Matt’s post the other day about the City Rail Link (CRL) project highlighted a growing feeling that proponents of the project (in particular Auckland Council and Auckland Transport) need to keep pushing the message of why this project is needed, as well as (certainly in my opinion) keep the public abreast of what progress is being made. Aside from a pretty logo and some incredibly generic factsheets on the project, we pretty much haven’t heard anything about what’s going on behind the scenes since the middle of last year.
Given the history of delays (Onehunga Station, Manukau Station, integrated ticketing etc.) to public transport projects, whenever things go quiet there’s always a sneaking worry that it’ll just drop off the radar never to be heard from again. While that does seem unlikely for this particular project, especially as it’s supposedly the number one transport priority project in the Auckland Plan, given the aforementioned history, one can’t be too careful.
The reason why all of this is important is not just so nosey bloggers can keep up with the play, but also because public support for the CRL is critical in ensuring that it goes ahead. While most of us are resigned to the fact that the current government will never fund the project, no matter how fantastic its revised business case is, there may be a change in government by 2014 – still time to push the “go” button and have the CRL completed by 2021: which has always been the target completion date. However, there are a few huge assumptions in that timeline:
That there will be a change of government (or that, miraculously, the current government might change its opinion of the project)
That the next government would be inclined to stump up significant funding for the project
That we still have a Council which supports the CRL after next year’s elections
In terms of public support for the project, this most strongly relates to the third assumption. It would be tragically ironic if, in 2014, we find ourselves with a central government willing to help fund the CRL, but a Council that no longer wants it.
So, with all that lengthy preamble, it is clearly important to “market” the project’s benefits over the next year or so in particular. There will be certain events over that time which should help market the project, such as the consenting process – which will show real progress and provide a lot more information (such as pretty pictures of the stations), although obviously also have risks as the negative environmental effects of the CRL are highlighted (although as it’s pretty much all in a tunnel, these shouldn’t be too massive). But there’s still going to be a need, especially as the issue of how we actually pay for the CRL comes into greater focus, to keep explaining, highlighting and describing why this project is necessary. This is my initial crack at that task.
Essentially, I think the City Rail Link project is all about adding capacity to Auckland’s transport network. This network, comprising of both roads and rail, is obviously of a certain size and has a certain amount of capacity. With regard to the CRL, capacity is often discussed in terms of just the city centre, but that falls into the trap which I think leads to a lot of the opposition to the project: that it’s just about the city centre. I disagree, it’s about the whole region. Although traffic growth on the roading part of Auckland’s transport network has tailed off in recent years, with the city’s population expected to increase from 1.5 million now to 2.5 million in 30 years, clearly (even with a decline in per capita travel) there will be more transport demand in 30 years time than there is now.
So, over the next 30 years we find ourselves in the situation of having a fairly significant jump in transport demand (with recent trends highlighting that most of the increase is on public transport). The key question becomes “what’s the best way to handle that increase?” This is clearly a question that requires a complicated answer, and in fact whole transport plans and strategies to answer it fully – with some of the solution being a management of demand (through encouraging more off-peak travel so we can use the current network more efficiently), some being selective improvements to the roading network where that makes sense and is necessary, much of it being through having a better bus network… and, most critically in terms of the CRL, ensuring that we are able to optimally use all of the transport network we currently have.
As it’s such a key issue, I will elaborate on the last sentence in the paragraph above to highlight what I mean by it. The current rail network obviously forms a part of the existing transport system – but it’s a part of the transport system which is vastly under-utilised in terms of its ultimate capacity. As the graphic below highlights (from here), heavy rail (our system is a kind of hybrid between commuter and heavy rail, although one could argue forever about where you draw the line between many of the different technologies) has the potential for simply enormous people-moving capacity:
While the theoretical capacity of our rail system is extremely high, we are – of course – limited by the current design of the rail network as capacity is only ever as large as the weakest point on the network. And the weakest point of our network is the bottleneck of the Britomart train station. This limits the capacity of each main line (western, southern and eastern) to six trains per hour and Onehunga to two trains per hour. A six-car electric train is likely to be able to carry around 750 people, meaning that the “person capacity” of the rail network is limited to 4500 people each way per hour, which I’ve added to our diagram as a red line: To use a roading analogy, our current system is like having a ten lane motorway disgorging onto a single lane-dirt track. It’s pretty dumb, not just because of the congestion we create, but perhaps most importantly, because we’re wasting a huge amount of the investment we made in that motorway. Similarly for Auckland’s rail network, we will only ever unlock the real benefits of Project DART and electrification once the “dirt track” capacity bottleneck of Britomart is resolved through constructing the CRL.
But, I hear you say, we aren’t actually near carrying 4,500 people per direction per hour yet on our rail system, so the Britomart bottleneck is not a huge issue yet. Part of the answer to this question is that our current rolling stock limits us to much less than this number (causing any of the existing overcrowding on the rail network), and the electric trains will significantly add to the ‘people capacity’ of the rail network. The other answer to the question is that we’ve compensated for the lack of capacity in the rail system by running a hugely expensive duplicative bus network. By starting to remove much of that duplication, we’re able to operate a fantastically better bus network – focusing buses on becoming feeders (thereby expanding the reach of the rail network) and providing massively enhanced all-day frequency. This was illustrated at last month’s Transport Committee meeting:
Every route shown above runs at 15 minute frequencies, all day, ever day. This network is only possible by reallocating resources away from bus routes that duplicate rail.
The other capacity matter that needs pointing out is in terms of roading. While the current ‘flat lining’ of traffic raises huge questions around whether we need to expand the road network at all, even if we did, this is becoming increasingly difficult. Not only are roading projects becoming more and more expensive (Victoria Park Tunnel and Waterview Connection requiring tunnels), but inevitably, because there is not the huge latent capacity available on our road network as there is on the rail network, each roading project just shifts the problem up or down the motorway. For example, my observation has been that opening the Victoria Park Tunnel’s third lane is clogging up the harbour bridge more than expected, basically replacing a traffic jam south of Wellington Street with one north of Fanshawe Street.
So if our population is growing by a million over 30 years, we can’t easily and cheaply expand the roading network (plus every time we do, it just shifts the problem rather than fixing it), while we have a piece of infrastructure (the rail network) hugely under-utilised because of a capacity constraint (Britomart), fixing that capacity constraint surely become a no-brainer.
Of course that’s not the CRL’s only benefit, we can add improved access to the city centre through the new stations, vastly quicker travel times for those heading to the city from the west, a kind of ephemeral “world-class city” benefit, agglomeration benefits from more employment in the city centre, higher rail frequencies throughout the network, easier cross-town access by allowing trains to through-route and so forth. But ultimately, I think the CRL is needed because there is simply no cheaper and easier way to increase the capacity of Auckland’s transport system so dramatically. And everyone, no matter where you live, work or play, benefits from Auckland’s transport system having significantly more capacity.
It appears that the Council’s silence on the benefits and the need for the City Rail Link may be coming home to roost. Stuff reports:
Nearly half of all Aucklanders who made submissions on the council’s draft long-term plan are opposed to mayor Len Brown’s proposed $2.4 billion inner-city rail link.
The council received 655 submissions on the proposed city rail link, and nearly half – 48 per cent – were against the link, while 30 per cent were in favour of it. The other submissions did not include a clear view either way.
“The city rail link is an unnecessary burden to the entire region and will only serve the few people who visit the CBD. It is unacceptable to keep continue spending ratepayers’ money while household incomes remain lean or declining,” one submission read.
Other submissions in support said the rail link was a “number one priority”, which would bring “vibrancy” to the centre city.
To me this is a clear sign the council and Auckland Transport have been asleep at the wheel of this project and I pointed this out just a few days ago. Since the government announced it’s review, there has has been barely any information about about it and documents like the Auckland Plan and the LTP only really pay the project lip service so is no surprise that people haven’t it as a priority. I get the feeling that the council/AT have wanted to deliberately keep quiet on the project so as to not rock the governments boat and in the meantime work away on it in the background to address the issues with the business case until they are ready to get the designation. There are two problems that I have with this strategy:
They have allowed the government to control the argument and continue to claim the project doesn’t make sense. I would have preferred that they at least had kept pointing out that their independent review came up with vastly different a result.
It’s not like people are against rail though, this from further on in the article:
Meanwhile, there was more support for an airport rail corridor, with 48 per cent of the 163 submissions on the matter in favour of it, and 32 per cent against it.
Some submissions said the lack of a rail link between the airport and city was an embarrassment for Auckland.
“Can’t believe that Auckland airport puts itself forward as one of the world’s top 10 airports when there is no rail link. It is more like some obscure European low-cost airline rural airport.”
Reasons for opposing the rail link to the airport were because of its expense, and because the benefits had not been demonstrated to ratepayers.
One of the key things that hasn’t been explained is that without the CRL there simply isn’t any capacity on the existing rail network to run more trains, this means that without it we can’t run rail to the airport, to the North Shore or anywhere else in the region. An example of exactly what we can expect a few short years after electrification is completed was on display this morning, by Glen Eden all seats on my train were full and there were people standing, by Avondale there was simply not enough room for people and I noticed a few people who simply couldn’t fit on the train and had to wait on the platform for the next service. To borrow one of Steven Joyces favourite terms, in many ways I see the CRL as the ‘step change’ that is needed to allow other network developments to take place.
I really feel that leadership on this needs to come from the top, statements like “The council says it will lead to more trains every hour on the western line and better public transport for the whole region” and “We’ve got some unique challenges ahead of us as a city but I am determined to deliver on this” don’t really do enough to convince the public. So come on Len, if you truely believe in this project then you need to fight for it, sitting quietly on the sidelines like you seem to be doing is not going to get the thing built.
Over the last week or so some of my fellow bloggers have put up their suggestions for how to develop the rail network in the future, I have taken some of their ideas and thrown in a few of my own. One thing that is common across these suggestions is that largely we aren’t trying to add a whole heap of lines to places that haven’t been discussed before but are just trying to optimise the network once the projects are built, the projects largely consist of the CRL, rail to the Airport and rail to the Shore.
You will see that there are a lot of similarities between all of the designs presented with the main one being the ‘cross’ at Aotea station which links the North/South services and the East/West services. I think that there are a few advantages to this, the key ones being that from one central station you can get almost everywhere on the rail network with a ‘one seat journey’. Of course it would mean that the station would be extremely busy but part of the reason for discussing it now is so that we can hopefully influence the design to avoid issues. The station would have some great potential access options and I suspect that many of the neighbouring business would be keen to have direct access to the station, something which could help to spread out the people using the station rather than funnelling them through a couple of entrances. These neighbouring businesses would also likely see huge financial benefit to having a direct connection to the busiest station in the city so would quite likely be prepared to pay for access, this could help to pay for the station and/or its operating costs.
So here is my plan including operating patterns that would run.
Here are the key differences.
Unlike Patrick I don’t envisage a University station, I think that it is simply too close to the Aotea Station to work well operationally.
There is no rail connection from Manukau to the Airport. There are a couple of reasons for this:
There is also no catchment between these two locations that would warrant having a station so any trains between these two locations would travelling an extra 9km each way for not a lot of gain.
Without embarking on building a rail line through to Botany it doesn’t seem to make much sense to have the planned busway terminate at Manukau, extending the busway services to the Airport provides a direct connection for those that live in the east. The line at station at the airport could be designed in a way to allow extension later on.
There is no direct connection between the West and Newmarket. The reason for this is there are not any simple operating patterns that easily allow for this connection to work without impacting frequencies on the lines. To counter this slightly a station at Dominion Rd (to replace Mt Eden) with an extra platform or two would allow for a shuttle to run between the two stations providing a connection to Grafton and a faster journey to Newmarket vs going through Aotea. At Newmarket it would use the current platform 1 so wouldn’t impact on the services using the other two lines. It would also help to take some of the pressure off Aotea.
There are a few other issues worth pointing out:
Ideally the yellow line would continue on to Onehunga, getting there from Mt Roskill is difficult due to the terrain and the currently designated route which was designed with freight trains winds its way through the area but bypasses the town centre. I imagine it will be extremely expensive to build that section due to this so I feel the focus should be on other areas first.
At the moment there is still plenty of capacity left in the busway however that won’t always be the case. The blue line north of Akoranga would be the last piece of this design to be built and the rest is likely to take up a few decades worth of work anyway.
My preference isn’t for a spur at Takapuna however the town centre is a bit like St Lukes or Manukau in that it is not easy to reach directly with the existing infrastructure patterns and doing so would add a few Km’s to every journey of anyone travelling to/from north of there.
The network is still very CBD centric, a lot of effort will need to be made to make it easy to transfer at key locations to high frequency cross town bus services.
There are still a lot of services that use the section between Westfield and Wiri. As frequencies increase this would become a key bottleneck which would likely require additional tracks beyond the 3rd main already proposed.
The Green and Yellow services are quite long at close to 50km, this means that we would need a lot of trains to run the network at high frequencies. The red and blue lines are shorter at around 37km (by comparison it is 31km from Papakura to Britomart).
One thing that Auckland Transport and the Auckland Council seem to struggle with at the moment is the issue of how to sell the City Rail Link (CRL). We have seen AT start to improve things but most people on sites like this tend to think that it doesn’t really do enough to explain the project or it’s benefits. Part of the problem is that the Government review muddied the waters by using dodgy assumptions like that the price of parking wouldn’t increase over a 30 year period, that there was unlimited roading capacity for more cars and buses in the CBD as well as a few others. These issues are currently being addressed by a piece of work called the City Centre Future Access Study (CCFAS) and that will feed into an updated business case but to me there is still a big gap we haven’t yet solved and that is, how do we explain the project to the general public.
Saying that we are going to build it is one thing but it tends to lead to a lot of misinformation about what the project actually is and part of the problem is that it can be very difficult to get some of the complex and detailed information across to the public in an easy to understand way. This leads to detractors coming up with arguments that have probably already been answered and already with the CRL we have seen things like:
Why not just put more buses on
Why not use X, Y or Z technology
Why should petrol taxes go towards a rail project
Why should those outside of Auckland have to help pay for it
Auckland doesn’t have the population to support rail
Aucklanders just love cars and will never use PT
We shouldn’t build a tunnel in such a volcanic area/what happens if there is an earthquake
So the question becomes, how do we get this information across to the public in a way that is easy to understand. One thing that we can do is look to overseas examples, here is one from Hawaii which describes a rail system they are currently building.
The information is nice and clear and makes it very easy to understand the process went they went through and the benefits of the process. About the only thing I thought that wasn’t well explained was why fuel taxes should be used to help fund the project. Hopefully AT will produce something similar once the current study and the updated business case are completed so that people across the country can see the benefits of the project.
Peter has usefully opened discussion on possible future network plans for Auckland transit systems. There is currently a great deal of work happening on both the CRL and and a study into ways to optimise access to the airport and the rest of south west AK. There is also a huge and exciting revolution underway for the entire bus network in full flight. So as we wait for the results of this work I think it is useful to run through various options for the city as a whole across all modes, but in order to do this we do need to look at some parts separately and in detail.
Here I want to have a look at the rail network alone. And in particular the next possible stages beyond the CRL and how that might all connect together. Yes this is only part of the RTN resource but because rail is, by definition, a closed system, it does require understanding on its own logic. And we need to have some idea of where we’re heading in order to not close off important opportunities. Peter discussed lineal routes with branches in his latest post. And I did a post on how important Aotea Station will be for the whole of Auckland, here. In this post I want explore a different variation in network design to the one discussed in my previous Aotea post, but one that still has Aotea as the essential heart of the network.
It seems to me that a combination of two largely discrete lines is the most elegant and efficient way to serve Auckland. This pattern reconciles the shape of the existing network with the most pressing new needs. And because no route can be designed separately from how it will be run we need to think about how best to integrate the next major addition to the network, after the CRL and the extension to the airport, the North Shore Line. This line could operate in isolation across the harbour but it would be better if it integrates more fully with the rest of the system. And happily by doing so it creates a more balanced network than the one we have now, or even the much improved network we’ll have once the CRL is built. In the Aotea post I looked at connecting North to East, and West to South. Here is another option with different advantages: North/South and East/West; forming a simple cross shaped network of two lines. Potential 2030+ network:
'The Cross' possible North-South and West-East network model
Now feel free to haggle about various details. How exactly the airport is best reached is a whole debate in itself and deserving of its own post. And whether the North Shore line just heads to Akoranga and Takapuna and allows the the busway north of the Aoranga Interchange Station to serve the northern Shore is also a good debate. You can see that I’m not a great fan of the full Onehunga to Avondale line as it has both a very expensive steep section and a dubious running pattern. Happy to be argued with about that. Of course if there was a strategy to develop Marsden Pt Port and therefore the freight route was put through this route that would change my view.
The big point is, just two lines: North-South and West-East. Hinging on the all important Aotea Station. Rolling stock stabled at yards on the fringes. I added the Mt Roskill spur because this is a booming area and the buses there could do with some relief, and because post CRL rail will be so much faster on the Western Line into and through the city. But also because it is a cost effective way to balance the Western and Eastern Line running patterns. There are also questions around direct West South running through Grafton: I’m a fan, especially once rail reaches the airport as people from all over will be heading there, and it makes no sense to send every trip through the busiest CBD section. Note that the Mt Eden Station has moved with access to both Dominion Rd and Mt Eden roads and is an inexpensive surface station south of the junction to the tunnel entrance and the branch to Grafton.
The really interesting part with this model is how it elegantly knits the North Shore Line into the Southern Line at the bottom of Parnell with the useful addition of a University Station and gives us an opportunity to all but avoid the slow and inefficient loop around the back of Vector arena:
CITY CENTRE 'The Cross'
Here’s a close up of Stanley St. Sitting on the train through here I have often thought how easy it would be to just straighten that bridge out at the bottom of Parnell stay above the traffic on a short viaduct and slide into a tunnel entrance into the cliff on Constitution Hill. Especially as it is so painful crawling around the back of the Vector Arena, and how many of those on board are heading up town from Britomart anyhow. This would also sort out the conflicted Britomart entrance at Quay Park, leaving it for Eastern Line and Intercity trains only.
There are two options, the northerly one over the pub, or a more southerly one between two buildings on the east side of Stanley St, if possible. Unfortunately the building site in the background image between these two is now a building, occupied by Kiwi Rail on the floor level with the track [!]. The land on the other side of Stanley Street I believe is owned by NZTA as they have further massive motorway plans for poor old Grafton Gully.
Parnell to Aotea Options
A University station would be tricky to site and make for a short run to Aotea, but would be extremely busy immediately and not only for the Universities but also the courts, the Art Gallery, the Library and so on. But more importantly I think it is essential to take pressure off Aotea Station as it would likely to become overwhelmed by both Southern Line and Northern Line riders as the only central city destination. There are of course heritage factors to consider too, as there are preexisting tunnels [and here] in the basalt and scoria on this route. But what a great opportunity to access them. We could leave the station cavity rock walls exposed , in an even cooler volcanic version of the Stockholm Subway. There are so many ways our network could be wonderful see here from examples from around the world. I particularly like Shanghai’s light show.
Personally I think the University Station could be called Princes St, Albert Park or even Albert Barracks and it should be sited with very public street entrances as well as in the quad as it’s not just about the Universities. It seems to make more sense for the line from Wynyard Point to be under Wellesley St than Victoria St, but either way here are a couple of options with possible station exists in white:
University Station options- 'Albert Park'
No route with underground stations and tunneling is cheap. But it is not as long nor as steep as the CRL. Of course the harbour crossing is expensive too. But that needs to be put into the context of the numbers that the proposed road crossing of the harbour come to. And it would staged; Aotea to the busway Interchange Station at Akoranga is essentially the harbour crossing. And this plan to link this line to the existing Southern line could follow later. The real question is about the value of these competing ideas for the city as a whole. The fact that there is absolutely nowhere for thousands of additional cars to go either side of any further road crossing whereas a line like this can move tens of thousands of people day and night irrespective of the congestion above both into and right through the city. It directly connects the businesses and beaches of Takapuna to everywhere on the rest of the network including the airport. Like the CRL it helps unlock the hidden value in our already existing long rail lines.
Albany to Airport: It could be called the ‘A’ Line or the ‘A’ Train: ….I look forward to your views.
They say that history never repeats but that doesn’t quite seem true when it comes to transport in Auckland. Our transport history is littered with examples of poor planning, bad decisions, underestimated demand, a lack of vision and corner cutting in order to save a few dollars. A couple of prime examples are:
The harbour bridge – we have all heard the stories about how the design was cut back to save a little but of money at the time only for traffic volumes to require the capacity to be expanded a decade later. Also cut were things like walking and dedicated PT connections, things that are still missing to this day.
Britomart – built at a time when rail patronage was low, its five platforms fed by only two tracks was considered to be sufficient capacity for 50 years yet less than 10 years later we have all but run out of space for more trains at peak times. Electrification will give us longer trains but history shows that will only work for so long.
We can now add the Manukau rail link to that list. There are three major issues I, and others, have with the station:
It stops short short of Manukau – Officials will praise how MIT is building a campus on top of the station but that doesn’t make the location good, even extending it just another 150m would have made a huge difference and the campus could still have had a direct exit for students, like how the Westpac building is now at Britomart.
That there is no Southern link – This means that the only way to access the station from the south by train, which would likely be it’s largest catchment, would be to get a train to Puhinui and transfer to a train heading back to Manukau. The NZTA even designed the motorway for it which can clearly be seen in aerial photos, they even built the formation for it so it would be easy to build in the future.
That the station appears not to have been designed in a way that would allow for future extension.
I remember reading some information on this a few years ago on the first point and so went looking for it and what I found surprised me. This story was in the Herald on 1st April 2008 but is no April Fools joke
The council decided last week that an estimated extra cost of $10 million to bring the line 60m east of Davies Ave, into a carpark near its headquarters, was too high when it was trying to stop rates from rising more than 4.9 per cent.
That followed advice from Government agency Ontrack that its budget of about $50 million towards the $72 million link from the main trunk line at Puhinui would not extend past a 9m-deep trench on the western side of Davies Ave, except for a basic pedestrian underpass to the carpark.
Although that would still leave passengers 140m short of the civic offices, and even further from the Southmall shopping centre, the station would be on the doorstop of a potential tertiary education development in Hayman Park.
Most people would probably agree that 60m doesn’t sound like much, especially when it would cost $10m but it can make a massive difference to peoples perception and use of the station. There is meant to be an underpass into the carpark from the station except when I visited the other day, there was no sign of it and no one else seems to know what happened to it either. We also learn that the MIT campus wasn’t even agreed to at the time, in fact another report I found indicated they were looking at several different options so there was a chance nothing would have been built on top of the station.
So what about that Southern link and future proofing the station
But Forum for Auckland Sustainable Transport spokesman Bevan Woodward, representing a coalition of several groups such as Walk Auckland and his own Cycle Action Auckland, said similar limited thinking was behind capacity constraints already emerging at the Britomart rail terminal.
“We have to future-proof these things and start getting it right,” he said
Mr Woodward’s coalition wants provisions for a rail link to be extended east in a loop through Botany Downs to Panmure, rather than relying on feeder buses to bring passengers to an interchange at the proposed Manukau rail-head.
Although Manukau transport planners are prepared to envisage replacing buses with a light-rail link through the east once the population grows large enough in new suburbs such as Flat Bush and Dannemora, they believe it would be too difficult to run heavy trains under or over the Southern Motorway.
But Mr Woodward said that should not be insurmountable, and noted that a road flyover of the motorway was already being built with full Government funding as part of the $210 million link between State Highways 1 and 20.
And
Manukau councillor Bob Wichman said he had always believed the rail link was to extend to Dannemora, and he was disappointed by the limited nature of what was now proposed.
“We are being told we are getting less and less for our buck,” he told fellow councillors, after hearing that the link would initially serve only rail movements to and from central Auckland, and that it might be 10 years before Manukau could be linked to stations further south.
Even back then it appears there was never any real plans to allow the line to be hooked up to the South but next is the part that really pisses me off.
But Manukau Mayor Len Brown said that, while he remained committed to early planning for rapid public transport to and from his eastern suburbs, the priority was to accept the money already on offer from the Government.
If his council hesitated in doing that, it risked having the money reallocated “to other squeaky wheels, and there are lots of squeaky wheels in transport”.
He told the Herald that although light rail might become more viable than buses to and from the east, there would always have to be some form of interchange at central Manukau, as he would not countenance extending heavy rail to his suburban hinterland.
“You can’t do it in local residential areas and I’m not going to.”
So Len Brown seemed to care more about getting some money from the government and saying he signed the project off than getting the best solution for his constituents and the region. What’s more he also ruled out the possibility of ever extending the line in the future which is just plain lunacy. It even appears from this document in September 2007 that both Ontrack and ARTA strongly preferred the station to have a central platform which at least would have made it a bit easier to extend but that appears to have been ignored somewhere along the way. Of course all of this wasn’t helped by other councillors like Dick Quax who hates rail and who pushed for the whole thing to be delayed like this article from 2007 indicates (without a doubt he would have tried to push out the decision again and again).
Now of course this is old news and with the exception of the southern link there isn’t a great deal we can do about these issues right now but just the other day we heard something even more concerning. That Auckland Transport and the Council are looking at how they can cut costs from the CRL. In particular they are looking at cutting out stations which would negatively impact potential patronage. Even more concerning is that they are looking to drop the Eastern connection which would mean it was not possible for trains to get to the CRL tunnel from Newmarket. Here is a comment from that post that describes exactly why that Eastern link is needed
As a network modeller who did some investigatory work on this project a year or two ago, I cannot understand the statement that “current modelling shows its more “efficient” with only 1 direction of link”. The modelling I did envisaged a triangular junction at Mt Eden and crucial to the scheme was the creation of a “CBD Loop” which the east-facing spur would achieve. The pattern of service that I modelled was that all trains entering the CBD would travel around the loop and exit by the same or by another route, with the loop linking the inbound and outbound journeys together into one. Thus nothing “terminated” in the CBD. This is exactly how both Sydney and Melbourne structure their services with a high degree of success. And combined with additional CBD stations, this gets right away from the flawed notion that focussing the entire service on a single CBD access-point will suffice, and that it is somehow OK to “inject” thousands of travellers into the CBD at this one point and expect them happily to disperse under their own steam.
My objective with the Auckland model was to demonstrate the feasibility of a 10-minute peak frequency on all lines, combining to give a 5-minute frequency in each direction around the loop. Under this model, the east-facing spur carried significantly more traffic than the western one, and without it the concept of a CBD Loop would be effectvely lost.
I am concerned that there are decision-makers out there who are not fully aware of what this scheme is all about and what it is capable of delivering. The danger in allowing politicians to pare it back to fit under some arbitrary bar of cost-acceptability, is that a lot of money could still end up being spent on something that proves ineffective. I also wonder whether there may be areas of overdesign in the scheme from which costs could more effectively be cut. I am mindful that at the reinstated Parnell Station, someone considered it necessary to spend a lot of money altering the gradient profiles to make the track through the station less steep (was 1 in 40, now 1 in 80), and the track approaching the station even steeper (was 1 in 45, now 1 in 37.5). I question the need for this, given that stations on Wellington’s Johnsonville Line have managed quite acceptably at 1 in 40 for many years. Maybe in Parnell’s case there are reasons that I am unaware of, but the tendency to insist on “rolls-royce standards” can kill the viability of otherwise worthwhile projects. If cost-savings are are to be made on the CRL scheme, they need to be made competently in a way that will not leave a gold-plated white elephant.
The CRL got overwhelming support as part of the Auckland plan with 80% of people agreeing with the need for it now and this is without the council doing anything to even promote the project (because their current attempts have been pathetic), if they did a proper job of informing the public about what the project actually was and why it is needed then that would put the pressure on the government to support it and cough up some money for it. Sadly in light of what has happened previously at Manukau when Len was in charge it seems we could be seeing exactly the same tactics, get the price low enough to secure the government funding even if that means critically damaging the whole project. When it comes to transport in Auckland it seems that history definitely does repeat and is doomed to keep doing so.
Aotea is the original name of Great Barrier Island, Motu Aotea, and the name of one of the Maori Great Waka and the harbour where it first landed. It is also the name given to the what is likely to become the most important station on Auckland’s metro system.
Anyone who has followed the arguments for the City Rail Link here will be used to us stressing the importance of a decentalised network. How a key benefit of the CRL is that it will liberate the system from its current structural focus on Britomart and all the limitations that this network shape causes. How the through-routing and the new services and stations of the CRL will unlock the existing spare capacity in the rail network that is currently dormant. These are the main ways in which this project will be transformational of Auckland’s very shape.
So it may seem a little strange to see me picking out another station as the prima donna. Well bear with me, because I don’t see how it can avoid becoming so prominent, and I don’t see this as a problem. But I am concerned that whatever we build here doesn’t limit its great potential as the primary place for people from all over the entire region to enter the CBD. In other words this station needs to be designed to be able to grow with the network.
Here is a description of the CRL station as currently planned; on this previous post. You can see it will be the most centrally sited station, the closest to the middle of town, the Universities, to the restaurants and other ‘delights’ of Sky City, Aotea Square and its cinemas and and of course all the employment and business in the heart of the CBD. So I am picking it to quickly rival Britomart for patronage from the existing lines and the next planned line to the airport. All will have direct services passing through here. It’s going to be mad busy, will flood these city streets with people and life and will therefore be an interesting design challenge.
But it is looking a little further ahead where we can see the dangers of underestimating the sheer numbers who could be using this station.
Here is the latest plan for Wynyard Quarter by Architectus. The east west spine of this plan opened last year to enthusiastic reception. Many people drove down there and parked on the currently empty sites to use the new promenade. The first of the new office buildings is currently under construction; a new headquarters for the ASB Bank.
Wynyard-Quarter
All of those new buildings and streets are planned to contain little or no car parking. Many of these sites right now are carparks, and will steadily be replaced by buildings. There is no chance at all that this new area as well as the rest of the expected growth of the city can be served by growing the numbers of cars entering into the city, as there is just nowhere for any additional roading to absorb this growth. Nor will the streets be able to take the vast numbers of extra buses that this kind of development would require if we try to rely on that mode alone either.
This area in particular is really an island cut off on its southern boundary by the extremely busy Fanshaw Street, and with nowhere to add any new road capacity. Now, we’ve got a bit of time to get this right but the fact remains that the only plausible answer to meeting this area’s needs and making the whole scheme viable is to provide the kind of system that can move thousands of people around the clock without adding further to the already full streets.
Luckily there is a plan: A new line from the North Shore to an underground station in the heart of Wynyard Quarter possibly running north/south under Daldy St, that then heads on to, you guessed it; Aotea Station.
There are various options for this line, where it stops on the Shore, what kind of train it should be. But almost all schemes call for it to meet the CRL on separate platforms running perpendicular and below the proposed CRL Aotea platforms, probably under Wellesley St. So Aotea is not only likely to be the busiest CRL Station but also to be the main point where North Shore users access the city side of their own line as well as a very busy point of transfer between lines.
Nick argued here for this line to be a Light Metro system like the extremely successful Vancouver Sky Train, because this will be by far the most cost effective system to both build and to run, especially as it would need only minor changes [and some track] to run on the existing Busway. There are ways to stage the construction of this line, first going to a bus Interchange Station at Akoranga and ideally Takapuna, later extending it up the spine of the Shore from Akoranga replacing the busway with faster trains that slip under the harbour to leave the bridge to car and trucks. Here’s one example that Josh put together last year:
First stage of a North Shore Line: Takapuna to Aotea
There are many fantastic advantages for Shore residents and the whole city with this plan. The speed and certainty that people will be able to move between these places and then onto further destinations on the rest of the network or by switching to buses will be revolutionary for Auckland. The constantly growing busway already shows that the demand is there from the Shore and the development of Wynyard Quarter and the location of Aotea Station mean that there will be no lack of demand from the city side either.
Of course crossing the harbour will be expensive but with this technology it will considerably cheaper than building any kind of new road crossing and of greater benefit because there is just no chance to accommodate any additional vehicles in the city or the local roads of the Shore.
It may seem that I am looking too far ahead. Not even the current North Shore Councillor appears to believe this is possible or desirable, let alone all the big men in Wellington. But I am certain that once the new trains and especially the CRL has transformed Auckland into a true metro city the disinterest of many in areas not currently served by rail will change to a desire to have their own access to the system too.
Really looking further ahead there is the option of extending the line out of Aotea Station and across the city under the University to link up with the Eastern Line at the old railway yards and then even out to the car jammed neighbourhoods of Pakuranga and the rest of southeast Auckland across the Tamaki River [another of Nick's suggestions]. Here’s a map with a whole range of potential options for Auckland just to show what we could do if change our priorities. The black lines may remain bus routes, and the Blue Line out west is more likely to be a busway for a good while too. While it is not clear what we will choose to do in the future it is important not to close off those choices by assuming that the conditions of today are permanent.
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Future Auckland Metro Map [by Josh A
One thing is pretty clear and that is that Aotea Station has the potential to be very very busy and very very useful. Best not to undercook it from the start.
A few days ago a comment by Greg N hinted that Auckland Transport are starting to investigate changes to how they plan to build the City Rail Link (CRL) so it is probably worthwhile looking at what is going on. Greg’s comment was based on a presentation by Auckland Transport’s Elected Member Liaison Manager, Stephen Rainbow, at a recent Orakei Local Board meeting as well as discussion Greg had with Stephen after the meeting. Therefore it is almost third-hand information, but worth exploring further.
First though just a reminder of how this all came about.
In late 2010 the council released a business case for the project which looked at a number of different options for building the tunnel comparing different alignments and station locations (as well as other alternatives). In the end they settled on the option below as being the best with three stations chosen to provide good coverage of the central city, one between Victoria St and Wellesley St, one under K Rd and one under Symonds St.
The tunnel would solve quite a few problems that either exist now or will do so very soon and it also provides some other significant benefits, some of the key ones are:
It would allow significantly more trains to operate on the existing rail network as we wouldn’t be constrained by every single train having to reverse out of Britomart again. Electrification will give us some longer trains but with the exception of a few other tweaks, rail capacity into the CBD during the peaks will simply not be able to increase further. Already train frequency can not improve because of the Britomart bottleneck.
Travel times on the Western line to the CBD including Britomart will improve significantly. Travel times on all lines to areas around the new stations will also improve.
The new stations would allow for and help drive significant development in the area’s surrounding them.
The government had its pet agencies perform a review of the business case which was released in May last year and came out with vastly different results. Part of the problem is though is that their review was extremely flawed, one of the biggest issues being an assumption there was unlimited capacity for growth in vehicle traffic (there were other errors in it as well). The only thing they both the council and the government did agree on was the cost which at $2.4b it isn’t as eye watering as the cost of another harbour crossing but it is still more expensive than any other single transport project so far. The government did allow for the council/Auckland Transport to proceed with designating the project and work for that is happening behind the scenes with a view to starting the designation process later this year.
With the government still fairly hostile towards the project it is understandable that AT is looking at where it can cut the costs of the project but what is being looked at, Greg’s comment gives us some good direction:
1. Stephen said that CRL case is being reviewed with idea being that they consider staging it to keep the costs down and (try to?) get Govt on side. 2. Staging may consist of not building 2 or the 3 planned stations immediately, i.e. just putting the tunnel/track to unlock Britomart to get those benefits sooner and lower the costs. 3. He said its going to cost $300 million per station – so staging 2 of the 3 will reduce the 2.4b price tag to 1.8b
and:
Anyway – as you can imagine all this stuff on CRL “staging” raised with me more questions than it answered.
So when he left the meeting I caught up with him and asked him some questions before he left the meeting on his comments.
I asked him the following.
1. Has any consideration been given by AT to just building the tunnel and track and southern end of the tunnel links to the Western lines as the very first stage, without stations to get the benefit of making Britomart a through station quicker? 2. If this was done, how long would it shorten the “build” time by and how much would it save/cost compared to full CRL with all stations? 3. At the Mt Eden end are they putting in links in both directions (from west to CRL, and from Newmarket to CRL) or only from West to CRL? 4. How long before the CRL build could start from today?
Answers from him were:
1. “No idea, (AT) haven’t thought about it, but might be worthwhile considering.” 2. Maybe 3+ years for the tunnelling build (as opposed to 5+ for the full CRL), costwise, not a lot less than 1.5b, maybe more. 3. West onto CRL only at this stage – I asked why – he said current modelling shows its more “efficient” with only 1 direction of link” rather than link to Western lines in two directions (West to CRL, and CRL to Lines going toward Newmarket). He said don’t need to tunnel there as they will be above ground. 4. If all goes well and building owners don’t challenge the notice of requirements (NORs), 2 maybe 3 years before the build starts. If they challenge the NORs, at least 4 years before building starts.
So take those as you will.
There are a few things in here so lets break it down with the help of the construction costs summary from the original business case.
Stations – The tunnel and it’s stations are actually proposed to be constructed differently for each part. The business case indicates that the section from Britomart to the Aotea station would be built using cut and cover methods, as would the Aotea station itself. From there the tunnel would be bored by a TBM and the other two stations, K Rd and Symonds St, would be too deep so would actually be mined out which I believe means that the station box will be dug out from the inside. Presumably if these stations are dropped there would be the intention to build them at a later stage when more money/a more receptive government is in place. I also assume there would need to be at least some preliminary work on the stations to allow this to happen in the future.
My big concern with this approach is that by cutting out the stations, we also cut out a huge amount of benefits from having more development around the stations. On the other hand we also have to be mindful that we can only focus development in a few places around the city at any one time, as an example much of the focus at the moment is on the Wynyard Quarter. Delaying the two southern most stations could allow more council resources to be dedicated to developing the surrounding areas which may give a better result. If the council/AT does pursue the idea of dropping stations I hope they do some pretty thorough analysis of it and the impacts it would have including how much extra it would cost to build the stations when there is a working line passing through the construction site.
The costs summary lists both of these stations at about $160m for the physical works but there would also be a fair chunk of money from other items like the design work, the costs from the construction company, contingency costs etc. All up AT are saying it would save about $300m per station so by not building the two southern ones would save about $600m.
If it does happen then perhaps trains should still stop at the station locations with a message saying something to the effect of “this is the location of XXXX station, it would have been build already but the government won’t support it”.
Construction Time – I’m not an expert on construction but if the tunnel could be delivered it would mean some of the benefits would also start to flow sooner particularly the travel time savings and unlocking the capacity of Britomart. Depending on the numbers it could help to boost the business case and offset some of the development benefits from dropping the stations.
Eastern Link – At some point south of Symonds St station as the TBM starts getting closer to the surface the remaining section of tunnel would be again be constructed via cut and cover to link in with the existing Western line in both directions. The link to the West is obviously where most people would be coming from so that would definitely be built but it is the link to the East that is in doubt. The costs summary puts that link at about $90m but when the other costs are added on it probably brings the total cost up to around $150m. The big problem with not building that link is it means all trains from East or South either have to terminate at Britomart or head out West. Depending on where the trains terminate this could be quite a good thing for people around the western line as they would benefit from not only much faster journey times thanks to the tunnel but might also get much higher frequencies as a result. However, this could lead to an unbalanced network, limit routing options and require significant infrastructure investment either at Britomart or at some point along the western line to turn all those extra trains around that we don’t want travelling all the way out to Swanson.
Overall I can understand the desire to cut costs out of the project to make it more palatable, $750m is a huge amount to potentially save but I am also concerned that we could end up shooting ourselves in the foot by killing off some of the benefits and/or substantially increasing the construction costs in the future to fix the situation. After all there are plenty of examples around the city where we have cut corners to save some money then paid the price for it later and I really hope that the CRL doesn’t get added to this list. There has also been a bit of noise from some politicians about this and it appears we will find out what is planned at the next meeting of the governing body on April 26.
This post is the second in my series on the stations of the City Rail Link project, having looked at Aotea in this previous post. My next post will look at Newton Station, while Nick is planning a post to look at how we might operate trains running through the CRL – both on opening day and also in the longer term when we further extend the rail network.
Karangahape Road station is, as the name suggests, located pretty much underneath Karangahape Road around its intersection with Pitt Street. While it’s not in the ‘heart of the city centre’ to the extent that Aotea Station is, Karangahape Road Station quite interestingly provides rail access to the part of the city centre that’s currently located most distantly from the rail network. As you can see in the map below, while Newton Station and Aotea Station have catchments that somewhat overlap with existing rail stations, the K Road station very much sits between the two – a long way from the existing rail network. As I noted earlier in this post, K Road station is located underneath the general area where Pitt Street intersects with K Road. The main entrance is likely to be off Beresford Square. Some further details are shown in the two images below:
A very distinctive feature of K Road station is how deep it will be, because of the need for relatively gentle gradients along the whole line and because Karangahape Road traverses a ridgeline. The platforms are likely to be at least 20 metres below ground level, meaning quite a lot of excavation to actually build the station.
Along with the obvious transport benefits of bringing this part of the city centre within access of the rail network (meaning much faster journey times for those travelling to and from the area) the station has the potential to trigger enormous redevelopment and reinvestment in what has previously been a somewhat neglected part of town. K Road should definitely maintain its unique and fascinating character, but vastly improving access to the area makes it a potentially fantastic location for both residential and commercial development: taking advantage of the great views, the proximity to open space like Myers Park and to Ponsonby/Grey Lynn just around the corner.
The City Centre Master Plan recognised the potential for development around K Road station, producing this diagram: The Master Plan suggested that the station’s catchment has capacity for an additional 46,000 square metres of office space, 77,000 square metres for residential development and 3,000 square metres for civic space. Looking at the diagram above, most of this seems focused in a pretty small area and I’d be surprised if there wasn’t significant further development capacity in a slightly wider area, and also potentially on sites just stepped back from K Road.
In terms of accessibility, the table below shows how many places will become within just a quick train ride of K Road station when it’s built: Less than 10 minutes to Morningside, Newmarket and obviously the other CRL stations. Only 5 minutes to Grafton Station. This part of Auckland would go from having quite poor access to rail to having absolutely superb access via the rail network to and from pretty much every corner of Auckland. It’s certainly an exciting station.
This post is the first of three that will focus on the proposed stations that are to be constructed as part of the City Rail Link project: Aotea Station, K Road Station and Newton Station.
Aotea Station is, without doubt, the most important station that the City Rail Link creates – located in the very heart of midtown Auckland. Unlike Britomart, which has half its catchment in the sea, Aotea Station will be surrounded by the highest density of employment and apartments in the whole of New Zealand. Improving access to this core part of Auckland’s city centre is perhaps the single greatest benefit of the CRL project.
The pictures below show the location of Aotea Station, underneath Albert Street in the block between Victoria and Wellesley streets: Of course increasing access to such a core part of Auckland is likely to stimulate quite a lot of further development in this area. The City Centre Master Plan highlighted the possible development opportunities in the direct area around Aotea Station: The station entrance itself (well, the main one, presumably there will be others) was roughly sketched in a presentation to the Council last year and is shown below looking from the northwest corner of the Albert/ Wellesley intersection: The map below confirms the catchment of Aotea Station will make a huge improvement to the general accessibility of Auckland’s CBD to the rail network: The combination of Aotea Station’s location improving accessibility to the heart of Auckland’s CBD plus the huge shortcut from the western line provided by the CRL means that travel times between many places in the west to midtown will reduce dramatically. The table below highlights this fact: My expectation is that, once built, Aotea Station would become the busiest station on the rail network – largely because of its catchment being so large. In the longer term it’s the obvious interchange point with a North Shore railway line which would really boost its numbers even further. It will be a logical interchange point with buses – particularly those heading north-south along Albert Street and east-west along Wellesley Street. It will also probably be the station of choice for university students: as heading from there up Wellesley Street to Auckland Uni and AUT isn’t a particularly long walk.
While all the proposed stations on the CRL are exciting, in pure transport terms Aotea is the most exciting. It will make a huge difference to a huge number of people currently working, living and visiting the real heart of Auckland’s CBD.
To use a roading analogy, our current system is like having a ten lane motorway disgorging onto a single lane-dirt track. It’s pretty dumb, not just because of the congestion we create, but perhaps most importantly, because we’re wasting a huge amount of the investment we made in that motorway. Similarly for Auckland’s rail network, we will only ever unlock the real benefits of Project DART and electrification once the “dirt track” capacity bottleneck of Britomart is resolved through constructing the CRL.
Less than 10 minutes to Morningside, Newmarket and obviously the other CRL stations. Only 5 minutes to Grafton Station. This part of Auckland would go from having quite poor access to rail to having absolutely superb access via the rail network to and from pretty much every corner of Auckland. It’s certainly an exciting station.
The map below confirms the catchment of Aotea Station will make a huge improvement to the general accessibility of Auckland’s CBD to the rail network:
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