I must admit I am somewhat confused at the moment with regards to the outcomes of the Regional Transport Committee’s seemingly very important meeting earlier this week. As I detailed in yesterday’s post the future of Auckland’s rail system over the next 30 years is being discussed quite vigorously at the moment, including all the kinds of lines that I go on about over and over again in various posts on this blog. While that’s very positive in many respects – we might actually have them being promoted in an important regional document with a serious timeframe for getting them done – there are still some things that I’m finding a bit strange.
The most significant one is the relative priorities that the ARC are giving to the Airport Line and the CBD Rail Tunnel. My reading of the transport committee’s analysis was that all future extensions to the rail network, such as a North Shore Line, the Avondale-Onehunga Line, the airport line and whatever else ends up being built assumed that the CBD Rail Tunnel would be built. This makes sense to me – that there’s no point constructing an Airport Line when Britomart won’t have the available capacity to actually handle trains entering or leaving the station. The last thing we would want to have to do is make Airport Line passengers (and all their luggage) transfer at Newmarket onto already crowded Southern and Western Line trains.
Now while I’ve interpreted “the plan” as promoting the CBD Rail Tunnel for construction before the Airport Line, Jon Coltrain at Auckland Trains has analysed things rather differently in a couple of different posts he’s made this week. This is what his post today says:
But the CDB loop which is not top of the officials list despite assuming it’s necessary and so will happen is being argued to increase the vitality of businesses – something the local business people are working hard on including their awful misguided recent ad campaign and their so far successful bid to lure more prestigious shops into the downtown area.
The officials comparison in their computer projections of rail demands with and without a CBD rail loop indicated the loop system would increase rail and ferry patronage by 23% from 93,000 to 125,000 users during the morning, interpeak and afternoon peak periods.
But they say other proposed rail services such as the airport link will increase by a much more impressive 70%.
So they have concluded that , while it would alleviate the terminal constraints and allow for increased services, the loop will NOT on its own maximise rail use – their jargon for increase rail patronage.
And some from yesterday:
While Britomart was having its typical afternoon rush hour hiccups (electronic signs not working, platform confusion, some southern line delays) officials were making important decisions on what should be the city’s rail priorities in the next ten years.
And rapid rail to Auckland airport was getting the most favoured consideration at this afternoon’s Auckland Regional Council’s regional transport committee. The airport connections and Avondale-Southdown route are now considered the best bang for the buck – attracting the highest levels of patronage relative to their expected cost.
One interesting gem that was reported in passing related to what government funds would be expected. It was estimated that Government funding for what would be KiwiRail’s rail infrastructure activities in the order of $1.2b would be provided over the 10 year old period 2009-219. “Assuming a similiar level of funding over the following 20 year years, this suggests funding in the order of $3.6b over the 30 years 2009/10 to 20039/40.” It’s not clear if this is inside information of what the government will be allocating and announcing but it’s good to see a figure given.
Passenger transport network improvements up to 2041 getting the “preferred strategic option” treatment are commuter rail for the Onehunga and Manukau branch lines, the CBD rail loop, the Avondale- Onehunga line and airport connections north and Puhinui.
Jon is very well informed about what the goings on are in Auckland’s rail system, so perhaps he has read into this more than me. If so, then it is worrying to see the Regional Council not supporting the CBD Rail Tunnel 100%. While the Airport Line might attract more new users of the rail system than the CBD Rail Tunnel, there’s not much point in attracting all these users if you simply can’t get them in and out of our main train station. Furthermore, the current system’s capacity is likely to max out at about 16 million passengers a year by 2016 without the CBD Rail Tunnel, while the tunnel would allow the system’s capacity to be increased to around 50 million a year. With that sort of capacity you could easily add an Airport Line and a Howick/Botany Line.
While technically Britomart is not yet at capacity, and trackworks will increase its capacity from 18 trains per hour to 24 trains per hour (in and out) from later this year, regular users of the system often tell of stories where trains get stacked up outside the Britomart tunnel during peak hour, waiting their turn to enter the station – basically waiting for another train to pass through the “throat” of where the two track tunnel meets the five tracks that lead to the platform. If that’s a problem now – when we’re barely running a train every 15 minutes on the three main lines – imagine how things are going to be when we’re running trains on those lines every 10 minutes, plus a couple of trains from Onehunga, plus at least one from Hamilton, PLUS potentially four trains an hour from the airport.
It seems impossible, and a recipe for disaster. So, in my (well considered I hope) opinion, clearly the CBD Rail Tunnel has to come first. So come on ARC, without your full support there’s no chance of the project ever getting central government funding.
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To increase capacity why not make the trains longer instead of increasing frequency? A frequency of every 15-20 minutes would be adequate I would have thought (I would prefer every 15-20 minutes on time rather than every 10 minutes sometimes late). Why the need to go to 10 minute frequency?
Longer trains need longer platform lengths. The length of platforms at Britomart places a limit on maximum train lengths. No easy (or cost effective) way to extend them. There are probably a number of suburban stations that would be challenging for extending platforms as well.
I think there are people thinking/talking about 6 car sets..?
The letter from the Wellington government department guy (under Jon’s post) confirms he is right to be concerned about the cop out from the ARC. That department guy obviously is close to the action and knows more than he is letting on. I hope he keeps writing and lets us know what the government is or probably isnt doing about transport.
10 minute frequencies allow people to “turn up and go” as the average wait is only 5 minutes. It’s well known that once you reach 10 minute frequencies on a public transport service that a lot more people start to use it, because they don’t need to live their lives around a timetable.
TJ, concerning news then.
Jim Quinn visited Wellington recently to rally the troops. I asked him about central govt funding for rail and in particular Auckland and was pleasantly surprised to hear him talk about the need for a city loop to relieve Britomart. This was without any prompting from me. If Aucklanders flood the new trains there will be real pressure on the government to push on with the tunnel.
Looks like the government clearly doesn’t want Aucklanders to flood to their trains though, they’re compromising on the electrification project already. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10592717&pnum=0
You might want to ask why so much money should be spent to get 4% of Auckland commuters to work. 88% don’t work in the CBD, what about them (and no, maybe 4% at best work within walking distances of the rest of the rail network)? Bear in mind that the majority of Aucklanders don’t live within walking distance of any railway station, and never will. You wont get mode shift by bus transfer, and park/ride tends to happen only for stations with large catchment areas with easy access (in Wellington this means Paraparaumu, Paremata, Redwood, Petone and Waterloo).
Jobs in the CBD tend to be the highest paid too, so this is about subsidising the highest paid workers who live as far out as Papakura and Henderson, to commute. Tough if you’re a blue collar ratepayer in Papatoetoe who lives within 10 minutes drive of work in South Auckland.
You see THAT is one of the fundamental problems with the whole rail project – it is CBD focused, not congestion relief focused, not mode shift focused, not value for money focused, not commuter focused. Auckland already had a high proportion of commuters to the CBD by public transport (mostly bus) at over 30%, this project will make little difference to this, but will encourage more people to live outside the CBD and work in the CBD, rather than work closer to home, or live closer to work.
In that respect it is not at all Green, but the rail evangelists don’t think that the land use impacts of their projects are negative. Paraparaumu near Wellington grew tremendously following the electrification of rail there, Kapiti Coast became a seaside commuter suburb when before it was seen as far away on a congested road. So thousands moved there, some worked there, many went by train to Wellington, then as jobs changed, they would drive to the Hutt, some drove to Wellington, but rail encouraged sprawl.
I fear rail electrification will simply encourage the very same, to Swanson, Papakura and the like. Aucklanders wont live in high density housing adjacent to suburban railway stations.
Liberty, have you looked at the growth strategies for Auckland over the next 20-50 years? There is huge focus on concentrating employment within the CBD and also within the various regional centres like Manukau City, Takapuna, New Lynn, Henderson, Onehunga and so on. Generally, these areas will be served by rail – so it is very likely we’ll see a re-concentration of employment patterns within Auckland.
With regards to your comment about 30% of CBD workers using public transport, that is an incredibly low figure by international standards. What’s the corresponding figure for Wellington I wonder? I know that in Melbourne it’s up near 75%. If we got 75% of CBD workers commuting into town by public transport there would be an enormous reduction in road congestion – leading to huge benefits for those who do work in areas that can’t be serviced by public transport.
Sprawl does not have to be encouraged. Have you not heard of the MUL?
This one project will triple the capacity of the rail network, surely increasing the value of the existing infrastructure… That alone as far as I’m concerned makes economic sense…
Sorry to dig up old thread – found this linked on Peter Parker’s blog.
I’ve blogged myself on the dangers of underground rail loops. By all means use them to extend rail’s reach to new districts. Use them to increase the number of potential destinations and attractiveness of the mode.
Avoid Melbourne’s mistakes, and do not use an underground rail loop to:
-turn multiple unit trains around. You can get the driver to walk from one end of the train to the other. I’m not joking by the way, this was one proferred excuse in Melbourne
-deal with capacity constraints that better signalling or pointwork would fix (relevant in Britomart example)
-deal with capacity constraints that are caused by train crew rules, like for example, a delay due to driver relief/changeover being at a particular station. An multibillion dollar rail loop doesn’t fix this – confronting the driver’s union does though.
-deal with capacity constraints caused by empty car workings – investigate ways of getting these services to be useful revenue service first.
and finally
-do not feed the loop back on itself, as in Melbourne. You couldn’t imagine something so ridiculous as building a loop at Britomart through its 5 platforms, out under the city, and then back to the same 5 platforms at Britomart. Quite foolish in the extreme. This is in effect what has happened at Melbourne and Sydney. Don’t do it!
Apart from the loss of platform capacity, it means at least 90 degrees of arc, if not 180, of the loop journey, are completely wasted, as trains turn back towards the point they came from. People will not ride from Britomart to Britomart in one journey, nor would they want to ride 270 degrees around such a loop. Again, a Melbourne failing.
Riccardo, there’s a reason I call this project the “CBD Rail Tunnel” rather than the “CBD Rail Loop” – I don’t actually think it should operate like a loop at all.
I agree there is no point in running trains around the loop and back the way they came – the “loop” that this rail link would form is far too big for that. I would probably run trains from the west, through the tunnel and then out on the southern line via Newmarket. Similarly, I would run trains from the Eastern Line through the tunnel, then via Grafton, Newmarket and then eventually to the Airport via the southern line & Onehunga.
This would mean that both lines effectively do about three-quarters of the “loop”, but offer a useful “through-service” for those who don’t actually want to disembark in the CBD.
I agree 100%, a loop would be worse than useless in Auckland, it would be counter productive. It is tempting to think of a loop because Auckland already has three quarters of one in place, the tunnel would simply fill in the missing section. But that would create a city loop of 9km length with seven stations, not to mention an awkward direction change at Newmarket for most services…. Complicated, very time consuming and possibly the worst service pattern possible. Melbourne’s loop with six kilometres and five stations is to long to work as it is.
I prefer to see the CBD tunnel as a ‘spine’ from Britomart to Mt Eden through which all services will run, more like Brisbane and Perth than Melbourne or Sydney. It seems logical that the western line services would enter at the western portal, the eastern line at the eastern, and the southern and airport lines coming though Newmarket could go one way each as the distance is about the same. Pair these four groups into two through lines and you have a simple, direct and fast service pattern that also allows for easy connections to go to the other side of the central area.
Sounds good. Will ponder. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the Penrose/Westfield/Otahuhu/Wiri(Manukau spur) arrangement is not making it easy to separate out your services. I’ve dreamed of neat solutions like having the Eastern line run through to Manukau on separate tracks or coming up with something clever with the Onehunga branch but I don’t know if there are many clever options, just hard ones! History doesn’t always leave you with neat symmetry.
I think it is inevitable that stretch of line will need to be 4-tracked in the not too distant future. A Manukau-Botany-Glen Innes line would make the Manukau branch more useful.