Auckland Transport Blog

The Dominion Road corridor is probably the most well-served bus corridor in Auckland (except for ones like Great South Road where you have a tonne of disparate routes converging) with over 30 buses along that route reaching the CBD between 8am and 9am during the week. That’s over a bus every 2 minutes, which means that at peak times the existing bus lanes are getting pretty close to capacity. Auckland City Council have plans to widen Dominion Road so that improved bus lanes can be constructed, but not until 2016. The project generally involves the following aspects:

Widening parts of Dominion Road

Sections of Dominion Road, between View Road and Lowery Avenue, will be widened by around one to two metres. This will accommodate four metre wide bus lanes, and more and better bus stopping facilities. The width of the new lanes is sufficient to allow cyclists to share the lane with buses.

Bus route deviations at Valley Road and Balmoral shops

Two features of the original Dominion Road passenger transport improvements were the proposed route deviations off Dominion Road near the Valley Road and Balmoral Road intersections and shopping centres. These were developed to avoid demolishing character buildings in the two shopping centres, and will each offer improved bus trip times and reliability if they are introduced.

Since the original scheme was developed 2003-2004 the need for better urban design features around the shopping centres and along the length of Dominion Road has been recognised. Consultation undertaken in 2005 also revealed that many people were also keen to see an improvement in the design of the paving, planting and seating facilities for example. To incorporate many of these urban design features, the original scheme for the deviations behind the shopping centres is currently under review. The review will enable Council to consider other ways of using the space behind the shopping areas and take international best practice into account while still delivering a sound solution for improving passenger transport along Dominion Road.

The table below shows the timing of the various parts of this project: While this is certainly a good project, it does make me wonder whether simply widening the bus lanes and threading them behind the shops at Valley Road and Balmoral Road is going to achieve what we need out of this corridor – and in particular whether it will interact with the land-use plans for the Dominion Road corridor and provide for the significantly higher capacity that is likely to be needed in the future.

The diagram to the left shows the Dominion Road corridor, broadly outlined. Dominion Road does stretch further south than this, all the way to Hillsborough Road actually, but I think the main focus is on the area north of Mt Albert Road, as that’s where the current squeeze on the road is most acutely felt.

The three red crosses indicate that three shopping centres along Dominion Road – Valley Road shops, Balmoral shops and Mt Roskill shops (heading north to south). Although there are these three distinct centres, I tend to think of the Dominion Road corridor as quite a continuous stretch of fairly intensive development. In particular, north of Balmoral Road there are shops which line Dominion Road for most of the distance from there to its northern end. This is no surprise as development stretched out along this route when it was a tram route.

There are three options I suppose when it comes to improving public transport along this route – the improved bus lanes as proposed, a light-rail/tram line and a (underground) heavy rail route. These options are detailed below:

1) The current bus-based proposal, as shown above, includes wider bus lanes and dedicated bus lanes behind the two shopping centres. Its cost is about $50-60 million I think. The wider bus lanes and especially the bypassed shopping centres would offer some improvements in capacity of the road, but I suspect that if we had significant intensification along this route we might eventually see it becoming fairly overcrowded. An advantage of a “bus based” system is that the buses can run with varying ’stopping patterns’, some being express services, some only stopping in a couple of locations and others starting their run fairly close to the city but stopping everywhere.

2) A tram route would possibly run along the same route as the bus lanes, or alternatively down the middle of the road. I know that internationally there is a preference to run trams down the centre of roads, and perhaps that might be prefered. I would suspect that this option would be much more expensive – perhaps twice the price for infrastructure works as well as a decent amount of money to purchase trams/light-rail vehicles. In terms of capacity though, generally light-rail can carry around double the number of people per hour as a bus based system – as modern trams are often triple-articulated making each vehicle able to carry a couple of hundred people at capacity. I suspect that constructing a tram line along this route would also stimulate quite a lot of intensive redevelopment – which once again is something that Council’s plans seem to want.

3) The third option is a fully underground railway line, probably with stations at Valley Road, Balmoral Road and Mt Roskill, before linking up with a future Avondale-Southdown railway line next to the Mt Roskill Motorway. This line would obviously be incredibly expensive – perhaps in the region of a few billion dollars – but would offer a massive capacity increase compared to both bus-based and light-rail systems. One problem with it though is that having only three stations means that there would be a lot of people living between stations who wouldn’t be particularly close to the line – and we would probably have to provide a bus service along the route still – potentially not the most efficient outcome. If this option was ever chosen I imagine that massive intensification around the three stations would be needed to provide the number of required people within walking distance of the stations .

I probably lean towards option 2 as my preferred choice. The linear type of development that exists along Dominion Road makes on-street light-rail more suitable than heavy rail in my opinion. In terms of comparing a tram and bus-based system, I do think that a tram line is more likely to encourage intensification along the corridor than simply improving the current bus lanes. The additional capacity offered by light-rail also suggests that this might be a smarter option in the long term.

I’m keen to hear what others think though. This project is likely to be one of the next major public transport projects in Auckland (excluding rail improvements), so it’ll be interesting to see what happens there. The changes in local government arrangements in Auckland will make it possible to readdress whether the current option is the best one.

An interesting article in yesterday’s herald on the possibility of having heritage trams running between the Tank Farm development and Britomart station.

Waterfront trams are being tipped as key Auckland tourist attractions, with a possible later benefit for public transport.

Although the Auckland Regional Council has no plans for a modern light rail network to serve commuters, its transport committee voted yesterday to press on with an investigation of potential tram routes through the Tank Farm to Britomart.

A staff feasibility report prepared after an approach by the Campaign for Better Transport and the Museum of Transport and Technology (Motat) said Auckland’s waterfront was a major destination and attraction for residents and visitors alike, and should be enjoyed by as many people as possible.

It suggested that tram routes be developed in stages, starting in Daldy and Jellicoe Sts – which are in the frontline of ambitious land development plans of the regional council and Auckland City.

Electric tram lines along Gaunt and Halsey Sts could later close an initial loop, to be followed by a route wending around the southern and eastern edges of the Viaduct Harbour to Britomart.

Developing a final direct link across the harbour from Quay St to Jellicoe St would have to wait for the proposed $47.3 million Te Wero bridge to be built in 2016.

The transport committee stopped short of adding a Rugby World Cup deadline for developing a partial tram route in Daldy and Jellicoe Sts, which the staff report said would be technically feasible but would carry a “significant risk.”

But regional chairman Mike Lee said that, with his organisation set to be supplanted in 11 months by the new Auckland Council, it was time to redouble efforts “to leave a legacy for the benefit of the people of the region”.

“To some extent we are like a cricket team down to the last 10 overs – we may be near the end of the game but it is time to start the big hitting,” he said.

Council urban development group manager Martin White said the entire network apart from the final Te Wero bridge link could be built for $30.2 million.

That would include $3 million for six “heritage” trams held in storage in Melbourne, similar to most of those used by Motat, which carries almost 200,000 passengers a year on its 1.9km network at Western Springs.

Mr White suggested that the waterfront trams could run every 20 minutes in each direction, using passing loops on a single track around the Tank Farm and duplicate tracks around Quay St and Britomart.

But Mr Lee was unimpressed that the budget estimate included $3.5 million for a “tramshed” to accommodate the fleet.

“I don’t want this to be gold-plated by consultants – that is a ludicrous sum,” he said, suggesting the council take frugality lessons from Motat in developing a tramway.

Finance committee chairman Bill Burrill was a lone dissenter, saying trams were not included in the council’s 10-year financial plan and that three buses could provide an adequate service around the same area for capital spending of less than $3 million.

Mr Lee said a tramway had been a feature of planning for the Tank Farm from the outset, and he couldn’t envisage tourists lining up to be carried by bus around the precinct.

Motat tramway manager Colin Zeff said Christchurch’s heritage tourist trams had done wonders for that city, although they were initially opposed by almost every business owner along their route.

A map is included in the print edition, and I have a rather crude version of that below, with the possible separate stages of the proposal.

I think that the idea in general is a very good one. This part of Auckland will be a very high quality urban development and deserves a primary transportation network that matches its quality – and trams is the obvious one in that respect. It could also be an excellent first step in a larger tram network for Auckland in the future – hopefully up Queen Street then along Dominion Road, as well as a Tamaki Drive line that I think could be really successful. However, I think that the “staging” of the proposal is slightly wrong – in that I think stage one has to link from Britomart station – otherwise I really don’t think it will be of much use to people living and working in the area. I doubt people are likely to pay for a ride on the tram instead of walking 750m if only stage 1 was complete. So perhaps stages 1 and 3 to start with – with stage 4 happening when the the Te Wero bridge is completed, and stage 2 being optional in my opinion.

In any case, the broad idea is a good one and I really hope it happens.

I do a lot of long-term dreaming when it comes to how Auckland’s transport system could be transformed, but while it’s critical to think longer-term, in terms of what we need to start planning for, start designing and start sorting out how funding will be provided, I think it’s also tricky at times to look so far into the future. Big long-term projects like the CBD Rail Loop, rail to the North Shore, an Airport Line, a Howick/Botany line and a Northwest Busway are just so expensive, or potentially not necessary for a decade or two, that focusing on them can make it too easy for public transport advocates to be written off as dreamers. So I think it might be useful to take a look at new public transport projects that construction could have at least started on within the next five years – so by the end of 2014.

To start with, there are a number of projects currently underway that I will exclude from this. They include:

1. ProjectDART rail upgrades – Newmarket station, New Lynn rail trench, Manukau rail link, Onehunga line reopening.
2. Rail electrification
3. Integrated ticketing
4. Central connector bus lanes

Depressingly, I think that’s about it. So what could be started within the next five years?

Firstly, I do think we could make a start on bringing trams back to Auckland. This has already been somewhat proposed for linking Tank Farm with Britomart, but that link isn’t likely until a permanent Te Wero bridge is constructed in 2016. I don’t think we really need to wait that long before at least making a start on bringing trams back to Auckland, and the first route I would build would be along Dominion Road and Queen Street. This is detailed in the map below – a slightly truncated version of the line I proposed in a post just over a week ago.

I do recognise there are potential issues with such a project. Would you put the tram line in the centre of the road or at the edge of the road? How would you deal with Queen Street? What about people wanting to travel from further out than Wesley? I guess the solution would be to still run some express bus services from far out places, have a lot of feeder buses going to the tram “super-stop” at Wesley, probably having the track on the edge of the road (sharing with a bus lane), while potentially the tracks could go down the middle of Queen Street.

In terms of economically justifying such a project, I do think that one would need to think a bit outside the square. While the time-savings for a tram over a bus might not be great – a tram system offers far higher capacity (and I believe that capacity is an issue on Dominion Road as something like 35 buses enter the CBD between 8am and 9am on a weekday morning), a tram system would encourage intensification along the Dominion Road corridor, potentially having huge economic benefits and a tram system would also offer a superior ride quality to what’s available on the bus. Therefore, a tram system would attract more people who otherwise drive – potentially even reducing congestion along this route.

Auckland City Council already has plans to widen Dominion Road so that superior bus lanes can be provided, and to make it possible for buses to bypass nasty bottlenecks at the Balmoral and Valley Road shops. A lot of those plans could be carried forward to a tram system – they’d just need to take things one step further and construct the lines – and buy a few trams to run along it! This line probably wouldn’t be well-suited to the running of heritage trams, keep them for a Tamaki Drive line I think. This is definitely one project the future Auckland Super-City could look at getting start on in the next five years.

Another project would actually be a series of projects to get stuck into – and that is quite simply: more bus lanes. While there are a few bus lanes around Auckland City,  some transit lanes in North Shore City, about 20m of bus lane along Pakuranga Road in Manukau City and (as far as I know) nothing in Waitakere City, in order to improve our bus system I think it’s utterly critical we develop more bus lanes. There are quite a few places where this could be done, and the following is by no means an authoritative list:

1. Queen Street – could be combined with laying the tram tracks for the Dominion Road tram line.
2. Manukau Road – particularly between Newmarket and Greenlane West, as the road is easily wide enough for bus lanes here.
3. Karangahape Road – between Queen Street and Ponsonby Road, a very very busy area for buses.
4. As much of the Link Bus route as easily practicable. Could include most of Ponsonby Road, some of Victoria Street, College Hill, Parnell Road and so forth.
5. Great North Road – through Waterview. As part of the Waterview Connection mitigation.

Outside Auckland City my knowledge is not as complete when it comes to the routes that would benefit, but a few are obvious:

1. Pakuranga Road – from Highland Park to Pakuranga.
2. Ti Rakau Drive – probably only the areas that are 6 lanes currently could be easily “bus laned”.
3. Great North Road – between New Lynn and Henderson.
4. Great South Road – as much as possible.
5. Te Atatu Road – between Edmonton Road and the NW Motorway

Bus lanes, combined with smart-card ticketing, should increase the speed of travelling on the bus quite significantly and as a result make bus travel a far more attractive option. I am sure there are many other arterial routes throughout Auckland that could be “bus laned”, keen to hear suggestions.

My final “major project” proposal for the next 5 years is a start on the CBD Rail Tunnel. Previously, I have proposed a way construction of the tunnel could be staged, although to be honest I’m really not sure if building another tunnel parallel to Britomart is likely to go ahead any time soon, particularly as the CBD Rail Tunnel project as it currently stands is already in the process of being designed. So it might be wise to simply focus on getting a start on that rail project. While it’s definitely wishful thinking that we might be able to find $1.5 billion to be fully dedicated to the building of the CBD Rail Tunnel within the next 5 years – even finding a small part of that to make a start might be useful. Here’s why:

One of the prime justifications of the CBD Rail Tunnel is that the tunnel into Britomart is going to hit capacity by 2016 (at the latest). This is because all the trains that go into Britomart have to then depart via the same tunnel – this makes signalling in the tunnel, and switching around all the points, quite a mission. As a result, the tunnel currently can only get “in and out” 18 trains per hour. Some tricky work to upgrade the lines in the tunnel to be able to run trains in either direction will allow up to 24 trains per hour to enter and leave Britomart. By 2016 it’s very likely that we’re going to need more than that, so we’re going to be pretty screwed.

One way to slightly delay the “we’re going to be screwed” date could be to make a start on the tunnel from the Britomart end – even if the first few hundred metres of it are only to be used as train storage until the rest is built. If we built a few hundred metres of tunnel then perhaps 8 or 10 trains could be stored along that stretch of tunnel during the morning peak. These would be trains that wouldn’t have to leave via the tunnel (and therefore wouldn’t block the way of trains coming in). After 9am, when the rush dies down, the trains could one at a time run as counter-peak services, slowly filtering back to the suburbs. The project would involve extending the lines that serve platforms 1 and 5 along the very alignment that will eventually be used for the whole CBD rail loop. If it was made possible for the trains to switch between the lines then a train that enters on platform 5 could leave via platform 1. I’m not an expert on what difference this will make, but I do understand that it would increase the station’s capacity. So, while this project wouldn’t necessarily make “the world of difference”, it could delay the chaos for a few years and would also mean that we had at least made a start on the CBD rail tunnel. That would make it more politically viable to argue to “finish it off”.

Another possible idea I have is making some lanes on all our motorways “carpool lanes” at peak hour. That could certainly improve the efficiency of the road network. Anyone else got ideas that we could be building by 2014?

The ARC’s Transport and Urban Development Committee this week made a potentially crucial first step towards bringing trams back to Auckland. In February (after an excellent presentation by the Campaign for Better Transport) the committee had requested the preparation of a scoping report into the possibility of having light-rail (trams) as the primary public transport option for getting people from Britomart to the Tank Farm area that is currently in the very first stages of redevelopment. That scoping report has now been completed, and had the following executive summary.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Auckland Regional Council (ARC) is looking into the feasibility of a light rail system along the waterfront to service planned waterfront developments and provide transport links to Britomart and the integrated transport services Britomart provides. A light rail facility for the waterfront development could fulfil one of the following roles:

• A loop linking the development area, Quay Street and Britomart.
• A facility which forms part of a wider public transport solution for the city.

Modern light rail systems are being used as part of strategic transport networks throughout the world to deliver high capacity, high frequency services largely to serve peak hour commuting trips. There are also examples of light rail systems which are limited to short loops, for example, in Christchurch. These are used predominantly by heritage vehicles and often lie wholly within city centres.

Current planning for transport enhancements in the region and along the waterfront do not anticipate using light rail. However, it is proposed to undertake a feasibility study which will examine the potential demand for and role of light rail along the waterfront, review how light rail has been used in comparable waterfront cities and examine the potential options, implications and costings of such a system in Auckland.

Probably the most interesting parts of this is the mention that the facility could form part of a wider transport solution for the city (I detailed what I think could be good first steps in a recent post) and also some recognition that modern light rail systems are being used throughout the world to deliver high capacity, high frequency services. In fact, I would hazard a guess that light-rail is one of the real growth areas for public transport around the world at the moment.

If we look at this proposal, the basic idea of linking Britomart and Tank Farm isn’t particularly amazing – and would only involve a couple of kilometres of track. However, it is an important start and could very well be extended to other parts of the city – most obviously either along Tamaki Drive or up Queen Street and along Dominion Road. The route below seems to be what is being proposed:

Looking forward, it’s tricky to work out where things will go next. On the bright side, the ARC have asked for a proper feasibility study be undertaken for the proposal. This will be reported back to the Transport and Urban Design Committee in November this year. But on the down side, Auckland City Council have postponed their plans to build a permanent bridge across the mouth of viaduct harbour (the $50 million price tag for a bridge with some architectural merit freaked them out I think) until 2016. All we’re going to get before then is a cheap $2 million temporary pedestrian pontoon bridge – which I can’t imagine will have anywhere near the strength required to let a tram across it. So even if the proposal gets the backing of the ARC, and they manage to find some money for it – we’re still looking at another seven years before anything happens.

Of course, by then Auckland’s local government structure will be completely reorganised. So who knows what might happen. It’s just nice having trams back on the agenda!

Until the 1950s Auckland had one of the best public transport systems for a city of its size in the world. Our usage of public transport was also very high on a per-capita basis. The vast majority of public transport users during the early 20th century were those who caught the tram. And Auckland’s tram system was very very extensive once it had reached its full extent by the early 1930s – as shown in the map below:
However, in perhaps one of the worst decisions ever made by the “powers to be” in Auckland, the tram system was ripped up in the mid 1950s. This certainly was not a phenomenon unique to Auckland, as most cities around the world ripped out their tram systems at this time – and instead replaced them with buses that were, for one reason or another, just never quite so popular.

I have detailed in a previous post why I think it might be advantageous to reintroduce trams to Auckland – at last along some routes where it would be appropriate. I do understand that re-creating the infrastructure for a tram network would be expensive, but on-street light-rail systems (such as a tram) are proving to be incredibly popular in cities around the world where they have been built in recent years – such as Portland, San Francisco, and London. Trams generally are more popular than the buses they replace – due to a higher ride quality, they have more capacity and their permanence encourages intensification around the routes that they take.

So I reckon we should bring trams back to Auckland – at least along a couple of routes to start with. These two routes are shown in the map below: Starting with the blue line, this would run from Blockhouse Bay shops (or potentially if we had to cut back on funds a bit, from the bus depot on Stoddard Road in Mt Roskill) through the Lynfield area and then primarily along Dominion Road into the city. It would then continue down Queen Street before linking across the viaduct harbour with the Tank Farm development area. The primary advantage of this route would be to provide a high-quality public transport service to the Dominion Road corridor – which is one of Auckland’s busiest and most popular bus corridors. Running trams along it would increase the public transport capacity of the corridor, and provide an incentive to further intensify the area. The route would also provide a good public transport connection between the CBD and the Tank Farm area.

The red line would provide a high-quality east-west link across Auckland, and would be particularly aimed at the tourist market. From the west, it would start at the current terminus of the MOTAT tram-line: at MOTAT 2 on Motions Road. It would then go past the zoo, Western Springs Park and MOTAT 1 along the existing tram track (might need to be double-tracked) before hopping onto Great North Road on the city side of the motorway interchange at Western Springs. It would continue into the CBD along Great North Road, Karangahape Road and then run down Queen Street. From Queen Street it would continue eastwards along Quay Street and Tamaki Drive out to St Heliers. It would therefore provide links between a number of top tourist attractions in Auckland: Mission Bay, Kelly Tarltons, the CBD, MOTAT, Western Springs Park and the Zoo. As well as that, the route would also provide a great commuting option for those living along the waterfront out east, or in the inner-western suburbs.

I really do think these two tram routes would work well as a first step in re-establishing Auckland’s tram network. Perhaps there would be further routes to consider if things really take off, and maybe one day we might be able to recreate the awesome system we once had.