It has been disappointing to see the Helensville train service cut, seemingly largely because only one train each way per day was provided, and also because the train took too long and ran at a pretty unhelpful hour of the day. I still think there’s a pretty good argument, as ARC Councillor Joel Cayford has outlined in more detail, that the service should never have been run at all. However, in the end we got the worst of both worlds in that it ran, and had to be subsidised at $45 a trip, while at the same time it was only run in a ‘half-hearted’ manner – through the provision of only one train each way per day, and having that train at a fairly unhelpful time of day.

The lesson that I think has hopefully been learned is: if you’re going to do it, do it properly. There’s no room for half-hearted efforts here – you need to either not bother, or you need to provide a service that is of sufficient quality that you can actually realistically expect people to use it. Which brings us to the reopening of the Onehunga Branch Line, which will (hopefully) happen in the middle of next year. A few things have come to my attention over the past week or so that make me worry that once again we’re going down the road of a ‘half-hearted effort’ when it comes to extending the rail network. And, if the Helensville service is anything to go by, unless there is full commitment to a service that is actually useful, I think that the result will be failure – and if the Onehunga Branch Line was a failure that would be a real disaster for Auckland. This is because, perhaps unlike the Helensville service, the Onehunga Line really should work. There’s a potentially huge population catchment, there’s a big shopping attraction for weekend travellers (Dress-Smart Onehunga), the area in the longer term will become a big growth node for Auckland, and with good feeder buses the station could act as a great transport hub for people living in the Mangere area.

So why am I worried? Well, for a start there seems to be a lot ‘up in the air’ when it comes to the final form of the station at Onehunga. One would have imagined that, as the darn thing is meant to open in little over 6 months time, this would have been sorted out fully. In fact, if ARTA had truly had their act together in building the stations the line would probably be open by now. Another matter is the proposed frequencies. As I outlined in feedback to ARTA on the line in August, due to the proximity of the Onehunga station to Dress-Smart Onehunga and the main-street shopping area, I think that the station could end up being really popular during off-peak times – both inter-peak on weekdays and (perhaps especially) on weekends. This is because Dress-Smart Onehunga is a very busy shopping mall that generally has a significant parking shortfall (which is a good thing by the way, as long as you have good public transport alternatives!) As far as I know, ARTA are going to ignore my suggestion that in order for people to really bother using the train during off-peak times, they really need to offer a half-hourly service. Anything less than that and I think that people won’t trust the train system enough to bother with it. One would have thought that ARTA realise this, considering what a success the Sylvia Park train station has been – with its half hourly weekend frequencies! Let me say once again: hourly frequencies on weekends would be a huge mistake and a huge lost opportunity.

The other issue that has me worried is the integration of the train station with bus routes that serve the area. Onehunga is quite a transport hub for the whole “south-west” part of Auckland, with many buses that pass through Onehunga coming from Mangere, Manukau City and other areas to the south before they continue on their way to the city. It is also a hub for cross-town buses such as the 008 and 009 routes. At the moment the Onehunga bus centre is located on the other side of the main street – Onehunga Mall, as shown in the map below:train-bus Now while the two aren’t located that far away from each other, they are certainly distant enough to make people think twice about making ‘linking trips’ between a bus and then a train (say if they live in Mangere but work in the city). While not too many people are likely to make such trips until we get integrated ticketing sorted, that is happening and once it does I think there will be a greatly increased demand for trips which include a transfer between bus and train (in fact, some bus routes could even be curtailed at Onehunga to avoid service duplication and ensure the efficient use of resources). So it would surely make sense to relocate the bus station to somewhere right next to the railway station right? Well apparently not. The rumour I have heard is that ARTA have been pressured into keeping the bus station where it is to force people to walk between the two areas so they they will hopefully purchase something on their way. This seems like utter insanity to me – surely ARTA’s job is to provide the best transport system possible for Auckland, not to deliberately make life difficult to travellers just so they’ll perhaps buy something while wandering from one place to the next.

As ‘opening day’ is still 6 months away I have hope that sanity will prevail and we will see the bus station relocated – either onto the large piece of land the ARC has purchased for the station or to somewhere extremely nearby (like Princes Street). I also hope that sanity prevails and we end up with half-hourly weekend frequencies, not a half-hearted effort that I think will just lead to Onehunga becoming the next Helensville. Because that would be really really sad.

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14 comments

  1. If this doesn’t integrate the bus station, train station and involve dress mart with 30 min frequencies week long, heads should roll at ARTA… It has the potential to be a failure and then put electrification of the branch in jeopardy due to the tight budget which would be a DISASTER..!

    We really need to put some pressure on ARTA over this debacle…

  2. Running the Helensville service was right and proper. It could have worked except for the fact that ARTA couldn’t understand the rationale. Your comment recently about engineers on the CBT blog is indicative of the reasons behind the failure of the service: it wasn’t just a matter of dealing with commuters but it was all about selling a service. FFS, Helensville is a deeply attractive place to go to and the route up is equally attractive. But to run an unintegrated skeleton service is crying out for failure. Ultimately, of course, it comes down to governance: the ARC – the political wing – wanted a service; what they were given was ill thought out, badly advertised and, of course, subject to the usual failures of KiwiRail. How, given dedicated access, is it possible that a train can run substantially slower than a bus? Something is deeply wrong at ARTA and I suspect that your apprehensions concerning the Onehunga line are all too real. This is one of the myriad factors that suggest that the whole rationale of transport planning in New Zealand needs revolutionising.

  3. The train route to Helensville is far more indirect than the road (at least between Kumeu and the CBD as the rail skirts around the southern end of the harbour).

    I’m still trying to get my head around the way that ARTA and the ARC interact…. it does seem pretty messy!

  4. Indirect? Direction is almost immaterial when you’re travelling on a route restricted in parts to 10km/hr! It’s not just the connection between ATRA and ARC – oddly enough that does seem to work at the moment, at least at a political level – but it’s more about the connection between ARTA and Kiwi Rail which, on the face of things, should be easy; after all they technically want more people using rail. Why, for example, wasn’t ARTA able to insist on improved track speeds during the Helensville trial? Seems a pretty simple requirement to ensure a decent service.

  5. I agree Christopher. I remember seeing the timetable for the Helensville service for the first time and immediately going “oh, that’s going to fail, it’s far too slow”. Funny how immediate reactions can turn out to be quite accurate.

  6. Onehunga is different to the helensville service, I don’t think it will fail even with all the crap thats going along with it, but they are not helping themselves. I can’t see why they can’t incorporate the bus station into the train station given the size of land on you picture. It wouldn’t even cost much given the state of the bus station they are currently using.

    Although I do understand they are already struggling to obtain funding for this station.

  7. Do you have any info on the extact routes the various bus lines take through the Onehunga town centre Josh? I imagine it would only take a very minor diversion to get at least the southern routes (the ones most likely to furnish transfers to the train) passing in front of the train station before they go via the bus interchange.

    Man, if only ARTA would come up with an ‘Onehunga Pass’ and revised timetable/routing like they did with the Northern Busway. Sure this isn’t quite the scope of the busway, but why not undertake a similar overhaul on a smaller scale?

  8. I think it would be really simple to shift things around so the railway station could be the transport hub for the whole area. And yes, some form of interim integrated ticketing makes a lot of sense.

    Too much sense actually, which explains why it probably won’t happen.

  9. It’s just simple stuff that doesn’t even cost much money too, like having boards up in Dressmart..!

    It really pisses me off…

  10. I had the fortune to be in Auckland a few months ago. As part of our tourist activities, we wanted to go shopping at Dressmart.

    We got the train from new market to Sylvia park, waited 20min for a bus to onehunga, went shopping at dressmart for 2 hours, then tried to get back to new market. We stopped a bus driver outside Dressmart to ask if his route intersected with a railway station. With very heaviliy accented english, he indicated that he didn’t know what “Railway Station” meant”. No ammount of explanation managed to convay what we were after, so eventually we gave up and caught the same bus back to Syliva park and then the Train to Newmarket. I looked up that bus route later and it turned out that he could have taken us to penrose.

    Anyway, to be on topic, the bus exchange should definately be outside or next to the Train Station, Anything less is only reducing the appeal of public transport and will impact those that use the service. All buses that go to onehunga should have a stop at the train station and where possible, should have synchronized services. Dressmart should also have time table information inside.

  11. Ah but William, that would make life easy for the public transport user – which is definitely a “no-no” in Auckland.

    (in other words, excellent point!)

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