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By Matt L, on May 14th, 2012 An interesting report goes to the transport committee on Wednesday which looks at how the land use plans on the North Shore as identified in the Auckland Plan would be impacted by various options for improving rapid transit (RT) in the area. Over the next 30 years there are expected to be an extra 750k-1m people living in the Auckland region with 85-120k of those living in the area of the old North Shore City. To achieve that growth there are going to be a number of infrastructure investments, especially when it comes to transport or the set targets may not be achieved.
The report confirms that providing we improve how buses move around the city centre that there is sufficient capacity in the busway until around 2041. One of the improvements to the city centre that is listed as needed is the City Rail Link which will have the effect of removing a large number of buses from the South and West from the cities streets which will free up that space for additional buses from the North Shore. With the busway moving an increasing number of people over the harbour bridge each morning along with the completion of the western ring route in 4-5 years time, we should also see the need for another harbour crossing pushed out to a similar timeframe.
The report starts with the assumption that the busway has already been extended to Silverdale and that the city side improvements have been completed to allow for up to 250 buses per hour to feed into town. It then goes on to look at a number of different routes and technologies for futuredevelopment options but also notes that experience, particularly in Australia, shows that bus based RT systems don’t get same level of land use change as rail lines/stations do. The options range in cost from $1.5b all the way up to $15b and all options were put through an evaluation matrix and the heavy rail options came out with the best results. All of the options considered are listed below:
There are quite a few options there and I think we can all agree that the options costing $13b+ are simply not going to happen, even though they came out the highest in the evaluation criteria. The conversions of the busway to heavy rail still very highly and at $2.5b (which I assume includes the cost of the crossing) actually seems fairly reasonable, especially if we can hook it into the existing network with something like the X pattern we have discussed on here before.
The report to the council also includes an image from the Auckland Plan that we haven’t seen before, presumably it will be in the final version of document which is being worked on at the moment (the content has already been signed off). It seems to show that thinking is starting to shift within the council that any future rail connection interface with the existing rail network at Aotea rather than at Britomart.
There is quite a bit of detail in the report but in all it is good to see some thought going into when we will likely need to start making improvements, that is unless the good folk of the North Shore start to increase their usage of the busway at a faster rate than predicted which is something that could very possibly happen.
By Peter M, on April 27th, 2012 Out of all the metropolitan centres proposed in the Auckland spatial plan (Albany, Takapuna, Westgate, Henderson, New Lynn, Newmarket, Sylvia Park, Botany, Manukau and Papakura), Newmarket and Takapuna really stand out as ones with huge potential for redevelopment to happen sooner rather than later. This is because, at least at first glance, they’re market attractive places for intensification. Newmarket’s almost a second city centre and has seen enormous apartment construction over the past decade – and has a lot of potential for further development to occur, while Takapuna has fantastic views, is pretty close to central Auckland and sits in the midst of the North Shore – which, by in large, is a place where people want to live and work. In the long-run, Takapuna could become something like Auckland’s version of North Sydney – a mini city centre all of its own.
However, Takapuna has a pretty major flaw: it’s not on the rapid transit network. The Northern Busway (shown in blue below), while relatively nearby, does not actually serve Takapuna at all: 
While it’s only 1.3 km from Takapuna to Akoranga Station – as the crow flies – land use patterns, the street network and the harbour make the actual walking distance close to twice this: and clearly outside what we can realistically expect people to do. Bizarrely, most of the prime land right next to Akoranga Station is empty fields and a golf driving range – perhaps one of Auckland’s poorest examples of land-use and transport integration.
Most of the “future rail network” maps that we’ve come up with on this blog over the past week have proposed a kind of spur from Akoranga to service Takapuna. This is clearly shown in the network Matt came up with: As we’re learning with the Manukau Station, spurs have some frustrating geometric consequences. Because Manukau City is not “on the way” for south-to-north trips, even if we were to build a southern link (enabling trains from the south to head onto the Manukau branch) we would find ourselves with some annoying operating patterns. Do we run trips into the spur and out again, inconveniencing everyone who wants to travel ‘through’? Do we terminate trains from the south at Manukau, thereby creating a situation where we’re going to magically need more platforms to run decent frequencies? Do we just run a shuttle train back and forth linking Manukau with the main line? All are sub-optimal solutions. All result from it being on a spur.
Theoretically we could put Takapuna “on the way”, if some future underground railway line following something like the alignment shown in green below: I’m just guessing that constructing this green line would be really expensive and/or incredibly technically challenging. Plus, we still don’t get around the issue of making the passengers take a pretty significant detour if they’re actually not travelling to or from Takapuna.
An alternative links into ideas that have also previously been proposed on this blog about keeping the Northern Busway beyond Akoranga Station and just building rail between Takapuna and the city. You end up with something like this (with purple being your railway line): 
If our Takapuna to city line is built as a Vancouver-style Light Metro, trains might be heading each way along it every couple of minutes – which combined with high frequencies along the Northern Busway mean that transfers are unlikely to be problematic. This arrangement provides really well for trips between Takapuna and the city and pretty well for both trips between the northern North Shore and the city (faster rail travel times would make up for any transfer time loss) as well as trips between the northern North Shore and Takapuna.
By Patrick Reynolds, on April 20th, 2012 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.
 The 'A' Train; from 8th Ave to Rockaway Beach
By Patrick Reynolds, on April 12th, 2012 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.
“]  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.
By Nick R, on March 5th, 2012 Readers of my recent post may recall that I’m no fan of the proposed second harbour crossing. That has a lot to do with the fact it would actually be our third harbour crossing, and our third motorway crossing at that. With traffic levels static on the Upper Harbour Bridge and actually declining on the Auckland Harbour Bridge it seems a little silly to be planning yet another motorway across the harbour, especially once we consider how effective the busway has been.
It’s not actually a case of fewer people crossing the harbour each day, that figure keeps climbing, it’s just that all the growth has occurred on public transport. More and more people cross the harbour each day… on a bus. This begs the question, why aren’t we planning a public transport crossing? A projected cost of more than five billion dollars for a harbour tunnel and it’s all just for cars and trucks. Something needs a rethink methinks.
The real problem with proposals like this is that they just won’t go away. No matter how poor the business case, how low the BCR (around 0.2 to 0.4 if you’re asking), no matter how damned expensive… I just can’t shake the resignation that sooner or later this motorway tunnel is going to get built anyway. All it takes is one minister to start using words like ‘policy alignment’ and ‘strategic fit’, and all the extensively researched economic evaluations aren’t worth toilet paper.
With that though in mind I went back to the drawing board and started to think about how we could really make a harbour tunnel work. If it abso-friggin-lutely has to be built come hell or high water, what can we do to make it a real bonus for Auckland? How can it also improve public transport, walking, cycling and urban design?
After all, it’s not like this megaproject couldn’t have some additional benefits. For a start the plan is for the tunnel to carry State Highway 1 though to Spaghetti Junction and leave just citybound traffic on the existing bridge. If they do this right the new tunnel would function as a bypass of the CBD, by taking all that heavy traffic and sending it underground and out of the way. With only city bound traffic on the bridge we could reallocate a pair of its lanes to buses, and without heavy freight traffic we would have enough strength in the clip-ons to add the proposed walking and cycling path.
More excitingly, without any need for a link between the bridge and the other motorways we could tear down the Victoria Park viaduct and free up that corner of the city. The remaining Victoria Park tunnel could be reused as a two-way link for traffic through to Cook St, perhaps even taking the bulk of traffic off Fanshawe St. In any case we could almost halve the number of lanes through St Mary’s Bay, if those lanes need only enough capacity to service the city streets and not the motorway.
There might even be a case for demoting the St Mary’s Bay motorway to an avenue style expressway, a sort-of western version of Tamaki Drive extending from a revitalised Fanshawe St boulevard. Auckland’s city waterfront could then stretch right across to it’s natural anchor at the foot of the bridge. I can see it now: rows of leafy trees, a stretch of waterside grass, cyclists whizzing along to the North Shore, kids eating ice creams as mums and dad watch the comings and goings of the marina and the harbour.
 The plan for St Mary's Bay today. Fourteen lanes carrying city traffic and State Highway 1.  ... and what it could look like if it only carried citybound traffic. This all sounds very good, positively bucolic even… but truth be told we’re not really getting much value out of this yet. Five billion bucks to get some bus and cycle lanes on the bridge and tidy up the waterfront? To be frank that is the sort of thing we can do anyway at a much lesser cost, we don’t need a motorway tunnel for that. If we really want to get value out of a harbour tunnel it has to carry public transport, and I mean proper high capacity and fast rapid rail transit. Nothing else is going to move enough people to swing the numbers. Adding a rail line to the motorway tunnel could triple it’s carrying capacity at very little extra cost, if only some space could be found inside the same pair of tubes.
If we look at NZTA’s most recent proposals we are actually talking about some pretty big holes through the ground. One of the issues with boring a tunnel like this is that motorway lanes are basically rectangular in cross section, while tunnel bores are circular. It’s very much a case of fitting a square peg into a round hole. In this case the round hole will apparently need to be about 15.5m in diameter to fit in a square peg 12m wide and 4.5m tall.
 The NZTA proposal for the harbour crossing. Two tubes like this would be tunnelled under the harbour. That’s quite a lot of tunnel indeed, and in fact some of it ends up wasted. I’ve clarified the labels there because they are too hard to see, but the bottom right corner of the cross section is simply ‘cement stabilised backfill’. In other words that is just a mix of concrete and dirt poured back into the tunnel to hold the road deck up. Could we not put this space to better use?
Closer inspection of the cross section reveals the sorts of things you might expect in a tunnel: lights, fans, smoke extraction ducts. But underneath the road deck there is also a sump area to extract water, and a cable tunnel to carry pipes and wires across to the North Shore. That cable tunnel is actually pretty big, about 4m tall and 3.5m wide, could we fit a train through there? Probably not one of our new electric trains, they’re a bit too big and their overhead power lines need more height. But I do think a more compact light metro vehicle would fit in comfortably, particularly as they have a low floor height and get their power from between the rails instead of an overhead wire.
This picture shows a Bombardier ART driverless metro train to scale in that same cable tunnel, nestled in under the road deck. Instead of backfilling the empty space under the road, I’ve used it to relocate the cable tunnel to one side. This could also double as an emergency exit, or an access path to whatever emergency system they would have to install in the motorway tunnel anyway.
 The same tunnel with a Bombardier ART light metro train under the road deck. Basically, it seems with a little rejigging of the layout of our big harbour motorway tubes we could also fit through a light metro line to the North Shore. Given that it’s the same pair of bored tunnels, this rail crossing could be tacked on for minimal extra cost.
Now I must say I am no civil engineer and I couldn’t confirm if this is actually feasible, but a quick looks suggests that we very well could get both three motorway lanes and a driverless light metro track into what NTZA were proposing to build for the motorway alone. The benefits of this would be immense.
Three motorway lanes can carry about 6,000 vehicles an hour at best, which at our occupancy rates translates into about 7,500 people. The light metro systems in Vancouver and Kuala Lumpur currently carry about triple that on each track at peak times, and can theoretically move well over 30,000 people an hour each way.
Stacking metro tracks in under the road decks could easily quadruple the person carrying capacity of a harbour tunnel, and one can only imagine what that would do to the cost benefit ratio. If we must build a hugely expensive motoway tunnel under the harbour, then a shared motorway and metro tunnel could be just the thing to make the numbers stack up too.
By Nick R, on January 27th, 2012 I’ve recently been involved in casual discussions with Shoreite friends over the merits of a new harbour crossing, hearing many words in favour of motorways and railways and the like. I thought I’d use this post to outline the issues and opportunities of a new crossing to the North Shore as I see them, and outline one possible alternative for rail that might be just what the doctor ordered. Admin has touched on something very similar in the past however it could be worthwhile to take another look.
Requiem for a motorway tunnel
At first glance the NZTA proposals for a new harbour crossing are quite encouraging… that is if we assume the people of Auckland would not settle for a hideous motorway bridge destroying their new waterfront precinct and demand a tunnel instead.
A harbour tunnel certainly has it’s appeal: it would take all that state highway traffic out of St Mary’s Bay and Victoria Park and send it underground on a long invisible bypass of the city centre. We could separate peaky city commuter traffic from traffic going nowhere near downtown. It would allow us to wind back the harbour bridge to something more like a local arterial, probably with walking and cycling lanes too. We could pull down the much despised Victoria Park viaduct and remove half the lanes from St Mary’s Bay, perhaps even renovating it to act something like a western version of Tamaki Drive.
Those would be some great outcomes, but on closer inspection there are several huge issues with the harbour tunnel plan:
 The approach motorway to Sydney's harbour bridge and tunnel. Do we want this in Freemans Bay and Northcote?
- First and foremost, it would cost around five billion dollars. That is an absolutely huge cost, how can we fund that? What else would we forgo if we did fund it, or rather what better use could we find for several billion bucks? How many intersection improvements, bus lanes and cycleways would that fund? On five billion dollars the cost of capital alone comes in at $750,000 a day!
- Secondly, do we actually ‘need’ a second motorway crossing in that same corridor? Do we need six more lanes of motorway when traffic on the existing bridge has been trending in reverse for the last half decade? After all, it only goes from the area around Onewa Rd to the Central Motorway Junction. Beyond that, do we actually ‘want’ a brand new route with plenty of capacity feeding into Spaghetti junction, something that might simply encourage more people to drive more often and create even more traffic and car dependence.
- Thirdly, this five billion dollar proposal is for a motorway tunnel only, there is no public transport component. Certainly if a motorway tunnel was built this would allow a pair of lanes on the bridge to be marked for the busway, but if you think about it that wouldn’t be much improvement over the way the busway works already. Same route, same vehicles and capacity, same constraints through downtown, just a little less impact from congestion on the bridge.
- Finally, would there actually be much improvement to the capacity of the transport system? A six lane tunnel would provide three lanes each way, so in the peak it could move an extra 6,000 vehicles per hour. At our occupancy levels equates to less than 8,000 people per hour. That’s less capacity than the busway, at about twelve times the price!
If we look at it again we really need to go back to the drawing board. Five billion dollars to tidy up the waterfront and duplicate a few kilometres of motorway to move only 8,000 people an hour, I don’t think so. The BCR on a motorway tunnel must be abysmally small given such a huge cost and minimal benefits.
If not a motorway, then what? Are trains an affordable option either?
What we need is something more affordable, something that will reduce traffic rather than generate more, something that has wider reaching benefits and will actually reduce travel times in the long run. Given that we already have an eight lane motorway across our harbour (plus second motorway bridge across the upper harbour), surely the next crossing should be a high quality rapid transit link. One that is cheap, compact and relatively simple to build, but can shuttle tens of thousands of people to where they need to be each day completely independent of traffic congestion.
What we really need is a crossing that can move several times as many people for half the cost. This should be possible with rapid transit: a two lane public transport tunnel would be far cheaper to build than a six lane motorway tunnel (not to mention all the associated interchanges and linkages), yet two lanes of rapid transit could carry at least twice as many people per hour than six lanes of motorway.
If we want a good cost-benefit return then it has to be public transport, the question is which form gives us the most benefit for an affordable cost.
We can probably discount a busway tunnel from the start. A bus tunnel would be relatively expensive due to the demands of ventilation and fire safety (although still miles cheaper than a motorway tunnel), yet the capacity, speed and level of service offered by a busway extension isn’t game changing. The same can be said for ‘light rail’ tramway. A electrified tram tunnel would be cheaper to build than a bus one and the capacity and service level would be better, but it’s probably still not going to give enough bang for buck. To be honest when dealing with public transport in Auckland we’re going to need a huge bang from a small buck to get one over the motorway lobby.
If we want a quantum leap in capacity, speed and service then it seems our harbour crossing needs to be based around a proper ‘heavy’ railway. However the issue once again returns to one of cost. The logical route for a North Shore rail line is to convert and extend the busway, however the grades and curves of the busway aren’t suitable for heavy rail design characteristics. So much of the busway would need to be completely rebuilt if it were to carry suburban trains, possibly with long sections in expensive tunnels. NZTA suggests the entire busway would need to be widened by three metres. The alternative of not using the busway corridor would probably mean building a new line entirely in tunnel. So constructing the train tunnel under the harbour would be relatively cheap (around $1.5 billion according to NZTA estimates), but once we add in the city side connections and North Shore extensions we can start ticking off the billions.
Admin has proposed one solution to this conundrum, suggesting that we could build the harbour rail tunnel and a heavy rail extension to Akoranga and Takapuna while leaving the busway as is. The idea is that bus passengers would continue to use the busway proper but transfer to a fast train at Akoranga for the remainder of the trip into the city, presumably until such time as we can afford to rebuild the busway as a rail line. This idea certainly has it’s merits but I doubt it could ever really work politically or garner much public support. In terms of a radio sound-bite, it is a plan to spend two billion dollars to add one new station at Takapuna. I can hear the words ‘boondoggle trainset’ already.
Driverless light-metro, ticking all the boxes at an affordable price?
What we really need is a rapid transit rail system that can run though a harbour tunnel, but also be cheaply retrofitted to the busway without any major reconstruction. It needs to provide top notch capacity and service with low operating costs, and ideally we should be able to build a whole North Shore network for less than the cost of a motorway crossing if we are really going to win over the public.
Readers of my previous post will know where I am going with this: Driverless light metro could be just the right combination for the North Shore. It’s cheap to build, cheap to run, yet fast, frequent and high quality. I’ve gone into the merits of this form of railway in a previous post, but I’ll quickly recap on what we’re talking about:
- It’s driverless: Computerised operation removes the need for human drivers. This means the trains can run reliably at very fast headways without worrying about drivers missing signals. More importantly the lack of staff massively reduces marginal operating costs, and therefore allows high frequency service to be maintained all day and all night, seven days a week. I cannot stress enough this benefit, in Vancouver for example their Skytrain actually turns a small operational profit despite running every couple of minutes twenty hours a day.
- It’s ‘light’: These systems are specifically designed for urban rapid transit only, so the tracks aren’t limited to what heavy rail can handle. The system used in Vancouver and Kuala Lumpur can handle curves as tight as 35m radius and hills as steep as 1 in 10, or in other words tracks about four times as tight or steep as our regular railways. The vehicles themselves are relatively compact and use third rail power supply rather than overhead line, so tunnels and underpasses can be quite a bit smaller. This all makes it ‘light’ on infrastructure and ‘light’ on cost, but not light on performance. This is a huge plus in the North Shore context, tracks could be laid straight onto the busway without modification and new branches and extensions could be built easily in and around the existing urban fabric.
- It’s metro: Again these systems are custom designed just to move people, providing high frequencies, high speed and comfortable capacious trains without delays or interference from freight or anything else. With a train arriving every few minutes at every station on the line it would provide as good a service as the metros of London, Paris or New York.
In summary, a light metro system on the North Shore could be as cheap to construct as a tramway, cheaper to operate each day than buses, yet provide greater capacity and service than even a full blown suburban railway. For well less than the cost of a motorway tunnel under the harbour we could have a whole metro network for the North Shore. Indeed it could also be the perfect mode for other areas of Auckland that have no rapid transit and similar constraints to building it, in particular the northwestern corridor, the upper harbour and southeast through Howick, Botany and Flatbush.
What would a North Shore light-metro cost?
As a benchmark for costs I will use the recent Canada line light-metro that was recently built in Vancouver (which despite the name is actually two lines, a main one and a branch to the airport). The total cost of this project was $2.054 billion in 2009 Canadian dollars, which equates to about NZ$2.95 billion today. This line is actually totally independent of the rest of the Vancouver Skytrain system as it was built using Korean technology that is slightly different to the rest of the network. As such it is a good representation of a complete ‘turnkey’ network like Auckland would have to build.
This three billion dollar sum bought a total of 18.4km of double-track line (comprising 9,080m in tunnel, 7,349m on elevated viaduct, 1,386m at grade and a bridge 614m long), one major junction, 16 stations (8 underground, 6 elevated, two at grade), a operations and maintenance facility, and twenty two-car automatic trains to run on it.
So this represents a cost of NZ$160 million per kilometre for all the track, trains, stations, tunnels, bridges and viaducts needed to build and run the line. As you can see most of the Canada Line was built in tunnel or elevated, so it really represents the top end of what we would pay in Auckland given that we already have most of the corridor available at-grade. Using this rough guide we can get a ball park figure of what light metro might cost on the North Shore.
Lets start with the harbour tunnel itself, a 3.2km link from Wynyard wharf to the vicinity of Onewa Rd interchange. NZTA have estimated this would cost about $1.5 billion to construct to heavy rail standards. For the purposes of this exercise I’m going to drop this back to $1 billion to account for the fact that light-metro can handle steeper grades, tighter curves and would have a much smaller cross section so would require substantially smaller diameter tunnel tubes.
 Proposed light metro lines on the North Shore (black). Stars indicate station locations and purple lines are major bus corridors. Next up is the brand new parts of the line. For the city side connection we’ll assume a 1.4km cut and cover tunnel from the corner of Wellesley and Albert St to the start of our harbour tunnel at Wynyard wharf. This includes two stations, one at Aotea and one at Wynyard. As an aside, the site we dig out for the Wynyard station would be the perfect spot to launch the machine that bores the harbour tunnel. From the northern portal of the harbour tunnel we have a line from Onewa up to Akoranga, then from Akoranga let’s continue across Barry’s Point and the adjacent inlet to terminate our branch at an underground station under Huron St in Takapuna. So that’s an extra 3.4km of track (mostly just widening the existing motorway causeway, but with some viaduct and underground) and two new stations at Onewa and Takapuna. Altogether our brand new track requires 4.8km of track with four new stations, applying the Canadian costing gives us a rough figure of $768 million for this section. Once again I will point out this is the average cost of Vancouver’s mostly tunnelled and elevated line, so probably well above the maximum we could expect running it along the motorway in Auckland.
After this we need to look at the busway. From Akoranga to Constellation is bang on 6km long, with four existing stations that would need some level of modification. To account for the fact that most of our infrastructure already exists I’m going to (somewhat arbitrarily) halve the cost of this section. $80 million per km should be sufficient to install track, power delivery and control systems and modify the station platforms. So my guestimate is that it would cost $480 million to refit the busway proper as a light metro line.
Next would have to be an extension of the line to Albany. For this I’m going to assume a 4km route through Albany to the existing park-n-ride station, mostly elevated with short sections at grade and perhaps a tunnelled section in Albany itself. I’m also assuming two new stations: one at Rosedale Rd, the other central to the Mega Centre/University/Mall. Furthermore we will probably locate our stabling facility in the industrial area somewhere near the new Rosedale station. Once more applying our costing figure gives us a price of $640 million for this extension.
Where next? Well the obvious route would be a branch from the vicinity of Constellation station along the SH18 corridor. For the moment we’ll stop at Greenhithe Rd, but eventually this branch could reach right across the upper harbour to Henderson and the Western Line. So here we’re looking at 4.5km of line, mostly elevated, with three new stations at Unsworth/Albany Industrial estate, Albany Highway and Greenhithe respectively. Using our reference figure this comes in at $720 million. A touch pricey for those few stations but I guess the real value would come with the subsequent extension over to west Auckland.
Right, to wrap that all up we are looking at a system of a three metro lines on the North Shore running through a harbour tunnel from the CBD to Takapuna, Albany and Greenhithe respectively. This is a total of 22.5km of double track metro rail (comprised of a 3.2km harbour tunnel, 13.3km of new route and 6km of refitted busway), with five upgraded interchange stations and ten brand new ones. That’s quite a system really, it should work fantastically with a combination of decent bus feeders, the odd park-n-ride and a little intensification around stations.
But the bottom line, how much would this cost? Well to add up these simple estimates we arrive at a maximum figure of $3.6 billion to cover everything, track, stations, tunnels, trains the lot. I realise this is a very basic analysis, but using these figures that’s only 70% of what is proposed for just a motorway tunnel from the lower North Shore to Spaghetti junction. So instead of a motorway tunnel we might be able to build this whole metro system and still have $1.4 billion left in the budget to upgrade the harbour bridge or extend our metro elsewhere! Of course three-point-six-billion is still a huge amount of money, so we could obviously start with the basics first. If we exclude the Takapuna and Greenhithe branches we get a figure of roughly $2.7 billion for the metro line from central Auckland to Albany, and just over two billion if we stopped at Constellation.
So how would it operate, what would it be like to use?
The figures for Bombardier’s ART light-metro trains show that under normal conditions they operate at a top speed of 80km/h and accelerate and brake at a rate of 1.0ms-1 (the can actually brake much quicker in an emergency, and if they are running behind they can boost speed to 90km/h in catch up mode). If we plug these figures and the spacing of the stations along our proposed lines into a little model we can work out what sort of travel times we could expect.
The main line from Albany to Aotea in the central city would take just 21 minutes from end to end. That’s a full 12 minutes faster than the current timetable of the Northern Express bus to Britomart, which doesn’t even take into account the effects of major traffic congestion in the city. It would be about the same time as driving off-peak, and much faster than driving during rush hour.
 What a North Shore light metro network map might look like. The line from Greenhithe to Aotea would take only 23 minutes all up. Right now the best option is the 956 bus using Upper Harbour Drive and the busway, that takes 49 minutes. So we’ve saved an amazing 26 minutes on this route, and again this is much faster than driving if there is any sort of congestion.
The last line between Takapuna and Aotea would take only 11 minutes from end to end. This is a massive improvement over existing bus links like the 839 and 875 that actually take 30 to 35 minutes to make the short trip! Slashing travel times between Takapuna and the CBD like this would have one very good outcome: it would allow the two centres to effectively operate as a single business district. Getting from Queen St to Takapuna by light metro would take you no longer than walking up to the university or catching the bus up to K Rd.
Fast travel times are all well and good, but not if you have to wait for ages to get a train in the first place. So what are the frequencies we could expect? Well if we again assume an equivalent number of trains as used in the costings we got from Vancouver’s Canada line we arrive at a figure of 24 two-carriage sets included in the price of our network.
Based on the travel times for the three lines above we can work out that a single set can make 1.4 return trips an hour to Albany, 1.3 per hour to Greenhithe and 2.7 to Takapuna. So our 24 sets are enough to provide a train every six minutes on each line, plus have a couple of sets in reserve for operations and maintenance.
A train every six minutes on those three lines is itself is a fantastic level of service, however it gets better. Because the lines overlap there would actually be a train every three minutes between Constellation and the city, and a train every two minutes through Akoranga, Onewa and Wynyard stations! That sort of frequency makes transfers a complete breeze. With computer control maintaining regular spacing you would never wait more than three minutes to transfer between any of the three lines. And if we recall the driverless operation allows us to affordably run the system at these headways all the time, these are the same frequencies and quick transfers you’d get at any time on any day of the week. Transferring to get from Albany to Takapuna would be just as painless at 2am on a Sunday morning as it would be on a weekday at peak hour.
But what about capacity? Could a light-metro system really move more people than a huge motorway?
In a nutshell, hell yes. A motorway lane hits the wall at approximately 2,000 vehicles per hour, so our motorway tunnel would have the capacity to carry only 6,000 vehicles per hour in the peak direction. At the usual levels of vehicle occupancy that’s a maximum of just 8,000 people per hour each way through the motorway tunnel.
So what of the metro? As we worked out above our light-metro system could easily operate under the harbour at one train every two minutes each way. With a comfortable capacity of 342 passengers per two-carriage train that works out to be 10,260 people per hour each way (and quite a bit more if we are happy to crush load people in like sardines).
So just using little two-carriage train sets we can carry more people than the motorway crossing, but as patronage increases we could very simply couple more pairs of carriages together to make longer trains. With four-carriage sets the peak hourly capacity would go up to 20,520 people, and with six-carriage sets we could move 30,720 people per hour. That’s almost four times as many people as the proposed motorway tunnel.
In other words a cheap twin track light-metro tunnel could move as many people as a motorway tunnel twenty-three lanes wide!
But there’s an even bigger gulf to consider. With a motorway crossing all those 6,000 vehicles per hour have to use the same old motorways and streets either side of the tunnel. All that extra traffic will still need to funnel down either the northern motorway, Esmonde Rd and Onewa Rds at one end, and through the to the southern and north-western motorways at the other. On the other hand our light-metro system includes the cost of new tracks right up to Albany, Takapuna and Greenhithe, so we could move tens of thousands more people per hour right across the Shore and the harbour without a single extra car on the motorway. In reality we’d probably see less considerably less cars on the motorway if it were so easy to get around without driving, plus all the buses would be redeployed to feed the local stations so there would be far fewer of them in congestion on the motorway (and some arterial routes) too.
In conclusion: huge benefits at more affordable price
So there we have it, a broad indication that a truly world class metro rail system could indeed be possible right across the North Shore for the sorts of costs that have been proposed for a harbour crossing.
NZTA really should look at realistic alternatives to a hugely expensive motorway tunnel under the harbour, given that a motorway that would only further entrench Auckland into a spiral of traffic congestion and parking issues. If we do want to spend billions of dollars on transport under the harbour then why not spend it on a light-metro system that will have far greater benefits and a lower cost?
By Nick R, on December 2nd, 2011 I had a few moments spare in the city library yesterday and thought I’d have a peek up at the Auckland Research Centre. This section of the library is great for finding old plans and proposal on anything related to transport or urban planning (by the way, just about every report, plan or meeting minutes from any council in Auckland is held on desk copy in the archives in the library basement. If you ever wanted to know about any council document it is there).
While there I luckily found what I was looking for, a copy showing the 1972 Rapid Transit Plan for Auckland. The history of this plan is eerily similar to our current situation in many ways. It was a revolutionary scheme championed by the charismatic mayor of Auckland Dove Myer Robinson (leading to the nickname ‘Robbie’s Rapid Rail’), despite the mayoralty and council not having the means to actually fund the thing independently. They began working on alternate funding solutions such as a targeted land tax but found them impossible to implement without support from Wellington. In the end by the Labour government reluctantly offered an election pledge to fund the proposal, but failed to deliver on that pledge. A wholly unsupportive National government were voted into power in 1975 and in 1976 the plan was cancelled completely.
The 1972 plan was based on the De Leuw Cather report of 1965, and it actually goes into very fine detailed design, modelling of patronage and economic analysis. It even goes so far as to include scale diagrams of the necessary grade separations on the western line, designs for park and ride stations and timetables for the integrated bus feeder services. One wonders if project DART planners couldn’t have simply checked this document out from the library and got stuck in!
I’ve taken photos of two pages that outline that out line the main components of the scheme so I’ll go through the interesting features of each one. Overall it is such a huge shame we didn’t build this scheme, as it would have provided us with a five line rapid rail transit system with a central city underground loop, fed by integrated bus feeders and park-n-ride and a focus on development around key nodes. Auckland would be a much different (and in my opinion better) place if we’d had such a system shaping the city’s development for the last thirty years.
The city loop (an actual loop)
Unlike the current proposals for a City Rail Tunnel, the 1972 scheme did actually contain a tight loop of tunnels under the core of the CBD. Two main stations were proposed: one downtown in the vicinity of theQueen St/Shortland Street intersection, and a second midtown between Queen Stand Mayoral Drive, about halfway between Aotea Square and Albert park. A third city station was to be built at K Rd, but this would have been a stop on the western line only.
 The City Loop proposal from 1972. Click to view full detail. Now I’m generally against rail loops, especially one way loops but this one seems to be small and tight enough to work. With only two stations and about a two kilometres right around it would be very quick to circuit and would have worked well. (Compare this to the modern suggestion of using the City Rail Tunnel and the existing Newmarket to Britomart line as a loop: that would be 9.3km around with seven or eight stops on the way. Just plain loopy!).
We can see that the main link to the existing system comes via a tunnel and viaduct leading to the old Auckland Station. Indeed next to the former railway hotel opposite the station buildings there is still the empty section of cliff where the viaduct was to enter the tunnel. A good benefit of this scheme is that it maintained the old terminus as a proper ‘central station’ for long distance trains and generally kept them clear of the suburban tunnel operations. Also visible is the tunnelled link to theNorthShoreline, which passes underneathWynyardWharf. If only we had that tunnel today we could already have the station for the waterfront development.
As an aside, if you look closely at that page (sorry about the quality, I snapped it on a camera phone) you can see the full central motorway junction plans in all their monstrous glory. Notice how the spaghetti stretches right down Grafton gully to a elevated Eastern Motorway, while the CMJ is insanely complex due to the links to the mercifully never built Dominion Motorway (note how the Dominion Motorway runs beside the huge new North Rd interchange, rather than through it as commonly assumed). Could we image the traffic nightmare the full junction would be today, not to mention the urban destruction? Sounds like Dante’s tenth circle of hell to me, a combination of Limbo and Treachery.
The suburban network
Moving on to the second image we see the real extent of the rapid transit system proposed. One thing I can’t quite figure out is whether the dots indicate the only stations, or if they are simply the major stations. If it is the former then the plan involved a major rationalisation of stations and would have been a really rapid rail system.
For example the southern line would have only six stop between Newmarket and Papakura allowing for some lightning transit times! I guess we can assume that every station would have been a major bus interchange and almost all passengers would have used a feeder bus to get to their local station. An interesting omission here is a Manukau link, perhaps we would have seen Papatoetoe or Manurewa be the ‘centre’ of south Auckland instead, or perhaps they would have simply built the branch at the time Manukau was first developed rather than thirty years later. Looking at the lines in turn now, perhaps the most obvious addition is the North Shore rail line. Not surprisingly the station locations are almost exactly the same as the busway interchanges. The first is one at the bottom of Onewa Rd in Northcote, originally planned for the busway but never built. Next we have stations as Barry’s Point (aka Akoranga), Wairau valley (aka Sunnynook), Sunset Rd (aka Constellation) andAlbany. From there the line takes quite an interesting route north, via a station at Redvale (presumably a big park n ride?) it curves around the waterfront at Stillwater to a station half way along the Whangaparoa peninsula like a sort of rail based Penlink. Again with only six stations between Whangaparoa and the CBD transit times would have been around 30 minutes or less.
 The rapid rail network proposal from 1972. Click to view full detail. The western line appears much the same, except for the fact there are only four stations remaining between Henderson and town. The main difference is that the route leaves the existing line at Ranui and curves north along a ridge beside Don Buck Drive to terminate at as station called ‘Hobsonville’, which if we look closely is actually right where Westgate exists today. A quick glance at Google Maps shows that this ridge line is still largely undeveloped, perhaps we could still use this route to extend the rail line up to Westgate and the upper harbour?
Over on the Eastern Line close inspection shows something interesting. Unlike the Western and Southern which use the existing tracks, it looks like the eastern rapid rail would have run alongside the existing tracks in the same corridor. In particular we can see a station at St Johns Rd and an alignment that appears to cross over the existing tunnel, both of which suggests the new line was intended to climb up the hill rather than use the low level tunnel. I guess this is in order to keep the old ones for port freight. Perhaps this is something we could still look too in the future (that is keeping the existing eastern line tracks for freight and building a new set in the corridor to specifically to take rapid transit), especially if we were considering some from of light rail or light metro for a line out to Botany and beyond. At Panmure the rapid rail line has definitely deviated from the main line and it passes east of the Panmure lagoon before passing further east to new stations at Pakauranga and Harris Rd (just before contemporary Botany Town Centre) to terminate at Howick. Apart from the last station, this route is pretty much the same today on the Auckland Plan and the AMETI busway plans. This is an interesting concept, modern designs have rapid transit to Botany then heading along Te Iririangi Drive, but a spur out toward Howick would certainly get right deep into the neighbourhoods on the Howick peninsula.
The last line is quite a curious one. The outer section of this is extremely similar to current proposals for an Airport/southwest suburbs line, more or less following the motorway corridor from Onehunga to the Airport via Mangere Town Centre. The interesting bit is on the inner section: rather than travelling along the Onehunga branch and the Southern line into the city, it actually swings up part of the old Avondale-Southdown corridor through to Mt Roskill then along Dominion Rd straight into town. Certainly this would be quite a good way to get a direct trip to the airport plus take care of the central ithsmus transport needs at the same time. A close look at the map suggest the line runs parallel just east of Dominion Rd, presumably in the same corridor as the proposed motorway. Luckily for us we never carved that horrific scar across the central suburbs, however unfortunately that likewise make such a rail line quite infeasible today. I suppose a long Dominion rail tunnel or some sort of light rail or metro system could work (if we had the funds), but generally I think a rail line via Onehunga paired with trams on Dominion Rdwill take care of those transport needs.
From a modern viewpoint this system is extremely radial and CBD focussed, like the system in Melbourne. However if we had had these lines in place by the late 80s we can assume that other lines would have been built since, for example the Te Irirangi – Flatbush corridor probably would have included a rail link between the eastern and southern lines in addition to an expressway, and probably over to the airport too. Likewise completing the gaps in the route between Avondale, Onehunga,Westfieldand Panmure would have been a logical choice for an ithsmus line linking all the main radials.
A real shame this network ended up being cancelled shortly before it got started, but perhaps there is a thing or two we could learn from this proposal for the future of rapid transit in Auckland.
By admin, on October 24th, 2011 The Auckland Plan (submissions close October 31st) takes a fairly long-term viewpoint of Auckland’s future, looking to 2041 when the population may well be as high as 2.5 million. Here are the projected population numbers for Auckland over the next 30 years, and how they compare with cities throughout the rest of New Zealand: A population of 2-2.5 million in 2041, if the medium or high projections are what turns out to happen, would put us in a situation similar to that of Greater Vancouver (current population 2.2 million). Add in our limited capacity to expand the roading network, hopefully a greater focus on aligning land-use plans to encourage intensification around public transport corridors and the inevitability of much higher petrol prices and you have the recipe for significantly higher public transport patronage in 2041 than what we have now. As impressive as our increase in train patronage has been over the past 10 years (especially since 2003 when Britomart opened), if you compare Auckland with Perth and Vancouver, you can see that we’re really just scratching the surface: Realising this level of rail patronage in Auckland will obviously require massive changes in the structure of our public transport system. Vancouver’s Skytrain is so incredibly popular because it’s used for all kinds of trips – particularly trips to suburban centres and reverse-commuting trips for those living downtown but working elsewhere. More than half of Skytrain users arrive at their station on the bus, while continuously high frequencies (enabled by its driverless operation) make the system useful for far more than just peak-time commuting: The low proportion of Auckland’s public transport trips taken on the train is fairly unusual, as Ottawa and Honolulu aside (both cities are now expanding light-rail systems), we have one of the lowest proportions of our PT trips on the rail network – clearly a legacy of the rail network being so bad for so long. Comparing Auckland to Vancouver (which is also dominated by bus patronage, even considering the fact that the Skytrain carries around 120 million trips a year) highlights that a more long term ‘balanced’ network might have around three bus trips per rail trip, rather than Auckland’s six bus trips per rail trip. Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Brisbane all have much higher proportions of their PT patronage carried by rail. While in Melbourne and Sydney this is because they have huge historic rail networks, Perth had lower rail patronage in the early 1990s than Auckland does now but now has nearly as many rail trips per capita as Auckland has bus trips.
What does all this information actually mean though? I suppose the message I’m trying to get across in all of this is to look at Vancouver and Perth as giving us a view into Auckland’s future. Those cities have shown us that it is possible to have successful rail systems in cities with relatively low densities and without huge legacy rail systems (like you see in Sydney and Melbourne). In short, I think it’s perfectly feasible to expect our rail system to carry 50-100 million or more passengers a year in the medium-term future. But what kind of system might that require?
The obvious point to make is that we need to use our existing rail asset far more effectively. Electrification will enable that to an extent, but we’re still stuck at a train every 10 minutes – meaning a capacity of little more than 4000 passengers per hour per direction, a fraction of a railway line’s potential capacity. The City Rail Link is, of course, necessary to enable our existing railway lines to operate to their capacity. Beyond the City Rail Link, completing an Airport/Southwest Line would enable a pretty useful system based around two lines: 
If the maximum capacity of your railway line is around a train every 2 and a half minutes (24 tph), then theoretically a train could run every 5 minutes each way along both the red line and the green line. Obviously it will be a while before we need to run this level of service, even at peak times, but it effectively doubles the capacity of the line in each direction and quadruples the capacity of trains into the CBD because there are now two entrances (from Britomart and from Mt Eden).
A next line to put through, half of which seems to be progressing in the thinking of the powers to be (North Shore rail), half unfortunately not (a Southeast Line) could be this: Aside from the shared track between Glen Innes and town, this new line could theoretically be developed as a “Light Metro” along the lines of what Nick said recently in this post. The southeast portion of this line would probably be really useful in the next 20 years, although because we’re already building an AMETI busway chances are it’s probably quite a long way away from becoming a reality, if it ever happens.
Another possible future line, one which already has its route protected actually, is between Avondale and Southdown. This line would probably be of most use for freight – enabling freight trains to bypass Newmarket and the really high frequency passenger trains we’re likely to run on the inner part of the network in the future. Building that line enables an isthmus loop line though – which is quite an interesting idea for future service routings: Supplemented by a Northwest Busway (or a northwest rail line?) (perhaps linking through to Albany via SH18?), excellent quality feeder buses in the outer parts of the city, a high-frequency grid of bus routes on the Auckland isthmus, perhaps a few tram routes where they make sense and I think we might have found ourselves the public transport system to really support a city of 2.5 million people in a future where driving as much as we do now simply isn’t feasible.
By admin, on October 20th, 2011 Nick’s post a few days back on looking at a Vancouver Skytrain type solution for providing the North Shore with a long-term rapid transit system (as well as other areas, but I think North Shore is the one which makes the most sense initially) inspired a lot of discussion. It also made me take a second look at the issue – especially if the “light metro” can run over the Harbour Bridge (or just beneath the traffic deck?) and could run up the busway without requiring serious earthworks.
First things first, I think it’s necessary to point out that the North Shore has a very high quality, pretty brand-spanking new, Rapid Transit option at the moment – in the form of the Northern Busway. So any rail projects to the North Shore are likely to be a fairly low priority – definitely after the City Rail Link and the Southwest/Airport Line. There’s also a good argument over whether the proposed AMETI busway is really a long-term solution for that part of Auckland (or whether we need to look at rail options) but that’s a debate for another day.
While the Northern Busway certainly has plenty of life left in it, and plenty of spare capacity along part of its route, it has its own weaknesses. It has to share lanes with general traffic over the harbour bridge, Fanshawe Street is getting close to the maximum number of buses it can handle and – more generally – the city centre is increasingly being flooded with buses at peak times. While the City Rail Link will do a lot to help the issue of the CBD being flooded with buses, it obviously won’t do anything about the number of buses coming in from the North Shore – as is shown in the diagram below, which looks at projected bus numbers in 2041 with the City Rail Link: The Albert Street bus numbers can be fixed by running more North Shore services via Wellesley Street, and perhaps the Fanshawe numbers could be decreased a little bit by running some via Cook/Wellington St (although they would have no priority measures between Fanshawe & Cook/Wellington). But generally we’re going to have more than 200 buses an hour from the North Shore coming into the city centre by 2041. That leads to poor operation, significant delays and a pretty horrific City Centre.  Oxford Street in London is a good example of the problem created by so many buses passing through a particular street where you don’t have the width to create a Curitiba/Bogota style of BRT system (and I would argue we don’t have that width in Auckland’s city centre):  NZTA’s study into North Shore Rail (which is where the above images all come from) only considered two options for future rapid transit: the current busway or an eye-wateringly expensive full-scale completely underground Metro from Newmarket to Albany. The report says this:
In this section of the report, a comparison is made between busway and rail systems with respect to service attributes, corridor capacity, system attractiveness and transit mode share response. Consideration is also given to differences between the two types of systems with respect to CBD impacts and their role in shaping cities.
Comments in this section regarding rail are made on assumptions of a suburban or metro rail system (otherwise referred to as commuter or heavy rail systems). A comprehensive review of different rail types is not provided here, but it is assumed that rail in the North Shore would be either an electric suburban system, similar to that to be operating on the electrified lines in Auckland, or a metro rail system.
Constructing a light rail system along the Northern Busway corridor would not deliver any benefits over the existing busway system and is not considered here.
I completely agree it would be nonsensical to construct a light-rail line to the North Shore – as it would be an enormous cost for little, if any, capacity benefit as compared to a busway. Furthermore, you would force transfers from feeder buses without providing the speed advantage that comes from a fully grade-separated Metro solution (whether that be traditional Metro or Light Metro).
The NZTA report also chooses a rather strange preferred alignment for Rapid Transit on the North Shore – not quite on the busway route but sort of zig-zagging across it – requiring such an alignment to be fully underground: No real justification for this particular alignment is provided in the NZTA report, although I’m presuming it’s preferred over the busway route in order to connect up existing town centres.
On the city side, the report uses the super-deluxe tunnel idea running beneath the University and Hospital to link further south – something completely unnecessary in my opinion. So really, we can ignore the massive cost that the NZTA report concludes would occur if we tried to create a rail link to the North Shore – especially if the Light Metro option is viable. Somehow getting the line over the existing harbour bridge is surely likely to be around a billion dollars cheaper than a rail tunnel (and if we could sling it under the existing bridge deck we can even keep the existing number of lanes). Secondly, if we can easily upgrade the existing busway to carry Light Metro trains we have a pretty cheap way of getting those trains to Constellation Station. A full Rapid Transit right-of-way between Constellation and Albany doesn’t yet exist, but is in the process of being planned, so could be constructed in a way that’s easy to upgrade to Light Metro when necessary.
 Now if we look at that issue of cost, a fairly good guide would be the Canada Line in Vancouver – which was opened in late 2009 and is constructed to the “Light Metro” standard we’re talking about here (even if it is a slightly different technology to the rest of the Vancouver system). The Canada Line’s route is shown in the image to the left, effectively being a key north-south link across Vancouver, connecting the downtown with the Airport and with the major sub-regional centre of Richmond.
Around 110,000 trips a day are taken along the line, which wasn’t expected to reach 100,000 daily riders until 2013. During the February 2010 Winter Olympics there were well over 200,000 daily trips (who says the Rugby World Cup is the world’s third biggest sporting event?)
The line includes just over 19 km of track, including the 4km spur to the Airport. As you can see from the map to the left, a large chunk of the route is in a tunnel – either cut and cover (between Marine Drive and Olympic Village) or as a bored tunnel (the central city section). The bored tunnel section is around 2.7km long and the cut and cover tunnel seems (from looking at Google Earth) to be around 6 km long.
In total, the project has the following lengths of different types of tracks:
Tunnel 9080 m
Elevated 7349 m
Bridge 614 m
At-Grade 1385 m
In contrast, by my rough calculations a North Shore Line would have around 1.5km of bored tunnel (Westhaven to Aotea Station), around 2km of elevated tracks (if we price the harbour bridge section as being roughly similar to that of elevated tracks, as some strengthening and other work may be required) with pretty much most of the rest able to be at grade – aside from probably a new bridge over Constellation Drive (and a stronger Tristram Ave bridge potentially). On a per kilometre basis, you would certainly think that a North Shore Line could be much cheaper than the Canada Line.
All up it seems that construction of the Canada Line cost around $2 billion Canadian, with the cost being split across a variety of agencies and there being a PPP structure put in place:
The Canada Line was built as a public-private partnership. Funding was provided by both government agencies and a private partner, the proponent. As of March 2009, the entire project was expected to cost $2.054 billion. The premier of BC has furthermore stated that the project is on budget and ahead of schedule. When approved in December 2004 the cost was given as $1.76 billion.
The public contributions to the budget comes from the following sources:
Government of Canada: $450 million
Government of British Columbia: $435 million
Vancouver Airport Authority: $300 million
TransLink: $334 million
City of Vancouver: $29 million
These sums are all in 2006 dollars, except for the Government of Canada’s contribution which will be paid out when constructed, and is estimated to be equivalent of $419 million 2003 dollars.
The private partner was expected to contribute $200 million, as well as being responsible for any construction cost overruns. As of November 7, 2009, InTransitBC has invested $750 million. InTransitBC is a joint venture company owned by SNC-Lavalin, the Investment Management Corporation of BC (bcIMC) and the Caisse de Depot et Placements de Quebec.
The British Columbia government initially committed $370 million but when the bid came in over budget, they contributed an extra $65 million. TransLink also put in extra money by committing money from the sale of the Sexsmith Park and Ride in Richmond and from the introduction of a special fare in the Airport Zone.
I wonder whether some sort of similar funding arrangement might be looked at for the City Rail Link project.
A North Shore Line via the existing busway and the harbour bridge is around 16 kilometres in length, so a bit shorter than the Canada Line – while the route also involves less tunnelling and elevated structures (and a lot fewer underground stations), so would be much cheaper that way. So it’s feasible the cost of a North Shore Line could actually come in at a price far less than the crazy $11 billion or whatever NZTA suggested the line would cost. That may well make the project viable in 15 or so years time when the city can’t handle any more buses.
By Nick R, on October 17th, 2011 The transport section of the recently released Draft Auckland Plan makes for very encouraging reading, with the main priority being the development of Auckland’s transport infrastructure into a single cohesive network integrated with land use and development. The main ‘principle’ for achieving this (apart from a much needed look at revised and new transport funding mechanisms) is the development of Auckland’s railways into a true rapid transit system. The plan is to build the city rail link at its core and new suburban extensions at its periphery, to unleash the existing demand while promoting intensification of development in the right places to create a longer term mode shift.
Right now the City Rail Link is gathering momentum and I am confident it will be incontestable once Auckland experiences the patronage explosion that will undoubtedly accompany the new electric rail fleet. Once we have addressed the capacity and integration issues at the core, the easiest next step would be to extend the Onehunga branch via the residences and jobs of Auckland’s southwestern suburbs and the airport zone, forming a fourth main line linking from the CBD to Manukau. At this point we would be looking at a very functional rapid rail system, with new electric trains gliding seamlessly from the one side of the region, through the CBD then across the other. A network of four integrated lines sharing a tunnel at the centre carrying commuters in comfort, speed and reliability across most of the region, while providing a massive boost of access to the central city without any impact on the on the existing urban fabric. Fanstastic!
However, the question then comes: where do we go to from there? A quick glance back at the Auckland Plan shows several more rapid transit corridors, in particular routes across the North Shore via a new harbour crossing, through the outer eastern suburbs to service the growth zones of Botany and Flat Bush, plus across the upper harbour and along parts of the Northwestern motorway to provide much needed rapid transit there. To complete all of these rapid transit corridors would be the best solution we have for Auckland’s transport problems, but how to go about it?
Where to next for Auckland rapid transit, more buses and trains?
The simplest and most immediate answer is to build a series of busways, starting where they are needed the most and then expanding into longer contiguous corridors. Buses have the ability to climb just about any hill and take any corner, and can easily run on local roads where appropriate. The Northern busway is a good example of how we can pick the low hanging fruit and get some huge gains from our public transport without tackling the big and expensive issues (like a new harbour crossing) immediately.
 The rapid transit network from the Auckland plan (including the NW gap). Some of the yellow and blue corridors could be very difficult to complete with heavy rail However as we have also seen with the busway this approach is somewhat limited by it’s relatively low people carrying capacity, while the dispersed nature doesn’t promote much change in land use. It also has the unfortunate side effect of pumping tons more buses onto already congested city streets. Not exactly ideal when the goal is to decongest streets in order to work more efficiently and make them livable urban spaces. Furthermore operating rapid transit with buses can have surprisingly high staffing costs, particularly because each bus and driver can only move around 40 to 50 people at a time. This leads to high operating costs on busy peak routes, plus a tendency to cut frequencies in the off peak to avoid losing money on less busy routes.
It seems that buses are probably the best way to get the ball rolling in the short term, and we should strive for busways and bus lanes to be introduced in all major corridors as soon as possible. But to effect a significant mode shift and create a real change in land use bus based corridors can only go so far, so we need to look to the next step also.
Having discounted buses as a very effective long term solution, then perhaps the best idea to simply to expand the network through new electrified railways using the same track standards and trains as we will have already. This approach definitely has its appeal: modern electric suburban trains are fast, capacious and comfortable, they have low operating costs per passenger on busy routes, they are reliably run on their own tracks free from road congestion, and can be tunnelled under sensitive or highly developed areas. Overall rail based rapid transit is what Auckland needs to really get changes in land use and make a significant mode shift. A new rail station linked to the rest of the network by a modern train every few minutes is likely to allow people to change their travel habits, and encourage residential development and new businesses to set up shop nearby. I’m not sure if the same can be said for a bus stop on a route that leads to a busway somewhere down the road.
But railways have a critical Achilles Heel. While upgrading and integrating our existing rail lines is a very cost effective way to realise the capacity inherent in the corridors we already have, building brand new ones can be eye-wateringly expensive.
Main line railways must have particularly gentle grades and curves in order to operate at high capacity, high speed and high frequency. For example the city rail link tunnel will be at the limit of what regular trains can handle, just to make up the rise in terrain from Britomart to Mt Eden. Auckland has had to specify extra powerful EMU trains to handle the grades of 1 in 33 in the tunnel, yet over at the harbour bridge and along the busway grades of 1 in 20 are not uncommon. At the end of the day suburban rail is built to the same basic characteristics as freight trains and intercity railways.
This means in a hilly harbour city like Auckland any new line will be comprised mostly of expensive structures like cuttings, embankments, viaducts and tunnels in order to keep the line straight and even, while threading new lines into the existing urban fabric effectively means long sections of tunnel or long swathes of properties being purchased and demolished. The irony here is that the very qualities that make new suburban train lines almost essential for Auckland are the same ones that make them almost unattainable.
Now at this point I must say that new railways are still far more cost effective than trying to provide the same capacity with new motorway developments. Given a like-for-like comparison trying to build a new railway across Auckland would be expensive, but trying to build a brand new motorway would be masochistic. Yet to be realistic the cost of new urban railways is still going to be the largest stumbling block, especially with a government so intent on wasting most of our transport funds on an economically destructive fetish for boondoggle motorways.
Light metro as a third option
This leaves Auckland in something of a predicament. On one hand we need more rail based rapid transit to get the real step change in land use and mode share we need, yet we can -for now- barely secure funding for less than ideal bus based solutions. If only there was some sort of rail system that could be built and operated cheaply without the usual constraints of main line railways, but still give much the same level of superior performance we need from a rapid transit system.
Well there is. It’s not surprising to learn that Auckland isn’t the only city to have faced such a dilemma. There are many mid sized cities like ours than need a first rate transit system without spending first rate funds. Generally this has come in the form of ‘light metro’: metro style rail systems designed solely to move people around cities on dedicated corridors free of the constraints of other heavy metro or railway systems based on the demands of freight trains or intercity carriages. In this regard these metros are ‘light’ on cost and construction, but not necessarily light on capacity or performance. Note that the term metro is used here to refer to the service model, it needn’t necessarily be built underground like the metros of Paris or New York.
Light metro may present just what Auckland needs to extend its rapid transit system once the core suburban rail network is completed.
Introducing ART: New technology light metro
One such light metro system in the Bombardier Advanced Rapid Transit (ART), used most famously onVancouver’s Skytrain, but also found in various cities including Kuala Lumpur, New York, Beijing and Seoul. Although there are various other light metro systems across the globe (such as the Docklands Light Railway in London or the Copenhagen metro), I will use ART as the gold standard for light metro in this post. It is the most advanced and most common example worldwide and has the longest track record stretching back to the first line in Vancouver that has been in continuous use since 1985. One interesting point is that this technology used to be known as the “Intermediate Capacity Transit System” (or ICTS), however they dropped the name once they realised it can actually provide more capacity that many regular metro systems!
So what differentiates this system from regular trains?
First of all let’s look at the main innovations of an ART type system and see why these innovations were introduced:
1) Driverless operation
 No one here but us passengers Yep that’s right, no drivers. Much like a giant horizontal elevator, the ART is controlled entirely by a central computer system during routine operation (there is a small lockable control panel that can be used during maintenance, testing and emergency situations). Because staffing is the number one cost in any transit system this has amazing benefits. Not only does it make the system far cheaper to operate, it means the marginal cost of putting on another train is low. This is basically just the cost of the electricity used, so suddenly you only need a small number of paying passengers on each train to make running it worthwhile. This means that running trains very frequently becomes affordable, and frequencies can be kept at peak-hour levels most of the time. With driven trains the tendency is to have one bigger train run less frequently to minimise the staffing costs, say a six-carriage set every fifteen minutes. With driverless trains the costs are basically by the carriage-kilometre, making it the same cost to run a two-carriage train every five minutes as a six-carriage train every fifteen. Same number of vehicles, same capacity but three times the frequency!
It also means that without needing actual people in charge, running a train at 3am on a Sunday morning or in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve is no harder or more expensive than running one on a weekday morning. Frequent operation all day long, even 24/7/365, becomes perfectly achievable. Also the lack of a drivers cab means space for more passengers in each train, not to mention a nice view out the front windshield!
2) Computer controlled system with rolling block signalling
On most train systems lines are split into a sequential series of ‘blocks’ to keep trains a safe distance apart from each other and prevent collisions. Generally a driver cannot enter a block until the train in front is perfectly clear of it and signals like traffic lights are used to alert drivers when they can go or when they have to stop. This works fine on main lines but can cause limitations at high frequencies, and generally if you have flat junctions on the line about the best you can get away with is a train every three minutes per track. Without human drivers traditional signalling is not needed, and the ART system uses ‘rolling-block’ signalling. Here there are no fixed blocks or signals, but the computer simply ensures sufficient stopping distance is maintained between trains at all times. It’s a bit like the ‘two second rule’ for keeping a safe following distance while driving. The end result is that ART can safely run trains every 75 seconds, including routing them through junctions.
3) Linear Induction Traction Motors
 Linear induction motors This sounds a bit like something out of Star Trek, but the concept is very simple. Regular electric trains have motors attached to the wheels to provide motive power. Electric motors are very elegant machines, far more simple and powerful than diesel engines. They are basically comprised of a coil of wire wrapped around a magnet attached to a driveshaft (called a rotor). If you put current through the wire coil it creates a magnetic field, this pushes against the rotor causing it to turn and providing the force to drive the wheels. If you cut the current to a moving motor the process works in reverse in a process known as ‘regenerative braking’: moving the rotor induces a current in the coil which provides resistance for braking and converts the momentum of the train back into electricity.
A linear induction motor takes this simple concept and refines it even further. Instead of having a ring of wire the linear induction motor has it’s ‘coil’ stretched out along the underside of carriage, while the rotor takes the form of a metal plate affixed to the track between the rails. Apply current to the ‘coil’ fixed to the train and it pushes against the track itself for propulsion. The benefit here? Well firstly it means the motor has zero moving parts, thus increasing the lifetime of the equipment and reducing the cost of maintenance. But more importantly, propulsion and braking are not limited by how much traction you can get between the steel wheel and the steel rail because the train pushes magnetically against the track itself. This means that ART trains can climb and descend grades over twice as steep as conventional trains.
4) Steerable bogies
On a regular train the wheels are fixed to the bogies because the rails do all the steering. This is usually quite fine, except on tight curves where the pressure of the wheel flange against the rail can result in a nasty screeching noise and cause excessive wear on the rails. Anyone who has ridden a train into Britomart will have experienced this on the tight curve around the Vector Arena. The ART design overcomes this by having wheels that can turn into the corner much like a road vehicle. The end result is a vehicle that can take even tighter curves than normal trains without any of the noise, and less track maintenance to boot.
5) Compact body design with third rail power.
Like most light metro designs, the ART has a relatively compact body shell, lightweight aluminium construction and third rail power supply rather than overhead line. This creates a lightweight train that can climb those steep grades, yet requires only minimal amounts of clearance in tunnels or under bridges.
So how do these innovations translate into benefits for the Auckland context?
In many ways as it happens. Firstly the lighter vehicles and ability to take much steeper grades and tighter curves makes it easy to construct new routes over and around Auckland’s hilly, harbour side terrain. Ground level tracks can follow the contours of the land to a great extent; underpasses of roads need not be very deep, while elevated structures and viaducts could be much lighter and lower profile. Now nobody wants to see an elevated line blocking out the sky on Queen St or ruining the Domain, but in a place like Albany or Westgate it might be the perfect way to get stations right where they need to be.
 A Bombardier ART MkII in Kula Lumpur The relatively small cross section and agility of the ART would make tunnelling lines a much cheaper prospect also. For example a line through the CBD could be built just below the surface using the cheap cut-and-cover tunnelling method, as the line could easily follow the contours and curves of city streets. The factors would also make it simple to upgrade existing and future busways. For example the Northern Busway would need massive reconstruction and modification to support a regular rail line, but only a simple refit with rails instead of tarmac to take an ART light metro. There is also the tantilising prospect of running a metro line over the harbour bridge, as the ART could handle the grade. This could also prove to be an effective model for other busways, such as the ones mooted for the Northwestern Motorway or AMETI corridor. We can start with a busway at the core, then after ten or fifteen years upgrade and extend the corridor with light metro.
This has the potential to shave billions of the cost of building brand new rail lines (to the North Shore or the Botany-Flatbush area, for example), and makes linking them together with another tunnel through the city an economically feasible idea. While the ‘smart’ vehicles and track systems are likely to be somewhat more expensive than regular ‘dumb’ trains, the capital costs of constructing new light-metro alignments would be far far lower than the heavy rail alternative.
A second benefit is that driverless operation means they can be cheaply run at high frequency all day and night, without always needing high occupancy to offset costs. High frequency means great ‘turn-up-and-go’ accessibility, so we could design bus feeder routes around bus-to-bus interconnections without having to consider connecting to any one particular train. This high frequency also translates into high capacity. In Vancouver the Skytrain lines are usually run with just four-carriage trains, but because the come so often the peak capacity in each direction is around 25,000 people per hour. That is more than even our new EMU trains could ever achieve. Extra trains can be bought into play where and when they are needed for special events without rostering staff or paying overtime. Overall this means very affordable operating costs, which is important politically and economically. In Vancouver, a city that has lesser population density and centralised employment than our own, Skytrain actually makes an operational profit.
Thirdly, with the very fast headways and rolling block signalling made possible with computer control, flat junctions can be switched very frequently and many trains can share the same section of track over a short period. Furthermore the driverless operation means that it a terminating train takes no longer to change direction than it does to make any other stop, making it simple to operate branch lines frequently. This all provides a lot of flexibility in terms of having many lines on the map, despite only a little infrastructure on the ground. The London DLR is a good example of this benefit: this has two main lines and two branch lines linked at three junctions, but the services are typically operated along seven different patterns between various points on the network. Look at a track diagram and you see two main tracks, look at the route map on the station wall and you see seven different coloured lines each representing a separate passenger line.
Fourth, the driverless operation means that long crosstown lines become possible without concern for rotating crews or factoring in meal and rest breaks. This means we could have, for example, a line running from Orewa to Manukau all day long with it only ever stopping just long enough to let passengers on and off. That means no lengthy delays in the middle while drivers swap in and out (Melbourne is plagued by this on its City Loop), and making intermediate trips between suburbs are just as time-reliable as those to the CBD. Furthermore it almost eliminates wasted time or wasted vehicle trips, so we need less trains overall to provide the same level of passenger service.
Fifthly, the quiet motors and screech free steering make for very smooth and quiet operation, while the flexible grade and curve characteristics would make it simple to duck underground at sensitive areas. This would allow us to get stations right in close to residences and workplaces without creating noise and vibration problems, and to get routes through the city and suburbs without major impacts upon urban or natural features.
Is all this techo mumbo jumbo really realistic, what are the pitfalls?
In short, the answer is yes. These systems have been in daily operation in Canada for twenty-five years with an exceptional track record: over 1 billion passengers carried with six extensions since 1989 and no full suspension of service for construction or commissioning. The two main lines carry over 240,000 passengers a day. The linear induction motor is extremely reliable; many of Vancouver’s original 1985 Mk I trains have accumulated over 3.8 million kms with only one minor overhaul of the motor and are still going strong.
There would no doubt be various objections to introducing new light metro line to Auckland, even if the initial hurdle of political and public scepticism could be overcome. The main issue is perhaps the lack of interoperability, for example a line on the North Shore could not run into the city rail tunnel, nor could it take freight or intercity trains to the north of the country. In a way this is actually something of a benefit, the single urban-transit mode would ensure regular high frequency operation could not be disturbed by other transport uses. In the first instance connection to the other lines using the city rail tunnel should be made in the CBD and wherever else possible, but this should only be by passenger connection rather than by trying to run everything through the same set of tracks. In the second instance there already exists heavy rail lines heading north and south out of the city, and maintaining these for freight and long distance passenger access is no doubt the best idea. A new metro line would need a new stabling yard and maintenance facility, however this is likely to be the case too with any suburban rail extension.
Perhaps the best way to frame this issue is to consider a heirarchy of rail and public transport, each stage being ‘sectorised’ from each other. The first level is that of freight, regional and intercity trains, these would operate from the freight yards and Britomart terminal, using the main trunk lines to head north and south of the city. The second level is that of the suburban rail, using the existing and proposed suburban rail network and operating through the city rail tunnel very frequently at peak hours and approximating a metro system at the centre. The third level is that of our light metro, providing urban passenger-only services separate from the suburban lines. but directly interconnected with them into a wider rapid transit network. The fourth level would be street level bus and tram services, providing local access and feeding into the higher levels.
In summary
A light metro system such as Bombadier’s Advanced Rapid Transit could represent a way to establish high quality metro style rail routes across Auckland at a fraction of the capital or operating costs of conventional heavy rail or underground metro systems, meaning more lines could be built to more areas in a shorter time frame given the same amount of funding. Lines with low capital and operating costs yet frequent high quality service would no doubt perform well on any benefit-cost analysis, potentially making it much more feasible to secure funding for them.
After the essential City Rail Link is built and our existing rail lines are being used to their maximum potential, we will need to ask ourselves “where to next?” Do we look at developing the next suburban heavy rail line in Auckland, or the first metro line instead?
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