The business case was completed in 2004 and investigated three options, the busway, the busway but also with T3 vehicles and the busway with T3 vehicles initially but then changing to T2 from 2015 once other projects like VPT had been completed. It was estimated to cost $214.6 million although they note that the North Shore City council planned to spend some more money to improve the stations which would help build patronage. Here is a summary of the costs and benefits of each option:

The cost of the busway ended up being about $294m of which $210m was for the busway itself and $84m was for the stations. As you can see though, comparing the costs to the benefits the option for the busway actually came out with the lowest score with a benefit cost ratio (BCR) of only 1.2 which was much lower than I had expected. So the next question I had was what figures went into the business case to arrive at these benefits, one factor that would make quite a difference is the discount rate used. Our former admin has done a number of posts that explain discount rates and the impact they have on investments we make. The standard NZTA rate currently used is 8% however for the busway a figure of 10% was used (I assume that was the standard rate back then). Reviewing the business case using current NZTA methodology would most likely result in higher BCR numbers across all three scenarios.

The biggest impacts though come from the number of people using the busway as well as the benefits that accrue to other road users who aren’t using the busway. The results of the modelling for two years are included in the paper and these are 2011 and 2021 and this is where we can see how many people were expected to use the busway.

So they suggested that in 2011 we would have about 1630 people using the busway to head to town in the AM peak and in 2021 that would rise to 2174. Of course these are likely to have been fairly conservative numbers but how do they compare to what we actually had. We don’t have direct numbers for the busway but we do have numbers for the harbour bridge which would also include buses from Onewa Rd, Auckland Transports annual report for 2011 tells us that over 8600 people crossed the harbour bridge by public transport, while the report we saw last week shows that at the height of the peak about 5000 people cross the harbour by bus. Of course a decent chunk of these numbers will come from Onewa Rd but the majority have likely travelled along the busway meaning that we are already far exceeding the numbers forecast above.

What this means is that the busway has already delivered significantly greater than expected and will continue to do so. If we were to re-evaluate the the project with what we have learned so far the BCR would likely be considerably higher. Interestingly the NZTA might be doing just that right now, in responding to my request they advised me that they are just finalising a post implementation review of the Busway which should be out very soon, possibly by the end of the month. They have said they will send me a copy so I am looking forward to seeing what comes out.

I think there are also lessons we can learn from this when thinking about other PT projects, the main one is that it seems that our models consistently under estimate the demand for high quality PT services like the busway. I think it would be a good idea for politicians to keep that in mind when thinking about the CRL today as that is another project where I feel the patronage projections underestimate what will really happen.

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.

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.

Promoting transport solutions

Gridlock traffic has long been the number one complaint about Auckland. With the roads only set to get busier, the Auckland Council will need to find sustainable transport solutions, while making sure our neighbourhoods are protected.

Cameron has worked effectively with the New Zealand Transport Authority, the Automobile Association, rail authorities, public transport providers and advocates. He is committed to leading the charge on addressing local transport issues.

This is after the article congratulating himself and other retrogrades like Ken Baguley for getting the bus lanes on Remuera Rd downgraded to uselessness.

But enough on political game playing; there really is nothing duller, the interesting point is not that Brewer is going to spend the next year painting the CRL as black as he can but rather that his current complaint exactly expresses the reverse of what I believe the Council ought to be doing with the CRL. Here is his big idea:

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.

Well of course buying property is a really exchanging one asset for another, so not really ‘crazy’ unless a particularly poor deal is made. And here’s the thing, transit stations transform land use and value positively, so the Council is in a strong position to make good deals through the purchases around the CRL. Two of the financially most successful transit systems in world, in Hong Kong and Tokyo achieve this success through the very act of investing in and developing property around subway stations. A recent article at Atlantic Cities on the Tokyo system begins with this observation:

Twice during my recent trip to Tokyo, once at Shibuya and again in a suburb to the west of the city, I exited a subway platform only to find myself swaddled in a massive department store. This was the Tokyu store.

Really innovative councillors, especially from the supposedly business savvy right, should be pointing out the investment opportunities for the Council Property CCO especially around Aotea station and at the Downtown Centre that the CRL offers. The article continues:

…the Tokyu Corporation. Established in 1922 as a regional development company, Tokyu today is a massive “rail-based conglomerate” of nearly 400 companies that employs 30,000 people, only a tenth of which work directly for the railway. Beginning in the 1930s Tokyu surrounded its hubs with commercial and retail buildings and sold land near its intermediate stations to universities at good prices, to create reliable residential (and thus passenger) corridors.

My compliant with the Council is not that it shouldn’t buy property where it intends to change that property’s value through transport initiatives but rather that the Property CCO seems rather lacklustre and lacking in sufficient energy to maximise these opportunities. I guess it doesn’t get any such lead from the Council itself.

No surprise as we certainly don’t seem to be blessed with much quality from the C&R ticket. I am most disappointed with Councillor Fletcher, to whom all Aucklanders owe a debt of gratitude for the construction of Britomart, as she is reported as observing:

C&R leader Christine Fletcher said the time was not right for a big budget and a big spend-up.

Well Sydney built much of its metro in the Great Depression, and in many ways it is the perfect time, interest rates are low, especially for local authorities, the construction industry is largely idle, the city and country needs investment in game changing infrastructure, and property can be easily bought. And we are only talking about getting ready to start the real work later which gives a few years for things to change in Wellington.

Newmarket Station ©Patrick Reynolds 2010

When it comes to Newmarket station though, one sore point since it opened has been station square which has a number of issues, one of which is below.

Station Square exit to Broadway

A report to the Waitamata local board  (in the same agenda as the Fort St report) looks at what the issues are and what some solutions are to fix them up. Here is what some of the report had to say:

Newmarket Station Square was purchased to provide a space that could function as a mixture of:

• a transition and waiting space for rail passengers;
• a civic square for community activities and events;
• a public open space area for respite from the busyness of the commercial streets;
• a pleasant outlook and “backyard” for local high rise residents, while retaining its public use, look and feel.

However, Station Square has faced challenges in becoming what was envisaged following its opening early in 2010 and has a number of fundamental design issues. The space is isolated from surrounding streets with little visible reference to the adjacent shopping centre. There exists a conflict of public/private interests created by private development forming the built edge to Station Square.  The design is barren, uninviting and uninteresting, and there are severe restrictions on the amount and positioning of any fixed elements as Station Square sits over a car park roof.

Newmarket is a very busy station with thousands of students and commuters waiting in and walking through Station Square at certain times during the working week. Station Square’s visitors are mainly transient, making their way to or from a train or apartment. The most visible exception to this is the use of Station Square by young people on weekday afternoons as a gathering space, while they wait for trains after school finishes.

and

Given its location behind Broadway and fronting the Newmarket rail station, Station Square is a key open space for Newmarket. As a business centre, Newmarket continues to grow rapidly, outstripping other retail centres and operating as a strong retail and shopping magnet. The population of Newmarket town centre is growing rapidly, thanks to the construction of new apartment buildings, of which the L&Y development adjoining Station Square is one example.

This significant growth in population will continue to place pressure on the relatively small amount of open space available within walking distance of the Newmarket town centre. Major projected business growth in Newmarket will continue to attract more shoppers and workers into the town centre, who want open spaces and parks for lunch and relaxation, putting even more pressure on the available open space.

Modelling suggests that 3000 commuters will alight at Newmarket during the morning peak by 2016, with 800 of these exiting the station at one time in the busiest 10-minute period. It is estimated that 50-80% of commuters exiting the rail station will do so via the link out to Broadway. The majority of buses travel along Broadway and the town centre is most easily accessed by this link, hence most transfers are and will continue to be via the Broadway walkway.

And here are some of the recommendations to improve the square, the most costly of which is the first one but it is perhaps the most important (I’m not going to put the all of the recommendations up simply due to the size of some of them.

 1. Visibility and legibility

1.1. Improve access and signage

There are two designated pedestrian links giving access to Station Square in addition to the main concourse into the upper level of the railway station, which provides a direct and secure covered access from Remuera Road into the station. These are illegible entries with very poor amenity on both the Remuera Road and Broadway entry points.  Visitors from Broadway will walk past the backs of buildings, service alleyways razor wire and poorly lit dog-legs before arriving at Station Square.

However, this walkway will be in use until the widening and development of the access. Auckland Council approved funding by committee of $700,000 in 2011 towards the necessary relocation of the existing toilets and to redevelop shops 29 and 30, which are retained in council ownership. Negotiations have been completed with the owner of the property on Broadway but still awaiting legal confirmation.

Meanwhile, better signage is needed to signal the access ways to Station Square and then on to the station.  The Newmarket Business Association has some suggestions for this. The upgrade of lighting along the walkways is also recommended.

Options for improvement:

• Develop the access way to Station Square from Broadway as soon as the deal is completed between Council and the owner.
• Improve entry signage to Station Square.  Suggestions have been made to the Local Board by the Newmarket Business Association to install signage.
• Upgrade lighting along access ways including catenary lighting.

1.2. Improve sightlines and surveillance

There are no clear lines of sight between Station Square and outside streets as all accesses are dog-legged, contributing to the impression of isolation.

The balconies of the surrounding apartments that overlook Station Square on three sides, together with the few tenanted shops on the ground floor, provide intermittent passive surveillance. However, the solid concrete canopy over the shops denies any real connection between the residents and people in Station Square.

The railway station has security cameras that are monitored at Britomart Transport Centre by Auckland Transport. The CCTV coverage only includes a small area outside the station at the bottom of the steps into the square. There are no security cameras in the general square vicinity.  The few bench seats in the corner are insufficient to provide ongoing natural surveillance and encourage the necessary activity to relieve the space of its barren emptiness.

Suggestions for improvements

• Design of the new Broadway exit creates a direct line of sight into Station Square from Broadway
• Ambassadors for Station Square and to develop and support positive relationships between retailers, residents and visitors, paid for by Council.
• CCTV installed to cover the Remuera Road and Broadway exits and the open area of Station Square

2. Activate the square

2.1. Work with local business association to bring in appropriate retail activities

Suggestions for improvement:

• Work with the Newmarket Business Association to encourage retail development that will provide activity and colour on the reserve edge and enliven the space.
• Work with businesses to design a market that works within the weight limits

2.2. Activation

Suggestions for improvement:

• Make Station Square into an arts area
• Programme activities in Station Square that target youth
• Bring in more soft landscaping as part of Station Square

3. Amenity and design improvements

Green Station Square and create seating spaces

There is a seating area in the southwestern corner close to the shops but there is no other amenity to encourage apartment residents or the public to use Station Square for recreation.

Station Square is a designated open space and the potential exists for developing an ‘oasis’ in the town centre for the recreation and relaxation of visitors and workers. Station Square sits over an underground carpark, leading to severe restrictions on the amount and positioning of any fixed elements, and any greening of the space would require planter boxes.

Any redevelopment of Station Square must investigate options to solve the ‘fundamental’ problems above and in the safety assessment, rather than providing simply a ‘paint and paper’ of the existing space.  While the options outlined in this report will provide some quick, relatively inexpensive ‘fixes’ to the square’s design itself, they will not in themselves solve the social problems currently plaguing the space.  It must also be noted that a structural engineer needs to be engaged prior to any development of these solutions, as the location and strength of structural beams and pillars will dictate the design above, and these were not known at the time of drafting the concept.

Suggestions for improvements:

• Pursuing initiatives for greening the space and adjacent buildings
• Install a high quality, covered hardwood seating area in the middle part of Station Square
• Position steel/timber planters, planted with 400L deciduous trees and low underplanting, with seats on two sides of selected planters
• Consider installing interactive/brightly coloured sculpture

Getting this square and the surrounding commercial businesses working is really important and hope that the council are able to quickly get any outstanding issues resolved because at the moment the place is a bit like a school report card, has lots of potential but doesn’t deliver.

A few things about the videos really stand out to me:

1. The extremely high frequency of trains you see travelling in the opposite direction
2. 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)
3. 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.

• 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.