A peek into Auckland’s PT future

The Auckland Regional Council’s Regional Transport Committee has spent most of this year working on developing the 2010 Regional Land Transport Strategy. That strategy now has a full draft, which along with some background information on the analysis of what future public transport projects make the most economic sense, certainly does make for interesting reading.

A lot of the Regional Land Transport Strategy is very much “policy-speak”, with targets and goals and aims and so on. While I understand that kind of stuff is always important, it doesn’t really interest me particularly much. What I find myself more interested in is looking at what projects are proposed, and when they are likely to happen. In particular, I suppose that I find myself most interested in the expansion of Auckland’s rail network – hopefully eventually turning it into something half-decent (world-class is probably a bit much to ever hope for).

As I’ve previously mentioned on many occasions, there are a number of possible rail system extensions for Auckland:

1. CBD Rail Tunnel
2. Airport Line
3. Avondale-Southdown Line
4. Howick/Botany Line
5. North Shore Line

The latest information from the thinking behind the Regional Land Transport Strategy looks at all these potential extensions to the rail network. I’ll work through what is said about each one in turn.

With regards to the CBD Rail Tunnel, the RLTS correctly realises that all future extensions to the rail network are reliant upon the project happening. Therefore, for all the options is it assumed that the CBD Rail Tunnel will be happening. Which is excellent news.

So the need for the CBD Rail Tunnel is pretty obvious. Overall it appears to provide for at least a doubling of capacity along most of the existing railway lines. As I’ve often said, the most significant reason to build the CBD Rail Tunnel is because otherwise the system’s capacity will max out at about 2016.

The proposal doesn’t look too deeply into the airport line, but the rather low patronage estimates for the line for some reason are said to exclude air passengers. Once air passengers are included, patronage doubles and is considered to be sufficient for making the project justifiable:

What’s of most concern is the “Mangere Bridge” number of trips, which does seem pretty low. However, as I said that excludes air passengers, which is further analysed:

Adding 2,500 air passengers to the almost 2,000 passengers from non-traveller sources gives us around 4,500 passengers during the peak period for the airport line. This seems to be about the level that is considered justifiable.

Moving on to the Avondale-Southdown Line, which is being called the Avondale-Onehunga line for the purposes of this study, we see the following: This is certainly an interesting potential railway line, as unlike most successful lines it wouldn’t actually pass through the CBD at all. I have generally thought that this line wouldn’t work unless it was linked into some significant “greater isthmus circle line” of sorts, taking in the Eastern Line and the inner part of the Western Line. I guess that Auckland’s employment patterns being so dispersed would assist in this line potentially becoming a success. I imagine services are most likely to run between Henderson and Manukau City, via this line and the airport line. If that was the case then I think the patronage is realistic.

Next, the analysis looks at what I call the Howick/Botany Line, but what is called here the Panmure-Botany RTN/QTN, which is analysed below: This is one situations where I strongly disagree with the findings. For a start, I think the lower patronage is probably at least somewhat due to the route that is proposed for this line – not far north of Ti Rakau Drive. This means that the significant potential residential catchments of Highland Park, Bucklands Beach (via feeder bus) and Howick (via feeder bus) are excluded in favour of a route that largely runs through industrial land – at least between Botany and Pakuranga. Secondly, the big problem with having a bus-based solution is simply “what does one do with all these buses once they reach Panmure?” There is no obvious bus link between Panmure and the city at the moment, and there is no real way of building an “RTN standard” (busway) link between the two places, unless we revived the Eastern Motorway. Which I really don’t think we want to do. So in this case I will disagree with what the Regional Transport Committee are promoting, and continue to suggest that a rail based solution out east is definitely the best choice.

Lastly, we come to a future North Shore railway line:

I’m not quite sure whether I buy the whole “turning it into a railway line would reduce patronage” argument. Yes, sure it would mean that people have to transfer, but if trains are coming every 5 minutes then I don’t see that as much of a problem. It would effectively mean an average wait of 2 and a half minutes for the train. So therefore, if the train journey was any more than two and a half minutes faster than the bus trip over the same distance, the whole trip would actually end up being, on average, quicker. Surely that, along with the higher quality ride one gets on a train, would actually increase patronage?

In any case, my opinion towards turning the Northern Busway into a railway line has generally been that it’s a good idea in the long run, but in the meanwhile the busway works pretty well and there are other more important projects out there. However, as is stated above, in the long run it might be necessary to undertake this project if the busway reaches capacity. A heavy rail line can have much higher capacity limits than a busway.

So overall, what are my thoughts on this? Well, I must say I’m not quite as excited by it all as I thought I would be. While I’m glad that all the potential lines have been raised and analysed, I think that the priorities assigned to these projects aren’t quite right. I don’t see the Avondale-Onehunga Line as a higher priority than the Howick/Botany Line. I also don’t think it’s a wide idea to go for a bus solution out east. Nevertheless, it is great to have this information available and it’s good to know that there is at least a plan being worked towards that could lead to these important projects actually happening. Some of the more crazier ideas about a Metro system for Auckland have been thrown out, but in a way that’s probably a good thing as we don’t want them to distract from the projects that would actually work and are actually necessary.

It’ll be interesting to see how things evolve further.

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