Guest Post: 23 reasons why trams are awesome

By Guest Post, on April 14th, 2013

This is a Guest Post by Geoff Houtman

In the dying days of the ARC, with the “People’s Paradise” of Wynyard Wharf about to flower it was decided that a Tram Loop would be built, with future plans to extend it to Quay St and beyond. Mission Bay? Dom Rd? Ponsonby? Unitec? Wherever the people demanded it.

The loop was built, money was sourced to extend it to Quay St, linking the Ferries, Britomart Trains and Wynyard like an “innovative” city would. Inexplicably Waterfront Auckland delayed the extension of the line, the extension that would give it real utility, and now their unelected Board want to remove the Trams so as not to offend their bosses. No, not the Residents of Auckland, not even the Council- the corporates who lease the land and want everything their way.

Here are 23 reasons we need trams/light rail and now!

1- Improved Air Quality. Reducing air pollutant emissions by 50% by 2016 is the Council’s stated goal. Diesel buses drive and wait idling all day every day, adding cancerous diesel particulates to the air from early in the morning until late at night. Electric trams not only take cars off the road more successfully than buses, they doubly reduce air pollution because they are zero emission themselves. Exhaust fumes are estimated to prematurely kill 400 Aucklanders per year.

2- Safer For Cyclists. It is physically impossible for a tram to swerve out of it’s lane and hit a cyclist. Cities with high cycle usage and high tram usage are the same cities precisely because of this reason. Riders must take care to cross the tram rails correctly but it’s not any more care needed than crossing a painted road marking or pothole. Trams are the cyclist’s best friend.

3- No Conflict with City Rail Link. Mike Lee’s desire to get “Trams now” and the Mayor’s wish to Tram Queen St up to Karangahape Rd (from 05.00) mean that trams are not a competitor for funding or patronage, more a complement to the existing plan.

4- Higher Quality Urban Results. The densest parts of Melbourne (and generally the most desirable and livable) are largely congruent with the extent of the tram network. Ribbons of lesser density extend out along the train lines. The areas served only by buses in Melbourne are low density. Causality cannot be proven but, in the case of Melbourne, trams go hand in hand with medium density and desirable areas.

5- Safer For Pedestrians. Trams calm traffic. The speed limit (even Ponsonby Rd’s 40 km/h) is being ignored constantly and is not being enforced. Trams calm traffic in a way no other vehicle can, many cities, like Melbourne, have passengers boarding from the centre of roads at pedestrian safety zones. Safer for pedestrians, safer for drivers.

6- Heritage and History. Many inner-city shopping centres formerly had tram lines along their entire length. When the trams and historic trolley poles were removed in the mid 1950′s the area lost much valuable heritage. Auckland developed along the Tram lines. Some could go as far to say that Trams built Auckland. Could they do so again?

7- Increasing Tourist Stay Days. (Western Bays Line example). Rightly so, the Council wants to increase Tourist Days spent in Auckland. A tram from Quay St though Wynyard, Victoria Park and Ponsonby Rd could connect to Great North Rd and from there to the existing tram lines in Western Springs- effectively linking 6 retail areas (CBD, Viaduct, Wynyard, Victoria Park Market, Ponsonby Rd and the Grey Lynn shops), 3 parks (Victoria, Western and Western Springs) and 4 tourist attractions (Springs Stadium, MOTAT 1, Auckland Zoo and MOTAT 2) with Britomart trains, Queens Wharf cruise liners and Ferries. Independent of destination, some cities use the Trams themselves as attractions. Melbourne even has fine dining trams!

8- Easy To Install. Many streets are wide enough and suitable for trams as they were all former tram routes. Reinstalling the rails is fairly straight forward and will have no incompatibilities with current services (buried pipes etc). In “Olde Aucklande” 27 miles of track was laid in just 14 months. These days we may not have the superior technology of the 1920′s but I’m sure we could find a way to lay 715 metres of track per week as they did 90 years ago…

9- Mass Local Support. The former Western Bays and Hobson Community Boards both supported the reintroduction of the Trams, as does the Ponsonby Business Association. A petition presented to Parliament last year was signed by nearly 1100 locals, including almost all Ponsonby Rd and K Rd businesses, asking “the House to consider whether legislation will be required to facilitate the extension of Auckland’s tram system as part of an integrated system that complements the proposed City Rail Link with the aim of reducing congestion in Auckland.”

10- Shush- quiet now. Tram technology has advanced considerably since 1902. The only downside to Trams- the noisy rails, have been taken out of the equation. The Wynyard Wharf loop makes great use of current dampening techniques. This makes trams quieter than buses and cars, although not as quiet as cycles!

11- Less Oil Imports. New Zealand’s economy will also benefit at a macro level. Domestic electricity beats Imported oil every way it can be measured. If oil prices continue to skyrocket the price of fuelling all our diesel buses will also go up, driving fares up to compensate. A tram network will help us avoid the effects of the oil spike, and public transport will have a cost-advantage over private vehicles.

12- Better Ride Quality. Trams have a smoother ride and less vibrations, due to the guided tracks, more ability for commuters to work enroute, more comfort overall. Railed vehicles are far less likely to induce motion sickness than road vehicles.

13- Permanency and Certainty. By their very nature the immovability of Trams encourages intensification along the tram corridor. The caryards on Great North Rd ridge in Grey Lynn, slated to become city fringe apartments, are a prime example of this. This has been shown on many occasions overseas (Portland, Oregon being a classic example). This can have significant economic benefits bringing more people and businesses within an easy tram ride of each other.

14- Higher Capacity than buses. Trams (both single carriage and articulated multiple units) have up to twice the capacity of buses.

15- Remove more cars. Trams have much greater appeal to the general public as they are generally more attractive than buses (cleaner, quieter, superior ride quality), and because they only follow the tram lines, there isn’t the fear that some people have with buses where they may get on the wrong one, so more people are more likely to use them than buses. Tramways are proven worldwide to attract up to 50% of their patronage from former drivers.

16- Faster Loading / Disabled Access. Newer trams with 100% flat floors, wide aisles and three or more double doors per side lead to very short “dwell times” making faster “headways” possible. Mobility is also improved for the disabled.

17- Increasing Existing Road Capacity. Following the Melbourne example of trams sharing the two lanes closest to the centre-line increases road usability without adding extra lanes. Both tracks share trolley poles, reducing the visual clutter as well as halving the cost of accessories.

18- Successful Public-Private Partnerships. Trams in Auckland were installed and run by the Auckland Tramways Company (as an aside- the bus driver’s union is still called Auckland Tramways Union). In July 1919 the Tramways were purchased by the Auckland City Council and ten years later taken over by the newly constituted Auckland Transport Board.

19- Trams Are Fun. People love Trams! Is it nostalgia? Perceived “coolness”? Exoticism? Higher desirability due to a “better” quality of ride? Greener? Nobody knows. The specific reason is ultimately not the point. People actively wanting to try Public Transport as a regular thing is the real win.

20- Names! A generation has grown up with Thomas the Tank Engine and know instinctively that all Trams (and trains) should have names. A Streetcar named Mike. Named Christine. Named Sene. Named Len. Named Bob. If we anthropomorphosise each car, people with think of them as “folks they know” rather than number 109. Kids love trams, this system is not just for us, it’s for them, and their kids.

21- Previous Council Support. The ARC under Mike Lee pushed hard for Trams, succeeding with the Wynyard Loop. The ACC had plans to investigate a 4km $16M Tram route. The ACC Transport Committee decreed that it “supports an electric tram proposal in principle and recommends to Auckland Transport that it gives consideration to the proposal as soon as practicable”. In September 2010…

22- Innovative Cities Have Trams. Auckland’s future is about being a “City Of Innovation”. Innovation is about being “ahead of the curve”. One part of being ahead of the curve is Trams. After all these cities are all doing it…

23- “Trams” is a palindrome of “Smart”. ‘Nuff said.

Giants building a tram

Giants building a tram

Tags: , , | Category: Light Rail | 69 comments

Making light-rail make sense

By Peter M, on February 15th, 2013

A week or so ago I wrote a post about how I think we can make sense out of ferries in the mix of Auckland’s public transport system. I think my key conclusion was that ferries do make sense in certain locations and we should try to take advantage of where they do make sense rather than pushing new routes all the time. Another piece of the public transport jigsaw puzzle is light-rail (or trams). In a number of ways light-rail is actually quite similar to ferries – it has its ardent supporters, it’s pretty expensive (although more in terms of capex while ferries are expensive in terms of opex) yet it also probably makes sense in some circumstances.

Let’s look at those circumstances, firstly by seeing what light-rail’s general advantages and disadvantages are compared to other modes. This is reasonably well summarised in a useful Australian Transport Study that highlights the importance of mode-neutrality when assessing transport projects (in other words, finding the best solution and recognising that all modes have a role to play in the right circumstances):different-transport-modesDefinitions of different modes is a much debated area, particularly when we’re discussing the “in between” modes of bus rapid transit and light-rail. In my mind there’s effectively a gradation of different types of both technologies – ranging from both buses and trams running in mixed traffic right through to Northern Busway style style bus operations or completed grade separated light-rail.

My general opinion is that in mixed traffic there’s little, if any, advantage to be had from running a tram or light-rail vehicle compared to a bus – as the capacity of the corridor is not determined by the vehicle itself but by the amount of congestion in that lane. At the other end of the scale once we’re talking about full grade separation it seems that light-rail once again doesn’t offer too many advantages over either a busway (which will be a cheaper) or heavy rail (which may be of similar cost but will have much higher capacity). Vancouver Skytrain style light-metro systems are a different issue entirely and have been covered extensively previously in posts that I’ve made.

The most obvious improvement to make as bus patronage grows along a route (or where there’s potential for fairly high bus patronage) is to install a bus lane. By separating the buses from general traffic, the capacity of the lane increases pretty dramatically while reliability and speeds of the bus services also improve a lot. With bus lanes being cheap and quick to implement, in the vast majority of situations probably the most important thing we can do to improve our public transport infrastructure is through extended, new and improved bus lanes.

However bus lanes only suffice up to a certain level of use – something which in many ways was the key finding of the City Centre Future Access Study’s Deficiency Analysis. In terms of buses per hour this is shown below:bus-lane-capacity
Once you start to push the limit of a bus lane the results are fairly ugly:sydney-bus-congestionBefore I go on to discuss the different options for what to do when a bus lane hits capacity I think it’s worth noting the difference between high frequency bus corridors where a large number of buses converge on a particular street (think Symonds Street or Fanshawe Street) compared to a high frequency bus corridor where frequencies are high of a single route (think Dominion Road north of Mt Roskill). Analysis tends to suggest that simply adding more and more buses in the latter situation hits a limit where it’s not really adding much value anymore as the buses tend to get in each other’s way as they’re all trying to do the same thing but not achieving it particularly well. Of course you can run local/express splits to reduce this problem but once again eventually you’ll hit a wall.

Now moving on, once a basic bus lane no longer has sufficient capacity there are a few options for what you can do about it – and the right solution is likely to depend on the circumstance:

  • Upgrade to a higher-quality BRT bus based system. This could involve median bus lanes, a semi-grade separated median busway (like proposed for AMETI) or a full grade separated busway (like the Northern Busway between Akoranga and Constellation).
  • Build heavy rail. This could involve a new line completely or extensions to existing lines. It could be underground, at grade or elevated.
  • Build light-rail. In this scenario I’m thinking about something that runs at street level in its own lanes but isn’t grade separated at intersections.

What’s probably going to make or break which of the three solutions above is most appropriate will be a number of criteria – the most important in my mind being the level of additional capacity required, the nature of existing infrastructure and the land-use impacts of the option. Oh, and of course the cost. Let’s explore this with a few case studies.

In the case of the City Rail Link project, future growth in public transport demand to the city centre effectively overwhelms the bus network (and the rail network at a later date) requiring something to happen in order to retain high quality access to Auckland’s city centre and around the region. Enhanced bus solutions don’t really work because our existing infrastructure only has a busway to the north whereas railway lines spread out west, east and south – as well as not working due to the capacity required (which would take away too much road space to provide for with buses alone) and also the land-use impact (widened approach roads throughout the isthmus). Light-rail doesn’t really work either as it’s of insufficient capacity and doesn’t integrate with the existing infrastructure.

In the case of the AMETI busway corridor, heavy rail is probably cost-prohibitive due to the need to get across the Tamaki River, while light-rail gets stuck between the need for a lot of feeder buses into Botany and then heavy rail connections at Panmure and Ellerslie at the route’s potential other end. In this situation the busway makes pretty good sense.

In the case of Dominion Road’s long term future, things start to get interesting. Because of the corridor’s significant heritage and character value, large-scale widening for a massively upgraded bus solution is unlikely to ever be feasible. Even widening the existing bus lanes outside the retail centres along the route proved to be impossible to make ‘stack up’. Heavy rail is clearly infeasible at street level or elevated and is almost certainly cost prohibitive underground – so light rail starts to look like it could be worth exploring further. Further potential aspects in favour of light-rail on Dominion Road include its huge potential as a high-intensity mixed-use corridor where amenity of the street environment is important as a shaper of land-use patterns. Plus the route is potentially well anchored at the city end by putting the tracks down Queen Street (probably via Ian McKinnon Drive) and at the southern end by a future rail station/bus hub – so it’s likely to be a single route without any deviations or branches.

Perhaps in summary we can try to distill a clear rationale behind situations where light-rail might make sense for Auckland. I think it’s in situations where demand along a single corridor (rather than where a number of corridors come together) can no longer be efficiently provided for by standard bus lanes and where land-use factors make either enhanced bus priority options or heavy rail infeasible or cost-prohibitive.

In my mind this is a fairly difficult test to pass and I don’t actually think any corridor in Auckland at the moment (perhaps except for Queen Street) would fit the criteria. This will probably annoy some, who want to run trams everywhere and anywhere, including seemingly with mixed traffic along Ponsonby Road. It might annoy others who think that light-rail is an expensive folly which doesn’t make any sense in Auckland. If I annoy both sides of the debate then I’ve probably got it just about right.

Tags: , , , | Category: Light Rail | 110 comments

Sydney’s extended light-rail network

By Mr Anderson, on December 23rd, 2012

I guess this is what happens when you have a centre-right government that isn’t completely insane in its ideological dislike of public transport:

Premier Barry O’Farrell and Minister for Transport Gladys Berejiklian today announced light rail would be built through the Sydney CBD to Randwick and Kingsford to reduce congestion and revitalise the city.

The estimated $1.6 billion 12 kilometre light rail project will link Circular Quay and Central via George Street, the Moore Park sporting and entertainment precinct including the Sydney Cricket Ground and Allianz Stadium, Randwick Racecourse, the University of NSW and Prince of Wales Hospital at Randwick.

Light rail will be built in parallel with the implementation of a redesigned bus network to significantly reduce the number of buses clogging the CBD during the peak.

Around 40 per cent of George Street will be pedestrianised, between Bathurst Street and Hunter Street, for light rail – meaning 60 per cent of George Street will still be accessible to private vehicles.

“This is a once-in-a-generation project to revitalise the centre of Sydney by reducing congestion and offering a fast, attractive public transport option to key locations,” Mr O’Farrell said.

“The NSW Government is getting on with the job of building for the future.”

There’s already another well advanced plan for extending the existing inner-west light-rail line significantly, as shown below:

TPD_LightRail_InnerWestLightRai-Extension_map_Feb_2012_0And here’s the CBD and southeast scheme:recommend-route-DecLooking at the light-rail plans in a bit more detail, there are some remarkable similarities between what Sydney is trying to achieve through a number of public transport initiatives and what Auckland’s trying to achieve through the City Rail Link. Things like:

  • Reducing the number of buses travelling along busy inner city streets
  • Providing better reliability and service quality for public transport
  • Improving the pedestrian experience of the inner city
  • Boosting employment and economic growth

For example, Sydney really struggles with the huge number of buses entering its CBD during the peak period – which this light-rail project as well as a reorganisation of the bus network will help resolve.sydney-bus-numbersI do wonder why centre-right politicians in Australia don’t seem to have the same ideological dislike of public transport as seems to be the case in New Zealand.

Tags: , | Category: Buses, Light Rail | 34 comments

The big BAM theory

By Stu Donovan, on July 7th, 2011

Welcome back and thanks to everyone who commented on yesterday’s post, which tried to highlight some ‘inconvenient truths’ about light rail (LRT).  In today’s post I will try to synthesize and respond to those comments, before moving on to what I think are greener pastures.  Taken together I hope that these two posts inject some excitement into conversations about the future of public transport in Auckland.

First let’s consider some of the important general comments from yesterday post:

  • Context of the debate – BrisUrban highlighted the importance of context.  Let’s be clear: We are discussing transport technologies that will be used in Auckland in the future.  And let’s be even more specific, we are talking about post-2020 transport scenarios.  Why?  Well for the next 10 years all available public transport funding in Auckland is already committed.  Unless I’m pleasantly surprised and the Nats get rolled in November.
  • Redundant arguments – In another comment, George D suggested that those who support light rail in Auckland are already aware of its weaknesses.  This does not match my experiences.  From where I’m sitting it seems like  LRT is often thrown out there as the default transport technology Auckland aspires to (e.g. by Len Brown), without much awareness of a) its limitations and b) other potential transport technologies.

And now let’s respond to some of the technical comments:

  • Capacity – Patrick R (and others) argued that the Bogota BRT does not show that bus rapid transit (BRT) can match LRT’s capacity because it has two lanes in each direction, rather than one.   But do the math – if you divide Bogota’s total throughput (40,000 pax/hour) by two lanes then you are left with 20,000 pax/hour/lane, i.e. about the same as LRT.  So it is a fair ‘apples and apples’ comparison: LRT and BRT have similar capacities.  It’s true!
  • Resilience – Matt L suggests that observations of the fragility of LRT focus on “worst case scenarios.”  But any discussion of technological resilience is an exercise in risk management, i.e. we must consider unlikely yet high-impact events.  I don’t think it’s silly to consider how light rail would function in an earthquake, or in situations where cars get in the way – they are real risks involved in operating public transport in New Zealand, and they are risks that do not seem to affect buses as much as LRT.

Other commentators put forward advantages of LRT that were not discussed in yesterday’s post:

  • Corridor width – Josh suggested that the narrower width of LRT was advantageous in constrained road corridors, such as Dominion and Mt Eden.  But if this was really important we could simply build narrower buses.  Also, I suspect that the emerging transport technologies (discussed below) will neutralize this problem because of the advanced guidance systems that they use.
  • Market image – Nick R suggested that buses have an image problem.  I’m skeptical of how important this is for three reasons: 1) the Northern Express has successfully got the suits out of the closet in Auckland; 2) bus systems overseas are well-used by people on high-incomes  (e.g. Brisbane, Edinburgh); and 3) 15 year olds who start catching buses in 2020 will have a completely different image of buses from us oldies.  We remember the bad old days of Auckland in the late 1990s, while the youngsters hopefully benefit from all our hard work over the next 10 years :) .  Finally, “image” is highly malleable, especially for new users coming from younger demographics. 
  • Mix of technologies – A number of commentators suggested Auckland’s future public transport system should involve a mix of transport technologies.  This was never in question.  What was in question is whether that mix includes light rail.  I think not, or at least not in its current form.  Even on “sensitive” corridors such as Dominion and Mt Eden, I suspect that existing transport technologies will work fine until better transport technologies (which are discussed below) become available.

Let’s now step back a second to consider what an ideal public transport technology (let’s call it a “BAM!” i.e. a Bus trAM) might look like.  Ideally, a BAM would combine the advantages of buses, such as low capital costs, with the advantages of LRT, such as ride quality, while avoiding the disadvantages of both.  That means we want to have higher vehicle capacities than can be accommodated on buses, while avoiding the need to run tracks and overhead wires.  Even so BAM must be mainly electrically powered.  We are really talking about some form of “technological convergence.”

But is the BAM a figment of my sore right knee or is it a realistic transport technology?  Well, it actually already exists – sort of.  A BAM (called the “Phileas”) was up and running in Eindhoven (those crafty Dutch) in 2004, as illustrated below (photo source).

That’s not to say that the Phileas ran smoothly straight up: There were problems with drive-trains and engines, which required a fairly substantial re-design from the manufacturer.  But the Phileas seems to be developing nicely, and has since been tested by Douai (France) and Korea.

The Phileas website mentions some impressive headline technical specifications: The 26m hybrid diesel-electric version carries a maximum of 141 passengers and has a turning radius of only 12.5m (thanks to all wheel steering).  This largely neutralizes concerns expressed by several commentators about buses leading to frequency overkill, or large buses failing to navigate through K’ Road.  One of the most exciting developments included in the Phileas is its electrical guidance systems, which basically means it can steer itself – removing the need for drivers and potentially saving heaps in operational costs.  BAM BAM!

But my faith in future, rather than past or present, transport technologies rests not on one product.  Yesterday’s post also linked to Siemen’s BAM offering, which they are promoting as eBRT.

In contrast to the electric-diesel set-up used by Phileas, Siemen’s eBRT offering uses a fully electric power system based on super-capacitors (electricity buckets) that empty between stops.  The super-capacitors are then re-charged (in 20 seconds) via overhead wires at the next stop (NB: Super-capacitors have been in development for several years as a cheaper and greener alternative to electric batteries).  As with the Phileas, optical guidance systems are used to keep eBRT ontrack – so again it’s potentially driverless.

One final example of an unrelated but cool emerging technology is Avego, a real-time car-pooling (“ride-sharing” in U.S. parlance) software that runs through your SmartPhone.  I know car-pooling has been talked about as a transport solution ‘fa-eva’ (in NZ parlance), but I get the feeling that the growth in GPS enabled smart phones will greatly reduce the transaction costs involved in finding someone to car-pool with.  It may be at a stage where it takes off; although these initiatives are all about critical mass. If it does, then this may re-shape the transport landscape.  Watch this space.

Some commentators (like KarlHansen) point out that these technologies are as yet unproven and it’s a very valid point. But I’d just like to point out that most of the technology underlying BAM is not new, even if the application is relatively novel.  Moreover, time is on Auckland’s side, we have ten years before we need to chose the transport technology that will ply our major urban public transport corridors.  Time is on our side, especially while the “Colossus of Roads” Steven Joyce is steering NZ’s transport agenda.

In conclusion, I suspect the future of Auckland’s (surface) public transport system will not include light rail as we know it, but it may well make use of new transport technologies that combine the advantages of light rail with buses.

To finish, I want to ask whether Auckland should be passive receivers of transport technology, or an active driver of technological change?  We basically know what we want from the BAM, and we more or less know when we will need it.

Should we be making eyes at potential industry partners?  Or if we’re too small to gain their attention should we be working together with Wellington, Christchurch, or other cities with similar technological demands.

Does anyone know why don’t cities collaborate with each other and then engage with relevant industry players to set a research agenda that delivers the type of transport system that we want?  The EU tends to play this role in Europe and I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on whether we should be doing the same.

Tags: , , , | Category: Buses, Light Rail | 49 comments