I was reading the Western Leader that came on Friday and a letter to the editor caught my eye:
I regret that Gayle Marshall is right (Western Leader, June 22, 2012)
Auckland Transport is proposing to delay for two years the introduction of further Park and Ride in Glen Eden.
The local board was stunned when the decision was made.
I for one had understood that it was proposed, programmed and funded to start pretty quickly but it was delayed because of last minute funding cuts to Auckland Transport.
Certainly the Waitakere Ranges Local Board fully supported the original proposal and I wanted to be there when the ribbon was cut, and soon.
I agree that the current situation is not acceptable. The existing Park and Ride is full by 7:30am and if Auckland wants more people to use public transport then more parking must be provided.
I am not sure where the money went to but there is no a capital fund that local boards can access to promote local transport projects and I am hoping that this can be used to speed up the creation of the Park and Ride.
I can not think of a more important local project.
Glen Eden has a great future and will become part of a vibrant transport hub as more and more people used the imoproved train system.
But only if we get the local infrastructure rightGreg Presland
Waitakere Ranges Local Board member
I have highlighted the part that annoys me the most. Now I do agree that park and ride places are useful but I would caveat that with the point that they are only useful in the right situations. The reason for this is simply due to the sheer amount of land they take up compared to the number of extra people they allow to drive to the station. The current park and ride (oddly it isn’t listed on MAXX as even existing) has space for about 80 cars right across the road from the train station. That land however is probably a prime piece of real estate for future development being right next to the station and the Glen Eden town centre.
Auckland Transport has already done some investigation into the issue and in a report to the local board have said:
The feasibility study is at the final stages and the draft report has been submitted. An at – grade car park on KiwiRail land located to the south of Waikumete Road (site 2) is the best option overall in the short to medium term, and the most economically efficient. This option also involves retaining the existing Park and Ride site off West Coast Road (site 3).
In the longer term, there may be a case to provide additional park and ride facilities in Glen Eden. The most cost effective option is likely to involve the construction of a multi-storey car park on KiwiRail land located to the south of Waikumete Road (site 2) and developing the existing Park and Ride site off West Coast Road (site 3).
Here is the location of site 2 which is considered to be the best option, the blue line shows the walk to the station would be about 200m so not too bad. The piece of land highlighted is roughly twice the size of the existing park and ride and lets estimate that we could probably get around 200 car parks in there.
I don’t have any idea on how much this car park is expected to cost but based on the recent extension to the Albany car park, lets assume costs are about $10k for each park. That would put the cost at about $2m and that is not including the land which I suspect that being on Kiwirail land that AT would take a lease out rather than purchace the land (as they are doing in Swanson). My main issue though is the thought that we have to provide car parking if we want people to catch PT. We can actually work out the impact of this facility fairly easily, that is because these car parks are almost exclusively going to be used by commuters who are working Monday to Friday which means the parks would perhaps allow for an extra 400 trips per day. By comparison there are over 40,000 train trips on weekdays so even if the parking was filled only with new passengers then we would have only increased patronage by less than 1%. Another way to look at it is that over the course of a year (lets say 50 weeks to account for things like public holidays) it would only contribute 100,000 trips to the rail network which is pretty tiny in the grand scheme of things.
I guess at the end of the day I do agree that park and ride is important but lets be realistic and realise that it is only part of the problem and that even today only a small number of people who are using the rail network do so in a park and ride. If we want much higher usage of trains in the future then we need politicians to start realising that spending millions on car parks isn’t going to be the way to do it.
The economics of it also depend on whether it’s free parking or paid parking. If it is paid at a few bucks a day per vehicle then maybe that can cover the cost of leasing and stacks up a bit better. If it’s free then, as you suggest, it’s a lot of money for relatively few people.
Melbourne’s rail system has something like 30,000 parking spaces (plus I imagine a lot of people who park informally), yet all of that makes up fewer than 10% of people who travel on the Melbourne rail system every day. The vast majority still walk to their station.
Why can’t they use that money to create very frequent (free?) local feeder bus services to and from the station? It would be of use to far more people.
In town centre plans a few years ago, that existing park-and-ride site was earmarked for a key multi-storey retail building on that street corner.
Let’s see a comparative feasibility study of subsidising local layer 4 shuttle services (preferably door-to-door for best universal access) in this and other similar locations as part of the shift to routes feeding into rail stations. Might avoid costly park-and-ride extensions on the Northern busway.
I think you are a little off beam here, we catch the train from Glen Innes and the parking there is usually full by 7.30 as well. On days when it is full we just drive into town. The option of catching a bus is not realistic as the buses run late, are dirty and cost an additional fare ($1.60 each way) which when combined with the train fare means it is break even to drive and park in town, and that is for one person, for two as there is most days it is a no brainer.
If more parking was available, we would use the train every day.
Integrated ticketing, frequent reliable bus services to and from the rail station, and increased inner-city parking costs might help tip the balance in a few years.
Hit the nail on the head there with the need for integrated fares (including free transfers).
So why should other rate payers pay up to $10,000 just so you can park at the station? The problem is any parking only has very limited uses, you could put a multi story car park there for 10s of millions and people will still say it isn’t enough.
Integrated fares and fairly new buses (which will probably be required as part of the PTOM contracts) as well as the changes to the bus network should make things a bit better.
How the heck it can cost $10k for one park is unbelievable
That is based on the costs at Albany which was $5.5m for an extra 550 car parks
Because otherwise they will demand more roads? A much more expensive option.
This doesn’t mean I am in favour of it but there appears to be good information available to show that it assists in getting people to use PT to get around.
As the PT infrastructure (feeder buses, intergrated ticketing, HOP, cycle storage etc) gets better then perhaps we won’t require the same level of park’n'ride facilities?
I don’t have a problem with park n ride facilities, if they help get more people taking the train that wouldn’t ordinarily consider it, then thats a positive. Its not a perfect solution, but it’s a good work around to keep more cars out of the city. I don’t really want to to be waiting for a feeder bus then have to wait for a train on my commute.
…or perhaps they could consider working harder at creating safer & more convenient cycle routes to the stations from surrounding districts and putting in more “bike’n'ride” spots? I suspect most punters are coming from only a few km away, i.e. a bikeable distance under the right circumstances. Can fit about ten bikes in every car space and probably for less construction cost (much less pavement depth required). Even with local cycle-route improvements (which will also benefit other riders), the cost is probably less than what you are suggesting for a new carpark. I gather places like Perth work pretty hard to integrate cycling with their rail networks – why not Auckland?
I agree 100% Glen.
I don’t have a problem with paying a fee for park and ride. There is no reason why they can’t be included in the cost of fares.
Park and ride and kiss and ride helps makes urban rail travel appealing to people who don’t live near stations. Bus feeders have their place but so does park and ride. The big problem with focusing on bus feeders is that a lot of people who may consider using trains don’t like buses. Wellington tried free bus feeders for Train passengers in Paraparaumu with little success.
Not so many issues if there was a fee for it and was able to be paid for by HOP cards. Including it into the PT fare isn’t such a good idea as it means that everyone else who doesn’t use the park and ride (and that would be most people using the trains), would have to pay more as a result.
Here’s a simple rule: Park and ride should not be subsidised more than the PT system it is supporting. It’s quite a simple story about supply, demand, and pricing something too cheap = too much demand. AT should be charging P&R users about $5 per day before they even consider providing more P&R at Glen Eden.
When I was doing some early research into BRT, one of the advantages touted for it was that, when compared with LRT, it allowed one-seat journeys where LRT park-and-ride did not, and thus avoided a ‘transfer penalty’. So, when I had a first look at the northern busway, it did surprise me just how heavily the two parking areas were used, when the logic of the BRT model is that ‘in theory’, they shouldn’t be needed. The penny dropped when I went through the bus timetables for the services which used the busway, and what that made clear was that the door-to-door time saved by driving is substantial; that is, you can get to or from the station in half the time that staying on the bus would involve. There is even more time saved if you would otherwise be transferring to a bus, which is why this market behaviour becomes an issue for rail services as well. St Nick’s point above is absolutely right.
Remembering that the customer determines the market, how can we educate the market into using connecting buses? (or cycle to a station, for that matter). The example of Auckland’s own BRT shows that it’s not about the availability of integrated ticketing either.
The busway service pattern is currently a mongrel, having neither a good application of the one seat ride nor the feeder model. The one seat thing only happens on a few peak expresses, while the feeder network has woeful frequencies and service spans.
That was because of political issues. Effectively they were so hamstrung for cutting or modifying service they ended up keeping the entirety of the existing North Shore bus network intact, and then had to overlay the NEX and a pared back feeder system over the top. End result is a two generally independent networks operating in parallel, with neither very efficient yet the whole lot still costing heaps. If they had been able to redesign the whole network to suit the busway then things would be a lot different.
The only reason the busway is doing so well is due to the sheer volume of buses on the Shore. With the right redesign we could service more people with about half the service.
The new Manukau carpark building will be the only paid Park & Ride parking for the train that I am aware of in Auckland.
Clearly it is time that AT started charging at other park n rides. Will the geniuses at the Orakei local board fight to the last BMW for their right to ratepayer funded parking at Orakei and Meadowbank while the citizens of Manukau have to pay for theirs? Probably.
Not difficult to price these spaces right, clearly less than downtown, but free? That’s nuts. Why not just hand out train tickets to the citizens of Remuera too?
The Manukau car park has been dropped by Auckland Transport.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10813702
“Auckland Transport has ditched plans for a $20 million parking building from near Manukau’s new railway station, a project understood to have caused some concern to senior council officials.”
Yay!, but they still built an earlier one there, no?
Yes, but it’s a building for Manukau commuters, not intended for park n ride. Earlybird fees are s $7, with full rate daily parking at $19.
A couple of observations –
a. Sunnyvale is where the P&R is already and should be for the wider area. Any increase in train parking should be here – no different in fare stage, and there is some room to expand, even before going up one storey. If we are going to waste land for people who drive in from the Waitaks (and many of them drive in a long way!) we should not be letting key town centre space be given over to parking, rather using less valuable opportunities to dump cars for the day. I doubt many of them use the Glen Eden shops between the car and train, based on my daily observations. If there were a pay-off in terms of urban integration and customers for the town centre then I might warm a little to the idea, but it really does not happen.
b. Greg Presland’s office is directly opposite the car park mentioned – its always good to have lots of free parking for your firm…. Not saying he is not a good board member etc, but we all know how conflicted we all are in real life when it comes to some of these issues….
Um Tim
I have no idea how my clients park when they visit my office. I do not see people for more than an hour unless there are exceptional circumstances and there are plenty of P60, P90 and P120 parks around. As for me, regrettably I tend to get to work early enough to get a park or I do not and travel to court and if necessary pay the fine. I am working how to bike to work, catch trains to Court and become more healthy.
Eventually I will reside in Bethells and communicate with everyone, Courts included, by video link. The only traveling I will do will be by pied.
Hi Greg – thanks for fronting up, for explaining your logic on why you’re promoting P&R, and explaining your business aspect – I trust I was being reasonably open-minded in pointing out the latter, steering off being outright condemnatory? It’s not always easy to see what motives are when reading letters like yours in the press.
I get the idea of being realistic and strategic in some of these decisions, but I still don’t get why you aren’t suggesting the Fruitvale site is the most relevant for the area. Auckland’s centres are excessively blighted by parking; why prioritise GE town centre for more parking rather than directing it to where a monitored, dedicated car park is already provided? Fruitvale is undoubtedly better in terms of access from much of the wider area, and in terms of reducing traffic on west coast road. Interested to hear back.
Glen Eden has plenty of land available. Fruitvale has no land at all available, unless you mean getting rid of the tennis club and park, which would be a big negative for the local community. It’s the only green space in that neighbourhood. Glen Eden is also on main thoroughfares, while Fruitvale is on a back street.
I think Tim means Sunnyvale which already has a dedicated park and ride facility.
The park’n'ride is already full after 7:30 and even if it were expanded I would imagine this would not change so I don’t see how that would help Greg’s business.
Greetings Matt
I really enjoy your website. There is no other Auckland based discussion point that covers transport issues the way this blog covers them.
It is my letter. My view of public transport usage is that there will be two periods, an initial period where public transport usage gradually increases as locals realise that PT is more comfortable and cheaper and better for the environment and a subsequent period where peak oil starts to really hurt and people stop driving and start using the train system because there is no alternative.
My letter was addressed to the initial period. Right now Auckland Council should be pushing as many people as possible onto public transport as soon as possible.
Park and ride is part of this. I get really frustrated by the discussions but essentially Aucklanders do not like walking 500 m and catching a train, they prefer walking 100m and catching a train. I just wish they would walk slightly longer, be more healthy for it, and Auckland Council would never have to spend a dime on park and rides, but it is not happening right now.
Part of the process is to persuade Aucklanders how good the rail system is. It really is great now and when it is electrified it will be sustainable.
But I stand by my comment. The current imperative is to persuade more people to use the PT system and not drive. Interim park and rides are part of the persuasion process even though in environmental or economic terms they may not immediately make sense.
I guess the point people are making is that spending lots of money on Park n Ride is pretty poor “bang for your buck” when trying to attract people to use the rail network. What if we took that money and spent it on other ways to encourage patronage – like feeder buses, like better frequencies at weekends, like improved station facilities etc. etc.
To some extent I agree Greg. In a sense then this is AT land banking with sites that will become more and more valuable for development as the stations are used more. But even as a principle alone I think there should be a charge for the parking but perhaps the best time to introduce this is when the bus route changes are beginning and integrated ticketing is working….? Parking will need to be priced so as to still be attractive compared to driving further in and parking there.
As mentioned above, Bike n Ride is a wonderful option. Very simple to communicate, extremely simple and cheap to implement, I’m surprised no facility has pushed this at all. Inexpensive bike lock facility with a basic roof on for rain cover, why not? Of course the environment around the Albany facility is pretty brutal for cyclists I’ll admit, but couldn’t something like work quite well at Glen Eden? I’d imagine many of the journeys would be 2ks or less, which as mentioned is ideal for biking.
Definitely need far more and far larger bike and ride facilities (covered or not covered) at AKL stations than there are at present. I really dont see the need for people to take their bikes onto the train.
In Japan, cycling to the nearest station, parking bikes in special bike parking frames (bikes are either locked into a frame two bikes high or slotted into a continuous frame) and getting on the train, is the norm. I’m sure that in Auckland, people would cycle up to 2km to the nearest station even if its raining a little, as long as there are proper bike park facilities there. From what Ive seen, bike park facilities at stations in AKL, are pretty pathetic.
Moreover, cyclists are not all mountain bikers in lycra, burning down the road, sweating away. New Zealand really has to move on from the current narrow view of what it means to be a cyclist. There will be more and more sit-up style bikes and sit-up style electric bikes coming into NZ, over the next 5 years I believe and thus, proper bike parking facilities at stations that can accomodate up to at least 50 bikes, should be put in place over the next 3-5 years. In this instance, it is very much a case of ‘if you build it, they will come’.
Agreed. Any park n ride must have decent bike parking included.
And here’s me thinking that less than 2km is close enough to walk.
2km is about 20-30 minutes, depending on how fast you walk. If you’re already commuting on a train and then walking to your end destination, having another hour a day, or 200 hours per year taken from you will have an effect. My experience with a daily 30 minute walk after a 1 hour train ride and 15 minute city walk in Melbourne was that the pleasantness wore off by about 7pm. 2km can be cycled in 5-8 minutes, a much more reasonable and convenient option.
It also expands the catchment of the station dramatically, which as we’ve seen in previous posts is a major boost to usage.
Driving and parking is of course the big housing issue too, and not just in AK:
http://www.streetsblog.org/2011/10/17/nycha-chairman-parking-minimums-working-against-us/