Where to now for Snapper/Infratil?

@JSH Thats quite interesting about christchurch and definitely makes sence. While not the only reason one advantage of having a common system in the country is it would be great for tourists. They could come here, buy 1 card and use it for most of their transport / small purchases (all would be better). Having to buy a different card for each city makes no sense. Of course they would have to be branded differently as I can’t see people outside of Auckland wanting to by a Jafa card (obviously by jafa I mean Just another Fabulous/Fantastic Aucklander)

According to Rudman’s article in this morning’s Herald Snapper have conceeded that not getting into Auckland would make the card “subeconomic”. Given that they are going to have to comply with the Thales system and the obvious appeal the Thales card will have over Snapper (free top ups, no up front payment for the card) i’d say it could be curtains for Snapper, regardless of how much they want to talk it up. According to the article this would mean withdrawing it from Wellington as well.

Link id here for anyone who’s not read it

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10615299

Sorry, quite right, what i should have said was they have privatly conceeded that this is the case. Publicly they are conceeding nothing.

As for those other provincial cities/towns, why would they bother with Snapper when they could also have the Thales card with no top up fees and no upfront costs. After all the option will be available to them wont it?

If they were depending on Auckland to make it profitable then i doubt they’d be able to make a real go of it with those provincial centres even if they could get in there. The total combined popoulation of those places you mentioned is only about 500,000 and in most cases public transport usage would not be very high.(I know it can be used for other transactions but the primary reason someone would buy one is for PT use)

Personally i think Snapper is a lame duck. Can’t see it existing in 2 – 3 years.

Tiny technical note – your caption for the Link says it’s a hybrid – it’s a Euro V rated diesel but not a hybrid (source). It’s just the City Circuit buses that are hybrids in Auckland.

agree christopher

@Christopher – I agree that the visual pollution of overhead cables is a negative aspect of trams and trolleys, however, the situation of trolleys in Wellington is like saying Auckland shows that rail travel is uncomfortable. It’s using a run down old system as an example of how bad it is. Living in a city that has either only trolley buses or trams I can tell you they are immensely more comfortable than the rattly diesel buses in Auckland. They are quiet, they accelerate smoothly, they can put electricity back into the network when breaking, they make almost no noise, in summary they are a pleasure to ride on compared with a diesel bus in Auckland. And furthermore, seeing as the system gets maintained I can say I have never been on a bus that has derailed or had to slow down at points.

And in regards to your comment about a bus in front bus breaking down and therefore being stuck, the same can often apply to diesel buses of course, but all electric trolleys also have small backup diesel motors, these can be used for instance when a section of road has been closed and the buses must detour to get back to the trolley lines, it’s frequently done here and all it does is to remind me how noisy a diesel motor is in comparison to an electric one.

But regardless, in the end I would rather see the sparse money Auckland has for PT not spent on building the required overhead lines but rather on improved bus lanes and bus priority measures. Infratil also lobbied against the trolley buses in Wellington so is hardly likely to be favourable for them in Auckland.

@Jeremy – they certainly do need to change their attitude, and they certainly have demonstrated to that they only have short term profits as their primary aim despite their website blathering on about their desire to create a growing and desirable PT network.

Hey Christopher, I disagree with you a few points, one is trolley buses cost about three times as much as diesel buses but last three times as long, the wiring costs money but there is also a saving on diesel over the long run, overall the services are more expensive but for me it is more than made up for by the advantages pointed out…

The reason they don’t run the trolley-buses on the weekend is to save money on wages…

With a new system and new buses (the technology is now being improved exponentially with more cities investing in them) a lot of the problems you talk about would be reduced significantly…

Again, light rail/trams have even more advantages over trolley-buses and leave diesel buses for dead…

Absolutely agree Joshua – have been on Auckland buses many times where they’ve had to diverstt hrough suburban streets because of roadworks or the like.

I don’t believe people would respond too well to having more overhead lines put up in their neighbourhoods. Maintenance is a factor in Wellington’s trolley bus-free weekends – it’s the only time you’ll see the masive trucksd out working on the lines outside of a fault – the line of traffice stuck behind them is testament to the waste of time that is the trolley bus netowrk. But regardless of the reason – no one seems to care all that much.

Do you have a whole-of-life costs analysis on you, Jeremy, regarding trolley buses? It would have to include the costs of installing and maintaining the lines and the costs of reduced manoueverability and infrastructure upgrades to maintain servcie standards (lest they become like Wellington’s). Would be interesting to see.

I met someone form the DoT recently who suggested ripping up all the rail lines in Auckland and having buses use those corridors, simply based on their ability to fan out into the suburbs and service a far larger catchment area – reflects the value of buses’ ability to go anywhere and everywhere.

@Jeremy – interesting. But it also raises the issue of electricity usage. New Zealand isn’t exactly brimming with supply at the moment and short/medium-term, depending on the outcome of the emissions-debate, there aren’t a whole lot of options. Adding a fairly extensive bus network to the demand-side wont help and it exposes bus operators to fluctuating costs of electricity, much like they are exposed to diesel costs now.

I don’t think the replace rail-with-bus idea is all that bad. It represents a much smaller investment in rolling stock and the infrastructure needed to service an enhanced (higher-frequency) bus fleet is signifacntly less than that of trains, surely. There would also be less need for inter-modal changes to get between starting and final destination. So I don’t think it’s fair to discount it entirely.

@Nick R – I think you’re confusing ideology with practicality. if there is an obstruction in front of a trolley bus, it has a far lesser chance of passing that obstruction. When Joshua and I talk about “freedom to move”, we’re simply referring to the ability to move around physical streets, of whch Auckland has many narrow or single-laned ones.

Demand patterns do change – if you look at Auckland’s old tram system, they were all centred on the CBD – but life changed, Auckland developed multiple nodes, as cities do, where labour congregates to toil away. Current CBD-centric services are regularly cited as a major failing of Auckland’s transport system, including on this blog. Having fixed-infrastructure limits your ability to change to meet those needs.

Fixed infrastructure also forces a hub-and-spoke system on passengers, like airlines, when point-to-point is what is needed to stimulate/satisfy demand. Airlines are grappling with this very problem now.

eg. I used to live in St Heliers, worked in Mt Eden. Before the 007 bus service came along, I had to trapse into the CBD and conenct to a poorly timed bus from there. The 007 was put on at the flick of a switch – fixed infrastructure would have taken a solid two years to install, in my opinion.

@ Christopher ripping up the rails and putting down road, even bus lanes is an insanly stupid idea and would result in huge amounts of people going back to driving. I for one refuse to catch a bus and if I couldn’t catch a train I would definetly be driving into town each day for work, even if it cost me more.

@Nick – so the routes you have mentioned are still brimming with popularity – true. This despite the fact that they are now buses. You assume that trams represent an “upgrade” (upgrading the 007 bus to a tram), which is the basis of your entire argument. I believe that trams do not represent an upgrade at all for the reasons I’ve already outlined.

But in a way you’ve proved my point – the bus routes you mention (Dominion Road) are hugely popular despite the lack of trams – so why bother spending huge amounts and causing all sorts of traffic chaos by laying tracks and overhead lines? It’s comlpetely unnecessary. What’s the benefit? There’s none, which is why no one talks about trams seriously outside a few touristy routes.

i hear all the time this transfer-model whereby nodes of transport are created whereby passengers can transfer between buses/trams/trains. All adds time and reduces appeal. Direct services, however, bypassing established nodes (Newmarket, CBD) is more likely to generate/satisf demand as it saves people time and hassle.

@Matt L – you refuse to catch a bus? Why? Public transport snobbery? A bus on a dedicated former-rail route is exactly the same as a train – bar capacity (less) and potential for frequency (more, without the need for expensive upgrades to fault-probne signalling systems) – its wheels just hit asphalt rather than rails.

Very few Auckladners are within walking distance (or even short-bus distance) from their “local” train station. if buses get people to where they want to go faster and with no need to transfer, at a reasonable cost, they will use it. Hence the importance of bus priority lanes.

Essentially, the more complexity you add to a system, the less reliable and efficient it is. See what happens when there’s a power cut with your trolley buses and trams. And notice the chaos casued by fault-prone signalling systems for trains – these dictate frequency (after demand) and are enormously expensive to replace. Plus they force hub and spoke. Simplicity is key.

Well Christopher…

Trams are electric, not diesel. So they are cleaner
Trams have a larger capacity
Trams are more attractive than buses to the user
Trams look better
Trams are more comfortable and support the different needs of people (bicycles/disabled people)
Trams wont clog up inner city streets
Trams will be more reliable
Trams will have their own right of way all the way into the city centre

Just because buses are doing fine doesn’t mean we should be trying to achieve status quo. We should be trying to grow our transport systems by making them more attractive to the user while allowing for capacity at the same time. Trams will also support a multi-modal transport system for Auckland, instead of relying on buses to do all the work. If our transport systems remain to have poor links around the city, people will keep using their cars, which wont solve congestion issues.

I believe that the (future) ATA should be able to install tram lines in the summer holidays over the months of Jan and Feb to limit the disruption of those using the road. I really just depends on how much the ATA are willing to put into such a project

Christopher, a standard tram such as those used in Melbourne have more seats that a standard bus (approx 60 vs. 50) while the longer articulated vehicles have a lot more seats (around 90). While you can get articulated buses too they cannot be nearly as long if you are to drive them on the street, as they lack the rails to guide them.

As well as more seats trams have a lot more standing room. Even a large bus such as the one used on the Northern Express can only handle about 20 people standing and then it is very unconfortable. Standard trams on the other hand are designed to accomodate around 100 standees, while longer articulated ones can handle up to three hundred. One key difference is that trams have level boarding and are designed for people to stand in, which indeed makes it a lot more comfortable to ride. Due to the fact they ride on rails standing on a tram is a lot more comfortable than standing on a bus. There is an argument that no one should have to stand at anytime, and if we are talking buses I would more or less agree. However standing during peak times is a fact of life so making it comfortable and efficient is a good idea.

There is also an very useful flow on effect of the fact that a standard tram can carry roughly three times as many people as a standard bus. If you replace buses on heavily patronised routes such as Dominion Rd then you slash your staffing costs by one third as you only need one-third the drivers.

““Trams are more attractive than buses to the user” – um, says who?”
3.5 million Melburnians for a start, ask any one of them if they prefer riding trams or buses.

“PT options that get the user closer to their start and end-points will always be more attractive, bringing us back to the practicality and flexibility of buses.”
Getting people between their start and end points is the goal, but that will not always be more attractive. Capacity, directness, speed and ride quality are massively important as are cleanliness and appearance. If I provided a 2 hour ride on a wooden plank on the back of a donkey cart directly from your front door to your workplace would that ‘always be more attractive’ than a bus at the top of your street? That is as close to your start and end points as you can get.

There is a sector of the population that will simply not catch a bus because they are seen as cheap or nasty. Trams do not suffer such a image problem, and when you are trying to provide a realistic alternative to having everyone drive everywhere then that image and desirability is important.
The concept of trying to provide buses directly between each start and end point is a fools errand. Without pumping untold millions down the drain to support such a folly the outcome is either buses that go anywhere but only run once per hour, or buses that wind their way across half the city taking in every side street and corner. All this does is make it take forever to get anywhere, so no one would use the system. This is the kind of service a lot of Auckland has right now, unless you are going to downtown during peak hour you’d be lucky to find a bus that runs more than once every half hour and gets anywhere in reasonable time.
The solution to this conundrum is to have a series of high quality, high frequency direct links that intersect at key points to allow transfers. If you allow for quick and simple transfers then you don’t need routes that go from everywhere to everywhere, you just need a network that covers everywhere. This ends up a lot more efficient as you no longer have hundreds of mostly empty welfare services winding their way around the place. In terms of a trunk route such as Dominion Rd, trams would be an ideal solution. They could run every two minutes up the street (half as frequently as buses do currently, with half the costs but twice the capacity) and crosstown and feeder buses could connect at every stop.

I would ask why do we need ‘flexibility’ on the Dominion Rd route? Is Dominion Rd going to move? Are they shifting the CBD to somewhere else? Do we want to surprise Dominion Rd travellers by suddenly removing their service? Sure add extra routes from Dominion Rd to other destinations, but you will not need flexibility along the trunk route. I would suggest getting rid of the flexibility of buses is a good idea, to give people the reliability and permanance of fixed rail transport.

Trams are indeed a lot more reliable than buses, far from requiring “substantially more maintenance” the opposite is in fact true. Electrically powered trams have very simple drive train designs without internal combustion engines, axles, gearboxes, steering equipment etc, they have very little to fail in comparison to a bus.

I’m not sure why you are so concerned with impediments to the flow of traffic when the suggestion is to replace bus lanes on Dominion Rd and into the city with tram lanes. There are plenty of opportunity for tram lanes on the Albert St bus lanes or perhaps on Queen St. Queen St certainly does not work well as an arterial road and there is no need for four lanes to access the few road side parks there. The existing traffic lanes would generally stay the same.

I’m not sure why you are so hostile to the concept. The bus lanes on Dominion Rd are very well used to the point where patronage cannot grow much further. Replacing them with a higher capacity tramway would allow that patronage to continute to grow while using the same space on the road as well as giving people a more comfortable and quicker ride.

Do bear in mind the thing contributing to ‘enormous snarl ups’ in Auckland are the cars. A single lane of road traffic carries around 2,500 people per hour when it is congested, while a lane of tram track can carry up to 20,000 people per hour before becoming congested. So even if precious road lanes are recovered for more efficient uses, what is going to cause more traffic problems, having the roadspace for trams or cars?

@Christopher – lets just keep doing what we have been doing for the last 50 years and relying on road because that is obviously working well isn’t it.

Trams and trains are more attractive than buses, there might not be any official research to say this but there also isn’t any research saying the opposite. I however would never use a bus as I feel they are smelly, dirty, noisy and overall a not very plesant environent, I would rather drive and sit in traffic than catch one. I will however happily catch a train every day and I know my wife has the same views.

You mention that people would rather go point to point but it seems terribly inefficient to have buses going all over the city just for a couple of journeys. We would surely be much better off having a number of high frequency corridors with more local connections to them.

Lastly most politicians (from all sides of the political spectrum) need to be vented at and then thrown off a bridge, it is their fault for the mess we are now in and they are to scared to make the big calls needed to fix this city and country because they only care about protecting their jobs.

@Brent – it doesn’t suprise me that research has been done, I have never looked for it. Also unlike Christchurch many parts of Auckland aren’t exactly flat and easy for cyclists, add this to the fact Auckland covers a much larger area so people are having to travel further.

Righto, how to reply…

Tram capacity – I suspect, Nick R, that you’re confusing actual seating with seating+bum-rests+comfortable standing room+”crush capacity” (i.e. jam packed = not much fun). There is no way that the trams in Melbourne actually seat that many (I’ll count next time I’m on one – tomorrow maybe). You also have to compare like with like. 30 metre Bombardier trams seat about 60 (including bum rests – not actual seats), but an 18 metre bendy bus can actually seat between 45 and 50, with standing room for up to 100. Make that a double decker and you’ve got yourself seating for about 60, like the tram, but at significantly less cost and comprised of actual seating, not just bum rests.

Your staffing-costs claim is a little odd given that you purport trams to stimulate demand, so surely staff savings would not be all that great, if any at all. And wouldn’t people prefer frequency? Again, a lot like airlines and the p2p versus hub debate.

Interesting you bring up Melbourne. I live in Melbourne now, have done for about 5 months (there’s more like 4.5 million Melburnians, btw). The trams aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, even the newer ones. They fail in admittedly extreme heat, when they do breakdown it’s an absolute mess (admittedly, not often, but when they do and you’re on one, well, bummer for everyone else on that line for the next hour or so). Melbourne has a long-established tram network, so they’ve decided to maintain them. BUT, it has come at the expense of the bus system, which is still needed for all the places that trams cannot go (or where building the infrastructure is just too cost-prohibitive). As a result, funding for all forms of transport is spread more thinly across trains, trams and buses, with none providing a decent service.

Trams get stuck in traffic in Melbourne almost as much as buses (if it weren’t for their exclusive routes, they’d be just as bad). There’s also almost no policing of fare payment so the system loses out on significant fare income. and I mean significant. They don’t even take the user-stats seriously anymore because of the sheer volume of fare evasion. Again, this depletes the pool of money for PT in Melbourne. Whereas buses – well, you have to pay at least something.

I agree that comfort is important – and buses are increasingly comfortable. Are trams so much more comfortable as to warrant the investment in them? In my opinion, no.

Inter-modal is the form (mode) of transport used. If you’re so dead-set for a grid network based on nodal transfers, then buses can do the same. I would have thought my idea for more p2p services is a significant departure from Auckland PT planning of the past 100 years (Matt L – notice the contradiction in your statement?). Jarbury recently did an analysis on here of the success of metropolitan trains in a Canadian city (Vancouver) compared to Melbourne. He concluded that the reason was because of the need for Melburnians to catch trams or buses to access their closest station, whereas in the Canadian city,stations were within walking distance. I agree with this conclusion, which I believe undermines the supposed beauty of forcing people to transfer across networks to get between their start and end point.

Like others, Nick R, you have misinterpreted the term “flexibility”. I’m not suggesting routes along Dom Road are suddenly going to go all whoopsy-curvy (though if demand changes, or roadworks block the way, a bus route is very simple to deviate). I’m suggesting that when there is an obstruction (e.g. traffic banked up in a turning lane, a parked car in a bus/tram lane, a car crash, a tornado), a bus can easily deviate to get around the obstruction.

I’m curious to know what evidence you have to assert that a tram is more reliable than a bus. Perhaps it is, but the infrastructure required for trams is maintenance-heavy, requiring frequent checks, upgrades and fixes (overhead lines mainly). And when something does go wrong on a tram, the effect on the rest of the network can be pretty devastating. It’s not like a tram can simply overtake one in front.

Bus lanes in Auckland generally operate only certain hours of the day, no? So you would have to fight with local shops that like that parking to remove it and ensure 24/7 tram/bus lanes. And what happens if there is a car illegally parked there? The tram is stuck too. A bus can move out of the way.

Frankly I don’t know much about cycle lanes in Auckland, nor do I care. Like most pedestrians/car drivers, I find cyclists the most annoying feature of road travel there (I used to catch buses along Tamaki Drive that would get stuck behind two cyclists for minutes at a time – so much for the “but we take up less space” argument).

If people have a problem with the “image” of buses, well that’s entirely speculative, subjective and, I suspect, these are the kind of people that would shy away from PT in any form. Again, speculative. And it’s always easier to say you’d do/use something hypothetically. When it comes to actually doing it – well, I have my doubts that people follow through.

@Brent – That was my thought also, Auckland is to big to ride the whole way in most situations but riding a few Km’s to a train/tram then again on the other side to their destination or leaving their bike securily at the station in bike lockers (I think there are some out south)

Putting tram lines down the centre of the road would certainly be easiest in most places, the biggest issue would be from cars turning at intersections and the extra space needed for the stations (along with getting passengers across the road to the station).

That can make things confusing for road users though, one intersection I need to be in the right hand lane, at others I need to be in the left hand lane.

@Matt L,

So what..?

I currently have that problem in my vehicle… It has taken me months to figure out exactly what lanes I should be in around the Mt Wellington Highway/SH 1 interchange/intersection, I still make mistakes on the Panmure Roundabout, the world ain’t perfect…

Chris, FYI I live in Melbourne and have done so for the last 2.5 years. Naturally I’ve had first hand experience with the tram fleet and the rest of the network on a daily basis, from the sweetness of the turn-up-and-go frequencies on some lines to the horrors of cancellations, crowding and breakdowns. Melbourne has a variety of tram types, from the fully grade separated ‘light rail’ to St Kilda, the ‘reserve track’ routes like Dandenong Rd to the ‘tram suck behind cars in mixed traffic on a narrow street’ such and Brunswick Rd. The latter variety is a relic of history no better than a bus line in my opinion, and perhaps worse for some of the reasons you have mentioned. It is primarily the second type that I believe would be most appropriate for Dominion Rd, where the tram runs in the road corridor at street level and are accessible via wide-ish spaced ‘super stops’ but has dedicated reserved track on which cars are not allowed to drive (and perhaps physically prevented from driving in, such as a boulevard type arrangement where the tram runs in the central median).

I think you have misinterpreted the Jarbury’s analysis completely, sorry but you’ve got it completely back to front. I’ve had a series of lectures from the academic who analysed the figures on which Jarbury’s analysis is based, Dr Paul Mees, so I’ve heard it from the horses mouth in great detail. The failing of Melbourne to achieve highly efficient levels of patronage on its train network is due to the fact that the catchment is limited to the walking area around each station and to a lesser extent the availability of park-n-ride spaces. The lack of bus and tram access to rail stations means that huge swathes of Melbourne cannot access the rail network even though there is a rail line within a few kilometres of most of the region. The highly efficient utilisation of rail in Vancouver is due to the fact that people can reliably catch a bus feeder to the rail network from places outside of the walking distance of the station. 85% of passengers on the Vancouver Skytrain metro system access their origin station by bus connection, only 10% walk to the station and 5% take other means (mostly park and ride). The three lines (a mere 70km of track) of the Skytrain system carry more people each day (370,000 pax) that the 16 electrified rail lines in Melbourne that cover 372km of track (275,000 pax)! This is simply due to the fact that in Vancouver the system is integrated with connections covering the whole reagion and in Melbourne the potential passengers are only those people who can walk to a station (or get a park and ride space) and are well served by the point to point trips available.

Point to point services is all Auckland has ever done, in most cases just point-to-CBD. Sorry but your concept is just doing more of the same expensive, ineffective and inefficient service model that has always been done. This is aside form the tram/bus issue but if it is inefficient and costly doing more of it will only be worst. If it ever wants to capture more than a few percent of all trips then it needs to move to a connective network model. Melbourne likewise, while those areas serviced by the tram network get up to 60-70% of all trips this is lost in the rounding regionwide as many areas have basically 0% trips by public transport.

Melbourne’s bus network is simply shameful. I use one of the few semi-coordinated links between bus and train on my commute each day and even then it is barely adequate despite being a flagship ‘smartbus’ line. I must admit the state of the bus service must have a lot to do with why Melburnians dislike buses (although not the only reason). Melbourne has a good wide reaching core rail network (if imperfectly utilised) and a secondary tram network of inner trunk routes, yet it lacks the third piece of the puzzle for a truly great system: and effective network of bus feeders, crosstown routes and connectors to fill in and link the gaps. Arguably all Auckland has is the latter bus network and a nascent rail core.

The issue of fare evasion on trams is a furphy, this has little to do with the vehicle or mode and is simply related to they way they are run. Buses would suffer the same fate if they were operated the same way, and they could require everyone to line up and validate in front of the tram driver as they do on buses, although this would effect one of the other benefits of trams over buses for busy corridors. Trams have a minimum of three doors per side, and they are usually wide double doors. This gives them a time advantage over buses for loading and unloading passengers at busy stops, as buses typically only have one double front door and one single back door. Even the jumbo articulated buses only tend to add a second single back door.

Yes, you probably could start building long multiple doored articulated buses like they have in Curitiba and Bogota, and maybe you could go to double decks. But there are issues there, particularly regarding the length and navigating city street corners. You can only go so long or so big and be able to drive the thing on the street. The solution in Curitiba and Brazil is to run them all in dedicated busway lanes with station facilities… but then you are buying specially made jumbo buses and running them on specially built guideways and any capital expenditure advantage has disappear. An 18+ metre articulated double deck bus would not be cheap, even if you had the right roads to run it on. You could go a long way to make a bus like a tram, but why not just uses trams?

One key thing that trams have that buses never will is simple, they run on rails. This means much less rolling resistance, it permits greater load weights and axle loadings on a smaller area, and allows very long vehicles as they are guided by the track and not by on board steering. Some European street trams are up to a hundred metres in length with seven articulations, you could never do that with a bus and be able to actually drive the thing. One ‘constraint’ of tracked vehicles is ironically a great benefit. Trams require a smooth track with limits on curve radii, grade changes and cant deviations. While this means they cannot be used in all situations, where they are suitable they benefit greatly from the track constraint in terms of their ride quality.

One issue with buses in pitch and yaw, which affect ride quality and are big problems for standees. Buses by their nature run on roads which usually means they bounce around on their suspension when they hit pot holes, drain covers etc, they pitch and yaw as pull in and out of bus stops, move from buslanes to general lanes etc: Tracked vehicles suffer this far less.

The staffing costs hold true per unit, i.e. for every passenger on a full tram the staffing cost is one third that of a full bus. If you double your patronage the staffing costs will still be about a third of what it would cost to run the same patronage with buses. Yes growing patronage is the goal and a natural outcome of the superior nature of modern trams, and it is obviously better to grow that patronage on a mode that has lower operating costs.

In regard to frequency, my point was on saturated bus routes like Dominion Rd which sees a bus every 60-90 seconds during the peak you can still halve the frequency and still have a very frequent service that affords turn-up-and-go type trips. Obviously if there is a bus only once a half hour you would only aim to improve that frequency, but this is not the case for Dominion Rd or any other route where trams could be a viable option.

Note that no one is suggesting that all bus routes in Auckland be replaced with trams, just those heavily trafficked routes where trams would be most suitable. Modern articulated trams running at street level on reserved track are perfect to fill the niche between street bus services and full heavy rail lines.

For flexibility, I am arguing that on a route like Dominion Rd demand is very unlikely to do anything but grow. In terms of the other things you have mentioned, avoiding obstacles such as roadworks blocking the way, car crashes, traffic in lanes these are all largely irrelevant. Roadworks obviously need to be managed properly and trams would not be sharing lanes with cars so there would be no influence of congestion, crashes etc. Again no one is suggesting trams be run like those mixed-traffic routes in Melbourne. Trams do have the Achilles heel of causing network issues if the break down, but they tend to do that infrequently and there are ways to manage the problem that don’t take hours to remedy (shuttling trains either side of the blockage for example, I’ve done that before in Melbourne where the tram has had to stop behind a broken down tram and people needed to walk over to a third tram waiting in front. Not ideal but not too much hassle either).

Right hand turns aren’t really a problem, almost all streets with trams in Melbourne have normal right hand turns, particularly those with reserve track. There are actually only 19 intersections in Melbourne that require a hook turn (despite the system having 245km of track), mostly on constrained intersections in the CBD. Despite being confusing they are actually a pretty efficient use of road space at intersections (and a good technique for making a right hand turn on a bike anywhere I might add). There is also the possiblity of allowing right turning vehicles to use the tramway as a flush median under certain conditions provided they do not hold up a tram, very similar to have vehicles can use the bus lane to make a left hand turn.

In the case of Dominion Rd resistance from local shops, parking etc is also a non-issue. Dominion Rd is scheduled to be widened by 6-8m along its length by 2016 with public transport diversions around the two main historic shopping strips in order to create a proper fulltime busway type systems similar to the Central Connector. That is to say these shop keepers and car parkers are going to be affected regardless of whether the system is bus based or tram based, although in either case the diversion around the shops mitigates most of the problem. In general tram lanes running in the middle of the road reservation would have less impact on parking, driveways, cyclists etc that bus lanes which tend to occupy the curbside lane.
On the Dom Rd proposals the general road cross section will be 20m wide, consisting of 4m kerbside bus/cycle lanes replacing the existing parking/narrow bus lanes, one 3.5 lane for general traffic each way plus a central flush median to separate opposing traffic. I have one idea in mind for Dominion Rd which places the tramtracks in the central median (still providing the separation between opposing traffic required) thus allowing the curbside lane to be used for a lane of off-peak parking with a peak hour clearway and/or cycle lane. This would give you a 3m wide parking/cycle/peak lane curbside, 3.5m general traffic lane and 3m tram lane each direction, which would require only 1m more width than proposed to allow a second traffic lane and tramway each way.

Yes tramways do represent a greater capital outlay than simply running a bus on the road, but they have much lower operating costs so are financially more efficient on busy routes.

And by the way according to the ABS there are 3.5 million people in metropolitan Melbourne and 3.9 in the greater Melbourne statistical division. She’s a few years off having 4.5mil yet, but growing fast as 5 million is projected for 2030. On a side note Melbourne really needs to capitalise on its rail infrastructure properly through the use of interconnection and more bus services if it is to avoid serious transport problems having 40% more population in twenty years.

Yeesh, what a post. I guess you can tell things aren’t to busy at work this time of year!

Wow, Nick makes an excellent long post, Chris completely misses the point, flies off on a tangent and proclaims his point is made… Oh dear…

If a proper light rail/tram system was designed with good stations fare evasion would not be a problem as like rail you could have gates through which passengers need to pass before and after using it, something that isn’t practical with buses. Also i imagine once integrated ticketing comes along we will use the back doors for loading passengers also, if this is the case buses would be just as vulnerable to fare evasion.

Any idea how much it would cost to put a line back down Dominion Rd and also how many passengers use the route on a daily basis?

BTW, I hate the term tram as to me it is associated with the vintage trams in use at Motat, I think much of the population would feel the same way and that may be something that hinders their reintroduction (cost being the other thing).

I think Dom Rd is the only route people who follow Auckland transport closely are convinced would be a success with light rail and would like to see it immeaditely… Replacing, say, the 757 with a tram line would be nuts…