The NZTA have released a new video about the Waterview Connection (they actually released it about a month ago but I have only just seen it now). It is definitely a very pretty video but I get the feeling from the ending that it is partly to help push their case for moving the vent stack from the one mandated by the Board of Inquiry. This is something they were pushing back in Feb but I thought they had now dropped the issue.
Of course one does have to ask just how much was spent on this video, I bet it wasn’t cheap.
Along with ‘Transformational’ the other phrase suffering from misuse in discussions around Auckland’s transport plans at the moment is ‘Multi-Modal’. This seems to have come from the logistics sector where it refers to the sending of goods over a variety of technologies and/or involving handling by various companies to get to their destination. In the urban transport context it seems to have at least three meanings:
1. A journey that uses more than one kind of movement, eg walk/bus/walk, or drive/rail/walk, or bike/ferry, or even bus/bus/bus [3 different bus rides] and so on.
2. An infrastructure project designed to facilitate different modes of movement, eg the AMETI project includes highways, buslanes, cycleways, and train station redevelopment, so can be described as multi-modal.
3. An analysis of needs for an area that sets out to not proscribe what mode, or combination of modes, will provide the best outcome. Currently there is [yet another] study into the transport needs of south west Auckland that aims to be multi-modal, which is to say it will look at whether trains, bus systems, more motorways, or maybe teleporting [!?], will best suit the needs of the area and at what cost.
So we can see how the phrase can mean various things, although generally we can say it is intended as a positive; as it sounds like a good thing, sounds like it offers choice, democracy, and in a sophisticated way. Who doesn’t want that?
Here is Auckland Central MP Nikki Kaye:
I support, as does the Government, the development of a robust multi-modal plan for future transport into the CBD, which includes a thorough analysis of all the alternative modes to transport.
Sounds good doesn’t it? Except this is from at post on her website where the MP is detailing the government’s refusal to support the construction of the City Rail Link, because, somehow, it supports ‘a robust multi-modal plan’. So when you don’t want to support something but still want to appear all positive it seems calling for ‘a thorough analysis of all the alternative modes to [sic] transport’ seems like a cunning choice of phrasing; go all multi-modal. Okay, so perhaps we’ed better look at this phrase a little deeper.
The multi-modal journey.
Almost all public transport trips are multi-modal. With the occassional exception of someone who say works at Westpac, whose offices are directly above Britomart and who also happens to live right next door to another train station, all PT trips can be assumed to involve getting to the point of connection with the transit system by some other means, usually walking, and then doing the same at the other end of the transit journey. This fact is one of the reasons that cities with more effective public transport systems consistently record better health statistics than those without. Simply because with more people using PT, more people are getting more exercise.
The chief advantage of the vehicle mode is that it can be point to point. Straight from your garage at home to the carpark at your office. So while very handy also both extremely sedentary and completely mono-modal; therefore cities dominated by car use report poorer public health outcomes. There is all the evidence in the world for this for example; here, here, and here.
Of course park’n'ride journeys are also multi-modal, but usually involve less walking. And when I ride my bike to University I am only using one mode point to point, but still getting more exercise than those rainy days when I take the bus. But despite these two examples a place that supports more PT journeys, and therefore more multi-modal journeys, reports better health outcomes.
Nikki Kaye again:
Twitter with Nikki Kaye
Yes well Multi-Modal does include cycling and walking, and it’s great that Kaye knows this but do her government’s transport policies actually encourage more of either? There is nothing, for example, about opposing the construction of the City Rail Link that supports either Multi-Modality or cycling and walking. In fact quite the reverse. All PT encourages walking, offers choices other than driving, and frees the streets up to be available to cyclists and walkers. And fully underground and transformative projects like the CRL do these things extremely well.
So lets look at some more examples.
It is often gloomily noted that in order to get funding for a cycleway in Auckland you first need to find a billion dollar motorway project to attach it to. Certainly this is true of the Waterview project [and here] which despite taking place on a rail designation its only claim to any multi-modality is that the Environment Court has forced the addition of some pretty good funds for cycleways and paths as a means to mitigate the negative effects of this motorway on the local community. It has no public transport component -so other than the mitigating paths and bridges it is not really a multi-modal project. Hopefully AT will add buslanes to Gt North Rd after this project is complete but there is no funding or specific inclusion of bus priority in the Waterview project itself.
Multi-modality can be retro-fitted to an ordinary road too. Here is a multi-modal street in Manhattan: From left; bike lane, parking, general traffic, dedicated buslane. And to top it off pedestrian priority in the foreground. Four modes each with their own priority, clearly to do this you need a fair bit of road width, and that presupposes other systems of movement to compliment the road space. Of course Manhattan has a comprehensive subway system to free up this roadspace.
First Avenue NYC photo: NYC DoT
This pattern of strict separation isn’t the only way to multi up the modes; there’s also the ‘shared space’ way, this offers a more anarchic multi-modality that can work extremely well, especially in narrower streets where vehicles can be calmed by enough users of other modes, this type of system is common with trams too:
Shared Street in Copenhagen
Or we could think of particularly mono-modal systems; motorways are not only restrictive of what travels along them [no walking or cycling, and very little successful public transport] they also break connections across them for other modes, especially walking and cycling, but also for more local motorised connection too. Not only that but the quantity of traffic that they then dump onto to local streets severely limits the exercise of multi-modal patterns seen in the examples above.
Auckland's CMJ
This is what a Mono-Modality looks like. So anyone looking for a ‘robust Multi-Modal plan for future transport to the CBD’ would be wanting to urgently add the modes that are missing from this picture, and could well be looking to limit the use of systems like this one: the largest Motorway interchange in in Australasia.
So I guess the question I want to ask the government is how sincere are they really about Multi-Modality? I agree a truly multi modal Auckland would be a great improvement but successive governments have deviated very little from a highway dominant policy and the current one has greatly accelerated it, and therefore increased our Mono-Modality. The Government Policy Statement makes it very hard to get funding from NZTA for any mode at all other than state highways, in fact it seems designed to enable motorways to get funding no matter how poor their cost benefit analyses. So under this government the share of Land Transport funding going to anything other than state highways has shrunk. And now they are planning to make it even more difficult for the local authority to make its own investments that may differ from this bias.
These actions then are the exact opposite of promoting the Multi-Modal. I know this may seem naive but I would very much prefer politicians to back up their sweet words with actual actions.
The NZTA and it’s partners presented an update to the transport committee yesterday on what is currently happening with the Waterview Connection project. Most of the update was pretty straight forward, explaining what the project is, why it is needed and how it will be built. Also the images shown are the same as in this post from December however you can watch the videos of the entire presentation along with the questions and comments about it here: (sorry I can’t embed these ones)
One aspect though has raised the hackles of a number of some councillors and the local board members is something first mentioned late last year which is that the NZTA is considering moving the northern tunnel ventilation stack. The issue is that it was initially intended to be on the Western side of Great North Rd, something the locals weren’t happy about and fought strongly at the board of inquiry (BOI) that was set up for the project. In their ruling the BOI required that the NZTA move the ventilation stack and its associated building to the Eastern side of the road. Since that time the alliance that won the tender has decided to use a tunnel boring machine that can get under Gt North Rd without it needing to be dug up at all so want to be able to move the stack back onto the other side of the road and further north. Whether any change to its location actually happens will have to be seen but one thing is for sure, if it has to go back through the BOI process it could take a long time.
Some pretty cool design details for the Waterview Connection project have emerged, and are worth taking a look through. Starting at the southern end of the project: The above picture shows the interchange with Maioro Street.
Shifting further along, you can see how the motorway will look as it passes through Allan Wood Reserve: It’s good to see that, while the motorway will be running effectively through the middle of a large green space, the leftover parts of that space are going to be really nicely landscaped. While the area is certainly a lot of grass at the moment, it’s not particularly intensively used.
Shifting further west, we see the southern portal of the tunnel: Artistic impressions of the southern portal look really awesome: The pedestrian path over the motorway will also be quite nicely designed: It also looks like quite a lot of thought has gone into landscaping around the northern portal – although this is a slightly outdated design: The interchange with SH16 is certainly pretty huge, but once again it seems that some thought has gone into the landscaping to mitigate its effects: The tunnels will be bored with a 14 metre diameter tunnel boring machine, which should be a pretty impressive piece of equipment.
With special votes seeming likely to result in the Green Party getting one more MP, at the cost of National, and the chances of Auckland Central and/or Waitakere swinging from National to Labour being relatively (but not impossibly) slim, we have a fairly good idea about the shape of the future government.
We have 121 seats – a one seat overhang. This is down from the current parliament, which has 122 seats. This means that 61 seats are necessary for a majority.
National are likely to end up with 59 seats, which leaves them two short of a majority. They will require two “parties” (it feels a bit wrong calling one man bands of Act & United Future parties) out of United Future, Act and the Maori Party for support. This shouldn’t be too difficult. Ironically Labour might be kicking themselves for winning Te Tai Tonga as then there’d be a two seat overhang and National would need all three of these support parties – a much harder ask.
Interestingly, the total number of seats of parties generally supporting the government is down from 69 to 65 (assuming the Maori Party supports them), which gives a little less breathing space than we had previously. If either John Banks or Peter Dunne disagree with National on anything then they could make life pretty difficult – although I think this is unlikely as both will probably become defacto National MPs.
What does this all mean for transport? Well obviously the government is likely to continue with its current policies – as I outlined in this post we are likely to see further investigation of four additional Roads of National Significance. Personally I think these extra roads are more election bribes than anything else as there’s unlikely to be any money in the transport budget for major new projects for at least a decade if the government keeps pushing forward on their current RoNS.
In three years time obviously Victoria Park Tunnel will be fully completed and opened (I wonder if it will still be plagued by horrific congestion, I suspect so), construction on the Waterview Connection will be in full swing and widening of the SH16 causeway should be well under way. I’m not entirely sure what progress is expected to be made on Puhoi-Wellsford by that stage. Assuming that Labour and the Green Party stick to their pledge to scale back this road, a change of government in three years time could well mean that the “holiday highway” never happens, unless so much construction on it has occurred by 2014 that it’s impossible to back out of. I think that’s unlikely.
My pick for the big “elephant in the room” issue for road construction over the next three years will be declining fuel tax receipts putting enormous pressure on NZTA’s ability to actually deliver on the projects the government is promising. Already this year we are seeing NZTA finding it desperately difficult to “pay the bills”, having to put off many of its subsidies that go to Auckland Transport for a month or two here and there, so that they can manage their incredibly tight cashflow. If petrol prices continue to rise between now and 2014 this trend will only increase and we might find it very difficult to fund either the smaller projects (generally those with the best cost-benefit ratios) or we may have to be looking at delaying some of NZTA’s bigger projects. I feel that even increasing NZTA’s ability to borrow (as proposed in the LTMA reforms) will only delay this inevitability.
Of course it’s not all doom and gloom over the next three years. By late 2014 pretty much all our flash new electric trains should be running on the Auckland rail network, and judging by recent trends our rail patronage may be getting close to 15 million trips a year. With an enlarged Greens caucus, and key Labour MPs with a strong interest in Auckland transport issues (Phil Twyford, David Shearer and Jacinda Ardern) being returned to parliament and identified as rising stars, there should be an even better informed political debate over transport in the future. As I have noted in a few recent posts, I am particularly excited that Julie-Anne Genter has made it into parliament – I’m looking forward to parliament’s first questions on parking policy!
Like with many things, the real wildcard might be New Zealand First. Which side of the political divide they fall on transport policy is probably yet to be determined, but they may find it a useful weapon to attack the government on. Although Andrew Williams was clearly the worst mayor North Shore City ever had, the fact that he has been in that position means that he must have a reasonably good awareness of transport matters in the Auckland area – which must be a good thing.
NZTA continue to refuse to publish their board papers online (even though they spend around $3 billion of taxpayers’ money a year), so in the cause of increased transparency I have been doing Official Information Act requests for their board papers for a while now. Here are the papers from the latest meeting, with a short comment where I think they contain something interesting. A list of the documents is included below:Attachment 1 – Chief Executive’s Report. Quite a lot of the “progress on RoNS” information has been withheld, which is quite disappointing. Aside from that, there’s an interesting snippet about NZTA’s concerns over the Rugby World Cup opening night. More detail is provided in attachment 11 on this matter.
Attachment 2 – NLTF cashflow and programme management. This document is really interesting, as it details some of the significant cashflow problems NZTA is facing at the moment, which has led to a complete moratorium (and potentially even further measures) on new state highway projects for quite some time. This is summarised below: While some of the extra expenditure has obviously been unavoidable, it is somewhat concerning to heard about the discrepancies due to MoT not recording expenditure (further investigation showed that this was around $180 million, not a small amount!)
Attachment 3 – Quarterly Report on Borrowing. This seems a fairly standard and repeating report showing NZTA’s cashflow position. As per the previous paper, it’s clear that NZTA is really pushing their debt limits at the moment.
Attachment 4 – Refreshing the Investment and Revenue Strategy. This document outlined some possible changes that NZTA will be making to the way they prioritise transport projects, as a result of changes to the Government Policy Statement. The proposals are quite worrying, particularly in terms of focusing more emphasis on ‘strategic fit’ (which means little more than what is the Minister’s pet project).
Attachment 5 – NLTP activity funding class allocations. This gives us some hints about the level of funding NZTA is going to give to various types of transport over the next few years – it largely reflects the roads-obsessed Government Policy Statement, so is fairly depressing.
Attachment 6 – Proposed changes to funding assistance rates. This outlines some changes to the level which NZTA helps subsidise the different councils around the country in undertaking their work. It’s worth noting that Auckland gets a relatively low level of subsidy compared to most of the rest of the country.
Attachment 8 – Pricing and Operation Principles for National Integrated Ticketing. A very interesting paper that confirms NZTA will take over the running of all public transport ticketing systems in New Zealand in the future, to enable interoperability. Snapper made quite a detailed submission raising concerns about the proposal but (thankfully) these have been dismissed by NZTA who note the importance of having independence the processing system from any bus operator. This is summarised below:
Attachment 10 – Western Ring Route, pre-award review. This paper relates to the process NZTA have undertaken (or were about to undertake when the paper was written) to decide who would win the contract for constructing the Waterview Connection process. It’s an interesting insight into how these decisions are made.
Attachment 11 – General Business. This has a wide variety of information, although as noted under attachment one, it’s particularly interesting to see what was said about the concerns NZTA had about the Rugby World Cup opening night: Overall there’s a bit more interesting stuff than you normally get from an NZTA board meeting. Particularly in relation to integrated ticketing and the financial issues NZTA is currently facing.
Yesterday NZTA announced that Fletcher Construction, along with a bunch of other companies, forming what’s called the “Well-Connected” consortium, have won the contract for the Waterview Connection project:
NZTA awards contract for New Zealand’s biggest-ever roading project
New Zealand’s biggest and most complex roading project – Auckland’s Waterview Connection – is a step closer to completion with the NZ Transport Agency’s announcement today that it has chosen the preferred tenderer for the project’s construction.
The successful tenderer is the Well-Connected consortium. Well-Connected includes New Zealand and international companies: Fletcher Construction, McConnell Dowell Constructors, Obayashi Corporation, PB New Zealand, Beca Infrastructure and Tonkin & Taylor. The consortium includes five sub-alliance partners and contractors: SICE, Wilson Tunnelling, Downer EDI Works, Boffa Miskell and Warren and Mahoney. Well-Connected will now enter into an alliance with the NZTA to deliver the project.
The project, to be finished by 2016, will complete one of the key links in the Western Ring Route around Auckland by connecting the Southwestern Motorway (SH20) at Mt Roskill to the Northwestern Motorway (SH16), providing a 48 kilometre motorway alternative to ease pressure on SH1 and the Auckland Harbour Bridge.
“Today’s announcement marks a significant milestone towards a transport solution that will deliver many benefits for Aucklanders and for all of New Zealand,” says the NZTA’s Chief Executive, Geoff Dangerfield.
“The Waterview Connection is the key transport link needed to complete the Western Ring Route. This will have a major change on the way traffic moves around Auckland, keeping the city moving and the economy growing. Business, commuters and tourists will all be able to travel more reliably, more safely and with much greater convenience. This important travel solution will reduce congestion and provide a strategic alternative to SH1 – the country’s busiest motorway.”
The Western Ring Route is one of seven Roads of National Significance (RoNS), identified by the Government as vital to enabling economic growth in New Zealand by moving people and freight between and within major population centres more safely and efficiently.
Together with the NZTA, Well-Connected will be responsible for constructing nearly 5kms of new motorway that includes tunnels and interchanges that will connect the Southwestern and Northwestern Motorways.
More than half of the new motorway will be underground – traffic will drive through two three-lane tunnels – which will be a first for New Zealand.
“This project will require underground work at an unprecedented scale, in a country where road tunnels are relatively rare. It will need to be constructed through difficult terrain that consists of soft sedimentary rock and basalt lava flows,” says Mr Dangerfield.
“It won’t be easy, but by constructing the project in an alliance between the NZTA and the private sector, we’re ensuring that this project will be delivered as quickly as possible and with the very best value for money.” Mr Dangerfield says today’s announcement marks a significant milestone in a rigorous procurement process that started last year.
Last November, the NZTA shortlisted three registered consortia down to two. The other shortlisted consortium which was unsuccessful today was Tuhono. The Tuhono consortium included Leighton Contractors, Fulton Hogan, John Holland, Aecom and Sinclair Knight Merz. Tuhono also included United Group and Keller New Zealand as proposed sub alliance partners.
Mr Dangerfield thanked Tuhono for its hard work and involvement in the process and says that both of the final tender submissions received by the NZTA were innovative, demonstrated good value for money and proved that either of these competitors were up to the challenge of delivering a complex and important project of this size.
“These parties have been engaged in a competitive and rigorous tender process that has attracted a high level of interest both nationally and internationally. We have been incredibly impressed with what they have delivered, and we are pleased with the outcome of this competitive process. We are on track to deliver this very large project on time and on budget at $1.4 billion. That’s great news for Auckland and great news for New Zealand.”
Mr Dangerfield says the NZTA has run the competitive alliance tender process in parallel with its pursuit of statutory approvals for the Waterview Connection Project from the Board of Inquiry. The Agency received the final nod to go ahead in July.
“Running the two processes in parallel has helped us save up to a year in construction time and ensure we get the best market prices.
“Now, we gear up towards the start of construction. We’re nailing down the final design scheme that will incorporate all of the Board’s additions and take into account the community’s views and concerns and excitingly, we’re looking forward to getting that first spade in the ground before the end of the year.” Mr Dangerfield adds.
“And it doesn’t stop here for the community. They will continue to have a very active role as the project develops. We’ll be establishing community liaison groups that will ensure the community will have a voice throughout the project’s lifecycle and we’ll make sure they’ll be in place well before construction commences.”
While I can’t help but wonder what spending $1.4 billion on further improving Auckland’s public transport system might help achieve, I have generally come around to accepting the Waterview Connection project as a necessary last piece of Auckland’s motorway system. In particular, it was heartening to follow the Board of Inquiry consenting process quite closely, read through the 300-odd page decision and see that it really had taken into account many of the community’s concerns about the impact of the project – and required some really substantial mitigation.
With the Hobsonville Motorway now open, the Waterview Connection project will complete the Western Ring Route and (hopefully) complete the Auckland motorway network for good.
There were some videos from the NZTA that admin posted around the beginning of the year looking at the Puhoi to Wellsford RoNS and there was also a video of the Waterview Connection that was posted last year. Looking around online it appears there are a few more for other RoNS projects that were released.
First up we have a newer version of the Waterview Connection which is a little more detailed that the original (I quite like the Hendon Rd footbridge)
Next up we have North and Southbound animations of the Victoria Park Tunnel project
Heading South East we have the Tauranga Eastern Link
Lastly here is some videos showing what Transmission Gulley would look like, the cuts through some of those hills are huge and the of those embankments are pretty high. This will massively change the geography of the area.
One thing you notice is that in all videos is that their magically isn’t any congestion, funny that.
A draft decision of the Board of Inquiry into the Waterview Connection project has been released today, confirming reports from a couple of weeks ago that the Board has imposed some reasonably significant changes. These include requiring the relocation of the tunnel’s southern portal building, the shifting of the northern ventilation stack to the other side of Great North Road and the requirement that NZTA contribute $8 million to the construction of a cycleway between SH20 and SH16.
The whole decision can be read here. The full set of conditions now to be applied to the construction of the project can be read here.
I have kept a reasonably close eye on this project over the past few months, being particularly interested to see how the EPA and Board if Inquiry process would work for a large-scale motorway project. In effect, the Waterview Connection hearings process has been a test of some of the 2009 amendments to the RMA: which allowed large-scale projects to be ‘fast-tracked’ to a far greater extent than was possible before. In general, the process seems to have worked out OK, and the Board’s decision (which runs to nearly 400 pages) is a comprehensive analysis of the project.
I am pleased with many of the changes they have suggested, in particular the requirement that NZTA contribute to the construction cost of the cycleway. I also think the changes to locations of the portals, associated buildings and/or ventilation stacks will ensure the project’s effects are minimised to a greater extent than before.
The Campaign for Better Transport’s criticism of the project gets an interesting analysis around pages 64-66 of the decision. In effect the Board is saying that it cannot determine the appropriateness of the government’s decision making process when it comes to prioritising transport projects and that requiring a post-construction audit of the project’s benefits seem outside the scope of what the Board can do.
Overall, while I still have some lingering issues with the Waterview Connection project, in terms of whether it’s the best immediate way of spending $2 billion and whether we really need to widen the Northwest Motorway, I at least feel satisfied that the hard work of many community activists in pushing for better mitigation of the project’s pretty significant adverse effects has been worthwhile.
There was some excellent news today for residents in the Waterview/Owairaka area that much of their hard work to get a better mitigation package out of NZTA for the impact of the Waterview Connection project seems to have been successful. The NZ Herald reports the following:
A board of inquiry appointed by the Government to oversee a fast-track consenting process for the country’s largest transport project has accepted their submissions on where vehicle emissions towers should be erected at each end of a pair of motorway tunnels.
The five-member board chaired by Environment Court Judge Laurie Newhook has directed the Transport Agency to build a northern tower on the other side of Great North Rd from Waterview Primary School, which is next to its preferred site.
It also wants a tower in Owairaka at the opposite end of the tunnels to be built 70 to 80 metres southeast of the agency’s preferred site, away from a narrow chokepoint in Alan Wood Reserve.
I am particularly pleased that the ventilation tower at Waterview will be shifted away from the primary school and the nearby residential area. Although many expert air quality witnesses testified over and over again that the tower wouldn’t result in hazardous air pollution levels, I am sure that the perception that the tower would generate pollution would have been widespread. How comfortable would you feel about sending your five year old child to a school with a giant ventilation stack right next to it? While I remain worried that the tower will in some respects become the symbol for Waterview it seems less likely for this to happen with it being on the opposite side of Great North Road among a lot of large trees. The diagram below shows the different options considered for moving the ventilation stack/tower:
I’m not quite sure which of the three alternatives have been chosen (either 1 or 2, that’s for sure). If the above diagram is a little difficult to make sense out of, below shows an aerial of the area with the location of the alternative locations for the ventilation towers: The BP petrol station is in the top left corner of the plan, to help orientate yourself.
With the southern stack and ventilation buildings, the proposed shift will also result in significant benefits – both as the building is shifted away from a narrow point of the Alan Wood Reserve (where it would have really really dominated the area) and also because the building is to be put largely underground. The diagram below shows the effect of the move: The red dotted outline shows the edges of the building as initially proposed. The details of the access road in this particular diagram may well be incorrect, but what is obvious is that the building is to be largely underground (which is great as it sits in a park) and that the building is shifted away from the really narrow point of the reserve – freeing up more space for recreational activity.
Another excellent gain that the Board of Inquiry seem intent on requiring is in relation to the proposed cycleway linking up the Northwest Cycleway with the cycleway that runs next to State Highway 20 through Mt Roskill:
Other board directions include requiring the agency to pay $8 million towards a cycleway between Owairaka and Waterview.
All these additional requirements are going to add some serious cost to the project – something the NZ Herald article picked up on:
The agency told the board during its hearings that $11 million to $21 million in extra costs spent on moving the location of the tunnels’ southern ventilation building and partly burying an associated ventilation building could be better spent on other mitigation.
It estimated that building the northern emissions tower across Great North Rd from the primary school could add up to $29 million to the bill.
Overall I’m exceptionally pleased that the Board of Inquiry has required these additional mitigation measures. Waterview and Owairaka were really getting hammered by the project (and still do to an extent) while experiencing fairly limited benefits. The proposed changes should significantly reduce the negative effects of the project, while the cycleway will add a really important connection for our regional cycling network.
All the hard work the local communities put into this process seems to have paid off – at least to some extent.
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