system at minimum ten minute frequencies on all lines we would need ninety-six buses on the road at any given time. This is in addition to the Northern Express busway service and a similar route on the Upper Harbour Motorway. That sounds quite a lot, but how many buses run on the Shore at the moment? A full analysis of timetables could reveal how many buses are on the road on the Shore at any one time, and if I’m ever sick in bed for a week I might try and work it out. But for the meantime, a quick poke around the websites shows that Northstar (the North Shore wing of NZBus) has 134 buses that run public services on the Shore. The other main player in local services in Birkenhead transport which reports over 50 buses. Ritchies also operates on the Shore but we can leave them to run the Northern Express which I have excluded from the analysis. So what we are looking at here is definitely within the realms of possibility, a system requiring 96 buses when the area already has over double that number on the road.
Now obviously the proposed network isn’t fully complete, there would be plenty of services to slot in between the trunks. This grid has spacing of about 1.5 to 2km wide, so ideally we’d need double the number of routes on the grid (to give about a .8-1km spacing) so that nowhere on the shore was more than about 500m from a bus stop.
I imagine there would need to be greater than ten minute frequencies at peak times, plus a range of express buses to the CBD. Having express buses isn’t exactly consistent with the network effect, but I believe they are warranted at peak times on the North Shore to take people to the CBD. This is not simply for CBD workers, but because all connections from the Shore to the rest of Auckland must go via the CBD (or the Upper Harbour) due to the harbour bridge, so it makes sense to provide express links to the central interchange point. I think the ideal routing of express buses would be to follow the one of the lateral routes exactly to the nearest busway station then down to the CBD, in order to keep things consistent. This way during the off-peak you can take exactly the same route, the only difference is you need to make a transfer at the busway station rather than going direct.
By admin, on April 25th, 2010 On Good Friday Leila (my fiancee) and I were driving around Auckland randomly checking out different bits of the city (as you do when you’re an urban planner, it’s an unhealthy but interesting obsession) when my car simply stopped working as we were exiting from SH1 just near Manukau City. It was a rather strange sensation, as all of a sudden the car just stopped responding to what I wanted it to do – the engine didn’t cut dead (immediately) nor did the engine rev like crazy with the wheels going nowhere, it was just a rather low-key death.
So there we were, stuck relatively in the middle of nowhere. I’m not a member of the AA, because of their roads lobbying, and my State vehicle insurance very frustratingly didn’t cover “Roadside Rescue” because I only had 3rd Party insurance, because full insurance had originally been extremely expensive and my car isn’t worth an utterly huge amount of money. A $180 tow later we were back home in central Auckland, with the huge question of how much was this going to cost to fix hanging around my neck. Fortunately Leila’s parents lent us a vehicle over the last couple of weeks, for things like being able to see my daughter and get her to school, until I eventually got around to getting my vehicle fixed. Of course actually getting my car fixed entailed organising another tow from my place to the garage (although fortunately that was done by the garage itself), with the final bill for the fix-up being close to $700.
All of this rather expensive and inconvenient process has reinforced to me two things:
- That the “freedom” you supposedly get from having a car is exceedingly fragile, and you are extremely reliant on nothing going wrong with your vehicle for that “freedom” to remain.
- That the “freedom” of car ownership can be pretty damn expensive to maintain.
It’s interesting to explore that second issue, of how much we actually have to spend individually for this whole car-dominated society that we have to work. What comes to mind for me is an excellent passage from the book Suburban Nation: the rise of sprawl and the decline of the American dream by Andreas Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, which talks about how the need for car ownership is having a huge effect on the ability of people to afford home ownership:
It has become increasingly difficult for the middle class to own satisfactory housing. In 1970, about 50 percent of all families could afford a median-priced home; by 1990, this number had dropped below 25 percent. There are many reasons behind this phenomenon, but the most significant factor is evident in the image on the left [shows a small house with four cars in the driveway]. In what has become a typical sight in suburbia, this family appears to own almost as many square-feet of vehicles as it does of housing. Since every single adult in the household must drive a car in order to function, this situation is unavoidable. The impact it has on housing affordability is profound.
According to the American Automobile Association, the average cost of owning a Ford Escort – one of the cheapest cars available – is over $6,000 a year. At conventional mortgage rates, that figure translates into more than $60,000 in home-purchasing power. In other words, two cars will pay for a starter home…
…This is not just a theory. The banks that qualify mortgages are well aware of the burden that cars can present to homeownership. When qualifying a loan, bankers calculate the “back ratio”, which reduces income by the borrower’s existing debt, often primarily automotive. Bankers have been known to tell borrowers to sell their car, which the borrowers do, to a friend, from whom they buy it back upon receipt of the loan. And buy it back they must, since they live in an environment where life without it is impossible.
It’s a common mistake to think of cars as economically OK because they supposedly “pay their way” through petrol taxes (if we are to ignore rates contributions to local roads), but public transport as a huge drain on finances because of the need for subsidies. What this ignores is that cars are more expensive, but that cost gets individualised and is often hidden in higher costs for land (as you must have somewhere to park your car) as well as the lost opportunity to buy a house, because you’re spending so much money on keeping the car(s) on the road. One wonders what percentage of income is spent on their cars by larger, poorer families in parts of Auckland who always seem to have two vans or people-movers in the driveway. Where’s their freedom?
I guess some could argue why I don’t arrange my life in such a way that I could be car-free, and I guess there’s the slightest opportunity that that could be possible. However, because of how slow and unintegrated and unreliable our public transport system is in Auckland, I would probably spend twice as much time getting between places (particularly as I tend to drive off-peak and catch the bus at peak-times) as I do now. So in order to retain a somewhat decent quality of life I feel that I am auto-dependent, at least in the need to own a car.
And that’s damn expensive.
By admin, on April 24th, 2010 There has been an interesting debate in recent days about a speech that Steven Joyce gave at the 2010 Australasian Rail Association Conference. In particular, I think that the controversy relates to these parts of his speech:
The fourth group we need buy-in from are the regional councils in Auckland and Wellington which, along with the Transport Agency, are responsible for the commuter rail services in their respective cities.
The Crown has invested a huge amount in improving metro rail in the last several years, with much of the change just now becoming apparent.
In Auckland alone we’re investing $1.6 billion to modernise and extend the network.
That means double-tracking the Western line; a process that will be complete by June, plus new stations and facilities in places like Newmarket, Grafton, Kingsland, Morningside and New Lynn – all of which I have visited in various guises in recent times.
It also means half a billion for the infrastructure of electrification, with contracts underway for new signalling systems, and the poles and lines to provide the motive power.
And the further half billion for the new electric units to run on the network which I announced in November last year, and which Kiwirail is currently tendering for in the market for delivery commencing 2013.
And in Wellington the government has committed $258 million through a Crown appropriation to the Greater Wellington Regional Council towards the project and further sums directed to KiwiRail.
So the infrastructure is improving at a great rate, but the reality is this: neither Auckland or Wellington are currently paying the actual amounts required to maintain and renew their share of the network.
By that I mean they’re not paying enough to enable KiwiRail to maintain the tracks and ensure services are reliable.
Because of this, we are in the ironical situation where, here in Wellington, KiwiRail is constantly bagged because of its run down and sometimes unreliable services but no one has yet been prepared to fund the full amount to have the network adequately maintained.
Well – for a KiwiRail Turnaround Plan to work, all customers, including those regions that provide metro passenger services, and their co-funder NZTA, will need to stand up.
The metro operations will have to meet the actual fair costs for the renewal and maintenance of the networks that they use going forward. And discussions on that responsibility will start shortly.
Basically it seems like Joyce is saying that NZTA and the Regional Councils are responsible for paying for rail operating costs, while KiwiRail is only responsible for paying rail capital costs (ie. new stuff). Now I find that a rather bizarre separation myself, in that I don’t see why NZTA funds can’t be applied to rail capital costs, but that’s another issue which I shall return to later.
Now I don’t necessarily disagree with what Steven Joyce is saying here. After all, KiwiRail is primarily a glorified freight company – why should a freight company be responsible, and have to pay for, the maintenance of railway lines primarily used by commuters? A very good question, and one that cuts to the heart of a very interesting matter – whether it really is a good idea lumping together the ownership and management of our rail network (the work that used to be undertaken by Ontrack) with the operation of a glorified freight company that just happens to run trains along it (the bulk of KiwiRail). It’s almost like saying that a particular road-freight company should have to maintain and develop the road network, and ideally can only use the money that it gets from doing the freight work to fund the maintenance and development of that network. Crazy, right?
Ultimately, our rail network should be viewed, in my opinion, in a very very similar way to our state highway network. It should be owned and managed by NZTA, be funded by track-access charges paid by KiwiRail and whoever operates the passenger rail system, plus – where there are indirect benefits to road-users from having more passengers or freight on the rail network, or indirect benefits to all of us through lower environmental effects of the transport system – by petrol taxes and RUCs collected into the National Land Transport Fund and general taxation. Having OnTrack wrapped into KiwiRail is, I think, a step backwards for our rail system and the cause of many of the problems Steven Joyce has referred to above.
Of course the Auckland Regional Council has justifiably screamed and yelled about the insinuation that it should have to pay a far greater amount:
Auckland Regional Council (ARC) Chairman Mike Lee says that in case the Minister hadn’t noticed, in terms of investing in rail transport, the Auckland region stood up many years ago and for a lot of that time stood alone.
“In terms of fighting for a first-world rail infrastructure, Auckland is still standing and we are still fighting,” says Mr Lee.
“The Minister needs to be told that over the five years to 2006, some $363 million was invested in upgrading the Auckland rail network.
“Of this, about $288 million or 80 per cent was provided by the Auckland region and its ratepayers. This funding provided for the construction of Britomart, upgrading of stations, double-tracking and the purchase and refurbishment of trains.
“The ARC initiated the first stage of double tracking the western line, funded by an Infrastructure Auckland grant, because the Government refused to do so.
“Between 2006 and 2009, the ARC funded the costs of purchasing and refurbishing trains and upgrading stations, and received no Government subsidy for this at all.
“The ARC also funded the costs needed to get the electrification project off the ground and 40 per cent of the costs of passenger rail services.
“In 2009/10, the ARC provided $25 million in operating funding to the Auckland Regional Transport Authority (ARTA) for rail passenger services and $66 million for investment in refurbished trains and upgraded rail stations.
It really was the initial investment by the ARC, and also by Auckland City Council in the construction of Britomart, that led to the rail revival in Auckland. The previous Labour government did eventually stump up with the big money for Project DART and the infrastructure side of electrification, while this government has stumped up with the $500 million for electric trains. But, it was mainly kick-started by Auckland itself. Looking forward, it will be interesting to see the extent to which the Auckland Transport CCO prioritises public transport spending – as ARTA’s budget of $150 million-ish will increase to a budget for Auckland Transport of $650 millionish. So there is theoretically more money available at a regional level to fund the rail system in the future, if it gets prioritised.
Overall, I find the whole debate rather bizarre and Steven Joyce’s position somewhat contradictory. Obviously KiwiRail’s budget needs to be brought under some sort of control – and hopefully the freight part of their business left to look after itself (which it apparently does quite well and reasonably profitably if you exclude depreciation of the track network) without its financial situation being burdened by the need to also look after the rail system for the wider benefits that having a rail system brings. KiwiRail shouldn’t have to stump up with the money to provide new railways tracks for passenger trains in Auckland, or have Auckland’s electric trains being a burden on their balance sheet, when this has absolutely nothing to do with their freight business.
The obvious two agencies (as well as commuters themselves) that should be paying for rail in urban areas are:
- Local Government – because the city benefits from better public transport through better social, environmental and economic outcomes.
- NZTA (ie. petrol tax and road-user charges) – because road users themselves benefit from there being fewer other road-users congesting the streets and roads of the city.
Rather bizarrely, the Government Policy Statement for transport specifically bans the use of NZTA money on rail improvement projects (even though obviously building the CBD rail tunnel for example would benefit road users enormously through the reduction in congestion) but says that NZTA funds are OK for rail operating costs (on the basis that when people use the rail network there are congestion relief benefits). This contradictory situation means that KiwiRail has effectively been forced to fund the upgrades to the Auckland and Wellington rail networks – even though their core business is actually running a freight company.
Which once again begs the question of why is a freight company running a core part of our infrastructure? The core of this messy debate revolves around that question, and until it is answered or until NZTA funds can actually be used for rail upgrades (like it seems Steven Joyce is actually wanting) we will continue to have this bizarre and complicated debate.
By admin, on April 24th, 2010 Both Jeremy and myself have written quite a few posts on Paul Mees and his book Transport for Suburbia. In particular, we have focused a lot on the huge benefits of creating a transport system that is a true “network”, rather than a number of independent lines between suburbs and the CBD – which is what we most commonly find in current public transport systems – particularly in Auckland.
The diagram below briefly described the network effect: Most basically, the network effect shows that if you build a public transport system around transfers, rather than building a public transport system to avoid transfers, you can achieve a heck of a lot more. You don’t have to live and work on the same public transport corridor for it to make sense for you to catch public transport, because with one transfer you could be anywhere in the city. Given that the most common complaint about public transport from those who don’t use it is that public transport doesn’t go where they want it to, the network effect seems like the obvious solution.
Now all of this as outlined in Paul Mees’s book is theoretical, and I have talked about it before in previous posts. The fascinating thing that I found out this week though is that over the past few months, NZTA have got Paul Mees and some of his public transport academic colleagues (J Stone, M Imran and G Neilson) to do a research report into how this concept could be applied to Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. The outcome of that is NZTA research report 396 – which is well worth a read!
The study matches up Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch with three “successful public transport cities”: Vancouver in Canada, Zurich in Switzerland and Schafhaussen in Switzerland respectively to analyse what could be learned from the form of public transport systems in these best practice cities and applied to the New Zealand examples. I will not even try to outline everything found or discussed in one post, as there are probably a number of posts to be made on this topic, but here’s an interesting extract from the executive summary:
Comparisons were based on population, residential density across the urban region, jobs in the CBD, mode share for the journey to work, public transport boardings, public transport service-km, and the level of public subsidy required per public transport boarding.
The comparisons revealed that New Zealand’s three largest urban regions have considerable potential to build on the increases in public transport patronage and mode share that have been achieved during the last decade. Encouragingly, the greatest potential for improvement seemed to lie with ‘nontraditional’ trip types, which could be accommodated without imposing commensurate increases in capital and operating costs. The research also investigated current public transport operating practices in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, and found that these practices reflected the broad history of decisions made in transport planning in each city over recent decades.
Because of its smaller size and relative coherence in the institutional history of public transport service planning and delivery, Christchurch had been able to develop or preserve a number of important features of the network-planning approach, most notably a ticketing system that did not penalise passengers who made transfers. Its cross-town ‘Orbiter’ line, introduced in 2000 at the same time as common bus liveries and the unifying ‘Metro’ brand, had achieved a level of transfers that exceeded the expectations of local planners. However, in both Auckland and Wellington, we found that the ability of private operators to run ‘commercial’ services at will had hampered efforts to coordinate services and had allowed perverse competition between different public transport modes to continue. In Auckland, particularly, obvious opportunities to significantly reduce journey times through better coordination of rail and bus timetables had been overlooked.
It is important to note the emphasis placed on the perverse outcomes of what happens when you allow commercial services within the system – resulting in poorer value-for-money, inefficient competition between modes and so forth. The proposed PTMA reforms may send us back to the bad old days of this.
The research paper offers a number of recommendations:
1 Appropriate institutions and public processes:
- Establish a public agency to plan the network across the whole urban region.
- Redirect private-sector competition into producing best-value tenders for the delivery of part, or all, of a publicly planned system.
- Use well-designed public education and consultation programmes to manage changes.
- Provide a simple fare system that avoids the imposition of penalties for transfers.
2 Network structure:
- Provide a simple and stable network of lines throughout the day.
- Base mode choice for different lines in the network on required capacity, comfort and speed.
- Consider locations for suburban interchanges on the basis of predicted travel patterns and efficient vehicle operations.
3 Network operations
- Simplicity and directness:
– Organise the network on the principle of ‘one section – one line’.
- Avoid deviations in the physical routes chosen for bus services.
- Provide pendulum lines through key activity centres and interchanges.
- Speed and reliability:
- Aim for travel speeds comparable to, or faster than, door-to-door travel times that can be achieved by car.
– Provide on-road signal and traffic-lane priority to allow buses to meet connections.
- Aim to have vehicles stopping only as required to pick up and drop off passengers.
- Frequency:
– Establish ’forget-the-timetable’ headways (10 minutes or less) in key travel corridors.
- Set up integrated timetables outside high-frequency areas.
- Location of stops and access to services:
– Carefully plan the location of stops to minimise the number of stops and ensure their optimal location in relation to major trip attractors, intersecting lines and pedestrian accessways.
– Locate stops in car-free precincts close to important destinations, to give public transport a significant competitive advantage.
– Change current access to ‘trunk’ services from ‘park-and-ride’ facilities to access by walking, bicycle, or feeder bus, in order to cater for long-term growth in patronage.
– Ensure that walking distances between services in interchanges are very short: preferably no more than 10 metres.
- Marketing for first-time and occasional users:
– Create a simple line structure that makes the network easy to understand.
– Use maps, on-line information, vehicle livery and on-board displays to reinforce understanding of the line layout and transfer opportunities.
This should be the blueprint for improvements to Auckland’s (in particular) public transport system over the next few years. International experience shows that it will deliver better value for money, will improve public transport patronage and will provide a better alternative to driving. Let’s hope the report doesn’t just end up as another door-stop somewhere in NZTA’s office-block.
By Jeremy Harris, on April 23rd, 2010 I’ve often wondered why and how Auckland’s meandering bus routes came to pass, Jarrett from the outstanding humantransit blog states:
Every transit system gradually acquires odd bits of route that really don’t make any objective sense. They may have been added to take care of some noisy complaint, or they may just be obsolete services that have been superseded by something added more recently. These oddities and complexities tend to hang on because if you try to cut them, the people who are used to them will complain, and there’s often just not that much to be gained — at least in the eyes of our political masters — from enduring these complaints. So a lean budget season, now and then, can be a blessing, because it creates the political will to fix these things.
Sounds like as good an explanation as any for Auckland’s examples to me. Also sounds like a good reason to get rid of some of them that can be consolidated and increase frequencies.
Hat tip: Humantransit.org
By Jeremy Harris, on April 22nd, 2010 I’m reading Admin’s copy of Transport For Suburbia by Paul Mees and it is a cracking read full of information and examples about Auckland and the rest of the world. The book makes a few points that it goes into in detail:
- While density can help make the provision of public transport easier, it is by no means the most important factor. Integration of fares, timetables and ticketing (integration) and having well planned routes, with frequent services and easy transfers (transport policy), is.
- A single public planning agency, with legislated powers, is required to allow integration and effective transport policy.
On the first point, in the past I have been one of the biggest supporters of radical changes to increase density such as eliminating minimum parking requirements (instead of amending them to maximum parking requirements) and ripping up the district plans and replacing them with high density TOD plans, part of my suppressed Libertarian, burn the castle down if you don’t like the curtains, desires. After reading this book, while I do believe we need parking reform and better district plans, it is obvious there is massive latent potential to increase PT use in Auckland using our current resources and densities do not need to increase massively to allow it. Admin posted on this first point earlier, in a post called Density is not Density. It didn’t attract too much comment but I recommend you re-read it again as it is one of the most important posts on this blog so far this year.
After I finish the book I’ll post on the case for, and importance of, a single public planning agency.
After making the case for the first half of the book that density should not be an excuse for poor PT he then goes into detail about how one might provide such a service, again Admin has posted on this in a post called Squaresville: The Network Effect. Again I suggest you re-read this post. So how would this potentially operate in Auckland? I’ve had a look at one of the oldest areas of Auckland and one of the best served by PT, the area on the isthmus NE of SH16 and SH1 over to the shore, generally known as the “Western Bays”. These are the current bus routes:
As far as Auckland bus routes go this area isn’t too bad, patronage is high in comparison to other parts of the city, there aren’t too many meandering back street routes (except the 011, seriously who is using this service by choice?) but there are some curious things here:
- Why would you have the 025 and 024 start from different places a 100 or so metres from each other?
- Why wouldn’t you combine the 004 and 005 service, or the 015 and 017?
- Why would you start the 027 from the end of Garnet Rd when the 035 travels along here, surely the 027 could be combined with the 024 and 025 and start at the end of Richmond Rd, are there that many people catching the bus from Garnet Rd to Douglas St that we need to provide a separate service?
- Is it really necessary for 9 CBD focused bus routes to originate in this area that then have to clog up limited CBD road space before returning?
You get the idea. All these numbers (buses with numbers ranging from 004 to 199 operate in this area) and different services provide only confusion and low frequencies for individual services - disasterous for patronage. How could you re-organise the assets servicing this area to make PT more attractive to patrons? What would you need organisationally to make such a change happen?
Now this isn’t a serious proposal as it doesn’t take into account the Link or services running along Great North Rd that originate from outside the area and all CBD buses run down Queen St (given my undying love for the Central Connector I would probably run them all down there) but gives an idea of how the network effect might work.
All the routes currently in the area are condensed into 6 routes, 3 CBD focused (the 1-blue, 3-black and 5-orange) and 3 cross-town (2-red, 4-pink and 6-green) routes. These would then run at 15 minute intervals from 0600 to 2400 7 days a week, with 7.5 minute frequencies from 0700 to 1000 and 1600 – 1900 Monday to Friday. All houses within the area are within 500 metres of a bus route. All CBD focused buses now terminate (or pass Britomart) rather than stopping all over the CBD. We’ve also eliminated all the buses clogging town by through routing the shorter CBD focused routes.
So we’ve basically turned bus routes into tram routes while having the advantage of flexibility that a bus can provide (i.e. it can drive around another broken down bus) and used the same amount of resources to increase frequencies by consolidating routes, this consolidation and renumbering has also reduced the confusion for the user, in particular the casual user, but the obvious problem is we now have created a system that requires transfers for many users, how do we overcome this problem?
We solve it by making transferring as easy as possible and this takes co-ordination. The purple squares show the 9 interchange points we have created by operating the bus system in such a manner and this is where the case for a single public planning agency comes to the fore. If you look at the cross-town 6 bus, originating from the end of Pt Chev Rd and toward Mt Albert Rd, the only way for a CBD commuter from Oliver St to get to town is to transfer to a 5 bus at the intersection of Pt Chev Rd and Great North Rd. They are only going to do this if; the ticket they buys on the 6 can be used on the 5 and doesn’t cost anything extra, the timetables are co-ordinated and the driver of the 5 bus knows to wait for the 6 and the walk between buses is safe, comfortable and quick. That type of integration takes a single planning agency.
So will this system work and will people really transfer? Will the greater frequencies and ease of understanding outweigh the hassle of transferring? Well if Auckland looks at Zurich we can see the answer is undoubtedly YES! The Zurich region is a similar size to Auckland and they have far more PT infrastructure but the principle demonstrated here is the modus operandi of their single public agency the ZVV. The result – patronage per capita is 10 times higher than Auckland.
This type of system also focuses investment for the Council, we now only need to provide bus lanes on 8 streets in the area to have ALL buses running in bus lanes and 9 locations to invest in excellent bus stops and transfer points. Not exactly expensive stuff compared to motorways and rail lines.
By admin, on April 21st, 2010 I am in Christchurch for the NZ Planning Institute conference for the next couple of days, but there should continue to be a few posts trickling out over that time thanks to Jeremy.
I have been pretty impressed by Christchurch so far actually (I was last here when I was 12). The pedestrianised streets in the inner city are great, the tram system, while touristy more than anything else, works really well with the local streets. There also seems to be a tonne of cyclists.
Hopefully will meet Paul Mees tomorrow as he is giving a paper.
|
Recent Comments