In a typically well thought out comment on my recent post that ARTA should focus on getting the train system sorted before getting stuck into all these bizarre promotions they have going on, Nick R pointed out that I was perhaps being a little bit harsh on ARTA and that the problems being experienced by our rail system at the moment are – just like they’ve been for years – the result of decades of neglect. Furthermore, political moves have meant that ARTA appears to be receiving less money from NZTA than previously anticipated, which seems to have led to an $11 million cutback to their rail budget.
I certainly agree with Nick that the problems experienced on the rail network generally aren’t ARTA’s fault, and perhaps I was being a tad harsh on them. But certainly it seems as though things could be done quite a lot better in a number of areas – both to minimise the inconvenience of delays, to make people feel as though the various agencies involved are really trying their best to fix things up, and to also offer some hope that things will get better some time before 2013 when electrification is completed. Quite simply, I think people want to know that there’s light at the end of the tunnel.
A good example of how to do this was shown last year when the Central Connector bus lanes were being built along Symonds Street. The construction did cause chaos and mayhem, but there was pretty good signage around explaining what was going on, people knew well in advance when the connector would be open and what benefits it would bring. In particular I remember a sign that read “Road Works Today so our Roads Work Tomorrow” which I thought was quite clever.
And there is a lot for rail passengers to look forwards to in the next few months. Next month Grafton station will open, which means that the stretch of single-track between Newmarket and Boston Road will be history. This should improve reliability of the Western Line quite significantly. Beyond that, in July the Onehunga Line will supposedly open (I’ll believe it when I see the station under construction) opening up a whole new corner of Auckland to the rail system. Later in the year, around September/October the New Lynn station will be completed – meaning the complete elimination of single-track on the Western Line. Oh, and some time in there the new Avondale station will open in a far more convenient location to the town centre.
It also seems as though in July we’ll see a new and improved rail timetable, perhaps even with 10 minute frequencies on the Southern and Eastern lines at peak hour (that’s the rumour I’ve heard anyway). Hopefully we’ll also see trains running later at nights, and more weekend services on the Western Line in particular (this might only come after double-tracking is completed in October). Beyond that, the Manukau Branch Line will open some time next year.
The point being that there is a lot to look forward to, and also that many of these improvements (such as the elimination of stretches of single-track on the Western Line) will lead to greater reliability on the rail system. Yet outside of a pretty small circle of transport nerds like myself, I don’t know how many people know how close we are to completing many projects that have been going on for years now. They’re also unlikely to know about timetable improvements or anything like that. They can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.
I also think that ARTA needs to get together with KiwiRail and Veolia to work out exactly what’s causing the problems that seem to have been plaguing the rail system throughout this year. Obviously some of the problems won’t have an easy solution, but surely some of them might and effort should be going into eliminating those small issues. Even if we can reduce the number of problems by 20%, that’s well worth the effort. And ARTA should tell us about all of this, they should let the customer know that they’re working hard to fix the issues: that KiwiRail has analysed exactly where points failures occur most frequently and is doing something about it; that Veolia and ARTA are working to identify their most unreliable trains and using them as infrequently as possible or undertaking additional maintenance to reduce the number of mechanical faults; or ensuring that when staff on a train apologise for a delay they actually do so in a way that sounds like they mean it.
It’s annoying enough to experience problems on the rail network, but feeling as though none of the agencies responsible give a damn is like adding insult to injury. For this approach to work it has to be genuine though, ARTA really does have to get together with KiwiRail and identify why there are over 200 points failures on the Auckland rail network each year and establish a process of doing something to reduce this number, they really do have to find ways to communicate better to passengers when things are going wrong, how long the delay will be, what other options people have and so forth. Ultimately, I do believe that ARTA cares about its passengers – but they need to show that better.
What do others think? What could ARTA do better here, aside from the obvious of ensuring that the problems didn’t happen in the first place?
In another critical step forwards for what I consider to be Auckland’s most important transport projects, today ARTA have announced the preferred alignment for the CBD Rail Tunnel. Here’s the media release:
Prefered Route Chosen for Transformational CBD Rail Loop Project 11 Mar 2010
A preferred route has now been identified for Auckland’s proposed CBD Rail Loop tunnel. The route was chosen out of three shortlisted options identified by consultants acting on behalf of ARTA and KiwiRail.
The tunnel would run between Mt Eden and Britomart, taking in Khyber Pass Road, Symonds Street and Karangahape Road, with the opportunity for three train station locations at Symonds Street/Khyber Pass Road; Karangahape Road/Pitt Street and on Albert Street between Victoria and Wellesley Streets (Refer to diagram attached).
The chairman of ARTA, Mr Rabin Rabindran says the project is regionally based and the preferred option has been discussed with the Auckland Regional Council and Auckland City Council. It has also been discussed with the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA).
Mr Rabindran said, “The next step in the study will be to investigate potential costs and economic benefits that the tunnel would deliver to the region.
“Naturally we need to ensure there is a sound business case to support the project and have a clear understanding of the level of investment required to bring it into reality before we proceed to the next step.
“The project takes into consideration management of Auckland’s projected population growth to well over two million over the next four decades, which is over 70 per cent of New Zealand’s total projected growth”.
Mr Rabindran said, “This project for Auckland, made possible by the Government’s decision to electrify Auckland’s rail network is a transformational project for the region with the ability to provide significant economic, social and environmental benefits. These benefits would accrue to the whole of the region”.
KiwiRail chairman Jim Bolger says the study currently underway is a first step in the process of identifying and protecting the route for future construction.
“If we are to ensure rail is able to play its part in Auckland’s transport mix, both now and into the future we need to ensure the network has reasonable reach and flexibility.
“There is still a long way to go with this project, but it is vital that we take the necessary steps to protect the route for the future.
“The option chosen has the three station locations under public roads with the locations optimising redevelopment and growth opportunities for economic productivity and patronage; the least number of curves which means lower costs for the tunnel boring machine and better operational speed for trains thus reducing operational costs”.
The Chairman of the Auckland Regional Council, Mike Lee said. “The CBD loop tunnel will not only radically boost the efficiency of Auckland’s commuter rail network and nearly double the throughput of trains through Britomart, but a metro rail really will be the making of Auckland, revitalising the CBD and giving Auckland a truly international feel. The suggestion of running the line under upper Symonds Street is a stroke of brilliance –and will certainly revitalise this wonderful old part of the city”.
Mayor of Auckland, John Banks said, “Excellent urban regeneration and economic development opportunities are available around the proposed three station locations. This is particularly important given Auckland’s projected population growth. Opportunities include redevelopment work around K’Road with the station centrally located on a ridge between Grafton Hospital and Ponsonby Road.
“Current population levels within 500 metres of the K’Road station are in the region of 7,000 employees and 2,500 residents. With future amendments to the existing zoning there is capacity to provide for approximately 20,000 employees and 7,000 residents. Similar opportunities exist around Newton while around the proposed Aotea Station there is the capacity to more than double the employment opportunities from 40,000 to over 80,000”.
“While further analysis is required, at this stage train patronage projections out to 2016 and 2041 for these three train stations indicate strong potential growth which is driven by the station locations in the heart of the CBD. This will provide easy walking distance to all the CBD’s commercial, tourist, residential and educational opportunities as well as allowing more trains to use the network by unlocking the constraint of Britomart being a dead end station and doubling its capacity”, said Mr Banks.
Mr Rabindran says: “The next step in the project will progress concept design work to identify a required footprint and a business case which we regard as a key piece of work to identify the value to the public and private investment required to bring this project into reality. Projects like this have the potential to lift land values and dramatically boost economic productivity through focussed regional and government sector investment in infrastructure and services. Earlier investigations have shown the potential benefits of this project are likely to significantly outweigh its costs. This work will be undertaken from March to September this year with Phase Three, preparation of the notice of requirement documentation, completed by December this year”.
Mr Rabindran said the total cost of the project had not yet been finalised. Funding for the project would need to be negotiated between the region and the government, however in light of Auckland’s burgeoning population growth of almost an additional million people by 2050; forward planning for the region was not only prudent but essential.
Before I get on to discuss the details of the actual alignment itself, it’s worth commenting on the press release above. I have underlined various parts of it which I think are particularly noteworthy, in that they refer to the significant benefits that will arise from this project, in particular the significant economic benefits that it will bring to the whole Auckland region.
I agree with Rabin Rabindran that the project is transformational for Auckland. There is so much benefit to be had from Auckland having a stronger core, as it will reduce the requirement for people to drive significant distances from one side of the city to the other, it will improve the viability of public transport in general if more than 12% of the region’s jobs are located in the CBD and it will also have other longer term benefits such as helping to create a more vibrant city centre and giving the CBD a critical mass that could eventually lead to significant economic benefits as more and more employment opportunities are available within close proximity of each other. The most successful cities at regenerating over recent years internationally, such as Melbourne and Vancouver, have a very strong urban core with lots of people and jobs creating a vibrancy that leads to massive long-term economic benefits.
The opportunity for significant urban regeneration in areas around the stations, particularly around K Road and Newton station, would also have massive economic benefits. As I explained in a blog post a few weeks back, putting a station in Newton means that whole area could effectively become an extension of the CBD. This kind of urban development in Auckland is exactly what our current growth strategies envisage – significant intensification in the CBD and in fringe-CBD areas where appropriate, as well as significant intensification in various other nodes along the rail corridor. But this kind of urban outcome is not going to happen by itself, we need the infrastructure investment to work with the development strategies to make it happen. Which is exactly what the CBD rail tunnel does.
Turning to the alignment chosen, this is shown in the map below:
This is pretty much what was expected, and the only real difference between the three options preferred by the previous stage of the study was whether the K Road station would be next to the corner with Pitt Street or the corner with Queen Street. While a Queen St location may have been better from some perspectives (linking with our main street after all) I think that technical factors made that option difficult. In any case I don’t think it matters too much, as the corner of K Road and Pitt Street does very much come across as the heart of that part of the city.
I await with great interest to see the results of the business case study into this. I would be extremely surprised if this project doesn’t come up with a far better business case than the Puhoi-Wellsford “holiday highway”. In which case, there should be some serious questions asked why we’re spending $1.4 billion there instead of here.
As I noted a couple of days ago it has been a pretty horrific year for Auckland’s train system so far, with signalling failures, points failures and train failures seemingly occurring on a daily basis (quite literally actually). In that previous post I questioned whether the $11 million cutback to the rail contract was behind many of these problems (the train breakdowns, the daily signal and points failures are KiwiRail’s fault). It seems that trains running in Auckland this evening on the Western Line were subjected to another typical “day at the office” - a points failure leading to 45 minute delays.
I think it’s worthwhile doing a bit of a comparison between how the rail problems faced by Auckland and Wellington in recent weeks have been dealt with. Let’s start with Wellington, where a couple of weeks ago there were some serious problems relating to electric wires that were not properly fixed during overnight maintenance, causing huge problems. KiwiRail got blasted in the Dominion Post Editorial, which had this to say:
On Tuesday 369 people were stuck on a train to Upper Hutt for two hours after a power failure halted all trains in and out of the capital. “No one told us anything,” complained a passenger. “We were locked up and were going nowhere. We were not allowed outside.”
The previous day 2000 commuters were delayed for up to two hours when another power fault brought services to a standstill. Some passengers waited more than an hour for replacement buses to show up. Others walked to work along the lines.
This week’s breakdowns are just the latest in a string of problems that have infuriated passengers over the past 12 months as historic under-investment in the commuter network and a $600 million upgrade have coincided to create what KiwiRail project manager David Gordon calls a “perfect storm”.
Passengers have been delayed by power faults, equipment failures, slips and contractor errors and, last winter, were left to shiver in carriages without working heaters.
Faced with such a difficult operating environment, KiwiRail might have been expected to do its utmost to retain customer loyalty by informing passengers of the cause and likely length of delays and having alternative forms of transport on hand to minimise inconvenience.
Instead it has operated as if its customers have no choice but to put up with its erratic services.
In response, KiwiRail actually did something. There was a free day’s travel as compensation for the problems and a real commitment to sort things out it would seem. Rail is taken seriously in Wellington and the trains are expected to work, so when something goes wrong because there’s only one agency involved (KiwiRail) things can be sorted out.
Meanwhile, back in Auckland, it’s arguable that we suffer (on a smaller scale, but far more frequently) significantly more problems with our rail network. As I have mentioned in previous posts, there were 406 signal or points failures on the Auckland rail network in the last year alone, and in January only 36% of Western Line trains reached the destination less than 5 minutes late, while 10% didn’t even reach their destination at all. And yet what have we heard from ARTA or KiwiRail about these horrific problems in Auckland?
Zilch.
Instead, we get bombarded with media releases about fun, nice to have, events and promotions that ARTA’s running. Like tomorrow’s Walk2Work promotion, which I’m sure is a good idea, but how about we sort those trains out? Or a “one-stop-shop” calendar for finding out about sustainable travel events, or some promotion with the Blues rugby team, or the refurbishment of the Maxx Website (without actually updating the horrifically outdated mapping system behind the scenes) or the bizarre “Make a Change” campaign. These are all “nice”, but once again please can we get the basics right first? Can we get more than two out of five trains running on time on the Western Line, can we ensure that 10% of trains don’t fail to make it to their destination? Can we get some progress updates on how integrated ticketing is coming along? Can we start implementing a paper-based integrated fare system like was promised “within a few months” back in 2008?
Now I imagine ARTA will throw their hands up in the air at all of this and say “but it’s not our fault, it’s KiwiRail/Veolia/ARC/City Councils/NZTA’s fault….” Which is probably true, but in a nutshell is the problem.
And having a massive Transport CCO is only going to make things worse, as they’ll be even less accountable while we’ll still have the dis-integration between KiwiRail, Veolia and the new Transport Agency. This isn’t throwing the baby out with the bathwater, it’s throwing the baby out but keeping the damn bathwater.
Put simply, 2010 has been a pretty shocking year so far for rail in Auckland. Despite two significant milestones: the opening of Newmarket station and the New Lynn rail trench, I think generally things have been worse than last year. This is illustrated in the problems faced around when Newmarket station opened, long waits suffered by Western Line travellers while drivers change ends at Newmarket, shocking performance statistics for January, numerous breakdowns occurring (including on Monday last week on the first day university was back) and poor press resulting from shocking customer service.
It seems to me that there are ultimately three issues:
KiwiRail still seem to be doing a terrible job at avoiding points and signalling failures. There were 406 such failures on the Auckland Rail Network alone within the last year. I realise that it’s tricky to avoid such events with crappy outdated infrastructure, but a lot of the problems seem to happen in areas that have been more recently upgraded – like Britomart and Newmarket.
The structural separation between the various agencies involved in running the train system means that nobody takes ownership of the problems. This is particularly evident when comparing things to Wellington, where recent problems there led to big public apologies from KiwiRail. Where’s our public apology for the 36% on-time performance on the Western Line for January?
The trains themselves seem particularly unreliable of late. Discussion on the Campaign for Better Transport Forum, with input from staff working in the system, suggests that an unusually high number of trains aren’t even operating because of mechanical problems.
I have discussed the first two issues at length previously, so for now let’s focus on the third matter – increased mechanical failures. While the main reason for these problems is the fact that the newest engines driving our trains around Auckland are almost 30 years old, and naturally these will become more unreliable over time, it would seem as though one reason for increased mechanical problems would be if the amount of maintenance being undertaken had been cut back.
Now I don’t know if there has been a cutback on maintenance, but what does become obvious if you have a good dig through ARTA’s financial statements is that there has definitely been a funding squeeze put on them in recent times. Let’s have a look at their “income statement” for January 2010: I have highlighted what I consider to be particularly interesting parts of it: Looking at the income side of things first, it is clear that ARTA’s budget has been revised from an original, with the result being a cut back of about $15 million. Most of this cut back was from reduced NZTA funding – most probably the result of the roads-obssessed Government Policy Statement, which revised down the amount of money NZTA were allowed to spend on public transport. The ARC also seems to have reduced its funding of ARTA from what was previously anticipated.
Unsurprisingly, a $15 million reduction in income is likely to result in some pretty significant consequences. And this comes through most drastically in the “Rail Contract” part of ARTA’s budget expenditure, where $11 million has been cut back from the original budget. Now I don’t know what that $11 million cut has actually meant in real terms – but it seems as though some of the money “saved” has come from a reduced amount of maintenance on the trains , hence the current problems. I also suspect that if we hadn’t had this $11 million cut we might be seeing more weekend and evening trains.
There has been a lot of talk in recent days about how some railway lines might be under threat of closure because KiwiRail is not generating enough business along them to make them viable. It probably didn’t help that the National Infrastructure Plan’s fairly mixed words on KiwiRail’s future came out on the same day that KiwiRail reported worse than hoped for financial results. I think a lot of people have put the two together to theorise that the end of lines such as the Gisborne-Napier Line, the northern Wairarapa Line and the Stratford to Okahukura Line (which hasn’t been used for a few months now due to damage it suffered during a derailment) might be drawing near. The government hasn’t exactly been providing much reassurance, and I do at least partially agree with the Labour Party when they say that the government’s heart just doesn’t seem to be in KiwiRail.
Let’s look at the bigger picture for a minute, before I get into what I think the problem is here. The National Infrastructure Plan certainly says that most investment in the rail network should be focused on lines that are the most commercially viable – which makes logical sense. What’s said in the tract I quote below actually sounds fairly promising in some respects:
The Government wants to set KiwiRail on a path towards commercial independence and long-term viability. For that reason, any financial support for it will focus on helping it catch up on deferred capital expenditure in those parts of the rail network where rail offers the greatest comparative advantage to other transport modes, based on undistorted price signals. This is likely to be in the transport of bulk goods, and imports and exports to and from major ports, where rail offers a vitally important alternative to road transport. This will relieve congestion and provide a greener and more cost-effective transport solution for some users.
In terms of future capital expenditure, it’s a little more mixed:
Subject to policy decisions about the size of the rail network and level of service the Government wishes to support, it is possible that KiwiRail will undertake further capital expenditure. For example, the current locomotive and wagon fleet is old (average age is 30 years for locomotives and 25 years for wagons) and prone to structural failure, and thus allows little or no room for revenue growth. In addition, a new interisland rail ferry is likely to be needed by 2016 to replace the ageing vessel Arahura. This may cost up to $250 million to purchase, or long-term leasing arrangements will need to be put in place.
There’s something a bit strange here though. We don’t generally say things like “subject to policy decisions about the size of the state highway network….”, or “it is possible that NZTA will undertake further capital expenditure on the state highway network…”, so why are we saying this about the rail network? After all, the rail network and the state highway network are both critical pieces of infrastructure that I think deserve to be treated in similar ways.
Yes, there are very very few inter-city passenger trains meaning that the rail network (outside urban areas) is almost exclusively used for freight purposes, but that doesn’t mean things have to be that way, or that they will always be that way. For all we know, in a decade’s time petrol could be $8 a litre, we will be electrifying inter-city railway lines around the country and thinking about catching electric trains to cities around New Zealand when we want to visit them. Just as we have a critical network of power lines, roads, telecommunications and so forth, the rail network is simply that: infrastructure. In the longer term I would imagine a whole pile of different companies operating freight services on the rail network, competing against each other for business potentially and so forth. The government would, and should, still own the rail network and all the organisation that goes on behind the scenes – but in terms of the actual trains that run along it who knows what the future ownership structure might be.
The problem that we have at the moment is that the infrastructure side of KiwiRail is bundled up with what is essentially “just another freight company”. Because of this, KiwiRail has the completely unreasonable task of being asked to use the money it makes from its freight business to both pay for the delivery of that freight business but also to maintain and develop the core infrastructure of the rail network. The first part is fair enough, and as far as I know KiwiRail do a pretty damn good job of ensuring that their income covers the job of delivering their business. The problem is that they are also required to spend huge amounts of money on looking after the railway network. That would be like asking the trucking industry to build and fund the road network – completely unreasonable and impossible!
When KiwiRail was bought back by the government in 2008, ONTRACK (which was the trading name for the government’s ownership of the tracks and associated infrastructure) was effectively subsumed into the freight business that had previously been Toll and was now KiwiRail. In hindsight I think that was a mistake, and (here’s for a fairly controversial thought) I think that ONTRACK and NZTA should have been brought together into one agency – perhaps known as “Transport New Zealand” or something like that. By putting ONTRACK into the same agency as NZTA there would have been proper recognition of the railway network as part of the transport network, not just the rights-of-way used by a particular freight company (in this case KiwiRail).
There are a number of other advantages that would arise from having ONTRACK merged with NZTA. The most obvious one to me is that we’d finally have an agency capable of planning, funding and constructing critical urban rail projects such as the CBD Rail Tunnel, rail to the airport and so forth. In our cities railways act very similarly to motorways, so it seems crazy that we have a very capable agency (NZTA) doing excellent long-term planning, designations when necessary, construction and so forth of motorways – but when it comes to ever doing anything about urban railways you need to get about 20 different agencies together, develop funding systems that we’ve never seen before and so forth. Having one agency responsible for delivering both the state highway network and the railway network would also mean that motorway projects would effectively compete against railway projects for funding – we could assess whether the CBD Rail Tunnel or the Holiday Highway is a better use of that $1.4 billion. This is how you end up with the best decisions being made, when all types of projects have “equal access” to funding and are chosen on merit.
Another advantage would be that the railways would no longer be expected to “make a profit”, just as the state highways aren’t expected to do so. There would be recognition that together, the railways and the state highways form a critical part of New Zealand’s infrastructure. In the meanwhile, KiwiRail would be able to get on with the job of actually trying to make a profit without being lumped with the unfair cost of having to fix 20 years of neglect of the rail system while trying to run a competitive freight business.
I have heard some public transport advocates worry that if rail was part of NZTA it would be ignored and sidelined. I don’t actually think that’s the case. I really think that NZTA wants to do public transport – I mean heck they are keen on extending the northern busway to Orewa even though it’s probably about priority number 3257948728529 on the list of needed public transport projects in Auckland. Why are they wanting to do this? Because it’s the only public transport project that they can actually do. NZTA are pretty damn good at weighing up which projects are most necessary (when they are left to do it by the politicians), and I think that it’s pretty clear important railway projects in Auckland – for example – would rise to the top of their list.
Oh, and NZTA have money. No other transport agency in the country seems to have any money but NZTA have buckets and buckets of it. So we might actually be able to improve the rail network if ONTRACK was a part of NZTA instead of KiwiRail.
I got forwarded the following email (not by someone at ARTA), sent by a regular commuter on the Western Line:
Dear ARTA
Ongoing concerns about rail transport especially on the Western Line:
A. Cancelling of trains – Please check (as funder) with Veolia whether they intend to ad hoc cancel the 6.20am train from Swanson to Britomart (cancelled twice this week – no msg over the tannoy). Today on the replacement service (6.35am departure from Swanson) we were told this train had fewer carriage as “not many people travelling” and from New Lynn on this train was crowded with standing passengers. This is also the train type that usually has diesel fumes coming into the carriages (in spite of denials by all concerned), hence many of us prefer not to travel in that train. Other passengers at my station were discussing the fact that they may have to get up even earlier because the train they usually catch appears to be subject to being cancelled, which we now suspect is more likely due to a financial decision (experimental, this year) not to run it due to falling numbers of pax.
B. Timetables – everyday we get text messages saying “train delayed 10 minutes due to
Please ask Veolia to publish timetables that reflect the reality of the service they can offer; e.g the 6.20am from Swanson is scheduled to arrive at Britomart at 7.13am – this is obviously an impossibility in the near future and I was surprised to see this published arrival time as the train (if running and “on time”) arrives at Britomart at approximately 7.23 am.
C. Another issue that seems to be overlooked is that if we commit to public transport many of us have connecting services – I have noticed staff at Britomart smiling indulgently at passengers racing from one platform to another to catch a train. I have a bus connection which I often miss, even if I run up the escalators and down the road. If the train arrived at the published time, I could easily walk to this bus. Stress is a word mentioned most often amongst passengers, including, right now, students starting first semester at University who are not only dealing with new life situations, but the added realisation of the unreliability of the train services. One student today was crying as this was the last straw in a challenging day.
D. Several passengers on the platform and in the train this morning were discussing what they could do to get realistic information about what is happening so they can make better informed decisions about travel arrangements. In their attempts to communicate effectively with the operators (phone calls, emails etc) the general feeling is that they get a “generic” letter back or are “fobbed off” with banal (business speak, no blame to us type) comments .
Overall – we may have lost the point of why we have public transport – i.e. to conveniently, effectively and environmentally sustainably transport our working and studying people (and our older folks and our potential tourists.).
What has gone so wrong that Veolia staff will say – “oh ARTA has decided…”, ARTA staff will say “oh, you need to talk with Veolia, they run the service”, OnTrack staff will say – “oh we are working on this wonderful rail system that will be so good in the future, please bear with us. It has been a long four+ years of this kind of fudging of the real situation. There may be good things in the future, meanwhile life continues and we deserve better/honest service delivery now.
Please consider this email – many of the passengers are supporting the system twice – as fare paying passengers and as rate payers to ARTA. Do we have a voice? Please be honest and realistic about the situation. For example, if the Veolia management plan is to “ad hoc” cancel a service, let the passengers know this is the plan (we are generally intelligent people), then we can consider alternatives that reduce stress and fit with our working and life styles. In January I was able to take my car to work – a pleasant journey, at the same time of the morning, which took 20-25 minutes maximum. On the train it would have taken 50-60 minutes best time. 75 minutes on Monday, including waiting for the replacement train.
Also, I note that the number of passengers appears to have dropped on the service I use.
Thank you for your consideration of this lengthy email – I hope it will be helpful in addressing some of the issues and lead to a better profile for the Auckland train services – we’d like to think that “our train service” values us (eg we buy a ticket and are given a timetable – a mutual contract), yet we often feel like chattels rather than partners.
There seem to be two obvious problems here. The first is the ongoing problems of having a reliable service run on the Western Line. In recent months this seems to be getting worse rather than better. Here are the reliability statistics for the rail network for January – for example: On the Western Line we can see that only 36% of trains arrived at their destination within five minutes of the timetabled time. Only 36% – that’s absolutely pathetic! That means that, boarding a train on the Western Line in January, you had only just over a one in three chance of not being late by less than five minutes. It is true that signalling problems experienced at Newmarket caused many of these problems, but really does the average passenger give a damn about whether something’s Veolia’s fault, ARTA’s fault or KiwiRail’s fault? I don’t think so.
Which brings us to the real problem in my opinion – where does the buck stop? If there’s a problem then it seems like all the agencies just play “pass the buck”: blaming the other for the problem. If we compare this to Wellington, there’s quite a difference. Over the last few weeks there have been a number of problems on the rail network in Wellington – but because KiwiRail does pretty much everything when it comes to operating the rail network in Wellington they’ve fronted up – given everyone a day’s free travel, ‘owned’ the problem and are actually quite likely to do something about it. I guess one could never give Auckland rail passengers compensation for the crap we have to put up with as most days would probably end up being free.
The really bizarre thing in all of this though is that Steven Joyce doesn’t like the way Wellington’s rail system is set up. He wants to separate out the agency that does the day-to-day operations of the rail system (like Veolia in Auckland) from that which owns the trains themselves. In Wellington KiwiRail does both these, at far lower per-passenger subsidies and actually does seem accountable for its performance. Shouldn’t Auckland be copying what’s going on down there, rather than vice-versa?
Well I did manage to get myself out of bed at a rather ungodly hour this morning and make my way to the opening of the New Lynn rail trench. My car also managed to survive a whole day parked in Henderson, which is an added bonus! After turning up at Henderson station at around 5.20am, we waited for the first passenger train to arrive. I had the opportunity to have a few good chats with various people: including ARC Councillor Christine Rose and Labour MP Phil Twyford.
The train turned up, and the various dignitaries (as well as other randoms like myself) jumped aboard. It must have been rather bizarre for regular commuters on the 5.44am train to be absolutely swamped by us. The whole train was pretty packed, and once again I had the chance for a few decent chats on the way to New Lynn. We waited a while just west of the single-track area – which I actually think was good as it showed all the dignitaries what regular commuters encounter on a daily basis.
When we arrived at New Lynn I was quite impressed by the station as it has a sense of an overseas underground station, right here in Auckland. There was a brief ceremony to formally open the rail trench and then we all zipped off to the local RSA for breakfast and more speeches.
And a photo that I took: I then caught a train into town for work for the day. Of course this meant I had to catch a train all the way out to Henderson this evening. That turned out to be pretty cool actually, as I managed to catch the express train for the first time and certainly enjoyed not having to stop at any stations between Newmarket and New Lynn.
Overall it was a pretty cool morning, and I am very impressed with the New Lynn rail trench. It’ll be great when the station as a whole is finished in a few months time.
ARTA have invited me to attend the opening of the New Lynn rail trench on Monday morning. If I can get myself out of bed at 4.30am I will probably go along. Monday’s event is not about the completion of the New Lynn project, as that won’t be done until September this year, but a lot of progress has been made in the last few months on this project and the next step is to get the trains through the trench – on one track – so that the other track in the trench can be built. The station will be shifted down into the trench, so things will be quite different for people using New Lynn station.
To see how progress is going I visited New Lynn today and took a number of photos – here’s one of them: I will do a more in-depth post on the New Lynn project in the next short while – probably after I go through the trench on Monday morning.
Anyway, that’s not really the point of this post. The point is that Steven Joyce will be attending the opening of the trench on Monday morning. At the opening of Newmarket Station last month I got the chance to talk to the Minister (altogether quite briefly), but because I was somewhat unprepared I didn’t really have the chance to think much about what to say to him. I mentioned that it would be ‘interesting’ to see the findings of the study into the CBD rail tunnel and that I hoped it would be fourth time lucky for this project (having been previously proposed in the 1920s, 1950s and 1970s). However, it would have been interesting to put a rather tricky question to him, although obviously in a fairly friendly manner.
Just in case I get the opportunity to have a brief chat with Mr Joyce on Monday I wonder what kind of question I should ask. A few come briefly into mind:
Were you a bit disappointed with the low BCR for the Puhoi-Wellsford road? If the BCR for the CBD rail tunnel comes out to be significantly higher than Puhoi-Wellsford, it’d be a bit strange to not go with that project instead…. wouldn’t it?
Do you feel a bit sorry for all those people in Waterview who went through 6 months of hell thinking that their houses would need to be taken, only to find that they needn’t have worried after all?
Is there any logical reason why it’s OK to use national land transport funds for rail subsidies but not for rail capital costs?
When are you going to announce a new public transport project?
There are two urban rail systems in New Zealand: Auckland’s and Wellington’s. The two systems are quite different in many senses, but they provide some useful comparisons.
Auckland:
1) Diesel trains
2) Three lines
3) No inter-city services (beyond Pukekohe and apart form the Overlander)
4) Patronage of around 8 million passengers a year
5) Public subsidies of around $7 per rail trip
Wellington:
1) Electric trains (except for Wairarapa, Capital Connection & Overlander)
2) Three main lines, plus the small Melling Line
3) Regular inter-city services to Masterton
4) Patronage of around 11 million passengers a year
5) Public subsidies of around $2 per rail trip
Another significant difference is the way in which the two systems are run. Here in Auckland we have a complicated system with Veolia Transport having the main rail contract, but on top of that having locomotives leased from KiwiRail, some drivers also from KiwiRail, ARTA seeming to co-ordinate things, Ontrack looking after the tracks, Auckland City Council owning Britomart station and Auckland Regional Council being ARTA’s funder. In Wellington, the system is far more simplified, with (as far as I know) KiwiRail owning the trains, operating the trains, owning the tracks, looking after the tracks, looking after the stations and so forth. The Greater Wellington Regional Council contribute to subsidies for the system, and is probably involved in the system’s planning, but there are – overall – far fewer different parties involved.
One particularly striking figure is how much more cost-effective Wellington’s rail system is than Auckland’s. The above figures suggest that Auckland’s system receives around $56 million of rail subsidies per year, while Wellington’s receives around $22 million – even though it runs many more services each day than are run in Auckland. I’m sure the fact that Wellington generally runs electric trains whereas Auckland runs diesel trains contributes to the difference – as electrics are much cheaper to run. But it seems reasonable to suggest that something else is going on here – that perhaps the complexity of Auckland’s system is leading to pretty huge inefficiencies. Looking at where the money gets spent on Auckland’s rail system provides some interesting further information in this respect: I must say I’m slightly curious what the $35 million Veolia contract does include, if it doesn’t include all the other matters listed above.
The difference between the cost-effectiveness of Auckland’s and Wellington’s systems is particularly interesting given the changes to the structuring of rail operations that Steven Joyce announced last year. Generally, it seemed as though Joyce was wanting some structural separation between the agency that owns trains in Auckland and Wellington (which in the longer term will be KiwiRail) and the agency which operates the rail services. This separation currently exists in Auckland, but doesn’t in Wellington. Which does beg the question why, considering Wellington’s rail system seems so much more cost-effective than Auckland’s, we would even consider wanting to do this? Ideologically I can see that Joyce would want ‘competition’ between possible operators, but surely experience tells us that perhaps what we should be doing is applying the Wellington system to Auckland – rather than vice-versa?
Or aren’t we actually interested in making public transport cost-effective after all?
Steve Ingrouille, from the Australian group “Going Solar”, puts out a weekly newsletter on transport and urban development matters. This week’s newsletter has some interesting information on high-speed rail in Spain:There was an interesting article in the NZ Herald on the weekend about the enormous investment China is making in High-Speed Rail (unfortunately not online).
While high-speed rail is certainly unlikely to ever be viable in New Zealand, it is certainly interesting to see what’s happening internationally. It will be exciting if the USA rolls out a true high-speed rail network over the next decade or so. It seems like a fairly naturally suitable country for that kind of network.
On the Western Line we can see that only 36% of trains arrived at their destination within five minutes of the timetabled time. Only 36% – that’s absolutely pathetic! That means that, boarding a train on the Western Line in January, you had only just over a one in three chance of not being late by less than five minutes. It is true that signalling problems experienced at Newmarket caused many of these problems, but really does the average passenger give a damn about whether something’s Veolia’s fault, ARTA’s fault or KiwiRail’s fault? I don’t think so.
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