Auckland Transport Blog

I didn’t get the chance to make it to the expo on the Waterview Connection today, although some commenters here did go along and it’s interesting to hear what they have had to say about it. I will try to get along next week.

One interesting things to come out of the expo is a pile of additional information, that is available to view in this document. It covers everything from the planning process to noise minimisation to tunnelling techniques. From a planning perspective, it’s interesting to hear that the notice of requirement is likely to be lodged around the middle of this year – so if you’re planning to make a submission on the Waterview Connection then it would pay to start thinking about what you’re going to say now.

The diagram below shows the construction techniques that will be used for the project (which now also includes some of the work to State Highway 16): Looking at the State Highway 16 widening part of this project (which seems to have been lumped in together with the Waterview Connection project itself), one of my biggest criticisms of this motorway widening is that it will simply induce traffic – meaning that before particularly long the motorway will be just as congested as it is now. The information in the diagram below tends to confirm my suspicions: The graph immediately above shows that widening state highway 16 will result in many more vehicles using it than would have done so otherwise, had the project not been constructed. What I find particularly interesting is that traffic on Te Atatu Road and Rosebank Road is also higher in the “2026 with project” scenario than it is in the “2026 no project scenario”. So not only is the project inducing traffic on the motorway itself, it’s also inducing traffic on the surrounding roads. NZTA claim that, in general, the motorway widening will divert traffic from local and arterial roads onto the motorway, although I’m not sure how much I really believe that as it seems NZTA do not believe in the concept of induced demand.

It’s a bit of a different story for the Waterview Connection part of the project, with some of the traffic benefits here will actually be quite real, as the new route means that local and arterial routes will no longer have to serve the functions of of a connection between SH16 and SH20. So roads like Carrington Road and Blockhouse Bay road will have long term benefits. I do still question whether this is really the most essential way to spend billions of dollars on transport in the Auckland region, but I guess at least with the Waterview Connection part of the project I think there will be long-term benefits with cars drawn off existing local roads. With the State Highway 16 widening I really can’t see any long-term benefits.

Apparently there was some talk about how the Avondale-Southdown rail corridor will be protected, and construction of that corridor “made easier” by the Waterview Connection project. That is certainly a good thing, and something I will look to find out more about when I visit next Saturday.

There has been a lot of talk about electric cars being the way of the future, a way that we can supposedly retain our automobility yet at the same time confront problems with declining oil supplies and the effect of transport on climate change. An article in the Sydney Morning Herald from December last year, reproduced in the lastest “Going Solar” newsletter, suggests that electric cars may not be the answer. Quite fascinatingly, it shows that electric cars are definitely nothing new:I do think electric cars are definitely part of the solution for the longer-term transport problems we face. However, I think they’re definitely not the solution on their own. In the end, we need to reduce our auto-dependency – whether or not it’s petrol-powered auto-dependency or electric-powered auto-dependency.

The government has released a document on improving road safety in New Zealand, called “Safer Journeys“. There is quite a wide variety of measures being looked at to improve road safety. These include raising the driving age from 15 to 16, ensuring that learner drivers get more experience before getting their restricted license, fixing up right-hand turning rules to improve safety, reducing blood-alcohol limits and other measures. Most of these seem pretty sensible.

However, what seems to have been ignored are measures to simply reduce the number of people driving on our roads. If we look at the road toll in recent years 2008 stands out like a beacon:

In 2009 the toll jumped back to around 400 I think, making 2008 the year which had the lowest toll by quite some margin. So what happened in 2008?  The answer there is higher petrol prices, so therefore people drove less. Traffic volumes on many parts of the state highway network were down 10% in 2008 compared with the same month the year before.

If one was being provocative, you could argue that we need to raise petrol taxes significantly so that driving is made more expensive – as therefore history seems to show that fewer people will die on our roads. Alternatively, we could improve public transport, walking and cycling so that people have more options when it comes to getting around. It’s a pity that has not been given greater consideration in what otherwise seems to be a fairly well thought through document.

A 1950s book that we discovered at work has some really interesting aerial photographs of Auckland overlaid with some of the transport plans at that time. One plan in particular I find quite interesting, because it shows how Auckland’s spaghetti junction was envisaged to look. It’s worthwhile to note that route “E” was never built – quite thankfully as it was a motorway down Dominion Road and would have completely torn the heart out of this part of the city. I find it interesting to see how narrow all the proposed motorways look – simple white lines on the photograph.

It’s somewhat gutting to compare that with how things turned out – shown in the photo below. It becomes clear how much of the inner-city we lost by building spaghetti junction:

I shudder to think what this area might have turned out like if we had also built that Dominion Road motorway.

NZTA have announced the details of the Waterview Connection expo to be held over the next couple of weeks. It seems like a lot of further information on the latest alignment will be unveiled at this expo: I must say this does seem to be a rather strange way to undertake consultation with the community. Usually there are “Open Days” where people drop by for half an hour or so, have a look at plans, ask various experts particular questions that concern them and so forth. I must say it would take a pretty dedicated Waterview Connection enthusiast to sit through all seven hours of the expo. I wonder why NZTA has chosen this kind of format?

I might be able to get along to the March 13th session, although even a transport nerd like myself would struggle to sit through seven hours of the thing.

There’s a quite remarkable opinion piece in the NZ Herald today by Maungaturoto resident Danielle Williamson. I say remarkable because she actually gets close to making the Puhoi-Wellsford “holiday highway” sound like a sensible option for funding priority. Here’s the article in full:

Danielle Williamson: Highway more than holidaymakers’ getaway

The Auckland Regional Council chairman calls it a holiday highway.

Which is all good if like Mike Lee, you live in Auckland and only use State Highway 1 on your way to the beach.

You needn’t use it often and when you do, you’re not in any hurry. You know the Government has identified it as a “road of national significance” but you can’t quite figure out why.

Surely a road which carries fewer than 20,000 vehicles a day can’t be all that nationally significant, can it? All you know is the Puhoi to Wellsford stretch has been earmarked for priority motorway extension and it’s going to cost you, the taxpayer, a horrendous $2.3 billion. Minimum.

And you know that in doing so, in four-laning a whole 34km chunk of SH1 of such little consequence, Auckland misses out on urgently needed public transport funding.

It hardly seems right, does it? After all, Auckland is New Zealand’s largest city, gateway to the country and in need of a proper commuter rail system.

But on behalf of the 250,000 New Zealanders who live north of Albany and use SH1 not as a holiday highway but as the only viable route into Auckland and beyond, let us be fair. SH1 north of Puhoi is a disgrace and in dire need of an upgrade.

People die on this road in appalling numbers. It is substandard, narrow and too winding. Anyone who travels this road on a regular basis can see it is unable to handle current traffic volumes.

And finally, when it does in fact go into holiday highway mode – because hoards of Aucklanders must all escape the city at the very same time – Warkworth and Wellsford become holiday hell and are gridlocked from one end of town to the other. Or further – sometimes traffic is blocked for up to 25km.

No it doesn’t happen every day, but it does happen enough to warrant both communities a bypass. And yet for some Aucklanders, this seems to be a problem. So much so that when it comes to regional transport priorities, the Auckland Regional Transport Committee thinks it barely rates a mention and puts it bottom of the list.

But wait! With 32 per cent of the national transport budget (and one third of the national population) allocated towards Auckland roading projects – completion of the Western Ring Route and the Victoria Park Tunnel – Auckland is hardly missing out.

To the Northland region as a whole – and particularly its economy – SH1 is the only viable access to the rest of the country. It is our transport lifeline and critical to the prosperity of the region.

Better – and safer – roads allow for easier movement of freight and people between Northland and Auckland and beyond. It allows for community growth, economic development and helps bring much needed tourists our way. It may even benefit the Auckland economy.

To the individuals who live here, SH1 is of critical importance. Whether it be for business, medical care, education, pleasure or practicality, SH1 is the only link south. We need this road. And we need it to be reliable and safe.

Unfortunately for Northlanders, frequent SH1 traffic delays and road fatalities are not simple inconveniences on the way to bach. They are a fact of life.

Gone are the days where one could hop in the car and be in the city without incident.

Greater traffic volumes now mean when travelling from the North, precautions must be taken in case of delays. If you require medical treatment in Auckland, you allow yourself plenty of time for the journey and hope that for whatever reason, the road is not closed.

If you have an early morning flight at the airport, it’s best to go the night before. And if the weather is bad and conditions less than ideal, you may cancel altogether because you know that on this particular patch of road, the Grim Reaper may be around the next corner.

But this is not about Northland prosperity or total project expense. The main issue here is road safety. SH1 from Puhoi to Wellsford in its present capacity as a two lane single carriage way is unsafe.

In the first three quarters of 2009 alone, 100 accidents occurred here.

Eight people were killed. Since the new Northern Gateway dual carriage toll road from Orewa to Johnstone’s Hill in January 2009 (to the end of August 2009), there were just five accidents and no injuries. The numbers speak for themselves.

The Government is right in declaring this particular stretch of SH1 one of national significance as it is high time the road from Puhoi to Wellsford be divided into a proper motorway.

For the 30 people who lost their lives on this small stretch of New Zealand road in the past five years, it is long overdue.

* Danielle Williamson lives at Maungaturoto, Northland.

There’s a lot to agree with here. Certainly, the stretch of road is very dangerous – particularly between Warkworth and Wellsford (which is unlikely to be upgraded within the next 10 years in any case). Also, certainly the traffic congestion – while generally limited to holiday periods and Sunday evenings – is very severe. So there are some good arguments that we need to do something about this stretch of state highway one between Puhoi and Wellsford.

However, I do think we need to question whether that something really needs to be a $1.4 billion (or $2.3 billion according to Ms Williamson) four-lane motorway. Most of the congestion seems to be caused by the Warkworth bottleneck, and as I have previously explained, surely the best solution there would be to simply bypass Warkworth. You’d only need to build a fairly short stretch of new road, generally across fairly flat land – surely that wouldn’t cost much more than $50-100 million, and you would have solved most of the congestion problems.

The second issue is safety, and as I said earlier the crash record of this road clearly indicates we need to do something to improve safety along here. But the question really is whether that thing should a supremely expensive motorway? What about alternatives such as easing particularly nasty corners, extending passing lanes, constructing wire barriers down the middle of roads, installing permanent speed cameras at regular frequencies and other such measures? Should we not at least try out those other things first before embarking on a hugely expensive motorway?

And here’s where we come back to the title of this blog post. We certainly have a problem here with the Puhoi-Wellsford stretch of State Highway 1. However, the proposed solution is massive overkill – it is using a sledgehammer to crack open a nut. It’s always tempting to come up with grandiose solutions to problems, without considering their cost. In public transport circles there’s a regular debate about whether we should construct the CBD Rail Tunnel as a two-track tunnel or a four-track tunnel. In an ideal world, of course we’d build it as a four-track tunnel – as chances are 30-40 years down the track we will need four-tracks of rail capacity through Auckland’s CBD. However, in the shorter term it’s actually ludicrous to suggest such a solution, because it’s going to be hard enough finding the money for a two-track tunnel, and really demand can only justify a two-track tunnel for quite a few decades to come.

In the end, we don’t live in Norway, Switzerland or Saudi Arabia. We don’t have money coming out of our ears and we need to be careful about where we spend money – to ensure that it’s worth it. That means, in the case of the CBD Rail Tunnel, that we end up with a two-track tunnel – and in the future if we need further capacity we perhaps find another alignment. For Puhoi-Wellsford, sensible thinking would mean that we bypass Warkworth, we spend a significant amount of money on safety upgrades to the existing road, but we don’t waste $1.4 billion on a motorway that will used by fewer vehicles than drive up and down Sandringham Road each day.

The other important issue to consider is that, by focusing so much on this “big bang” approach to fixing the problems faced along the Puhoi-Wellsford corridor, we’re actually delaying safety improvements that are really needed right now, or congestion easing improvements that are also probably needed already. It’ll take around 9 years (according to NZTA) to plan, design, consent and build just the first section of this road (from Puhoi-Warkworth). The second section won’t be upgraded for more than a decade, which means at least 10 more years of too many people dying along this stretch of road. Once again, the sensible approach would be to get on with bypassing Warkworth and get on with improving safety along the road as a whole.

Unfortunately, minor bypasses and safety upgrades don’t get as many news headlines as 35km long new motorways. Which explains a lot.

Auckland City Council owns five parking buildings within the Auckland CBD – Fanshawe Street, Downtown, Victoria Street, Civic and Karangahape Road. All up, these parking buildings provide quite a few thousand spaces in the CBD. I must say I have always found it rather strange that Council does own car parking buildings – as after all does it not contradict with others plans and strategies they have to minimise the number of people driving themselves into the CBD?

While I certainly am not generally an advocate for councils selling off their assets, I wonder whether there are good grounds for an exception to be made here. Is it perhaps a bit of a conflict of interest for council to retain its parking buildings? Another interesting issue to look at is the value of the various car-parking buildings owned by council. The ARC’s “Region Viewer” website has some very interesting information on property valuations, and gives us an insight into what Auckland City Council could potentially make if it sold its parking buildings.

I get the following valuations of the parking buildings:

1. Fanshawe Street: $15.6 million
2. Downtown: $68.5 million (see image below)
3. Victoria Street: $40.4 million (see image below)
4. Civic (can’t really be separated from the Aotea Centre above it, so wouldn’t bother)
5. Karangahape Road: $9.1 million

Here’s an image of the Downtown carpark, showing the valuation: And Victoria Street: That’s $133.6 million all up. You could buy back a pretty big chunk of Auckland’s buses for that price.

A number of commenters on my post yesterday noted with great concern the potential effects of the latest Waterview Connection alignment on the viability of the Avondale-Southdown Railway Corridor. I figure that it’s probably worth exploring that matter in a little bit more detail, as I can impart a little bit of my knowledge of planning matters to help us analyse the situation.

The Avondale-Southdown railway corridor is a bit infamous in many respects, as it has been designated since around 1947 I think, yet today we find ourselves not really being any closer to constructing in than we were back in 1947. As the name indicates, it’s a railway line that runs from near Avondale to Southdown, which is an industrial area near Penrose. It appears in the 1946 transport plan for Auckland, which is included below:Primarily this line is likely to be justified in terms of how it would improve shifting freight between Northland – via the North Auckland Line (the Western Line) – and the industrial hub of Auckland around Southdown/Penrose/Westfield. At the moment all freight trains heading north need to pass through Newmarket and the inner part of the Western Line – which obvious means plenty of potential conflicts with passenger services. As passenger service levels increase in the future it is likely to become more and more difficult for freight to find an appropriate ‘window’ to operate in, particularly through busy junctions like Newmarket. This is where the Avondale-Southdown line would come in handy.

Furthermore, if there are other future network expansions, like rail to the airport or the CBD Rail Tunnel, then the Avondale-Southdown line might be a useful part of this network. We could run trains from New Lynn to Manukau City via the Airport, or potentially trains doing a big circuit of the CBD via the inner-Western line, the Eastern Line and the Avondale-Southdown Line. In other words, while construction of this line may not be one of the top priorities for Auckland at the moment, it’s certainly conceivable that it might be useful and necessary in the future.

Now, turning to the contentious area around the western end of the proposed line, we can see from the Auckland City Council planning map below, just to the south of Hendon Ave there is a shaded area which is noted as G08-05. This is the area designated as the Avondale-Southdown railway line. If we compare this designation with the most recent alignment of the Waterview Connection, shown below, it’s clear that there’s significant potential for some conflict. In fact, I think it’s fair to assume that under both the May 2009 alignment at the December 2009 alignment there would have been conflicts with parts of the Avondale-Southdown rail designation. Under this most recent alignment the “Proposed Rail Line” seems to shift northwards, to sit relatively closely to the southern side of Hendon Ave. Now of course the map above is just a diagram, and perhaps with a more detailed map we could learn more, but certainly the ‘proposed rail line’ appears to generally be in a different location to where the current rail designation is. Put simply, the motorway has taken its designation, so it has had to move northwards.

There are a few worrying factors relating to this. The first factor is that it seems as though KiwiRail/Ontrack will have to redesignate their corridor. This involves a fairly complicated process under the Resource Management Act, something similar to the process by which one applies for a resource consent. This means that the new designation’s environmental effects would have to be analysed, its benefits weighed up against those effects, and so forth. Furthermore, it could be challenged in the environment court and potentially declined by that court. So basically KiwiRail has to go through a complicated process to resolve a problem that has not in any way been caused by them.

The second factor to consider is that because Kiwirail/Ontrack “got there first” with their designation, in order for NZTA to “take” their designation, or slap another designation on top of theirs (yes, there are designations on top of designations, and it an get complicated), KiwiRail/Ontrack would have to give their approval. This is outlined in section 177 of the RMA, which I have included below:

To simplify the legalistic language used above, sub-section 1 says that the latter authority wanting to designate (NZTA in this situation) needs the permission of the earlier designating authority (KiwiRail) for this to proceed. Sub-section 2 limits the reasons for which KiwiRail could decline such permission, but the fact that building a motorway in the rail designation would clearly “prevent or hinder” constructing a railway line there means that I think KiwiRail absolutely would have the jurisdiction to tell NZTA to bugger off, for want of a better term.

I can’t see that happening though, as I doubt KiwiRail would have the guts to stand up for their own designation. Which means a heck of a lot of work for them in sorting out a new designation to the north, through a whole bunch of houses.

There are some interesting updates on the Waterview Connection in this month’s agendas of the Auckland Regional Council Transport & Urban Development Committee and the Auckland City Council Transport Committee. Before I specify the details, remember that this is the kind of information that would not be publicly available under the proposed Super City legislation relating to Auckland Transport.

Let’s start with the ARC:I must admit that the costings associated with this project still confuse the heck out of me. First we had the four-lane tunnel that was going to cost apparently $2.77 billion, then we had the cheaper option that was going to cost $1.4 billion but involve plenty of nasty cut & cover and take heaps of property, then we switched back to something near the first option but for the price of the second, and now it seems that the Waterview part of the wider “Western Ring Route” project will be even cheaper than previously thought, but that the SH16 upgrades will be more expensive than previously thought. What on earth is going on?

I certainly look forward to learning a bit more about this at the “expo” in late February. I hope that NZTA have a clue about what’s going on, because it certainly doesn’t seem like they do from here. Furthermore, in order for the full Notice of Requirement documentation to be completed by mid 2010 there are going to be some very very busy people. I’m guessing the final documentation will be a bit of a mess – half of the work done for this alignment, a bit of the work done for a previous alignment all lumped together.

Now for what Auckland City Council have to report on the project:As I have said previously, this new alignment certainly is an improvement. However, I do not some concerns about the potential impacts of this new alignment on the designated Avondale-Southdown railway corridor. The report above says that the rail designation will have to be shifted to accommodate the motorway, which basically means that KiwiRail will have to go through a pretty ugly process of redesignating the rail corridor, potentially taking out houses, simply because the motorway has effectively stolen their right-of-way. Designation changes can be legally challenged, as they effectively have to go through a similar process to a resource consent application.

What if the designation alteration for the railway line gets turned down in the environment court or something like that? What if a concerned local resident argues that nobody’s ever used the Avondale-Southdown rail corridor in 60 years, why the heck should KiwiRail be allowed to realign a corridor through their house that probably won’t be used in the next 10-20 years? That’s a pretty strong argument against the rail designation, all caused by the motorway’s alignment.

Maybe it won’t be that complicated and fraught. But what if it is? What if we lose the rail corridor?

Late last year NZTA announced another alignment for the Waterview Connection motorway link between Mt Roskill and State Highway 16 at Pt Chevalier. As I said at the time, the change was certainly a good one – with the project likely to take out around 160 fewer homes than the previous “May 2009 alignment“. In fact, as shown in the map below, the latest alignment is getting pretty close towards being identical to the alignment that NZTA preferred way back in 2008. The red part of the route, at its southern end, shows the only area that was originally tunnel (as per the 2008 alignment) but remains as a surface motorway in the latest scheme. This means that, unfortunately, Allan Wood Reserve will still be fairly gutted by the motorway – but it’s certainly better than the previous option where the tunnel portal was much closer to New North Road. The area in red is about 1.14km long. The original tunnel was just over 4km long I think, while the tunnel in the most recent option will be just under 3 km long (the 2008 tunnel took a more northern alignment from memory, unfortunately NZTA seem to have deleted all traces of the previous options from their website so it’s difficult to compare). Interestingly enough, the 2008 tunnel was to be a maximum of 4 lanes wide, whereas the latest option will apparently be able to take 6 lanes of traffic in the future if required (and if NZTA widen every other motorway in Auckland to avoid bottlenecks).

So what’s the point that I am trying to make here? Well basically it comes back to the cost of these various options. The 2008 scheme was said to cost $2.77 billion, broken down into just over $2 billion for the motorway itself, $240 million for upgrades to SH16 and $400 million for ‘financing costs’ (even though NZTA’s own policies state that financing costs shouldn’t be included). The most recent option – the one with just over a kilometre less tunnel, but a wider tunnel and otherwise fairly much the same – will apparently cost only $1.4 billion (including the SH16 upgrades). So basically somehow we’ve halved the cost of this project while only really eliminating 1km of tunnel (which is surely somewhat counter-balanced in cost terms by having to build a wider tunnel). From memory the 6 lane option of the 2008 scheme was costed at $3.2 billion – so really we’re apparently saving $1.8 billion by building 1km less tunnel.

That sounds like an extraordinarily good deal, too good in fact. And it makes me suspicious that either the previous costings were enormously overblown, or this latest option has been severely under-quoted. I really do think that NZTA need to explain further how turning 1km of tunnel into 1km of surface motorway – while everything else stays basically the same – can result in a $1.8 billion cost saving, when it’s “only” going to cost around $1.1 billion to construct the remaining 2.8km (roughly) of tunnel.

The second matter which has begun to prey on my mind over the past few weeks relates to the 160 or so households that previously thought they were going to be nailed by the motorway, but no longer will be. I can’t imagine the emotional distress that these people have been through over the past 9 or so months – thinking that their house was going to be demolished to make way for this motorway and that they would have to find somewhere else to live – only to find in the end that they needn’t have worried and the motorway is going to miss them after all. Of course one would imagine their immediate reaction would be relief and perhaps jubilation, as was my reaction when I first heard of the route change, but in the end what this means is that all that emotional strain for them was completely unnecessary. And in a way, that’s even worse than if their houses did need to be taken, because the whole debacle could have been completely avoided if Steven Joyce and NZTA hadn’t been in such a rush to come up with a new alignment back in May.

A useful analogy might be that your doctor tells you that you have terminal cancer and only 6 months to live, but then three months later gets back to you to say that it was all just a mistake and they mixed up your test results with someone else’s. Of course you are jubilant, but really is what just happened OK? Chances are you’ve been put through three months of hell, that was completely unnecessary – and in a way what the doctor has done to you is even worse than if you had cancer to start with.

All up I actually think there needs to be a serious explanation of what’s gone on here. How on earth can NZTA build the latest alignment for $1.4 billion? If they can build it for that price, why did we have the unnecessary May 2009 alignment? Why weren’t NZTA given more time to come up with the best route possible for the money they had to spend (which it seems they’ve finally done, if it’s possible to build it for that cost)? Is someone going to apologise to those 160 households who went through 9 months of hell unnecessarily?

What has happened is pretty damn unacceptable in my opinion.