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.
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.
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.
An exciting media release from Auckland Transport yesterday and something hinted at on here a few days ago:
Double decker buses to be trialled
Double decker buses could soon be on the roads of Auckland.
A number of bus operators want to trial double decker buses on the city’s busiest bus routes possibly starting later in the year.
Among routes being looked at for the trial are the busy Dominion Road and the Northern Busway on the shore.
Before any trial can begin issues such as the weight, height and width of the buses need to be addressed to ensure they meet national standards.. Possible routes will also have to be checked for access around power lines, shop verandas and bridges.
David Warburton, Auckland Transport chief executive welcomes the move. “There is the potential to increase capacity by around 70 per cent on some of our busiest routes without putting extra buses on our already busy roads.”
And Mayor Len Brown also likes the idea. “Demand for public transport in Auckland is going through the roof. New infrastructure such as the City Rail Link is vital to unclog our roads. But at the same time innovative and forward thinking proposals like this from our bus operators are great ways of maximising our existing route system. I look forward to the trial.”
The trial is just one of many improvements for users of public transport in Auckland.
The frequency of services on the shoulder peak of the Northern Express has been increased to four minues to respond to existing demand and to future proof for the opening of the Albany Park and Ride extension in the middle of the year.
Mainline Howick and Eastern bus services from Howick/Botany through to the CBD via the Ellerslie Panmure Highway are being streamlined to provide a service at least every 15 minutes. In addition there will be bus service connections to the new Manukau Rail Station.
Cash machines have been installed at Albany, Constellation, Smales Farm and Akoranga Busway Stations to make it easier for commuters.
Plus a review is underway of all bus timetables against actual running information to improve the accuracy and reliability of all bus customer information.
This is what they might look like: As well as adding a “cool” factor to travelling on Auckland’s buses, double-deckers also provide some really useful practical advantages on routes like the Northern Busway and Dominion Road, where we’ve already got very good frequencies but need to keep adding buses simply for capacity reasons. Adding another paid driver and vehicle on the road for each additional 50 passengers is a pretty expensive task – especially at peak times when the bus might only be used for a few trips a day. So increasing the capacity of each vehicle is a great way to run a more efficient bus system.
There are pros and cons when comparing double-decker buses to articulated (bendy) ones. Double-deckers probably have slower loading and alighting times, but take up a lot less street space as they’re only the length of a normal bus.
Overall, it’s good to see the message is getting through to the operators that Auckland desperately needs bigger buses. The most recent tranche of buses to arrive in Auckland are stupidly small when you consider how quickly bus patronage is growing – so today’s announcement is a big step in the right direction.
This is a Guest Post by commenter Peter, who has written previous posts here and here.
There has been a lot of discussion in recent months about the need to improve Auckland’s bus network so that it integrates with, rather than duplicates, the rail network and also the Northern Busway. Auckland Transport’s board papers for their meeting this coming week seem to indicate that this process is finally happening – as Matt pointed out in his post earlier this week, we see the following:
The PTNP will define a new connected and integrated network for public transport in Auckland of:
Rapid Transit Network (RTN) of electrified and modern rail services and Busway services.
A connected network of high frequency bus services along key arterial road corridors, supporting and integrating with the RTN – 15 minute worst case frequency seven days a week between 7am and 7pm – plus some high frequency ferry services
Secondary routes of lesser frequency ferry and local feeder bus services connecting to the RTN and high frequency bus network, school bus services and peak only services.
The main benefits of the new PTNP will be to simplify the network, remove the “spaghetti” A-B bus routes, remove duplication of services and provide high frequency services that are convenient and reliable. This in turn will create resource efficiency “savings‟ that can be used to focus bus resources where the demand and congestion relief is most needed – on key arterial corridors.
It seems fairly likely that turning a number of existing “long-haul” bus routes into feeder services to both the rail network and the Northern Busway will be a key part of this plan. Logically it should, because as many people have pointed out earlier it’s just silly for us to run bus routes that completely duplicate our rail corridors doing the same “long-haul” job that we’ve spent billions of dollars on the rail network to do.
However, this “trunk and feeder” approach generally hasn’t worked well in Auckland so far. We have a few feeder buses that run around the North Shore at the moment, and the general conclusion that I’ve come to from discussions with various people is that they’re rubbish. And because they are rubbish, nobody uses them. Here are two of the feeder services into Albany and Constellation stations: The 880 route (the red one) takes almost an hour to complete its giant circuit of this part of the North Shore, and only runs at 30 minute frequencies – fine if you’re heading into the city where you can transfer onto the much higher frequency Northern Express: rubbish if you’re heading out of the city and just miss your connecting feeder bus to take you home. Furthermore, Constellation and Mairangi Bay are the 3 stage boundaries, i.e. an express from Mairangi to the city is three stages. However for some infuriating reason all the 880 route along Maxwellton Dr falls into the ‘upper zone’ of the North shore, while Constellation is still in the lower zone. The end result is a longer, slower and less direct 839 from Mairangi to town on a lower zone pass, but using the feeder and transfer to the NEX for a quick trip needs the more expensive upper and lower zone pass. The 887 bus (the blue route) takes 40 minutes to complete a pretty incomprehensible route, and also only runs every half-hour – making it hopeless for returning trips.
So we haven’t got feeder buses right on the North Shore. Does that mean feeder buses in general are always going to be almost completely empty and utterly useless, or is there a better way we can do them? Looking overseas, we find that in cities like Perth, Vancouver and Toronto, the majority of people catching the train have actually arrived at their station on the bus – suggesting that feeder buses to rapid transit is quite possible. But how?
Taking a look at Perth’s bus network gives us some clues about how to run better feeder services – here’s a section in the very northern area that feeds into Clarkson Railway Station. Tracing the individual routes takes a bit of work (and there’s a typo which doesn’t help), but generally they follow fairly logical routes feeding into Clarkson Station in the bottom-right of the image. With some exceptions they take the fastest trips while still offering a fairly decent coverage of the area. Looking at a timetable, we can also see that some care and thought has gone into integration with trains: The connections also work in the outbound direction: What’s interesting in comparing Auckland with Perth is a fundamental difference between a busway and a rail line – that being that you’ll probably always be running much higher service frequencies along a busway than a railway line (simply because you can’t fit anywhere near as many people on a bus). The lower train frequencies make it a bit easier for connecting feeder buses, because you can time your feeder to connect to your train (and vice-versa), even at fairly low frequencies. With a busway, it’s likely to be much more difficult to match the frequency of your feeder with that of your trunk route. The Northern Express runs at 5 minute frequencies or better for much of the day these days, and although you wouldn’t need any feeders to match that frequency, you would need them to be coming at worst every 15 minutes to ensure that non-timed transfers didn’t result in particularly long waits.
In future posts I’ll try to look at how Vancouver and Toronto operate feeder buses to their rail networks, and perhaps look at how Brisbane operates its southeast busway in a bit more detail – to really explore how we can make feeder buses to rapid transit work.
Green party transport spokesperson and transport expert Julie Anne Genter pointed out in parliament yesterday how spending money on public transport can save us a whole lot of money and uses one of the best examples there is: the Northern Busway.
The busway is definitely one of the great success stories we have in Auckland. We have been able to increase the number of people crossing the harbour each peak period even though the number of cars crossing the bridge has declined over the same period: We have seen from the most recent study into another harbour crossing that adding more lanes of traffic will cost many billions of dollars.
The other key message from her speech is that investment in public transport is actually about giving people a choice. If someone wants to drive to work then that is perfectly fine but they should also have good quality alternative options. The busway shows that if there is a viable alternative then people are very prepared to use it.
March is known as March Madness for a very good reason, it is when all university students are back along with schools and most workers. This results in extremely busy periods on our transport networks as there are a lot of people wanting to get around the city and in recent years has seen patronage on public transport soar. That’s why this announcement is just plain stupid.
Transpower advised today that it will begin work to install high voltage cables in the Northern Busway on Monday 12 March, as part of its project to reinforce the power supply into Auckland and the upper North Island.
The work comes under the North Auckland and Northland (NAaN) grid upgrade project which will address the current reliance on a single transmission line between Otahuhu and Henderson and will increase security of power supply into the region.
Project Director Paul Duffy said Transpower wished to advise passengers that this work has the potential to disrupt Busway users.
“We have worked with Auckland Transport and the NZ Transport Agency to ensure measures are in place to minimise the impact of our work. This includes restricting our activities so that only sections of the Busway will be affected at one time,” he said.
Some speed restrictions will apply around the work sites and portable traffic signals will help to manage traffic flow. Priority will be given to buses heading south in the morning and north in the evening to take account of peak travelling times.
Mr Duffy said that crews will also work extended hours to ensure the Busway work is completed quickly.
“Unfortunately delays to bus services are unavoidable; however these are expected to be within planned traffic management levels and could range from one to four minutes.
“We will carefully monitor bus flows so that adjustments to the traffic management can be made quickly to avoid unnecessary delays and to take account of special events that may increase traffic on the Busway,” he said.
Work will start at Constellation Drive, connecting through the new substation at Wairau Road before returning to the motorway corridor and completing the section from Wairau Road to the Auckland Harbour Bridge. Completion of this section of the project is expected early next year.
Mr Duffy said Transpower was aware of the thousands of passengers travelling daily on the Busway and were working hard to ensure delays are kept to the minimum while construction is underway.
“We took the opportunity years ago to install ducts during the construction of the Northern Busway in preparation for the cable installation so that we could cause as little disruption as possible.”
“We would like to apologise in advance for any interruption our work may cause passengers on the Northern Busway and appreciate their support for this critical infrastructure upgrade,” Mr Duffy said
Now I want to say first up that I can completely understand the need for the project so am not criticising that but what I am questioning is the timing of this. Why in the middle of the busiest month we have every single year would Auckland Transport let a utility company effectively dig up parts of the busway, one of the key public transport corridors in the whole region.
I can just imagine how loud the howls from motorists would be if they suggested that a lane of the harbour bridge (or even just the motorway) needed to be closed in peak times to lay some cables so why should PT users have to suffer the same issues. Could it not have waited for a slightly quieter month and I wonder what the economic impact is on this disruption as while it may not seem like much, adding 1-4 minutes on to every bus journey would quickly add up both in users time but also in operational costs.
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?
A few days ago we reported that Auckland Transport was about to spend $5.5m to add another 550 car parks to the Albany busway station. Today the NZ Herald is reporting that AT could have an additional 104 car parks open this year at a proposed new Silverdale busway station with a second stage increasing the number of car parks to 500.
Auckland Transport says northern bus users could have 104 free parking spaces at Silverdale this year.
This is in addition to the 550 extra spaces opening at the Albany “park and ride” in July.
Agency spokeswoman Sharon Hunter said public comment would be sought on whether the Northern Express service should be extended to Silverdale to coincide with the opening of the “park and ride” and better local Hibiscus Coast services.
Charging for parking was not being considered.
Resource consents for the first stage of the Silverdale station have been approved by independent commissioners.
I find it odd that they would consider building a park & ride without a firm commitment to extend the Northern Express to service, not that I could see to many people opposing extending it. I also raised the issue around the need for better feeder buses and that is something that some politicians like George Wood have also questioned as adding more parking is not something that can be done forever. In this regard it is also odd that they seem to be completely ruling out charging for these parks yet people who did use feeder buses would be charged (either separately or as part of the northern pass). AT do suggest that better feeder buses will be looked at later in the year however given what they have said about other projects and how long it has taken them to actually come to fruition I wouldn’t expect anything for another 2-5 years.
On Monday, the agency said it was spending $5.5 million on doubling the free parking area at its Albany bus station, raising questions about the adequacy of “feeder” bus services from northern suburbs.
Ms Hunter said that demand for more feeder services was part of the agency’s talks with Auckland Council on its annual funding plan.
Ideally, increased feeder services would start late this year or the first half of next year
Going back to the Silverdale station, here is an idea of what the station layout would be, the motorway is just to the left of the image. I’m not sure if this is the final design or not but if it is, my main concern is that by having the station to the west you separate it from any future development which would most likely be to the east.
Matt L has just dissected AT’s recent announcement regarding the expansion of the Albany Park and Ride.
Park and ride is a vexed transport planning issue: It’s very popular with middle-class commuters and as a result tends to receive a lot of public/political support. On the other hand, P&R’s merits are often not well understood. Is P&R really the boon it is made out to be?
Let’s consider the arguments usually put forward in discussions on P&R; turning first to the downsides:
P&R requires considerable tracts of land. For this reason it tends to be very, very expensive to provide within the urban area, unless opportunistic (read CHEAP) land parcels are identified (more on this later). Given the cost of land and the general constraints on PT funding in Auckland, it is quite reasonable to ask whether P&R in urban locations represent value for money – compared to other possible PT improvements.
The second issue is a logical extension of the first: Because P&R requires so much land it squeezes out opportunities for intensive land use development, often in the very locations that have good PT access. This second issue is very important, because it means that P&R may actually generate relatively few *additional* trips per sqm, above and beyond what would be generated by the intensive land uses that would exist in the absence of the P&R.
The third major issue with P&R is that it competes with other modes to provide access to PT stations. Surveys of the Northern Busway have shown that approximately 50% of users previously used local buses. The message is that providing free P&R can encourage people to drive down the road and park, when they previously waited for a local bus (which is typically going to run anyway, i.e. relatively low marginal economic costs).
The final major issue with P&R is that it concentrates vehicles on what are often strategic locations in the road network. In the case of Albany, the provision of 1,100 car-parks within the town centre itself represents about one full lane of traffic. By concentrating vehicle volumes at these locations, large amounts of P&R may soak up capacity in the surrounding road network and cause localised congestion.
Just to re-cap the points made above: 1) P&R can be expensive to provide (because of the land that it occupies); 2) may generate little additional patronage (above and beyond what we would get anyway); 3) tends to compete with other modes of access to PT stations (which are often more cost-effective); and 4) can cause localised congestion.
Given these issues you might reasonably ask under what circumstances would you ever want to develop P&R? The answer is that P&R can be useful where:
Alternative means of PT access (primarily local bus services) are ineffective. In these situations P&R can help to focus PT demands to a level that supports a modicum of PT service. This tends to be outside the main urban area, where land is cheaper to provide (especially where you can identify opportunistic land parcels, such as sites beneath high-voltage power lines or in flood prone areas, as is done for some P&R sites in Vancouver).
It is priced appropriately. Charging people to use P&R generates revenue from users and mitigates two of the issues noted above. Namely, the cost (or subsidy) of providing P&R goes down, while also reducing the degree to which P&R competes with other (substitutable) modes of access. Pricing P&R really just levels the playing field with other possible ways of getting to the PT station. It can also reduce the congestion caused by P&R.
The PT station has been provided in advance of more intensive land use development. Here P&R simply becomes an interim land use, until such time as development is ready to occur. At this point the land on which the P&R sits can be sold and the costs recovered. This practise of “landbanking” is not a bad strategy, especially where the interim P&R allows PT services to build to the point where they support relatively intensive development.
Given these pros and cons, as well as the general public/political pressure, it is perhaps not unsurprising that PT agencies struggle to find an appropriate role for P&R. In my experience most cities have relatively ad-hoc approaches to the development P&R.
So where to from here? Well, I thought I’d round out this post with a few takeaway P&R messages that I’ve collected during my years working as a transport consultant working in New Zealand and Australia:
The party rarely lasts – P&R is usually an interim activity. P&R should be viewed less as a permanent feature of the PT network and more as an interim activity that is redeveloped at some point in the future. Rose-tinted press-releases (such as that released for Albany) create the illusion of a never-ending feast of free P&R and build a public rod to beat the backs of future decision-makers (as an aside, there is a general need for transport agencies to better manage public/political expectations).
Ain’t no party like a policy party – the development of P&R should be governed by policy. Experiences in cities overseas has highlighted the issues that may arise with ad-hoc P&R development. In San Francisco, the (private) operators of BART had a pig of a time trying to redevelop and/or charge for P&R decades after the development of the system, even though the land on which the P&R sat was wholly privately owned.
No party is that cool – P&R is just another form of PT investment. Ultimately, P&R is just another way of getting people onto the PT system. As such, any proposed investment should be compared against other possible uses of that money.
Following these three P&R ‘party rules’ can help ensure that investments in P&R are a boon, not a boondoggle.
*** Disclosure of interest: Stuart Donovan is manager of MRCagney’s Auckland Office, which provides transport and planning consulting services to public and private sector clients throughout the Asia-Pacific region. The views expressed in this article are his alone; they do not necessarily represent the views of MRCagney, its employees, and/or its clients. ***
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.
We have seen from the 
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