There’s an interesting interview of Auckland Council mayor Len Brown in today’s NZ Herald. In particular, he talks about the CBD Rail Tunnel quite a bit:
What progress do you hope to make this year on the rail loop?
By the end of the year we will be through defining the route, seriously into the consenting process, defined the funding, firmly on track towards the initial construction and I’m quietly confident the Government will be behind the project.
How will you fund the project of up to $1.5 billion?
It will be part of discussions with a number of parties, including the Government. It is useful to allow those discussions to happen without too much media debate and conjecture. They need to happen in a respectful way. Too often, discussions about Auckland projects and the funding of those projects have been done in a combative fashion. There is a time now with one single leader in Auckland for us to show some real maturity in the way we conduct negotiations and deliver projects.
With a general election this year will you be lobbying Labour leader Phil Goff to give greater priority to the rail loop than shown by John Key and Steven Joyce?
You will see a lot of progress in the next three to four months on this project from the Government. I have lobbied and will continue to discuss with leaders of all parties this project and other projects. We have the Auckland Plan [a long-term city blueprint] to do this year as a springboard for progress, and we want the Government to sign up to that plan. I also want Labour and all the parties in Parliament to sign up to the plan.
Just before Christmas it was announced that a review of the CBD Rail Tunnel business case would be undertaken. I certainly hope that this review is a ‘step forward’ in advancing the project – and not an exercise that turns into a search for excuses to delay or not build it. The other key thing will be how the CBD Rail Tunnel fits into the Auckland Spatial Plan. The government has placed a lot of emphasis on the Auckland Spatial Plan, and particularly on how it will provide a useful plan for the timing and necessity of expensive infrastructure projects: and how those projects will fit in with Auckland’s future urban form. It is pretty impossible to see the CBD Rail Tunnel being anything other than the key central piece of infrastructure the Spatial Plan is built around. That will make things interesting.
The interview also briefly mentions the Puhoi-Wellsford “holiday highway”:
Will you support the Government’s Puhoi-to-Wellsford motorway link being included in the Auckland Plan?
In many ways that roading link is in citywide plans already. It is about timing and about cost. I think the Government showed some recognition and a little bit of unease and disquiet in the broader Auckland region shortly before Christmas when it realigned its view in terms of the northern roadway by confirming it was focusing on Puhoi to Warkworth in the first instance. In effect that halves the budget for that extension of the roading network. I think that was a reflection of … concern in Auckland that we didn’t want to put all our eggs in one basket.
Heh, that’s a pretty good answer actually. The government hasn’t exactly abandoned the Warkworth to Wellsford section of the holiday highway, but it certainly seems like geotechnical problems with it mean that it’s likely to be delayed for quite some time. If we read between the lines on what’s said here, it seems clear Mayor Brown is concerned about the cost of this project and is also aware of the fact that we may wish to fast-track bits of the project that make good sense – like a Warkworth bypass – while leaving other bits that don’t offer the same cost-effectiveness (like the rest of the road) for a later date.
I note yet again that no-one has yet explained why the Western CBD rail tunnel is needed! Reasons for it I can see include:
- cuts travel time for West passengers to Britomart (and therefore to East stations, but NOT to South stations, as that is quicker done by transferring from existing West to South trains at Newmarket).
- faster Kingsland-Britomart section of West service frees up trainsets and staff, which either cuts opex or lets them be used for another service, cutting need for more trainsets and staff to be bought/hired.
- opens stations in new catchment areas in K Rd, Aotea Square/midtown areas (new Newton station is so close to existing Mt Eden station it will not catch significantly many new passengers).
Reasons against include:
- costs $1,500m plus, with costs highly likely to balloon over $2,000m. That all comes out of taxpayers, ratepayers and passengers pockets (recalling we have already seen rail fares double in the last decade).
- adds massive delays and disruption to services that are just finishing the last lot (West line double tracking). Not to mention the additional electrification disruption. This is already turning passengers off using PT (including me!) and can seriously harm the perception of rail as a reliable travel option (see Josh’s post on impact of 2005 bus strikes on patronage).
- opportunity cost – the $1.5bn+ could be used more profitably on other PT projects, like Airport rail, extending North Shore busway service down Upper Harbour motorway and back along SH16, extending Wynyard Quarter trams to Britomart and along Tamaki Drive, etc, etc.
I recognise the benefits of CBD rail tunnel, but also the drawbacks. What I am not hearing from anyone is why we need the tunnel to solve the *current problem* with all rail services routing into Britomart, causing the congestion in Britomart tunnel. Sure, the CBD tunnel is one solution, but are there others that are cheaper, faster and less disruptive?
One mooted on this blog a while back was building a second Britomart entry tunnel beside the current one. None of the above advantages, but almost none of the cost too (recall entire Britomart project cost $200m a decade back, so replicating tunnel will be well under that even with inflated costs).
Another is to simply merge West and East rail services, and truncatae South service to a Westfield-Newmarket shuttle (and Onehunga at Newmarket too). Ties in nicely with Link buses through Parnell and to upper CBD, and can be done in 6 months for almost free.
Thinking caps on…. reasons for why CBD rail tunnel is best option to solve Britomart entry tunnel congestion???
To add to what Nick says, reading through the business case for the project provides the best reasoning for why it’s necessary and what benefits it will bring. There is the train congestion issue – which could potentially be worked around by doing ugly things like joining the East + West together (reinstating the old station?) or joining the west and south together and running Newmarket-Britomart shuttles.
However, the costs of doing that (in terms of passenger inconvenience) need to be considered. Around 80% of eastern , 70% of southern and 60% of western line trips start or end at Britomart. The old Auckland station didn’t work because people had to transfer onto a bus for the last leg of their journey – we wouldn’t want to undermine the rail system by forcing this situation again – just after we’ve spent $1.6 billion on upgrading the rail network ($600m on project dart + $1b on electrification).
Most of the benefit of the CBD tunnel comes through what the increased accessibility to the CBD achieves in terms of wider economic benefits. That’s what boosts the BCR from around 1 to 3.5 – the long-term productivity benefits for Auckland and New Zealand. Playing around with different service patterns does nothing to achieve these benefits – and potentially undermines the CBD.
In terms of your “constant disruption” argument, I don’t think building the CBD tunnel would have much effect on existing services – except for potentially around Mt Eden station. It is built off-line, rather than both Project DART and electrification, which are ‘on-line’ projects.
To add further, train congestion at Britomart is only one specific part of the problem. The main reason for its need is to enable the CBD to work, over the next 30 years there are predicted to be tens of thousands of extra jobs in the CBD and tens of thousands more residents as well. Our existing corridors don’t have the capacity to move the number of people required into and around the CBD, the study actually looked at what other options were and they determined that to use buses we would require every major arterial into the city to have bus lanes, some two lanes wide and would also require a tunnel under the CBD at even greater cost. They also looked at widening/duplicating the Britomart approach but while it was obviously cheaper it only really serves the northern parts of the CBD so would be of limited use to people. There is an appendix to the study which looked solely at what the alternatives were and that report is 109 pages long by itself.
The next question that you may ask is why focus so much on the CBD, why try and spread that employment and residential growth out over the region. The issue with that is there are huge benefits of businesses being in the CBD and near lots of other business and services, also on average jobs in the CBD are higher paying. When you actually look at the report (even just the executive summary) you see that it isn’t just about making the rail network better but that it looks at how the CBD as a whole will be able to work.
For the delays, is likely to be confined to either the start of end of construction only, if the green light is given this year then that work could be finished by the time electrification is done as it would only involve building the trench for the portal around Mt Eden. The TBM would put down off line so wouldn’t impact the existing network.
As for your opportunity cost, none of the things you mention do anything or at least enough to solve the issue of how to move all of those people around into and around the CBD. Airport rail can’t happen without more space at Britomart which as mentioned above isn’t worth it unless its the CBD tunnel. Extending the busway doesn’t solve the bus congestion issue and there isn’t enough patronage to justify putting one along upper harbour anytime soon. Trams along Tamaki Dr would be nice but again don’t do enough to solve the congestion issue.
I seriously think you need to have a skim through the study, all of the information you seek is in there http://www.aucklandtransport.govt.nz/improving-transport/current-projects/Rail/Pages/CBDRailLink.aspx
I should also add, there are many benefits to the region that haven’t been counted towards the business case, e.g. if someone lived in Henderson and worked in New Lynn then when the frequencies increase they will benefit from that as well.
Also rail use is expected to be 50 million a year which is more than twice what it would be without the CBD tunnel and over over 5 times what it is now
It isn’t the best option to solve Britomart entry tunnel congestion. If the only goal was to get more trains into Britomart there are much cheaper ways to do that.
But it is the best option to solve Britomart entry tunnel congestion *and* solve Newmarket congestion *and* create new central city stations to allow further CBD growth (i.e. economic development) *and* considerably shorten the trip length from the western line to the CBD.
In short the project competely revolutionises Aucklands rail system, it’s not simply about chucking a few extra trains on the line.
I guess that’s actually one of the hardest things about the CBD rail tunnel: It is a piece of infrastructure with manifold benefits for the CBD, the existing suburban lines and also potential/future lines… but how does one quantify that and communicate it to people?
How do you put a price on the fact that any future expansion of the network is unlikely to work without a CBD tunnel (especially when you have a government that denies that expanding the rail network is either desirable or likely).
A cheap way (unheard of in new zealand, it seems) is to make queen st for pedestrians and buses only, with few buses and full, going only up and down, moving people from britomart to their destinations in the city and back. They could run up until mt Eden station and close the gap. Driving in Queen st has no meaning at the moment, if only to show off the new car…
The problem with that is that you then have to transfer to a bus. The bus will still have to wait for traffic lights from cross street. Plus you would need to have buses going once or twice a minute to match the capacity of the trains and that will create a horrible environment for pedestrians.
Well, hallelujah!!! We’ve solved the funding problem for the CBD rail tunnel – since Josh, Matt and Nick all agree that the bulk of the benefits are to CBD economic growth and viability as a town centre, we should charge a targeted rate to apartments and businesses in the CBD to pay for the bulk of the tunnel, right?
Seriously. Everyone above agrees the CBD tunnel is not designed to JUST solve the current problem of Britomart entry tunnel congestion, but to revitalise the CBD (a worthy goal). But that is quite different to what the project originally claimed to be, which was a solution to getting more trains in and out of Britomart.
I’m quite fine with the frame shift in goals, but I think that shift is what needs to be publicised, as Nick said. Actually, the idea of dedicated PT charge as a separate line item on rates isn’t a bad idea (may need a roads rates line too to show the imbalance
). The PT rate could go down the further the premises are from a rail station, bus stop or wharf.
Specific responses to above comments:
).
- Fair point on the disruption being mostly at the tunnel ends
- Josh, I’m suggesting merging East and West trains at Britomart, not the old Strand station (tho that has merit), for the reasons you state. The inbound West train dumps virtually all its passengers before picking up the outbound East passengers, and vice versa. That is why we have to merge East-West, and not South-West, which would leave too many people transferring. The truncated South and Onehunga trains have few passengers to transfer, hence minimal disruption from them transferring at Newmarket.
- Matt, Airport rail IS possible without the CBD rail tunnel, as Airport rail is a straight extension of the existing Onehunga service, so adds no more trains in/out of Britomart, unless frequency goes up (which can be handled by above mentioned merger).
- Matt, I’m afraid I’m deeply sceptical about the BCR study, as I know how easy it is for the underpinning assumptions to create the result the authors want. Example – the claimed 2 bus lanes each way being unworkable is premised on not tweaking existing road use, as Albert St is more than capable of handling 2 bus lanes each way. But recall Albert St currently handles far more bus passengers than rail takes (currently or in future)… It reminds me of Transit ASSUMING their new Mangere Bridge had to be a high-level humpback bridge, so heavy rail was impossible, so they had to have more motorway lanes, etc, etc. Take out the humpback assumption, and their case fell apart (but got ticked off and built anyway
Good thoughts though – I’ll have to go back through the CBD tunnel study again to give you more chew over questions
Bob, there is no funding problem, there is only a funding allocation problem. The Government is happy to spend an additional eleven billion dollars over the next decade on new motorways (that’s above and beyond the regular transport budget). This money is coming out of the general account of taxpayers money, the rationale being that they will boost the economy and benefit everybody. The same thing can be said for the CBD tunnel (in fact it is one of the best projects for economic growth if the BCRs are to be believed), so why can’t we fund it the same way too?
All they need to do is drop the worst of the Roads of National Significance off the bottom of the list and fund the tunnel instead.
Bob – its not just about revitalising the CBD it is that without it the CBD cannot grow much larger than it currently is as people won’t be able to get to it. Due to the economic benefits of the additional businesses and therefore employment that it enables the report suggested that the government pay for 60% of the costs. The remaining 40% was to be paid for by the council of which they suggested a portion from the region and a CBD targeted rate. There is also the option of getting additional funding from some of the businesses around the stations i.e. the midtown station would be near Skycity so they may want to contribute to have a tunnel built into the station to make it easier for people to get to their premises.
Airport rail is possible as you suggest but with only half hour frequencies it wouldn’t be that successful. To do it properly then you need at least 15 min frequencies if not better and to do that within the current constraints you would need to cut some services from somewhere else.
Yes Albert St could take two bus lanes each way but that wouldn’t be very effective if all buses had to merge into one lane to drop passengers off, also there then would be no space for cars, as Albert St is only 4 lanes wide which wouldn’t be allowed to happen due to all of the car parking buildings that line the street.
I am not sure if this http://www.stuff.co.nz story is based on the same interview as the one reported in the Herald – http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/4548562/Auckland-mayor-rides-rails-in-public-transport-push – but it highlights some interesting things. First of all, it shows mayor Brown is fully aware of the historical context of PT in Auckland and secondly he seems to be a believer in my favourite hobby horse – more use of the harbours for water based public transport.
That looks different. The comments seem positive, although you have the usual why not make the link with light rail or buses comments. It’s like “think small, no smaller” is the NZ attitude.