Tomorrow Councillors will debate the feedback from submissions on the 2012-2022 Long Term Plan (LTP). There’s a lengthy agenda item on the LTP on the Council website, but even it doesn’t get into the details too much – detailed papers will supposedly be distributed separately, which means another mass of documents are likely to be uploaded onto the Council website in the next couple of days. The LTP is a really important plan as it effectively spells out the Council’s funding plans over the next 10 years, but most particularly in the first three (as new LTPs must be put together every three years). While there’s the opportunity each year to fine-tune an LTP by way of the annual plan, the LTP is where the meaty decisions are made.
And there’s not much more of a meaty issue at the moment than the City Rail Link. An NZ Herald article yesterday highlighted the importance of tomorrow’s meeting to the future of this project:
The $2.86 billion central rail loop remains the prime project in Mr Brown’s first 10-year budget, which faces a bumpy ride from councillors on Wednesday.
The day before Finance Minister Bill English unveils the Government’s Budget, Mr Brown and councillors will lock horns in the Auckland Town Hall over a $58 billion Super City budget.
Mr Brown said the council could not back off the need to invest in the future of the city and deal with major growth, but the budget had to be fair, just and prudent to the city’s 516,000 residential and business ratepayers.
Despite growing criticism towards the central rail loop, Mr Brown said it still had strong support.
The mayor’s determination for the 3.5km underground rail loop will be tested with a call by Citizens & Ratepayers and other right-leaning councillors to freeze funding on the project until it has Government backing.
The Government has serious reservations about the project.
Orakei councillor Cameron Brewer yesterday said it was crazy to spend $112 million in the coming financial year on land purchases for the rail loop when it had no funding certainty.
Mr Brown has put the Government down for half the cost of the project in the 10-year budget. Ratepayers are being asked to pay 14 per cent ($400 million) and alternative funding sources, such as tolls, the remaining 36 per cent or about $1 billion.
I get a bit annoyed when the Herald uses the phrase “growing criticism”, supposedly based off quite a few submissions to the LTP opposing the project because of its cost. If we’re going to attach “growing criticism” to the CRL then we should always attach “deeply unpopular” to the Puhoi-Wellsford holiday highway, based on submissions about that project.
That said, as this recent post pointed out, there’s a lot of uncertainty around the cost of the CRL and if I were a councillor I would absolutely want clarity on the matter. The price of the CRL seems to have edged up from $1.5 billion to $2 billion, then $2.4 billion and now, supposedly, $2.86 billion or even $2.94 billion – seemingly depending upon what day of the week it is. We know that the actual raw cost of the project (excluding contractors’ margins, design, contingency etc.) is under a billion dollars and has been peer reviewed on many occasions – so where on earth does the other $2 billion come from? We also know that Auckland Transport is looking at ways of reducing the project’s cost, where does that fit in the bigger and bigger numbers getting fed to the public all the time?
The most recent cost breakdown we’ve seen (emailed by Auckland Transport’s Wally Thomas to fellow blogger Patrick) suggests the project’s core cost remains at around $2 billion, with the extra money related to dollar inflation, extra trains and other additional infrastructure (which, I stress once again, is debatable whether it’s ‘part of the project’). Interesting to also see some potential savings of $166 million identified already: All that said, I think it’s time everyone took a big deep breath about the CRL project and actually looked at where the project is at, where it’s likely to get to in the next 3 years (the lifespan of the LTP), what money is actually needed during that time – and most particularly what money is needed over the next 12 months as next year’s Annual Plan offers the opportunity to revisit the issue. So let’s try to answer a few questions:
What money is needed in the next 12 months and where will that get the project?
According to the article above, around $112 million is proposed to be spent on the CRL during the 2012/2013 year – mostly on land purchasing but presumably also on consenting and detailed design. With the project’s route not yet even protected and no resource consents for its construction obtained, we’re certainly not starting construction in the next year. Money spent on property purchase should even be considered an investment, as surely once the project is completed that land will have increased in value (due to enhanced rail accessibility) and be prime for redevelopment.
To keep up with the proposed timeline for the project, by this time next year we will be well into securing the notice of requirement (route protection), resource consents and undertaking detailed design, as well as completing important property purchases for parts of the route not in a deep tunnel. What does that all mean? Well….
It means that this time next year we will have got this project further than ever before. Further than the 1920s scheme, the 1950s scheme or the 1970s scheme.
What does approving $112 million for next year NOT mean?
So let’s say I was a councillor worried about burdening ratepayers with a project that seems to be increasing in cost all the time, with no sign of commitment to the project yet from government. I would probably want to be sure that I wasn’t giving the absolute go ahead to the CRL’s construction at this time. Further work needs to be done to get the costs down, further work needs to be done to forge greater agreement between central and local government over its merits. Further work is needed to test public acceptance of the “alternative funding mechanisms” that will supposedly help contribute around $1 billion to the CRL’s construction cost.
Fortunately (for those such councillors), approving the $112 million next year does not mean the issue can’t be reanalysed in 12 months time to see where things are at on those matters. It seems pretty likely to me that the project’s cost will come down significantly, the consenting process and further detailed design will highlight ways in which the project can be further refined. Hopefully there’s also some good dialogue between council and government bureaucrats to resolve outstanding differences between business cases. In short, it seems like we’ll be in a much better position in a year’s time to really assess the long-term viability of the project than we are now – and the money we need to spend in the meanwhile is largely on land and therefore can be resold.
What happens if next year’s money is NOT approved?
Well this is why I call it “D-Day” for the City Rail Link project. If there is no money made available to progress land purchase then Auckland Transport’s ability to protect the route becomes severely compromised and effectively the CRL grinds to a halt: much as it has done so on so many occasions in the past. We go back to future scenarios with a rail system hitting capacity by the end of the decade, a city centre swamped with buses, an inherently inefficient rail system, more congestion on our roads, less ability to achieve the intensification outlined in the Auckland Plan, a less economically successful city.. the list goes on.
Clearly the project is not going to be “approved and funded” tomorrow. I suspect we’ll need to see a change of government for it to end up being actually funded – but that’s a debate for another day. So the council’s decisions tomorrow aren’t going to make the project happen, they’re not writing it a giant blank cheque. However, the council could certainly do the project’s future a lot of damage tomorrow – largely reacting to a bit of hysteria about the project’s costs that Auckland Transport should have dealt with a long time ago.
For now, we can just hope the councillors show some vision, don’t freak out, take a big deep breath and realise the money they’re actually approving is effectively an investment in some city centre land. I’ve got my fingers crossed.
One of the things I have being trying to find out recently is more details about the financing arrangements for our new electric trains. We already knew that the government had decided that they would fund them by loaning the money to Auckland Council but we didn’t know much else about it. Thanks to the results of an official information act (OIA) request to the NZTA we can now shed some more light on how the trains and the depot are being paid for (this is my own OIA request and not one passed on by anyone else). The OIA request provided three board papers on the topic, from June (854 KB), August (1.6 MB) and November (116 KB).
The financing arrangement has quite a few parties involved so I will try to explain it as best I can. First up there are actually a few different things that are being brought, we are getting 57 brand new electric trains (EMUs) and a brand new depot to maintain them. For the trains there will also be a maintenance contract in place to keep them looked after for the first 12 years of service. This table breaks down the costs although the maintenance is not included as presumably that was agreed to after the paper this came from (June) was presented to the NZTA board.
All up the papers indicate that the total costs of the project will be about $630 million. This would make the maintenance costs about $4 million per year which seems pretty good as by comparison our current clapped out fleet of trains cost about $15 million per year to maintain.
So how is this all being paid for, well that’s where things get quite interesting. The government is providing a loan of $500m towards the project that Auckland would have to pay back. It also announced that it would give a direct grant of $90m towards the project and that any costs above that amount ($40m) would have to come from Auckland somehow. Of course the devil as they say, is in the details and there are quite a few of those.
The $500 loan levied from Treasuries Debt Management Office (DMO) to the Auckland council. It will actually comprise of two loans, one for the EMUs of $400m at a term of 35 years and the other one for the depot of $100m at a term 50 years. That part does make sense, 35 years is probably about the lifespan of the trains while the depot is something that will likely last a lot longer. The interesting part comes in the form of what the council is being charged. The DMO will charge the council at the government bond rate, which the amount the government can get the money for, plus 1.25% (more on this shortly).
The council will then pass this loan along with the additional $40m required on to Auckland Transport who will pay the loan off. That loan will be paid off through a mixture of funding from the council, funding from the NZTA and fares from passengers. The funding from the NZTA for rail has historically been set at 60% however over the next decade this will reduce to 50% dropping by 1% per year. This diagram hopefully helps to explain some the setup.
Now as mentioned previously the DMO is charging the loan out at the government bond rate plus 1.25%. That might not sound like much but over the life of these loans it will end up being a considerable chunk of money, in fact some quick calculations show that over the life of these two loans we will be paying about $130 million in interest over and above what money costs the government. Of that $130m about half of it will be coming directly from rate payers with the other half coming from the NZTA. I can understand that there may be some extra costs involved in arranging things but should the government really be trying act in what is more like a commercial manner by collecting a margin on the loan? As the title of the post indicates, it sounds like they are clipping the ticket.
Another interesting thing that these papers reveal is in regards to the $90 million contribution that the government said it was giving to Auckland. The table below may have parts blacked out but it indicates that a large portion of the $90m is actually coming from existing and expected under spends in both the DART and Electrification projects. This is important for two reasons, the first is that it is money that was actually already planned to have been spent on rail in Auckland but the second and perhaps most important part is that both of those two projects appear to have come in significantly under budget. Coming in under budget for large roading projects has been a common occurrence in recent years so seeing it also happen with rail projects is positive. This is also important as another, even larger rail project is currently being talked about in the form of the CRL and even coming in 5% under budget could shave $100m or more off the total cost.
There are lots of other interesting bits revealed in these papers. One of the best outcomes from the tender is the fact that we are now getting 57 EMUs, we were initially only going to get 38 of them and then around 13 electric locomotives to pull the existing SA carriages around. The reason that plan was eventually dropped was that when the whole of life costs were considered it was clear that the cheaper option was to get the new trains and the papers indicate that it was cheaper by about $46 million.
Another aspect touched on in the papers is the total costs that will be associated with running the system including which as far as I’m aware includes everything from the track access charges to running services as well as the loan payments. A number of different options were modelled as the image below shows. The paper indicates that at the time it was written the amount of money coming from the National Land Transport Fund was $39m, this is significant as while there is expected to be a funding buldge in the coming years, in a decades time the expected level of funding will come back and only be $42m while over the same period the amount of money collected from fares will increase from $28m to $55m
Overall there is quite a bit of detail in these papers but it would be really good to have an explanation as to why Auckland rate payers will be paying millions and millions of dollars in extra interest to the government.
Further to my last post about the Vancouver Skytrain, I have found three videos which show – sped up – the whole system (except for a bit of the Canada Line).
A few things about the videos really stand out to me:
The extremely high frequency of trains you see travelling in the opposite direction
The extensive amount of high-rise residential development which has occurred around many of the stations (especially on the Expo Line, which is the oldest)
The fact that most of the Canada Line is in a tunnel, and the difference in tunnel shape between the cut & cover (square tunnel) and bored (round tunnel) sections
The videos are a great way to get a good understanding of the system, and also to see a fairly extensive part of Vancouver.
As I noted in this recent post, Vancouver has had spectacular success with its public transport system over the past 20 years – generating huge growth in patronage, which has helped contribute to Vancouver generally performing extremely well in world liveability rankings. The comments on that post highlighted a surprising number of people who had lived in Vancouver, with two really strong themes coming through around why people thought Vancouver had been so successful:
A really simple fare system that allowed easy transfers and offered really good value for money
The Skytrain system
For this post I’m going to look at the Skytrain system, wrapped around the question of whether it offers almost the perfect solution for high volume public transport routes. Here’s the Translink description of the Skytrain system:
Launched in 1986, SkyTrain is the oldest and one of the longest fully-automated, driverless, rapid transit systems in the world. The Expo and Millennium SkyTrain Lines connect downtown Vancouver with the cities of Burnaby, New Westminster and Surrey. The Canada Line connects downtown Vancouver to the Vancouver International Airport (YVR) and the city of Richmond.
SkyTrain runs on a mostly elevated guideway, high above city streets, though there are a few stations located underground. The name SkyTrain is derived from the first SkyTrain line, the Expo Line.
British Columbia Rapid Transit Company Ltd. (BCRTC), on behalf of TransLink, maintains and operates two of the three SkyTrain lines in Metro Vancouver.
Both the Expo and the Millennium lines are operated out of BCRTC’s Operations and Maintenance Centre in Burnaby, BC where more than 630 dedicated staff work in the areas of administration, engineering, elevator and escalator maintenance, field operations, vehicle maintenance and wayside maintenance.
BCRTC currently serves about 250,000 passengers per weekday and has an on-time service delivery performance rating of 95.46 per cent.
Although the name refers to the elevation of the line, and much of the Skytrain system is elevated, this isn’t really a defining characteristic of the system in my mind. Furthermore, a very large portion of the most recent line to open, the Canada Line, is actually underground.
The three lines of the Skytrain are shown in the network map below: With only three lines, the Skytrain system certainly doesn’t have a huge amount of coverage, compared to many rail networks around the world. In fact it quite possibly has fewer route kilometres than Auckland’s rail network – which is an interesting rejoinder to those who say rail will never work in Auckland because the system isn’t extensive enough. So how successful has the Skytrain system been? Well let’s have a look at its patronage over the past 20 years: Some of the big jumps are obviously associated with the openings or extensions of lines, but it’s pretty remarkable to see a rail system which has gone from 25 million rail trips a year to 120 million trips in the space of just a couple of decades. It puts Auckland’s otherwise impressive leap from 2.5 million rail trips in 2003 to 10.5 million today into a bit of sobering perspective.
What’s the key to this success? Why is the Skytrain system used so much? How can it attract so many trips when it’s a relatively limited system in terms of its reach? Well I’d offer three main reasons for the success – although once again I’m keen to hear from those who have lived in Vancouver to see whether there’s anything else worth mentioning:
1) Convenience and Frequency
This effectively relates to the quality of service provided by the Skytrain and the usefulness that it provides for those wanting to travel around Vancouver. Obviously the system is fully grade separated, which means fast travel times even along fairly lengthy (distance wise) trips. The system is built to a high quality, well maintained and so forth.
Photo Credit: Bombardier
But the main attractiveness, I think, is the frequency of service. Because the Skytrain vehicles are driverless, the connection between adding frequency and adding operating cost has been broken – so instead of running less frequent long trains in the peak, we have extremely frequent but relatively short trains. Missed one, well that’s OK because the next train is just a minute or two away. First train full, well that’s OK because the next one will be here extremely soon. From the customer’s perspective, having a two carriage train arrive every 2 minutes is much more convenient than a 10 carriage train arriving every 10 minutes – and the driverless operation of the Skytrain enables that to happen.
But perhaps even more brilliantly, driverless operation allows for extremely good off-peak frequencies. If the main cost in operating the trains just sits in their purchase, then it makes sense to keep those train in service as much as possible. So even during off-peak times, the service frequency of the Skytrain remains exceptionally good. This is shown in the table below from Wikipedia: So on the combined section of the Expo-Millennium lines we have a train every 108 seconds at peak times (a frequency that’s extremely difficult to achieve with non-automated trains) and during off-peak a train every 3-4 minutes. So even at 10.30pm on a Sunday night, the longest you’re going to have to wait for a train on this section is 4 minutes. The longest you’ll ever have to wait for a train on combined sections of track is 10 minutes on the Canada Line. This is frequency you can live your life around and is utterly critical to the success of the system – and completely dependent on its driverless operation as otherwise it would be impossibly expensive to run such high frequencies, especially off-peak.
2) Land-Use Integration
As I previously detailed in this post, Vancouver has a number of superb examples of best-practice integration between land-use and rapid transit. Put simply, while the Skytrain system doesn’t serve a lot of Vancouver’s area, because intensification has been concentrated around the system’s stations so effectively, the Skytrain certainly does serve a big proportion of Vancouver’s population.
Not only has Vancouver located so much of its residential intensification around the Skytrain network, but also employment opportunities – and not just downtown. By having a large downtown population and many employment locations around suburban Skytrain stations, Vancouver sees really strong two-way flows of passengers, further enhancing the efficiency of the system. Major attractions, such as shopping centres, are often located next to stations. Metrotown is a classic example of this integration (both photos taken very near Metrotown station):
3) Bus Integration
The clever integration of Vancouver’s extensive and very effective bus network with the Skytrain system has, I think, been utterly critical to its success. Because the Skytrain system is not extensive, it cannot reach everywhere and therefore relies heavily on feeder bus services to deliver its passengers – so it can then operate as railways do best: doing the heavy duty, backbone of the system, work.
The bus network interchanges with the Skytrain system regularly, allowing for the Skytrain to do extremely high capacity radial journeys while the cross-town buses combined with the Skytrain enable pretty easy “anywhere to anywhere” travel with just one transfer. The network is shown in the map below: Vancouver’s excellent fares system, based around a very simple zoned-based fare structure, make transferring between services extremely simple and attractive – meaning that in total there is a much higher number of “boardings” on Vancouver’s PT network (354 million in 2011) than there are “trips” (231 million in 2011). This indicates that a very significant proportion of PT trips in Vancouver involve a transfer.
By looking at Skytrain I think we can gather some really useful learnings which are applicable around the world, including Auckland. In my mind they are:
If at all possible, try to make your rail system go driverless. It enables such excellent frequencies without prohibitively high operating costs both at peak times and off-peak times.
Developing high density residential and employment areas around the rail network is both possible and clearly market attractive in Vancouver. Find out what makes it work there and apply to Auckland.
Integrate the bus system, using rail as the backbone. Don’t worry if the rail system isn’t massively extensive, just make sure it has many many feeder buses to keep those trains full.
Ensure there’s a fare system in place which is simple and easy to understand, and which encourages transfers between services.
It’s taken a while but AT has finally got around to posting the video that shows what the interior of the new EMUs will look like. They say the colours are still a work in progress so don’t get to caught up about them just yet.
We should get a chance to see what the trains will look like in person soon as the next mock-up from CAF should already be on the boat as it is due to arrive in June and after it has been reviewed by AT will be put on public display somewhere to allow people to comment on it. Here is the latest photos of that Mock-up from the April AT board report, once this arrives I think it will really help to get the wider public excited about them.
The City Rail Link is, undoubtedly, Auckland’s most important transport project – with this fact being highlighted in the Auckland Plan, which places the project as Auckland’s top priority. However, it is also a very expensive project – but just how expensive? And what is the cost breakdown? And how could costs potentially be trimmed? Those questions are important to explore further – particularly as reports mount about the CRL’s cost going up and up.
One problem that contributes to undermining support for the project is just how little information Auckland Transport share with the public on issues such as this. Really the only information we have to determine the cost of the project, and how it’s made up, is from an Appendix to the 2010 Business Case and then some further details in the 2011 Business Case Review. Here are some of the details from the original business case, which breaks down the costs: There are a few important points in the table above, which are worth highlighting:
The physical works of the project cost around $981 million out of the total budget of $2.4 billion. The rest seems to be property costs, contingency, design, client management, contractor’s margin and something called “funding risk”. I’ll call these the “other costs”.
The $2.4 billion total is actually the 95th percentile estimate (that is, there’s a 5% chance the cost will be higher and a 95% chance the cost will be lower). The “actual” cost (which I presume could be thought of as the most likely cost) is almost bang on $1 billion.
The stations make up a significant portion of the project’s physical cost: Aotea, K Road and Newton stations have a combined cost of around $455 million (excluding the “other costs”), around 46% of the project’s physical cost. Including all “other costs”, K Road and Newton stations are more than $300 million each.
As well as the “core cost” of the project (which has a closest estimated cost of $2 billion), the original business case also highlighted a number of additional areas of cost that would be required to implement the City Rail Link. These are summarised below: The $100 million in associated rail infrastructure works includes duplicating the Onehunga Line and grade separating a number of level crossings along the Western Line, as detailed in Appendix F. Whether these should be included in the cost of the CRL, just as whether the additional rolling stock should be included in the project’s cost (you don’t see the additional cost of buses included in business cases for bus projects) is an interesting debate to be had.
Debates between Central Government and Auckland in the Business Case Review have been very well covered on this blog over the past year, but what was interesting is that the parties generally agreed in their assessment of the project’s cost. This is outlined in the Workstream 6 document:
Our reviewers raised more than two dozen points ranging from major concept suggestions to relatively minor cost queries and opinions, which were referred to the APB&B Study team and Auckland Transport for their views. Most of these suggestions were countered, giving confidence that the original concept and costs had been considered in a robust manner. Some of our suggestions will be carried forward to the detailed design stage, when that is approved.
Both our reviewers were very interested in the benefits to the concept design and construction methods that might be gained through having contractors input to the project. Contractors’ knowledge of techniques and technology could potentially be used to save time and money by optimal design, staging, and construction. Our reviewers are of the opinion that it is conceivable that, given contractor input, it may be possible to reduce the costs if other innovative ways of working could be achieved, and this forms one of our conclusions.
They both agreed with the peer reviewers that the project could be carried out for the estimated cost (excluding property costs) of between $1.9b and $2.2b. Thus they confirm that the estimated construction costs are realistic.
In summary, it seems that the NZTA reviews found the cost estimated in the original business case to be realistic, and if anything their feedback suggested that savings were possible through an innovative contracting process.
The significant number of peer reviews the costing has gone through (APB&B themselves had the costs reviewed by three different external agencies) suggests that these numbers are pretty robust. Which is why it is rather surprising to see higher numbers being bandied about in more recent times.
Coming to our last question, how could the project’s cost be trimmed a bit, we learned from commenter “Greg N” (who himself learned from Auckland Transport’s Stephen Rainbow) last month that various options are being looked at on that very issue: in particular delaying the construction of some of the stations (presumably either K Road or Newton station or both, as they are the most expensive and each are likely to generate much less patronage than Aotea Station) and/or not building the eastern link between Newton and Grafton.
The eastern link, K Road and Newton stations are three very expensive parts of the project, if we recall the table earlier on in this post. If we assume that adding in the “other costs” (design, contractor profit, contingency etc.) doubles the actual cost from its pure construction number, we get the following numbers for those three aspects of the project:
K Road station: $319.6 million
Newton station: $315.2 million
Eastern Link: $180.8 million
A grand total of $815.6 million in those three pieces of infrastructure which seem to be ‘up for debate’ over whether they will actually happen (when the project is initially constructed). Obviously there are good reasons to build the two stations and it seems like there is an argument for the Eastern Link (plus probably a pretty significant infrastructure requirement if you don’t build it as you’ll need to turn a heap of trains around somewhere on the Western Line), so there’s a debate to be had around whether they should be in or out, but it’s fair to say that the cost saving potential is rather significant. Of course ‘future proofing’ for the two stations will incur some cost, which is another matter to consider.
But to come back to the question in the title of this post – what does the CRL cost – is seems the answer is fairly complicated and a bit of a movable feast. But what do we know?
We know is that the core cost of the project has been assessed over and over again (with three stations and an eastern link) at around $2 billion.
We know that a significant chunk of this could be saved (say $500 million and I feel like I’m being conservative with that) by delaying the stations and perhaps not building the Eastern Link.
We know that some extra trains will be needed, and some infrastructure works around the rest of the rail network, though it’s debatable whether they should be included as part of the project.
All up, it seems like there’s a pretty damn good chance the project could end up being under $2 billion – including the additional trains and additional infrastructure needed, if the stations are delayed. If this is the case, then it’d be great to have Auckland Transport start telling the world about this very soon before the project loses even more public support. It would also be good if those that do oppose the project actually came up with some ways that we will be able to move people around the region in 30 years time when there are potentially up to 1 million extra people living in it.
Good to see some further progress on the electrification project today, with the contract for the depot where the electric trains will be maintained and housed, being signed:
Auckland Transport has awarded the $40 million contract for the construction of the Wiri Maintenance and Stabling Depot for Auckland’s new electric train fleet to Downer New Zealand Limited (Downer).
Located next to the South-Western Expressway on Wiri Station Road on the old Winstone’s Quarry Site, the Wiri Maintenance and Stabling Depot will be the facility for maintaining and stabling the new electric trains that will be progressively introduced to the Auckland suburban rail network from early 2014 onwards.
The 7650 square metre building will have seven maintenance berths and will include systems that lift trains to enable maintenance, high level platforms to access the roof of trains along with a wheel lathe.
Downer, with their building construction partner Dominion Constructors, will also be responsible for development of the rest of the site including a train wash, cleaning platforms and stabling for 28 trains. Approximately six kilometres of new rail track makes up the sidings and connections to the Auckland suburban rail network. The facility has been futureproofed to maintain a fleet of up to 109 electric trains.
Mayor Len Brown says the Wiri Depot contract is a critical milestone in the electrification of Auckland’s rail network and a vital move towards a single, efficient, integrated transport network.
“This is a significant step to getting Auckland moving, and having a world-class, modern transport system that this region needs,” says the Mayor.
Auckland Transport Chief Executive David Warburton is pleased to see Downer joining the project that will ultimately result in the introduction of a new fleet of fast and comfortable electric trains as part of the on-going upgrade of public transport services in Auckland.
“The construction of the maintenance and stabling depot is a major step towards giving Aucklanders a 21st century rail service that will help keep the country’s largest city moving. It will also provide much needed jobs in the construction sector during the build. I’m delighted to welcome Downer and their subcontract partners to the team and have every confidence that they will exceed our expectations in terms of delivering the project on time and within budget,” he says.
Downer’s Major Projects Executive General Manager Fraser Wyllie is proud their organisation is able to contribute to the creation of a new era of rail travel for Aucklanders. “We are excited to be able to support the Auckland Transport Team on this transformational project for our city and extend the range of services Downer provides to one of our most important Clients,” he explains.
Significant earthworks to prepare the site for the Depot’s construction commenced in January 2011. The Depot build will commence shortly and take approximately 13 months. Once completed, the Wiri Maintenance Depot will be jointly managed by train operator Veolia and the manufacturers of the electric trains, Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles (CAF).
Fast facts – The Wiri Maintenance and Stabling Depot comprises:
· $40 million contract · 4.4 hectares on the old Winstones Quarry on Wiri Station Road · 7650 square metre building · The works were designed by Opus in collaboration with RLB quantity surveyors, Peters and Cheung geotechnical engineers and Arup consulting engineers · Six kilometres of rail track sidings · Stabling for up to 28 electric trains · Seven maintenance berths · Construction commences May 2012, completion expected June 2013 · The Depot will be operated by Veolia and CAF
A couple of images of the depot were shown at last month’s transport committee meeting:
It’s a pretty tight timeframe to have the depot finished by June next year, in time for the EMUs when they arrive.
An interesting report goes to the transport committee on Wednesday which looks at how the land use plans on the North Shore as identified in the Auckland Plan would be impacted by various options for improving rapid transit (RT) in the area. Over the next 30 years there are expected to be an extra 750k-1m people living in the Auckland region with 85-120k of those living in the area of the old North Shore City. To achieve that growth there are going to be a number of infrastructure investments, especially when it comes to transport or the set targets may not be achieved.
The report confirms that providing we improve how buses move around the city centre that there is sufficient capacity in the busway until around 2041. One of the improvements to the city centre that is listed as needed is the City Rail Link which will have the effect of removing a large number of buses from the South and West from the cities streets which will free up that space for additional buses from the North Shore. With the busway moving an increasing number of people over the harbour bridge each morning along with the completion of the western ring route in 4-5 years time, we should also see the need for another harbour crossing pushed out to a similar timeframe.
The report starts with the assumption that the busway has already been extended to Silverdale and that the city side improvements have been completed to allow for up to 250 buses per hour to feed into town. It then goes on to look at a number of different routes and technologies for futuredevelopment options but also notes that experience, particularly in Australia, shows that bus based RT systems don’t get same level of land use change as rail lines/stations do. The options range in cost from $1.5b all the way up to $15b and all options were put through an evaluation matrix and the heavy rail options came out with the best results. All of the options considered are listed below:
There are quite a few options there and I think we can all agree that the options costing $13b+ are simply not going to happen, even though they came out the highest in the evaluation criteria. The conversions of the busway to heavy rail still very highly and at $2.5b (which I assume includes the cost of the crossing) actually seems fairly reasonable, especially if we can hook it into the existing network with something like the X pattern we have discussed on here before.
The report to the council also includes an image from the Auckland Plan that we haven’t seen before, presumably it will be in the final version of document which is being worked on at the moment (the content has already been signed off). It seems to show that thinking is starting to shift within the council that any future rail connection interface with the existing rail network at Aotea rather than at Britomart.
There is quite a bit of detail in the report but in all it is good to see some thought going into when we will likely need to start making improvements, that is unless the good folk of the North Shore start to increase their usage of the busway at a faster rate than predicted which is something that could very possibly happen.
The other day we saw another alternative for the CRL crop up, an overhead line between Mt Eden and Britomart, it isn’t the first time an alternative route has been suggested and it is unlikely to be the last. While I’m sure that those who are proposing it have good intentions I don’t really think the proposal has been thought through, it solves the ‘Britomart problem’ but does so in a way that is unlikely to deliver many of the benefits the CRL does. This is due to the fact it just doesn’t go anywhere near where most of the jobs and residents are so to show this I have put their route roughly on a map along with the catchment within approximately 400m of the station. As you can see there is simply no catchment near what I would call the ‘heart of town’ and that more than anything else is why I think this isn’t a good idea.
A few days ago we were discussing the future of Britomart post the CRL and how and what we do with it. There were generally two schools of thought that cropped up, the first that plug the CRL into the back of Britomart and the second that we build a brand new tunnel and station under Quay St and next to Britomart to handle the CRL traffic while leaving the existing station as a terminus for regional trains. Following on from that I thought I have a look to see how many regional trains we may have to in the future to help inform the debate about how much space we need for regional trains. One thing that almost everyone agrees on is that Britomart is the ideal place for those regional trains to terminate as it is close to town and is able to deal with diesel trains which is fairly unique for an underground station.
In many ways this whole discussion is made a bit easier simply due to the geography of the wider area, the development of the existing rail network and the location of major population sources in relation to that. There are only two directions that potential regional trains can come from, the North West or the South. I will look at each of these two directions separately.
The North West
Pukekohe circle is here as a comparison
There are two major growth areas in the North West, the area around Huapai/Kumeu and Helensville. Unfortunately while it would be nice to have extended rail services, I can’t really see there being the kind of demand from these areas that would be needed to justify a rail service for two main reasons. Both places are not considered major growth nodes in the Auckland Plan and while there will be decent population growth in the areas, I don’t think it will be near what is needed for a dedicated and regular service. The other factor that needs to be considered is the state of the road and rail networks in the area. From Kumeu, SH16 takes a much more direct route to places like the CBD and so would be much faster for people to use that. The western line is also likely to be heavily used, especially the inner parts and there is little scope for adding in a third line with incurring considerable costs so any service would be stuck behind suburban trains that stop at each station. My feeling is that we would be much better to build the NW Busway and eventually extend that to Kumeu as it could offer real competition to sitting on the motorway in traffic.
The South
I think the South offers much more opportunity for regional services. Post electrification, Pukekohe services will be in the form of a shuttle between there and Papakura. Longer term the wires should eventually be extended to the town and it is expected to have considerable population growth as part of the Auckland Plan with something like an extra 25,000 people living in the area in 30 years time. With that sort of population growth, more direct services are probably going to be required but whether they are electric services that should also travel through the CRL I will put aside for now.
Heading further South the obvious candidate for a regional service is to have trains from Hamilton. The city currently has about 140k people but that is expected to grow by another 40k in the next 20 years. There are also a number of small towns along the way that could potentially have stops. The recent campaign to have a service restarted between Auckland and Hamilton has sadly gone quiet which was mainly due to a couple of big stumbling blocks. The biggest one was the lack of access to Britomart due to it being at capacity for suburban trains. The other major stumbling block was simply the amount of time it takes to get between the two cities, in total it is only about 140km but the travelling time was expected to be over two hours which in many cases puts it slower than cars. In order to make a service viable I feel that it really needs to have a decent speed advantage over alternatives and I think there are two key things that would need to be done, the first is something that is planned to happen and that is a third main line within the Auckland area. It is initially planned to go between Papakura and Westfield but long term it should eventually be extended along the eastern line to the port. For a regional train this would allow them to bypass suburban trains that stop at every station which should dramatically knock time off the journey. The other key thing I think is needed would be getting the tracks in a condition that allows for faster speeds. If we could get the average speed up to even 100kph then a trip between the Hamilton and Auckland would drop to less than 1.5 hours at which point I think it would become pretty popular.
After that a possible extension of services may be to the other major population centre in the upper North Island, Tauranga. In about 20 years it is expected to have a population over 150k which is more than Hamilton has today. At an roughly an additional 100km it is obviously a quite bit further from Auckland than Hamilton is but if we could also get average speeds up to at least 100kph on this section then we could see a trip from Auckland to Tauranga at less than 2.5 hours. In my own opinion that would likely be a bit to long for the most commuters but it may be enough decent enough to get other travellers to perhaps justify a couple of services per day.
The only real concern is likely to be at peak times so how trains would we realistically need to accommodate at Britomart? I think realistically we may only see two regional services eventuate, perhaps one an hour from Hamilton and one in the morning peak from Tauranga (part of which may be counted as a train from Hamilton). I think that even if we saw half hourly trains from Hamilton that we would be able fit those trains into the existing station without needing the CRL to be in a separate tunnel. With advanced signalling the CRL can handle 30 trains per hour per direction. If we used a routing pattern like from this post then one train every 5 minutes on each service pattern would see 24 trains per hour in each direction, that should leave enough space for 4 trains per hour from outside the current network.
All that said, I think it’s time everyone took a big deep breath about the CRL project and actually looked at where the project is at, where it’s likely to get to in the next 3 years (the lifespan of the LTP), what money is actually needed during that time – and most particularly what money is needed over the next 12 months as next year’s Annual Plan offers the opportunity to revisit the issue. So let’s try to answer a few questions:
There are a few important points in the table above, which are worth highlighting:
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