Out of the “big three” rail projects that Len Brown promotes as his rail vision, two make pretty obvious sense – the CBD Rail Tunnel and Rail to the Airport. The two projects work in synergy quite nicely actually – both expanding the capacity and the reach of the rail system. The third project – rail to the North Shore – is the most long-term project of the three, and also one that I have been most doubtful of in past blog posts.

My main reason for thinking that North Shore Rail isn’t a particularly high priority is due to the Northern Busway. The busway opened just a couple of years ago, cost around $400 million all up, so it would make sense that we squeeze the most out of the busway possible before embarking on replacing it. Added to that is the question in my mind that the current plans may be forgetting about what I consider to be a pretty critical rail project – the Southeast RTN. A Southeast railway line would follow approximately the alignment outlined in the map below – linking Glen Innes with Manukau via stations at Highland Park, Cascades Road, Botany, Flat Bush and Clover Park. The route would involve two big tunnels: one between Glen Innes and Highland Park (as I don’t think putting another bridge across the Tamaki River is that viable) and another being a tunnel between Clover Park – at the southern end of Te Irirangi Drive – and Manukau City Centre. So the route would be expensive, there’s no doubt about that, but think of the benefits it would bring:

  • This is a big part of Auckland, and a part that continues to grow rapidly. Flat Bush is planned to be New Zealand’s biggest “new town”, with a population of about 40,000 by 2020. In total, there are probably at least 150,000 people living east of the Tamaki River.
  • This area has terrible transport links with the rest of Auckland. There are no motorways, no bus lanes, no railway lines, pretty much nothing except giant four-lane highways such as Pakuranga Road, Ti Rakau Drive and Te Irirangi Drive. As a result of such poor public transport, the area is the most car dependent in the entire city.
  • A railway line could offer a Botany to Britomart trip in around 26 minutes. You’d be lucky to drive that distance in twice that time at peak hours. So I think it would be very popular, even requiring a feeder bus and transfer onto the train.
  • Bus-based solutions for this RTN suffer from a huge problem of “what to do at Panmure?” Either we find a way of getting a tonne of buses between Panmure and Britomart (nigh on impossible) or we transfer everyone onto trains at Panmure (the trains will probably already be full).

In short, this is an expensive project – but one that could bring huge benefits to a part of Auckland that’s growing rapidly, but which suffers from unbelievably poor transportation options. The project could completely revolutionise this part of Auckland.

In terms of the North Shore Line, this would follow the alignment of the Northern Busway between Akoranga and Constellation stations. North of Constellation, at some point the railway line would need to cross SH1 to access Albany town centre. Probably for now the line could end at Albany, although in the longer term it may be extended to Silverdale or Orewa. South of Akoranga, I imagine the line would largely be in tunnel all the way to the CBD. It could work something like this (although how it links in with the rail system at the CBD end is up for debate):

Some of the benefits of this rail line are obvious. It would probably be much faster than the busway – particularly between Akoranga and the CBD. Further to that, a railway line offers significantly increased capacity compared to the busway -something that will certainly be essential in the longer term.

Looking at this, one would think that there would be little point in advancing North Shore rail for quite a number of decades in the future – at least until the busway is getting completely swamped with passengers. However, there are a couple of matters that require a bit of further consideration I think:

  • It is not just the capacity of the busway that we need to think about, but also the capacity of the streets of Auckland’s CBD to cope with all these buses. In the not too distant future, it’s my understanding that Fanshawe Street and Customs Street are likely to be carrying more buses than they can really handle. Unless loading times around Britomart are significantly reduced, there will also become a time when we simply don’t have a big enough station area in the CBD to handle all these buses. If streets like Fanshawe Street become maxed out in terms of their capacity to carry buses, what do we do then to increase the number of buses that can get into the CBD?
  • As the number of buses are increased, there’s also an increase in operating costs that needs to be considered. For a start, operating a lot of buses is very expensive as you need to pay a lot of drivers (in the future we may have one or two staff for up to 1000 passengers on a lengthy electric train). Furthermore, as the loadings for the North Shore Line are likely to be quite strongly “peaked” (very high during peak times compared to off-peak times), we will need a lot of buses that may only be used a few times a day at peak times. Does it make that much more sense to keep buying $400,000 buses to handle these high peak loads? Perhaps not.

I probably still lean towards preferring the Southeast Line as a priority, simply because people living in that part of the city have such extremely poor transport options at the moment. However, because of issues like capacity constraints for buses in Auckland’s CBD, I do wonder whether we might need to look at upgrading the busway to rail a bit earlier than was previously thought. I also wonder at what point the very high operating costs (plus the cost of buying so many new buses) of maintaining the busway start to offset the admittedly extremely expensive capital cost of a rail line.

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51 comments

  1. Now is also the time to start thinking about alignments for closing the North shore loop, from Albany to Waitakere. Else we will be in the same place again as the South Eastern with nowhere to put it when we need it.

  2. I agree that the South East line should be placed above the North Shore line however at this stage if it was proposed I think it would be labeled by opponents as Len looking after his followers and could cause more harm than good.

    Another thing for upgrading the busway earlier is that when it does happen it will likely need to close for a year or two to upgrade it as there would be quite a bit of work doing things like easing grades etc that can’t happen with buses running on it. If we wait till it is at capacity of say 1 bus every minute or so then all of a sudden we will have to squeeze those buses back onto the motorway which will surely impact patronage. It might be better long term to upgrade it before it gets to that point.

    1. I also this that it was a strategic decision by Len to include the North Shore line in his campaign, i.e. to get the people on the Shore to vote for him.

      The South Eastern line with walkways and cycleways between GI and Highland Park will bring the two communities closer which can only be good for the area, since both are in need of a renewal.

  3. Does the centre median strip along Ti Irirangi drive have enough width to support a double tracked line, or does the whole road need to be widened?

    I just cant believe that someone allowed this whole area to be developed with such poor transport infrastructure. Who was responsible for this?

    Im sure most of you have had bad experiences where the South-Eastern Arterial meets up with the Southern Motorway at rush hour. Imagine the impact an effective and future proofed mass transit system would have for this area.

    I hope that parliamentary question time is daily filled with questions to that tw@t SJ about rail.

  4. Could we run the rail line down the center of the motorway on the north shore?

    It seems straighter and flatter than the busway.

    The busway could then be used as a Dedicated truckway, or a T3 lane. I bet Steven Joice would like the truckway bit :).

  5. Some points:

    * Trains suffer the same peak demand problems as buses – in Wellington, we needed four times as much rolling stock to meet the peak, when compared with the non-peak.

    * Five buses at $400,000 a shot have the same capacity as one 40-metre LRV, the cost of which would be in the order of $4.5m (Edinburgh’s cost £2m apiece). The running costs actually average out, because while the operating costs per passenger at the peak are less for rail than for bus – certainly staff costs – maintenance of the beasties is quite expensive. Also, once you are out of the peak, a single LRV will be carrying volumes of passengers that would be quite easily managed by two buses.

    * A busway built to North Shore’s standards can probably handle a lot more than one bus/minute, which is about what it is managing at the moment. The problem, as Joshua notes quite correctly, is where to put the vehicles once they arrive in the central city. However, if we can restrict car use, then there will be less pressure on the road network.

    * Light rail running in conjunction with buses on the busway is another option.

    1. That’s about right. Dijon is putting in a tramway, with each 33m long unit set to cost around 2m euros. I was surprised the price was so high.
      Incidentally, Auckland might want to consider rubber-tired trams, like rubber-tired metros, they can do steeper grades; as well as accelerate and stop faster (closer following distances). Downside is higher maintenance costs.

    1. Using 2006 Census Data, I think around 15,000 people live in the Devonport area – subtract that from 205,000 North Shore City residents – so potentially 190,000 within the catchment (not sure about the Birkenhead area though, might need a station at the bottom of Onewa Road for it to be much use for them).

      In terms of “out east”, the 2006 census data is probably quite out of date, but if you combine the population of the old Pakuranga, Howick and Botany-Clevedon wards of Manukau City Council you get 121,281 residents.

  6. He is talking about 5 year blocks, so starting on the North Shore rail in 10 odd years, and by then I think we really do need to be looking at rail, especially as that’s getting close to when they plan to build a second crossing – and ending up with only a road tunnel would be pretty short sighted. However, I think the Eastern RTN should be achieveable by redirecting the AMETI money as you have pointed out so many times in the past.

  7. What about Avondale to Southdown – it seems to have been forgotted about somewhat in recent discussions. Is there not something to be said for making this a priority after the CBD loop and airport extension, in that it completes the network we already have, and offers rail travellers meaningful opportunities to get to most points out west, on the isthmus, and in South Auckland without having to make very inefficient detours as currently is the case.

    My understanding is that fairly reasonable parts of the route are already set aside, potentially making it an easier project to actually complete.

    1. Michael – if I recall correctly one of the ARTA long term planning reports suggested building Avondale to Southdown at the same time as the airport line, as West to airport trains would maximise the benefit of the investment in the airport line.

      As I understand it SH20 has made it easier to build the railway line in some places, and potentially harder at other spots. Be wary when ever you see the statement ‘future proofed for light rail’. There are some real concerns that the proposed route for the waterview connection will by shifting the rail line to one side make the line more expensive as more properties may have to be purchased. This is a bit cheeky of transit given SH20 was built on a rail corridor that has been designated since the 1940s.

  8. On the eastern RTN, a first stage to Botany or Flat Bush would gain a lot of benefits without the cost of the Manukau tunnel, which could wait for a second stage. Personally I think a rail bridge over the Tamaki with walking and cycle access would be the best idea. It need not be an eyesore and it would save hundreds of millions over a tunnel.

    On the northern:
    -The Vic Park Tunnel allows for one of the four soutbound lanes to carry buses to midtown via Cook St, so that should stave off congestion for a while.

    -There should be a station at Rosedale Rd (overpass of main road in residential area), not Greville Rd (massive roundabout based interchange next to the dump and light industrial).

    -These definitely needs to be an interchange station at the end of Onewa Rd.

    -Staging the upgrade could be achieved by working in blocks, opening sections of the railway as they go along. Obviously the first section from the CBD to Akoranga Station could be done with very minimal impact on busway operations. From there you would close off each block between stations sucessively so that only one bit at a time is closed. I.e. buses would operate on the busway from the north, use a temporary detour around the bit being built (by local roads even) then terminate at first station of the upgraded track to transfer to a train.

    Any harbour rail tunnel would have the capacity for at least 20 trains an hour each way, probably even more. That’s enough capacity for three or four lines…. so maybe we should be talking about a North Shore rail network, not just one line. A branch from Constellation to Greenhithe along SH18 is an obvious candidate, to be eventually extended to West Auckland. A Manukau style branch to Takapuna CBD would be an option, and something in the Birkenhead-Northcote-Glenfield corridor seems logical (if tricky to build).

  9. What’s the “obvious sense” of the airport line? What is the catchment profile of trips to and from the airport?

    I’d want proof that a high frequency express bus service was sustainable before pouring a thousand dollars per Aucklander into a railway. It should be quite possible to do this, and if that can’t attract a profitable bus load then it suggests a railway wont do much better (certainly not better enough to offset the massive capital cost).

    Sydney’s airport line was a financial flop. Melbourne resisted the temptation and has an excellent high quality bus service. Brisbane’s one has survived and flourished thanks to not having to bear the capital cost of the rolling stock, but it also has a long established rail network that it connects into. Auckland doesn’t have that.

    If the private sector wants to build and run such a line, pay for all the costs itself and charge fares to recover the cost of capital then good luck to it – airport travellers have a high value of time, and are hardly deserving of subsidies for their travel. Of course if the optimistic forecasts of rail enthusiasts pan out, such a case may eventuate. I’d think the rational thing to do is “wait and see” if forecasts about the existing network meet expectations on patronage, revenue and costs.

    1. Buses to the airport don’t do well because they get stuck in the same traffic as everyone else who’s going there. If you’re going to be tied up in gridlock, why not take advantage of the convenience of your own car? Also, the Airbus is very expensive.

      Don’t think of the SW Line as an aiport line, think of it as another suburban line like the Eastern or Western, but it happens to have a stop at the airport. There’ll be other stops in high-population areas like Mangere, and Airport Oaks, to take advantage of the second-highest workforce-population area in Auckland and a residential area that’s low-income and currently has poor public transport options.

  10. Liberty, liberty, does the road to the airport turn a profit? No of course not, the road and its maintenance is a service paid for through taxation. Its benefits are calculated economically not financially. It’s a public service. Same applies to rail. And much of the benefit of a RTN is experienced by road users through greatly lowered congestion, but also by the city as a whole through productivity and agglomeration benefits. NZTA calculates the every dollar it spends on PT in Auckland it achieves $4.40 in road user benefits. Because any bus service shares the road these benefits will be lower.

    We should be much more focussed on choosing highly economically beneficial projects than trying to work out what creative accounting Australians can dress up a service to make it most look like a profit focussed business. The inevitable result of that is a crappy service [because of the wrong focus] and an even worse financial outcome [because of lower use, a lower cost recovery].

    Also remember the proposed line is really a local line connecting Manukau City/Mangere/Onehunga and the airport to the network. It is not just about getting suits to the airport from Britomart. Although airport market is very useful, and extra luggage space should provided as on the Heathrow trains. Its is a big employment centre too.

  11. This from The Age http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/how-cycling-inspired-a-city-20101012-16hhg.html

    Anyone got the skills and data to calculate the savings to the region of transit riding similar to the cycling one here? Got to get off that oil habit, of course rail isn’t nearly as good for walking or cycling, but the hidden economic costs of driving are huge and are borne collectively even if it doesn’t appear that way. Loss of land use to carparking, foreign exchange spent on vehicles, fuel and maintenance. Death and injury costs. Cost per km travelled for each mode would be interesting to see

  12. we must not forget that transport issues are caused in the main by land use patterns and problems. its where we have allowed all our origins and destinations to locate in relation to each other – spread out. so transport solutions will not solve transport problems so long as we have the same patterns of land use.
    the benefits of rail (or clearly distinguishable rapid transit – such as busways) as opposed to conventional buses, is that it will influence patterns of land use…unless they run alongside motorways.
    a good rail network should encourage mass intensification around the stations, but this cannot and won’t happen if rail runs alongside a motorway – apart from the fact the motorway eats up so much of the catchment, but also people don’t want to live next to a motorway.
    rapid transit therefore needs to run away from the motorway to be truly effective and be a land use catalyst, not just a transport solution.
    also, AMETI is pushing ahead in East Tamaki, with the idea of an RTN along the route. but this idea is fatally flawed. it will not be grade separated (so units will get stuck at intersections) and will not be rail, so RTN passengers will arrive at Panmure and be faced with a further change to get to the CBD. shocking thinking, but its pushing ahead.

    1. Just a reminder that the Auckland-Manukau Eastern Transport Initiative (AMETI) will hold an information session on Saturday, 16 October at the Panmure Community Hall, 7-13 Pilkington Road, between 10am and 1pm.

      There will be information available about:
      – Panmure intersection proposals (roundabout replacement)
      – The new bus rail interchange
      – The Lagoon Drive busway concept
      – Mountain Road to Fraser Road link investigations
      – There will also be a 30-minute presentation starting at 10.30am.

      This is our time to speak.

  13. Agree with Larry – now is the time to be looking at a North Shore rail loop designation to West Auckland. Ideally, this should have been done along with the recent construction of SH18, but a corridor should be designated ASAP as this area is going to fill in quite rapidly thanks to the new motorway.

    I believe that the NZTA is looking at doing the Albany extension of the busway (and the necessary crossover of SH1) at the same time they build a motorway-motorway connection of SH1/SH18 at Constellation.

    Regarding staffing costs of trains – my fantasy for the North Shore busway would be to see a driverless “skytrain” monorail system like they have in Vancouver. Just dreaming though!

  14. @rodin5, – The Vancouver Skytrain is not a monorail, , it infact has two standard steel rails and a 3rd rail for power pickup.

    I think the reason that rail to the Nth shore was even featured in Brown’s campaign was purely to get votes from the North Shore, where he has less of a presence than south of the bridge.

    If he had prioritised a CBD loop, airport link and some form of Botany connection, he would have been pilloried for ignoring those north of the bridge.

  15. Sting – You make a good point that people don’t want to live beside motorways, but actually this land is prime for for more affordable apartment style housing. Ideally, the land within a 400-500m radius around train stations and around the bus way stations should have virtually no development limits in terms of height/density.

  16. If you are tunnelling to Akoranga, why not point the tunnel closer to central northcote, and join up a first stage to the busway near Smales Farm? Less disruptive to the busway during construction.

    With the expected growth at Flat bush I hope they designate a route ASAP. Its a shame the manukau end is so expensive, as the line could start as an extension to the manukau service (not all passengers will be going north). I also wonder if there are any timelines to upgrading the section of SH1 that the line would have to cross – that might be an opportune time to insist transit allow for a tunnel under SH1 if they want to add more lanes.

  17. Patrick: Of course the road makes a profit, the entire road network generates enough surplus not only to maintain and sustain the capital already tied up in it, but to pour new capital into it (and into other modes). The rail network has not generated a financial surplus for decades. The contortions and evasions necessary to accept rail can be a financial drain on the economy, but is magically good for it, but deny roads make a financial surplus and are not good for the economy are astonishing. I like trains a lot, but the economics do not stack up to put in a bespoke high capacity link when the likely patronage doesn’t even currently support a decent bus service.

    Yes road expenditure is measured by economic benefit, but that is an anomaly as it involves vast assumptions about what users would be prepared to pay for and collectivises value in ways that don’t happen in free markets. Claiming productivity and agglomeration benefits is at best controversial, first because it involves some double counting, secondly because agglomeration benefits are only worthwhile in the context of globally competitive industries that export services, which you’ll struggle to find in NZ.

    Is Auckland Airport suffering because it lacks a rail link? Hardly. It is barely an international transit airport at all, and is indisputably NZ’s premier international hub (and already is second only to Sydney in premium traffic in Australasia).

    Melbourne has once again rejected a rail link for the airport as the decision has been made to reserve land for an outer ring road adjacent to it. The Skybus is a great success, but here we have advocacy for an airport rail link for an electric system that doesn’t even operate yet.

    Transport issues are not always (or often) solved by building something new, some basic economics will teach that the fundamental problem is that networks get grossly overused at short periods of the day in certain directions, and the rest of the time have ample capacity. Both road building fanatics and rail building fanatics suffer from the same problem, thinking demand should drive supply, but never expecting the direct beneficiaries to pay the full cost of that.

    1. More precisely, the system as a whole covers its operating costs and the surplus goes into capital investment. What is worth remembering is that is there is also a net transfer going on, from the ‘core’ parts of the roading system to the periphery – the bits of which which contribute fairly generous surpluses (urban main roads), suppport a big part of the rural roads network which doesn’t pay its way (=demand too light to cover its fixed costs).

      1. An argument can be made that the fixed costs of local roads should partly be recovered from an access charge for properties, particularly since over 50% of the costs of roads are unrelated to usage. As properties would have far lower value if they did not have road access, it isn’t unreasonable. I’d prefer that this be done transparently though. I am also open to fully recovering all such costs from road users, which is about a 10c/l increase in fuel tax and equivalent RUC. Hardly a big deal.

        Given that railways only really compete with state highways the point is moot really except in the context of some sidings.

    2. Liberty you’re doing the classic trick of conflating the financial and the economic. With the exception of the odd toll road [and they don’t ‘make money’], no road in NZ is operated on a financial basis. All roads are built and maintained through taxation, some national, some local. Yes some of this taxation is in the form of an excise on petrol but still there is no relationship between the amount of tax a road ‘earns’, if we can even say that, and what is spent on it. There is also a tax on tobacco but does that mean people with lung cancer should get better services? So every boat owner, and even Kiwi Rail pay petrol tax, it is a general tax and it is spent on a basis of perceived need not on a business model. No road can ‘go out of business’, they are financed economically, not as a profit or loss business. It’s a SERVICE.

      I know this idea offends the neoliberals, who love roads as they seem to represent individual freedom, and are happy with how they are paid for [because there seems to be little pain and like many taxes it’s efficient], but hate the idea of how it works when properly understood, as it looks horribly like some sort of frightening collective system. Arg. The poor dears; how confusing for them. And of course among the beneficiaries of this system are many businesses, which is great, but some of them, like the Road Users Forum, have so stuffed this horrible thought into the unexamined corners of their minds and persuaded themselves that they deserve this state subsidy for their business to get ever bigger. And so become apoplectic at the thought of the public getting some public transport.

      And this conflation, this convenient lie; this idea that roads and car travel is financially successful, but rail is some kind of Dickensian loss maker is their favourite weapon. We all, collectively, pay over and over for auto-dependency. Rail must pay for itself, really? Like that road does. No, like that road, rail is a service, for the collective good and like roads, helps individuals and businesses and society function. Roads are great, but sometimes trains are better, and together often even better.

      1. Patrick, the state highway network generates more than enough revenue to sustain and improve itself. Taxes they may be, but if vehicles did not consume petroleum or pay RUC on the state highway network, the taxes wouldn’t be raised. They are after all hypothecated to the National Land Transport Fund partly to do this. The Land Transport Pricing Study demonstrated that revenues from state highway usage were in surplus of requirements to maintain it and make some investment in it.

        You are dead wrong about fuel tax. Fuel tax and RUC are set according to the Cost Allocation Model that allocates road and PT expenditure to different classes of vehicles and vehicle weights and axle configurations. Off road usage of taxed fuels is eligible for a refund of Fuel Excise Duty, and off public road use of RUC liable vehicles is also liable for a refund. In effect RUC and fuel tax are forms of road pricing, RUC is a particularly disaggregated form of it as it allocates costs for road maintenance rather well based on weight and configuration.

        RUC and fuel excise duty (and motor vehicle registration and licensing fees) are not spent based on “general need” but on specific legislation from a hypothecated fund which prioritises expenditure by output classes. This revenue is not available for education, health, police activities outside those related to road safety and revenue enforcement, defence etc. Tobacco tax revenue goes into the Crown Account.

        Yes roads are not commercially run, but they can be defined as profit and loss according to whether enough is recovered from these hypothecated taxes to pay to keep the network at a steady state (maintain the capital value of the network). If not then other taxes would be needed to subsidise them, or the hypothecated taxes would need to be increased. I am sure you’d be one of the first to cry out in anger if the state highway network needed income taxes to prop it up, but the railways were a profitable business.

        I don’t “love roads”, roads are an essential piece of infrastructure in the modern world and have been a ubiquitous part of human civilisation for thousands of years. I am not happy with how they are paid for, I want there to be efficient road pricing so that roads operate commercially and road users pay the costs of the networks they use. The primary reason I support that is because it would resolve issues such as congestion and avoid over spending on the network.

        You can play semantics all you like but the primary beneficiaries of roads and railways (and all transport modes) are the users. In NZ rail users have on a whole never paid anything near like the long run marginal and fixed costs of that system, which is why it gets bailed out frequently. The reason is that most governments want railways to do what they aren’t very good at, and the users are not willing to pay those costs.

        Sadly politics gets in the way of rather rational economics, the simple point being that railways in New Zealand, in the long run, are economically efficient for long haul bulk freight on a handful of routes, two of the legacy passenger lines in Wellington and a couple of tourist services.

      2. Liberty, what you miss are the benefits to road users from people using rail. In terms of inter-city freight, there’s a benefit to road uses that highways aren’t clogged up with big trucks. Others on the road can travel faster, the roads are safer and they don’t need as much maintenance and repair.

        Similarly, in cities there are benefits to road users from having many people use the rail system – in that otherwise the roads would be incredibly clogged. Remember, around half of people entering Auckland’s CBD each morning do so on public transport. In New York City, around 95% of people working on Manhattan commute via public transport: most via rail. In both cases, without the broader benefits provided by public transport the cities simply wouldn’t function.

        The point is, roads operate more effectively the fewer vehicles that are on them (within reason). So there’s a real incentive to ensure they don’t get overcrowded. You can do that by pricing roads, or you can do that via subsidising public transport to encourage people off the roads. You like road pricing because you’re a libertarian. I think road pricing makes sense in some places (like Manhattan for example), but I’m yet to be convinced that it makes sense for Auckland at this point of time.

        If these lines don’t stack up in a business case (as long as the business case is done adequately to reflect wider benefits of rail) then fair enough if they aren’t prioritised. But until a business case is undertaken then we can only pontificate about what would be good value or not good value. Think of the $1.3 billion that is proposed to be spent on AMETI or the $5 billion on a road-based second harbour crossing. If cheaper rail projects avoid the need for more expensive roading projects, then who the heck cares which particular bunch of people paid for it – we obviously got the best deal.

        1. Admin – the intercity freight argument is negated by the reduction in RUC revenue (and ACC levies). Trucks pay more in RUC than the marginal costs of road use, so what you save in maintenance is more than made up by the reduction in RUC.

          The benefits to road users are when people who would have been drivers, use the rail system, when the roads are congested. Many rail users are not in any of those groups. New York is not a valid example as Manhatten was built around a privately built and commercially run subway system around a century ago (and privately built toll bridges and ferries). The fact that the NYC Subway is decrepit and that the NYC MTA is nearly bankrupt tells you what can happen with public sector run monopolies of what should be a profitable system (after all they are in Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan, and even London Underground is operating revenue positive).

          I like road pricing not because of my politics, but because of economics. Rational scarce resources by making people queue up to use them is appallingly inefficient and inequitable, you can guess how phone lines would work if they were free, because you’d have to wait for a free line to make your call. The means are not difficult, the principle is the same.

          For me a second harbour crossing should be an entirely private venture, AMETI should be smaller and the SE Corridor sold for a private investor to put a road on to toll. I want to apply the same discipline to roads as I do to railways.

          Who paid for it matters because it puts discipline on what is paid for, how well it is run, and whether it delivers what is needed. After all, intercity transport is pretty much financially self supporting, which ensures an efficient allocation of resources. When politicians decide to allocate money that isn’t theirs you have to question motives for rather obvious reasons, they don’t ever face sanctions for making decisions that are inefficient – only decisions that are unpopular.

          Given the electoral success gained by politicians across the spectrum for advocating grand projects of dubious merit, the ballot box isn’t much of a discipline on them wasting money. It never was in the past, and it isn’t now.

  18. Regarding the “Sydney’s airport line was a financial flop”. This is a good example of a failed PPP, more than anything. Within months of starting, the PPP arrangement collapsed. Just like the Clem7 motorway is collapsing in Brisbane, with over $1.5bn being written off the value of the investment.

    And you can’t claim “Of course the road makes a profit, the entire road network generates enough surplus not only to maintain and sustain the capital already tied up in it…” because you are ignoring the operational costs that the private motorist pours in annually – fuel, vehicle depreciation, insurance etc. If you are comparing the costs of PT with the cost of a road network, you need to include the operational costs as well.

    1. So a private motorist chooses to own a car and use it, and pays for it – not an imposition on taxpayers.

      Yet if faced the same share of costs for an urban passenger rail service that motorist wouldn’t consider using the train (which is why it is overwhelmingly subsidised).

      Yet if faced the same share of costs for a domestic flight, that same person might happily pay.
      Yet if faced the same share of costs for an intercity bus trip, that same person might happily pay.

      Has nobody actually figured out why that is so?
      The difference is that the only way the train might ever work, is if the peak car commuter faced the marginal cost of road use at that time on congested roads = congestion pricing.

      1. Quote:

        Has nobody actually figured out why that is so?
        The difference is that the only way the train might ever work, is if the peak car commuter faced the marginal cost of road use at that time on congested roads = congestion pricing.

        Possibly not even then. What drives peak modal choice is the aim of minimising travel time subject to a budget constraint. For many peak work trips, driving will still be faster than taking a train for at least some of the journey – and far faster than using a bus.

        The whole problem with rail is that what people are prepared to pay for it (which is a function of its quality of service) is much less, and sometimes far less, than what it costs to provide. It certainly creates external benefits, which bus use does not, and that is why we continue to support it.

  19. He is, not to mention the roads of national significance. If the road system
    is self sustaining including capital expenditure, that must mean the rons are being paid for entirely out of the hypothecated account. Right?

    A few points in response.
    The Melbourne airport bus is not excellent, it is oversubscribed, slow, expensive and it only achieves an 8% market share. It sits crawling in traffic on the tullamarine freeway with all the other traffic. The only reason Melbourne has ‘rejected’ a rail link is because the government is scared of the punative anti-competitive contract the old state government established the bus franchise under. The only reason this bus makes a profit for the private operator is the state sponsored exclusive rights, oh, and the fact the taxpayer built the company a brand new bus terminal in the CBD with dedicated access roads, and they let them operate on the freeway free of charge. They even widened it and established bus lanes half the way gratis.

    The proposed line in Auckland is not simply a terminal express, one would have to be ignorant of any of the planning proposals or discussion on the matter to think that. For the record the prefered option is a line from central Auckland to Manukau CBD, via Newmarket, Penrose, Onehunga and new interchange stations at Mangere Bridge, Favona, Mangere Town Centre, the airport commercial park and the terminals. So not only does this take in all the suburbs of western south Auckland and the airport itself, it also passes through the second largest employment district in the region.

  20. To my understanding the roads make a profit because the Minister sets the fuel taxes at a certain point, correct..?

    Hardly a free market…

    I believe that if parking requirements were eliminated and instead of fuel taxes GPS locators put into all vehicles to measure the distance travelled x the weight of the vehicles to more accurately measure the damage done by vehicles and payments made at that rate of damage, i.e. a much freer market user pays system, we’d see a big increase in PT use…

  21. Roads don’t make a profit even if you exclude all local roads which are paid for by the ratepayer, the consolidated fund tops up road transport to the tune of about a billion every year.

    1. Only a bil? Thought it was more. Certainly there’s a big hole between income and expenditure. Roading is insolvent, if not bankrupt, if one wants to play Liberty’s game.
      And let’s not go into the farce that is 53T trucks on local roads and the relevant TLA being told by “Trucker” Joyce that “No, you won’t get all the permit money, you’ll have to make do with notional increased economic activity to make up for the increased maintenance costs.” So, Scott, about that profitability…?

      1. There wasn’t a big hole until the Nats engaged in building inefficient motorways, which I have opposed. I have never claimed to be a National supporter. The Nats have failed on local roads, but the answer is rather straightforward – put local roads into commercial companies and enable those companies to charge for road use (up to a certain point).

        None of this actually takes away from the point that the network generates enough revenue to sustain its capital value (and local roads don’t compete with rail by and large). You can’t pretend that governments generally don’t have a problem raising funds to keep the road network operational and constantly improve it, because users are typically willing to pay (on average, it may be different if charged by route or region). Rail users have never been willing to pay anything remotely close to the costs of major renewals in New Zealand for passenger services for a very long time. Bus users have.

        1. Rail users aren’t willing to pay because they’re not actually the main beneficiaries in many cases. Why on earth should a rail user have to pay to cover the $17 in road user decongestion benefits that they have generated by catching the train instead of driving?

        2. Why aren’t cyclists paid $17 everytime they don’t drive? Or pedestrians? How about bus users (where the benefits are less but still substantial)?

          What about the rail users at off peak times, who ARE the main beneficiaries (because the congestion benefits are minor)? Shouldn’t they be paying their marginal costs of usage?

          It all just demonstrates how inefficient and unfair using second best pricing is (and the congestion remains).

        3. Road users don’t pay for any negative externalities, if they did they wouldn’t be very enthusiastic about driving!

          It is a bit rich that road users pay nothing for the negative externalities they inflict upon others (i.e congestion), but rail isn’t given anything for the positive externalities it affords road users (i.e decongestion). Road user get to have their cake and eat it too, while rail passengers are apparently supposed to pay all their own way and everyone else’s!

        4. Imagine if someone who spent 8 hours a day on the roads and developed lung problems was allowed to sue the council and government for the damage done by vehicle emissions…

          Imagine if building owners could sue for damage done to buildings from corroding particulate…

          Imagine if minimum parking requirements were eliminated…

          I don’t think it is a great stretch of the imagination to assume that in a totally free market with a system of English common law courts we’d see a massive rise in PT use, particularly electrically driven PT use…

          Which is why I always find it curious that Libertarians are so in favour of roads…

        5. Imagine if you had to pay a hospital levy as well as an ACC levy when you get a rego!
          I wonder how much that would cost if the Department of Health billed the Department of Transport for all transport related emergency department and hospital treatments.

        6. Nick, not to mention the Fire Service, who get no funding for operating as a rescue service. It costs over $250k to kit an appliance out to run as an emergency tender (hydraulics pumps, cutting gear, prying gear, etc), on top of fitting them out to be a normal pump appliance. All that money, plus the costs of training the crews and maintaining the rescue kit, come out of the FS levy on insurance that also has to fund the core service of putting the wet stuff on the hot stuff. If they started charging NZTA or ACC every road crash extrication, it’d get very costly very fast.

        7. Actually, there’s always been a hole. Even after Labour hypothecated roading tax there was still a hole. It was just a lot smaller. Roads aren’t self-sustaining, they require more money than they “generate”.

  22. This is a great post. I live on the shore, and have made extensive use of the busway since it opened to commute into the central city (although not right at the moment) — and I really don’t see any point in upgrading to rail at this point. The buses are flexible, and actually pretty scalable. You’re right that the Akoranga – CDB link is the slow bit. It takes about as long as the entire journey from Albany to Akoranga. So that might be better with a train system (although, you could just have a tunnel for buses, I guess).

    The key thing is that having a train forces you to transfer from a feeder bus, and this is always a loss in efficiency (many people, like me, can catch a bus from their suburb that goes directly down the busway). It doesn’t seem worth considering unless the frequency of trains was very high. The busses go every 10 minutes during rush hour at the moment, and every 15 for the rest of the day, so the bar is set pretty high. That that saves ol’ Len some money. Just build the rail loop, maybe the airport connection if you can fund it, and leave us the busway on the North Shore for now.

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