An interesting article in today’s NZ Herald about what the ARC thinks are the top priorities for transport projects in Auckland. It’s a very interesting read actually:
Top of the list is the $1 billion rail electrification project, for which the Government has yet to allocate money for new trains, followed by a central Auckland rail tunnel and integrated public transport ticketing.
The list – which measures projects against eight factors including economic development, urgency, safety and integrated transport and land use – gives the Puhoi-Wellsford road a score of 11 out of 40, against 27 for rail electrification.
The article also has an interesting debate about the Puhoi-Wellsford road, although I’m not going to go there for now. What I find most interesting is comparing the list of project priorities that the ARC has come up with, with the timeframes for actually completing those projects – which was detailed recently in the draft (and rejected for now) Regional Land Transport Strategy. Firstly, the priority list:
1. Rail electrification
2. Central Auckland rail tunnel
3. Public transport integrated ticketing
4= Western ring route
4= Auckland-Manukau Eastern Transport Initiative
6= Airport rail loop
6= Panmure-Botany-Manukau City centre rapid or quality transit network (dedicated busway or light rail, or priority lanes on roads)
Now let’s look at the timeframes, detailed in this post I made a couple of days ago:
Electrification – by 2013 (hopefully)
CBD Rail Tunnel – 2021-2031
Integrated Ticketing – within the next 10 years
Western Ring Route – by 2016 (except for widening the Northwest motorway)
AMETI – Not fully detailed but probably within the 2011-2021 decade
Airport rail loop – 2031-2041
Panmure-Botany-Manukau City – 2031-2041
Crikey, I’d hate to think what the timeframes of a low priority public transport project would be. The CBD Rail Tunnel, number two most important project in the region, but that’s OK we can live without it for another 22 years. WTF?
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“Integrated Ticketing – within the next 10 years”
Lol, what?
I am as confused as anyone by the timeframes. The ARC are not really doing themselves any favours with these mixed messages when they have to contend with the anti-rail rhetoric that we see in todays herald editorial for example. They need a clear priority of projects and a clear optimistic timeframe for getting them done. Hopefully the future Auckland Transport Agency can offer some clarity and really push for an earlier completion of these critical projects.
” The CBD Rail Tunnel, number two most important project in the region, but that’s OK we can live without it for another 22 years. WTF?”
My impression is that the regionals councils priorities are those listed above (ie rail electrification, then CBD tunnel). The timetable is realistic given the level of funding the council has, and the governments priorities (currently roads, roads and more roads, and a few crumbs for PT when we stop thinking of expensive new roads to build).
The regional council can only advise the government and push for the CBD rail tunnel (which it is doing with the above list) and ultimately has to deal with whatever money the government gives with whatever strings attached (which it is doing with the above timetable). I have no doubt Mike Lee and others would LOVE to have the CBD tunnel built in 10 years, but know at present 2021 to 2031 is the most realistic date.
Thats why the regional petrol tax was so important. Ouyr regional councils (unlike Australian state governments) have almost zero ability to fund and implement their programmes, and must lobby and beg central government for funds. When you have a government and transport minister, to put it mildly, is not exceptionally enthusiastic abgout public transport, you get little achieved.
Realistically National will be in government at least until 2014. The supercity does give some hope, and a push for rate increases to pay for the CBD rail tunnel (or a London style congestion charge to repay a loan to build it) is one option, but could be unpopular with voters (at least John Banks supports the CBD rail tunnel, and Lee Brown is supportive of PT transport, so were very likely to get a pro-tunnel mayor).
Another hope is to wait until 2014 or whenever labour get back in, and hope they start addressing PT in Auckland right away instead of waiting until their last term like the Clark government. Reinstating the regional fuel tax (hopefulluy coresponding with a cut in the national one to increase popularity) could insulate PTY investment from changes in government.
Hey, it will only take them 32 years to build a buslane down Te Irirangi Drive. You should be thankful if they get a tunnel done in less than 20.
Thank you George I feel much better now.
Jarbury & Nicholas have hit the nail on the head – unambitious targets set by ARC/ARTA planners create a mindset that govt and councils live down to.
And there is little excuse – Perth has been shown to ARTA repeatedly as a case study (similar in size & population density to Akld) of how faster PT investment gives faster PT growth. But they are ultra-cautious & risk averse and prefer incremental changes that give incremental passenger growth.
In the meantime, the road builders learnt their lessons from Roger Douglas well – blitzkreig of road building and scream for more road funding all the time – they get more that way. Look at SH20(Waterview) – the horrifically expensive full tunnel option gets floated, so people breath a sigh of relief and accept the cheaper $1.4bn surface/tunnel motorway…
Possible circuit-breaker – what about delaying the electrification, and using the funds to expand the rail network in the short term? Put the cash into extending the Onehunga line to Auckland Airport (which opens up rail to 55,000 Mangere residents), and extending the North Shore busway services from Albany across to Kumeu rail station, which would give a seamless loop from Shore-Waitakere-Akld CBD.
Another option is to use the cash to convert the refurbished DMU’s to DEMU’s with new electric traction motors and generators on the existing motors – all the benefits of electric traction without the high initial capital.
And for fast Waitakere-Airport access, what about a Manukau harbour ferry from Green Bay to Auckland Airport? Cheap to setup, and would cut travel time massively. Especially if linked to a bus route to North Shore via Upper Harbour Dr.
Why delay electrifying for such things? Because they are cheaper and faster to implement, and offer real passenger growth options – opening PT up to badly served population catchments. The Airport rail – even if only done to Mangere town centre – also dramatically improves the viability of the Onehunga rail project. Building success into funded projects.
I’ve said it before – gold-plating existing rail does not make PT more usable, and hence increase passenger growth much. Look for projects that reach into new areas for little up front cash – they do exist…
I should point out on the DMU-DEMU project idea, that the existing DMU fleet has brand new interiors, and stainless steel body shells (which last a century – see US city metro trains), so refurbishing the drivetrain (engines-bogies) would effectively give brand new trainsets. Worth costing against new electric trainsets, right?
Amd DEMU’s can become EMU’s if the DMU-DEMU conversion has pantographs & rectifiers planned to be added when electrification is eventually done. Simple and cheap changeover; minimal staff retraining, etc. Leave the diesel generator engine in place when the final shift from DEMU-EMU is made, so it can run as a DEMU if the electrified rail power grid goes down for any reason. Sorted.
And if the existing NZ rail workshops can be beefed up to do the conversion work (and they should), then it boosts local employment & keeps NZ govt dollars onshore, which is far better than paying overseas manufacturers, which worsens our massive current balance of trade deficit. Wins all round 😉
I dont want to wait another 22 years for this city to catch up with the rest of the world. I really dont think I would want to live in such a place ;(
Bob, the spanner in the works for your idea (which does at first look have some merit) is that rail to the airport is dependent upon the CBD Rail Tunnel – Britomart simply does not have the capacity to add in the extra trains of an airport line on top of all the other trains that it will have to handle. For the CBD Rail Tunnel to be possible, you need electrification (as you can’t run diesels through such a long tunnel). So basically electrification is the essential first step for any other improvements to the rail network.
The other issue is that over their life-spans electrification is cheaper than buying a bunch of new DMUs. Electric trains are cheaper to fuel, cheaper to maintain and better performing in an urban environment.
I fully agree on your first point though, that the ARC needs to be highly ambitious for public transport (otherwise who else will be?) I think the politicians realise this, hence their rejection of the RLTS in its current form.
In that fact bob may have it right on the head, build the airport rail link first, then britomart can’t cope so the government is forced to fork out for the rail tunnel, which of course is useless because you need to electrify to use it, so then the government needs to fork out for electrification. All this would half the original time frame so we are only 30years behind 🙂
Waterview spring to mind?
lol
Well that is a rather strange way of going about things, but if it was to result in us getting those three projects done sooner then I am not going to criticise.
hehe – nice thinking Joshua! Though massive demand for Airport rail would just get the usual ‘rail’s failed’ response from the Road Transport Forum led govt.
I didn’t say we should buy more DMUs, Jarbury. I said we should convert the existing DMUs we have in Auckland to DEMUs and eventually to EMUs (while retaining their DEMU capacity for emergencies). My point being that this allows a delay (not a cancellation) in electrification, which frees the EMU purchase capital and overhead wires (plus new signalling) capital to rapidly expand the track network, which in turn brings the revenue and political pressure (from the higher proportion of people served by & hence using rail) to do the electrification and other improvements.
Specifically, converting existing DMUs to DEMU/EMUs should be far cheaper than buying new (or secondhand EMUs), so should reverse the traditional new DMU vs new EMU cost-benefit analysis rating.
I take the point about Britomart tunnel congestion, but this is solvable. The radial rail network is a planner fallacy (assuming *everyone* wants to go to Britomart, so building all routes to Britomart, ensuring most patronage goes to Britomart, which shows *everyone* wants to go to Britomart, etc). But let’s ignore that, as it’s not even the problem it appears to be.
I suggested extending Onehunga rail to Auckland Airport. ARTA & Veolia have already made provision for Onehunga trains to go to/from Britomart, so the Britomart east entry tunnel slots are there (just – it is tight scheduling). Extending Onehunga rail to the Airport does not increase the number of trains going to/from Britomart via the east entry tunnel; it just increases the route length (which requires more trainsets & staff, but does not raise the train frequency).
That is, a train doing the 25 min Onehunga-Britomart trip can restart every 1 hour (25 mins there, 25 mins back, and 5 mins buffer time each end). So a half hour route frequency requires 2 trainsets to operate (plus 1 more spare in case of problems, but they have these spare at Westfield already).
Extending the tracks to the Airport would make it roughly a 40min one-way trip, so a half-hour route frequency requires 3 trainsets. Think of it as: when train 1 is leaving Britomart for the Airport, train 2 is 30mins ahead at Walmsley Rd (in Mangere) going to the Airport, while train 3 is 30mins ahead of train 2 at Onehunga returning to Britomart (having been to the Airport, and is 30 mins away from starting again at Britomart, following train 1).
So, this means a half-hour frequency requires extra trains, but it still only puts 1 train in and 1 train out of Britomart east entry tunnel every 30 mins. So no *further* congestion problems at Britomart if we extend Onehunga rail tracks to Auckland Airport. Whew 😉
For the record, I guesstimate the cost of Onehunga-Airport tracks (including signals, formation, bridges, stations, etc) at $250-400m, depending on how much we get gouged by contractors. Compares favourably with EMU purchase, eh? And that’s without considering network patronage growth (and hence revenue growth) – Airport rail opens up 55,000 Mangere people and IIRC 3,500 daily Airport staff to rail. Electrifying is a quality improvement, not route expansion; will it generate as many new passengers? Hmmmm.
Hmmmm… I think this whole matter requires a more detailed analysis. I dont actually think I have done a specific post on rail to the airport yet, might be an idea. I think we would want to run more than 2 trains per hour.
Britomart could support three lines (Southern, Onehunga-Airport and Eastern-Maukau) at 15 minute headways and one at 10 min headways (Western) with a couple of slots left over each hour for expresses and regional trains.
As the southern would overlap with the Airport and Eastern line, you would effectively have 7.5 min headways along most of the southern line.
That would be the very limit of the system, but you could make it the airport line work without the CBD tunnel.
You can also expand Britomart out under QE2 without doing the full tunnel or amplify the entrance tunnel…
Nick R, you’d really really be pushing Britomart to the limit with that though. Anecdotal evidence suggests that even with the current timetable (14-16 tph????) you can get trains effectively queuing outside Britomart in the AM peak because the tunnel’s at capacity. I’d hate to think of what another 8-10 tph would do – even with bi-directional running in the tunnel.
Regarding amplification of the eastern approach – the worry is that if that was done then the CBD Rail Tunnel project would be put off for a few more decades. Perhaps if a start was made on the CBD Rail Tunnel and the first few hundred metres were used to stable trains, that could improve Britomart’s efficiency as not every train that comes in during the AM peak would have to leave again. Also, in the PM peak you could stack the tracks in the tunnel between 1pm and 4pm in preparation for the rush.
Yeah, the first option is definitely better, we could then sneak in there late at night with pick axes, Hogan Heroes style..!
Bwahhahaha, Jezza, can I bring the 7 dwarves? They have their own pickaxes. hehehe
Jarbury – I agree we would prefer more than 2 tph frequency on any Onehunga or Airport line, but the point that ‘extending the length of a rail route does not increase the demand on Britomart’s bottleneck tunnel’ still holds true. The point being, that shifting the electrification cash to line extensions could bring in more cash and passengers, which gives more cash to grow/improve the network, …
Nick R – I spoke to Veolia’s GM (Akld) a few years back, and they were planning on a max of 6tph for East and South routes, and 4tph for West route. The bi-directional running signal improvements would allows them to squeeze in 2tph Onehunga, but they were scratching their heads over fitting in the proposed Manukau City-Britomart trains. So that is 18tph total, plus Manukau trains. Of course, West trains are likely to go to 6tph once double tracking is completed, so that puts more pressure on the Onehunga and Manukau train frequencies. Veolia & Ontrack were working on track block length to see if they could fit more trains in, I think.
That is one reason why I have suggested running Onehunga-Penrose and Manukau-Puhinui as shuttles rather than duplicate services between Penrose-Britomart and Puhinui-Britomart respectively. That, and alternating services confuses passengers (get on South train and go via Newmarket when they wanted to go to GI). But shuttles only work if they are timetabled to meet mainline services, and they stick to that!
A key related issue people often ignore is that Britomart entry tunnel is a bottleneck because 3 routes all run into it (West, South & East). If Onehunga trains run all the way to Britomart, then the whole Newmarket-Britomart section becomes a 3 route bottleneck (while the entry tunnel becomes a 4 route bottleneck!). Manukau-Britomart makes it a 5 route bottleneck in Britomart tunnel! Aaargh…
Maybe back to the dwarves… 😉
The problem with such shuttles is you need space in the trains you are transferring to. Trying to stick a full 2 car DMU worth of people into a 4 car DMU that is already full just won’t work (assuming here both Onehunga and Manukau are fairly popular branches of course). The other issue is the simple frustration of getting on a train, moving one or two stations down the line then having to change to another.
I think the best solution is to start the CBD tunnel by building a new cut and cover link from Quay park to a pair of platforms under Quay St, connected to the existing station via the concourse level. This would double the capacity of Britomart fairly cheaply (I’m assuming it is cheaper to build a new link under the road corridor than somehow try to quadruplicate the entrance tunnel to Britomart). Then you have effectively three sets of double track coming in from the suburbs feeding into two sets of double track at the terminal, twice the current capacity.
Then when that approaches capacity, you continue the new link along the CBD tunnel route (with the proposed CBD stations) to the western line. Then you have three double track routes coming in from the sububurbs feeding into three sets of double track at the core.
By building a CBD tunnel in two stages and running it alongside Britomart rather than through it, you can stage the capacity expansion to meet growth (rather than having to do the whole tunnel to get anything), you could have the first capacity increase in 3-4 years rather than a decade, and you end up with 50% more capacity in the end which is a level of capacity which is exactly matched to the capacity of the wider network (not a central capacity which is only 2/3 of the wider network). It also allows you to purpose-design metro style platforms for the tunnel and leave the existing terminal station to do what it was designed for (rather than converting part of the terminal station into a through station so all the EMU tunnel trains and the terminating diesels have to jostle for space in the existing throat tunnel).
True Nick R – but Manukau will bring very few new passengers; it truly is a political memorial to the ego of ex-Mayor Sir Barry Curtis. Under 1,000 people live in Manukau City CBD, and most staff and shoppers come to/from adjacent suburbs Papatoetoe and Manurewa, but the Manukau-Puhinui line does not link well to Papatoetoe, and does not link at all (except via transfer and reversal) to Manurewa. So no problem there.
Onehunga rail should bring more patronage, but it will be a slow growth at 30min frequency (which is what they are planning to start with). And given it takes Veolia 5 months to make a new timetable (according to them), we won’t get rapid jumps in train frequency unless demand swarms like a horde of angry bees.
So the South trains should cope for all but the AM peak, and even then, the most crowded trains are the expresses, which don’t stop at Penrose anyway.
Your Britomart ideas are practical and a cheap, fast way of expanding capacity! But…. we still have the bottleneck problem if we insist all trains must run into Britomart. You say:
“…you end up with 50% more capacity in the end which is a level of capacity which is exactly matched to the capacity of the wider network…”
but we already have 3 routes, and 2 more (Onehunga & Manukau) planned for the next year or 2. So that makes 5 routes coming into Britomart…. We need to shift the train operators to a mentality that supports fast transfers at junctions. Sometimes – as you say – capacity is sufficient to justify an extra partially duplicated route, but mostly not.
I think it is very important for all trains to go to Britomart, firstly because that’s currently where the vast majority of people want to go, and secondly because it is the central interchange point between lines, and to buses and ferries. Having people transfer at main junctions is a bit of a red herring, as you still need the same amount of carriages getting down the line to carry the same amount of people. You could run longer trains (up to a point, 6-car sets in Aucklands case) or you can run higher frequencies.
The way I see it is that there are three main lines at the core of the network, the two new branches or any other routes or variations will simply feed into to these three lines (except well into the future if they build a harbour tunnel for rail, that would add a fourth main line).
A well managed twin track rail line can handle up to 18 trains per direction per hour, or one every 3 or 4 minutes. This means that the core network of three lines can handle 54 trains each way per hour. 54tph is enough to run nine routes with a train every ten minutes on each of them. With a CBD tunnel from the western line to Quay Park Junction, the central capacity would be three lines like the suburban capacity (i.e. three times what it is now, while the CBD tunnel to Britomart would only double capacity, less actually as trains coming in to terminate at Britomart would steal slots from those running through the tunnel).
However right now all three lines feed into just one line leading to Britomart, this is the bottleneck. So the whole network is limited to 18tph, or the equivalent of three lines running at ten minute headways. This obviously isn’t enough to run those five routes at a high level of frequency, so we are left with the main lines every 15 minutes and maybe a half hour service on the two branches. But doubling the central capacity would give more than enough to run those five routes at fast headways.
I agree with Nick, on the idea about the need for a “new” Britomart station, either under Quay or Customs St, preferably Quay but as it isn’t on anyone’s list I think we might find it happens after the CBD tunnel more as a storage/siding relief project…
I think there are two stages to take when promoting the CBD rail tunnel. For a start I think we should promote the current plan as much as possible so that we get the full benefits of improved CBD access this project will bring. However, if things don’t look good in terms of getting anything then we start looking at ways to alleviate the Britomart tunnel problem. I don’t see any point compromising from the outset as that will inevitably become the best we can hope for.
I would like to see stage one as promoting the CBD rail tunnel, but from Mt Eden to Quay Park. Using the angle that it might be as cheap or cheaper to avoid the intricate connection to Britomart, yet give 50% more capacity and allow specialised tunnel platforms separate from the terminal platforms.
If that doesn’t swing then fall back on stage two, which is doing just the Quay St section and leaving the extension to the western line for a future date.
The last thing I would want to see is four tracks to Britomart killing the chance of a CBD tunnel, but the second to last thing I’d want to see would be a two track city tunnel feeding into the same Britomart platforms and throat tunnel.
Otherwise, the logical outcome is to not have any through running trains, but to terminate tunnel trains at platform 1 and 5 and Quay Park trains on 2,3 and 4 to maximise capacity.
“Having people transfer at main junctions is a bit of a red herring, as you still need the same amount of carriages getting down the line to carry the same amount of people. You could run longer trains (up to a point, 6-car sets in Aucklands case) or you can run higher frequencies.”
True Nick – it is a balancing act given Britomart and Newmarket are the 2 biggest patronage stations, but the principle remains true, that junctions are where transfers should happen. You yourself reinforce this by noting that no station in Auckland (not even Britomart) has capacity for more than 6-car length, so beyond that you can only increase frequencies, which brings the bottleneck problem in.
In special cases, like Newmarket-Britomart, it is worth continuing all current routes (West, East & South) into Britomart because ARTA patronage figures show all 3 routes (dis)embark roughly 1/2 their passengers at Britomart. That is, route duplication (West & South trains) over the Newmarket-Britomart line, and triplication over the Britomart East entry tunnel (West, East & South trains) works (up to a point) because the duplicated sections are short enough to minimise delays compared to the inconvenience of passengers transferring for just traveling 1 more station.
But things are different when the network expands. Bring Onehunga and Manukau routes into Britomart and even your Mt Eden-Quay Park track doubling would not give enough capacity (5 bidirectional routes at 6tph gives 60tph required total). And that’s without any North Shore line, which the busway is slated to become if a Waitemata harbour tunnel is built.
An example; Prague – capital city of the Czech Republic and 1 million people, has 3 main subway lines that converge in a triangle at their CBD. There is no 1 station that receives all trains, and this avoids the bottlenecking.
I guess all I’m saying is a Western CBD rail tunnel will solve short-term growth, but not medium-term growth issues. And there are faster and cheaper short-term solutions; what about a 1 stage railbus (using rail fares/discount cards with revenue to rail operator) between Kingsland and Britomart via western CBD.
It would be well set up for Eden Park/RWC 2011, and faster for West rail passengers, especially if a 24-7 bus lane is provided. If it sucked enough Britomart patronage off the West trains, they could terminate at Newmarket, letting East & South (& West) trains to go to 5 min frequency. Just thinking out loud.