The big question mark surrounding what progress we can hope to make on the CBD Rail Tunnel in the next few years is “where is the funding going to come from?” If the project costs around $1.5 billion I have always thought a likely split would be central government funding around a billion (through NZTA and most likely through doing a cheaper and more cost effective Puhoi-Wellsford) and the Auckland region finding the remaining $500 million from local funding sources. (Of course, Aucklanders pay a huge amount into the National Land Transport Fund (which NZTA distributes) so really we would be paying for the whole project ourselves in a roundabout way.) There are of course two huge questions here though:
- Can the government be convinced to upset its motorway building frenzy and let NZTA spend some of that money on the CBD Rail Tunnel instead?
- How will the Auckland region come up with the remaining $500 million without sending rates through the roof?
There has been talk of infrastructure bonds (which is really just a fancy way of saying “borrowing”) and PPPs – which tend to be more expensive in the longer term, but how about we think a bit outside the square in terms of possible funding sources? Here’s my idea.
The council imposes an annual levy (of between $500 and $1000 per space) on every off street parking space in the CBD with that money going directly into a fund that pays back a loan to construct the CBD Rail Tunnel.
It’s not actually an idea that hasn’t been thought about before. Sydney has a very comprehensive parking levy scheme:
The Parking Space Levy (PSL) is part of many strategies adopted by the NSW Government to discourage car use in major commercial centres, encourage the use of public transport and to improve air quality.
Projects resourced from the Parking Space Levy have become crucial to improving Sydney’s air quality, reducing traffic congestion and facilitating access to public transport. A number of significant projects such as the Parramatta Transport Interchange and bus infrastructure on the Liverpool – Parramatta and North West Transitways have been funded with substantial contributions from the Parking Space Levy.
In Sydney, the levy is over $2000 per space per year in the CBD and in North Sydney. In a number of other employment hubs the levy is around $700 per year. It raises around $98 million a year, which gets spent on public transport projects.
The beauty of such a scheme is that it provides both an excellent carrot (funding public transport improvements) and a stick (more expensive parking) to encourage people who work in the CBD to get out of their cars and start using public transport. In terms of funding a project like the CBD Rail Tunnel there would be an obvious benefit to back up how you “sell” the levy scheme to the general public (in that they will know exactly where the money is going). Compared to putting up rates a fairly significant amount to fund the local share of the project, this could be more politically palatable.
There’s also a strong economic argument for making parking in the CBD more expensive and thereby discouraging the creation of more and more off-street parking spaces. That argument is based on this table that I post frequently:
If someone shifts from driving at peak times to catching the train at peak times they generate around $17 worth of benefits to road users. If someone shifts from driving to catching the bus at peak times, then they generate nearly $12 of benefits to road users. The same obviously works in reverse – that someone who is encouraged to drive (by their employer giving them a parking space for “free” for example) then if they used to catch public transport they’re now doing $12.61 in ‘economic damage’ to other road users. So there’s a pretty strong economic incentive to discourage the provision of too much parking in the CBD for commuters – as it significantly contributes to congestion.
The other great thing about applying a parking levy is that nobody is really forced to pay it. If you don’t want to pay the levy then just get rid of your parking spaces and ask your staff to catch the train to work on that lovely new electrified system with a station just across the road. For parking buildings, they can just put their prices up to cover the levy. Fewer people might use the buildings, but at a macro-level once again that’s probably a good thing for the city overall.
Perhaps the one drawback is whether applying the charge to the CBD could reduce the area’s competitiveness for attracting office developments and general investment. I guess one way to get around that would be to not apply the charge until the day the CBD Rail Tunnel opens – with the benefits brought by the rail tunnel likely to offset any adverse effects caused by the levy.
How much would it raise? Well let’s say we charged $750 a year for each space and let’s estimate there are 30,000 parking spaces in the CBD. That’s around $22.5 million a year: which could help service a pretty big chunk of the Council’s contribution to the project – and once again we end up in the good situation of those who benefit from the project: being primarily road users, being the ones who pay for it.
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Thoughts…
If the Council wanted to discourage CBD parking (and it should) then why does it own several CBD parking buildings?
Will the Council be applying the levy to spaces in its own parking buildings? That is just a transfer payment from one Council account to another.
If the levy applies only to off-street parking, then you’re incenting on-street parking. I’d prefer cars be hidden away rather than cluttering up the street. Altho that is dependent on parking buildings being of an acceptable external design since parking buildings are about the ugliest buildings to have in a city.
Your proposal would penalise anyone living in the CBD who has a car park associated with their apartment, or who rents a permanent space in a shared parking building. I’d like more people to live in the center rather than less, and I think CBD dwellers should have the same right to use a car as people who live in the suburbs.
The Council could easily afford $500million if it flogged a few assets. Like airport shares or parking buildings. No need to design new taxes or levies or to put rates up, and they could have the money in their account within a couple of months. Brown wouldn’t have to go begging to central government and could announce the start of work on the tunnel by the end of the year with a bit of luck. But the Council’s holdings in Mackay, Cairns, and Queenstown airports are apparently more important than the tunnel.
I think both Jeremy and myself have advocated that council sell its parking buildings – though probably best to wait until the market is slightly better, and better still to redevelop them first!
I don’t see how reducing off-street parking would “clutter up the streets”. Do you see a lot of empty parking spaces around the CBD at the moment during the day – I think not.
Oh, and I think Sydney exempts people who live in the same building as their carpark – we could do something similar. The measure is aimed to reduce commuter parking, not resident’s parking.
I think selling 4 of the 5 parking buildings (they should keep the one under Aotea) to pay for (part of) the CBD tunnel is a great idea…
The Airport shares too, I think the Airport and Airline industry as a whole has it’s time numbered due to peak oil as there are no alternatives to avgas… It’s why I favour the East line over the Airport line after the CBD loop…
There absolutely are alternatives to avgas. AirNZ’s already taken part in trial flights for jets using biofuel blends.
To my understanding at the moment some petroleum is always needed in avgas…
Sure, but stating that there’s no alternative says that that will remain the case indefinitely. We haven’t got to the point of having production cars that’ll run entirely on ethanol, either, but nobody’s saying that it won’t happen. Plus, it’s not like we’ll run out of oil completely. Getting petroleum in order to have some in avgas is not going to become impossible for many decades, and the figures I’ve seen for viable extraction from tar sands are quite a few USD/bbl less than the current world price for crude.
I actually think the bigger concern is fuel oil for shipping. To the best of my knowledge there’s no viable biofuel alternative, and it’s not like we can just stop sending stuff by boat. Sails and the like are all good, but there are trade routes that need engines. Nuclear power could be the way to go, were it not for the fact that a lot of countries aren’t happy with nuclear-powered ships in their national waters.
Well there are current available alternatives for ships, cars and trucks… Namely CNG, amongst others… CNG ships run on the flare off of the CNG they’re carrying…
Airplanes are completely different because of the ascept of flight…
“I don’t see how reducing off-street parking would “clutter up the streets”. Do you see a lot of empty parking spaces around the CBD at the moment during the day – I think not.”
I think on- and off-street parking should generally be priced so that it was cheaper to park off street and parking buildings would fill up before people started parking on the street. Obviously on-street parking is useful for pick-up and drop-off style “errands”, but a proper pricing mechanism and time limits for on-street parking could take care of this.
“Oh, and I think Sydney exempts people who live in the same building as their carpark – we could do something similar. The measure is aimed to reduce commuter parking, not resident’s parking.”
There are plenty of residents who lease parks in parking buildings, especially those who live in old conversions without built-in parking. This would be a financial incentive for developers to include parks in their apartment developments, rather than giving them the option of not including them and allowing residents to organise their own parking. That is the opposite of what I thought you’d be aiming to do.
“Will the Council be applying the levy to spaces in its own parking buildings? That is just a transfer payment from one Council account to another.”
Why wouldn’t they? The money would be additional to what the council was usually raising through parking as they’d simply increase the daily rates, don’t see how this is at all an issue?
I definitely think this is an avenue that the council needs to go down, the current feeding frenzy that developers seem to be in in regards to building as many parking spaces as they possibly can needs to be reined in. I find it ridiculous that developments such as Rhubarb Lane plan to construct over 3000 underground parking spaces. If they had to pay an additional $3 million to do so, I think they consider the economics a bit more.
I was really intrigued about these parking levies when I first read about them. However, it seems to me the best way to negate the negative effects is to exempt residential parking, and perhaps the first 1-2 parks for a shop, but then apply it uniformly across the whole city, not just the CBD. This way it doesn’t disincentivise the inner city (for either living or business), and also acknowledges the impact of suburban malls and big box retailers have on the roads.
“The Council could easily afford $500million if it flogged a few assets.”
Killing the goose that keeps laying golden eggs such as POAL would be a pretty short sighted idea, and the council has been elected on a platform of retaining assets. That said I doubt many would worry if the council sold off and redeveloped the land which their parking buildings sit on.
It costs money to collect this money, parking levies have significant boundary issues (pushing parking to the periphery of the zone affected), and definition issues (parking for shoppers and short term visits generally is not to be discouraged). It is definitely a poor option, as it encourages kiss and ride (people being dropped off instead of parking) and certainly reduces the attractiveness of the CBD. A better option would be an urban congestion charge, but that has boundary issues too. Yet at least it could be pricing the real issue (road capacity not matching demand), rather than a proxy for it. However, a CBD congestion charge would also reduce the attractiveness of the CBD (and have a low impact on congestion which is NOT about traffic going to the CBD).
On a different note, what I find telling is that the EEM shows you the relative benefits of mode shift to rail vs bus (note mode shift does not mean every additional passenger). Does rail cost only 47% more than bus? Is this ever true? Unless rail can deliver these benefits at that ratio or better, then it is more efficient to subsidise buses that can deliver it. Of course the key is the proportion of trips on either mode that are about mode shift rather than trip generation or captive market. Sadly ARTA never did much work on this.
The benefits to users of additional passengers reflects the Moehring effect (more users increase frequency), but this gets offset by crowding at a certain point, although in NZ this is relatively rare.
Compared to the collection costs of a road pricing scheme I would think this one would be really cheap and easy. You just need to calculate the number of parking spaces each site has and send a bill every year.
Compare that to GPS based road-pricing schemes where every car needs a transmitter and you need a giant central computer working it all out… I think it’s obvious which one would be cheaper.
Wouldn’t they already have a list of how many car parking spaces on each title as part of the LIM and/or rating valuations. It would be incredibly simple, you simply add a line item to the rates invoice for every car park that isn’t on a residential title.
Melbourne has one of these too, A CBD carpark costs $800 a year in levies (except residential, civic institutions, religous buildings and not for profit organisations).
The ARPES already looked at this. Parking spaces that are not in parking buildings or purpose built become a bit of an issue. Of course these schemes become quite clever to evade, and you haven’t addressed the boundary issue (nor the point that it will have next to no effect on congestion). It was ruled out before for good reason, it collects little money, it does little for congestion, it has perverse effects geographically and incentivises all sorts of behaviour to redefine parking places. For example, what do you do if you have an empty lot which you simply charge people to drive in and park? More importantly, should all car parks be treated identically (including those for access to retail)?
For GPS based road pricing schemes it is becoming remarkably affordable, given the technology needed now exists in virtually every smartphone on the market. You don’t need a giant central computer working it all out. The costs of doing this are outweighed many times over by the economic gains from cutting congestion, deferring road expansion and increasing the financial viability of public transport. Yet too many rail advocates remain in the failed 1970s US mode of thinking (built it and they will come and congestion will be eased).
Simply focusing charges on the CBD will have a significant negative effect because it will make an already relatively unattractive CBD (because of price) even more unattractive. The money raised couldn’t pay more than a fifth of the interest costs of debt on the tunnel, so the idea is moot in any case.
I quite like the idea of getting around the boundary issues by simply charging it everywhere. I’m not quite sure why you think that it wouldn’t make much of an impact on congestion – I mean it seems to me that parking costs are one the strongest determinants on whether someone catches public transport or not.
I do agree that applying it just to the CBD could result in encouraging further decentralisation of employment, which we probably don’t want for a number of reasons.
Ugh. Buses. I just missed the 7:26 from Ellerslie this morning, and made the silly mistake of catching a bus rather than waiting for the 7:38 in the vain hope of getting to my 8:00 meeting on time (I thought I did well to only be three minutes late). Dumb, dumb, dumb. The bus took 30 minutes from opposite the school on Main Highway to dropping me at the last stop on Anzac Ave. That’s with almost no traffic hold-ups, just traffic lights and stopping for passengers.
Buses lose to trains. It’s that simple. They’re slower, they carry fewer passengers, and the ratio of staff to passengers is distinctly unfavourable. Smart cards will improve the staffing ratio for trains even further, but until we get reliable driverless tech buses will have to have at least one staff member and a passenger:staff ratio of maybe 50:1 vs a train’s ratio of, potentially, 300:1, or more.
Hi Matt
In “public transport network Planning: a guide to best practice in NZ cities March 2010” co written by Paul Mees for NZTA there is an interesting section about the comparison between travel times in Auckland. Basically to paraphrase he asks why we continue to allow buses (to try) and compete with trains, when they really don’t have a chance and would be better used for feeder services. Not sure if these are from the timetables or if someone actually rode on the services.
-Peak New Lynn to Britomart 50min by bus 33min by train.
-Peak Papakura to Britomart 80min by bus 53min by standard train 38 minutes by express train.
Thats a wopper of a difference, it’d be like catching a local bus on the shore that travelled next to the Busway, just silly.
Sorry that this isn’t related to levies.
Si
Simon, that’s interesting. Kinda knew it, at least intellectually, but the whole waiting thing really does come into play. Plus, of course, at 07:30 one expects a fairly prompt journey. I know I could do it in 15 minutes by car if I followed (mostly, except for Grafton Bridge) the same route as the bus.
The issue is largely that I knew that a bus would get me there roughly on time, and I wouldn’t have to wait. Trains, however, are still not sufficiently reliable for me to want to risk even a three minute delay, putting me at Britomart at 7:56 and then facing an eight minute walk to my office. If I knew that the 7:35 would be right on time it wouldn’t have been a problem, because arriving at Britomart at 7:53 would’ve been fine.
Simon – what drives people’s modal choices is not so much the in-vehicle time, nearly as much as the door-to-door time. If your trip origin is halfway between two stations, and your endpoint is halfway between two stations, then catching a bus from outside your door to outside where you are going to will save a ten-fifteen minute walk to the station and (depending on where you are) a ten-minute walk at the other end as well. So, in total time terms, it might well need less time.
As for running the 470 (?) from Papakura to Auckland. Having caught this on my last trip in NZ, it was the fastest and most direct way to get from Greenlane station to Manukau City Centre; and then from there to Papakura. But, if my trip had been Greenlane station to Papakura station, then yes, I would have taken the train. I suspect that in transport terms, the bus’s role is complementary, catering for a whole lot of short journeys from or two the areas between the rail stations, not from or to the rail stations themselves.
Air NZ use JetA1- not avgas. That is for piston engines!
Im hopeful that the 3 underground stations would be attractive propositions for companies looking to invest, thus lowering the cost for the council and/or Government. The retail property potential of those three stations would be immense, especially Aotea, . Overseas many main stations are simply shopping centres with a train track in the corner, especially in Asia. Britomart is not overly commercial due to its heritage status, but I was surprised that Newmarket station didnt have many shops inside to create a bit more income. opportunities lost perhaps.
At Newmarket the site is so constricted, which clearly prevented any commercial opportunity for the network. This is because a previous corporate owner of the network, Fay Richwhite, sold every bit of land there, including air rights above the tracks, to shitty apartment developers. This company’s sole business model was to simply asset strip the entire national railway system of all sellable land while running down all services and any assets they couldn’t sell, like bridges and tunnels. Yay for neoliberalism! The private sector always does it best. We should give those guys a knighthood, what? too late? already got one… Welcome to New Zealand.
There are plans for a northern concourse at Newmarket linked into a commercial development over the rail triangle.
Russel Norman managed to grill English quite well in parliament today, he looked nervous on many occasions, rightly so.
Video here
Transcript here
Aparantly English still thinks building roads reduces congestion, and agrees that the benefit to cost ratio would get demolished if an oil crunch happened
the part i most liked was this:
I am sure that people will make their choices about whether to travel more or less, or whether to change their mode of transport. It is our guess that even if oil prices rise, most people still will want to travel by private car.
I’m sure people will make their choices too, but if there is no infastructure in place, or infastructure that cannot meet the demand, then what are people supposed to do? I’m quite certain that no matter what the oil price was most people would WANT to travel by private car. The problem is that they CANT due to costs.
If labour are serious about winning next year, they need to put forward a decent public transport policy, with the support Brown got in the local elections campeigning on transport, labour could easily swing the election from this head in the sand government.
(sorry to go off topic slightly, but in conclusion, to raise money for rail projects, like the cbd tunnel. Scrap the stupid uneconomic (before oil prices are taken into account) roads of national party significance. Theres heaps there
It might come down to how the build the CBD tunnel stations.
If they build them ‘inside out’ by mining outward from the tunnel bore, then they will presumably make them as compact as possible.
If they build them ‘top down’ by digging a huge hole in the ground, then they might as well fill the hole up with leasable floor space. At Aotea the platforms could be three or four floors down, so you could have like a bus interchange on the first floor down, then a floor of shops, then a mezannine concourse with more shops, then the platforms.
Getting money out of land around stations is how Hong Kong does it, Auckland Council should follow their lead.
If they were clever they could compulsorly acquire most of upper Symonds St, build the station, rezone the land around it for high rises then sell the land back at ten times the price.
“If they build them ‘top down’ by digging a huge hole in the ground, then they might as well fill the hole up with leasable floor space”
I’m not in favour of pokey little tube type stations. They’re just horrible. I’d assumed we’d be building in an excavated box and so could afford a bit of space and plenty of light in to the stations. But… Have the exact locations for the stations been selected yet? If so, what is there already? Buildings that no one will miss, hopefully.
I agree, I think they should design the stations two have a double height main ‘box’ with a open mezzanine level, to give an open cathedral type feel.
The problem with ‘top down’ is the depth of the stations, particularly at K Rd which will be around 30m below street level. Assuming a station box 180m long and 25m wide thats 135,000m3 to be dug out of one hell of a hole.
All the stations will be under the road corridor, so no buildings need be demolished although one assumes a few would be modified to include station entrances.
Aotea will be under Albert St between Victoria and Wellesley. K Rd will be under Pitt St between K Rd and Greys Ave, and Newton is to be under Symonds St between Newtown/Khyber and Mt Eden/New North.
“All the stations will be under the road corridor”
That removes the possibility of a Canada Water style light “shaft”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Canada_water_drum.jpg
Which is annoying!
You could do something like that with K Road station and have the “roof” in Beresford Square.
Which parts of upper Symonds St are you talking about. If up by Khyber pass then the options are limited. On the western side of the road are heritage buildings so there aren’t many options for development. On the eastern side there are already apartments up to the current max planning heights
Yes the air above the Newmarket triangle is privately owned, so no control or benefit there for the network, but the possibility, or hope, of more access to the platforms…. But the downturn means there’ll be nothing soon. Arise Sir Michael!
Happily the empty site of the old Royal International Hotel is perfectly placed at Midtown for access to constructing the tunnels and the new station. Also one presumes the Korean owner of this site will be familiar with the advantages of integrating any future retail development with what will be such a busy transit node. I do hope any work here takes into account just how busy this could get and the need for additional capacity for future lines. This station will be extremely popular unless so poorly designed and not future proofed….. sigh… one day Auckland will actually plan ahead.
But also perhaps happily the downtown means there is little threat of this carpark being built on soonish, so depending on how long this government can delay our desperately needed line, it shouldn’t be lost access.
It’s an especially good place for an entrance becuase of Darby St too, you would have basically a short level walk down Darby St, across the development’s ground floor to the concourse of the station.
Parking levies only work in planning systems that can stop out of centre trip generating uses, and it assumes that centres are so attractive that businesses will want to locate there even with levies.
We already have major problems with many of our trip generating uses spread out everywhere – retail, commercial, leisure etc, and are centres are the worst part of the city. New Lynn, despite the new rail station, can still not attract significant investment, and they are building a 6 storey parking building on the old bus station, next to the rail station.
Parking levies are the way forward, but if they are to work here, they have to be applied across the city (but not to residential) and have to be backed up by policies restricting out of centre development. Huge out of centre retailers, including supermarkets, would then suddenly be faced with huge bills, and have to think about changing their mode share or moving to more accessible locations. This will suddenly make New Lynn and other centres more attractive and raise land values.
But parking levies without such measures would be a disaster, and would lead to more dispersed land uses.
But in our country of imposing nothing that is seen as a tax, you try getting parking levies through…that would take a 20 year battle in the courts.
The exceptions also need to allow for suburban supermarkets away from rail services. Shopping malls, tax away, but many supermarkets aren’t located conveniently to public transport. People also tend to come away with more bags from a supermarket than they would a general shopping trip.
That said, a levy on carparks above one park per x sqm of floor space would be good for the likes of Countdown Greenlane (though how they’d cope with the McD’s on that site I’m not sure).
I’d love to see a carpark levy on Central Park (666 GSR) and other office parks located near the rail corridor. CP is a particularly egregious example because there’s a tunnel right onto the Ellerslie train station platform and every non-express bus from the east and the south drives right past it. I cannot think of any better-served area of concentrated suburban office space, but they still have hundreds of parking spaces that could be used for productive purposes.
Yes it’s pretty close to being a Queen St station. I think the crappy old carparking buildings behind the old George Courts building could well be removed during the K’Rd Station construction. This would make for another good access point for the contractors on what will be a tricky build. These two sites and some clearance of some scappy buildings at the Newton/Mt Eden end should make the whole thing more do-able. I assume lower Albert St, between Quay and Customs could also well be closed for a time to access the Northern end. Looks to like a challenge that Fletchers should relish….
Actually , you could go even further with the digging around the Aotea station and create something very useful for the city. A couple of exits for Aotea will come out onto Queen street. Another 3 or 4 exits would be right on top of the station. But If possible a long “mall-like tunnel exit could be extended the other way to the west under wellesley st and come out on the western side of Nelson st. It would be a long dig but perhaps be worth it considering a lot of people would use it to avoid the steep hill over the Nelson/hobson st ridge. Thus it would be heavily used and so popular for retailers. Another strand arcade kind of place but to link the western side of the city with the Queen st valley with a nice , flat, relatively comfortable walk. For the purposes of creating more retail space in the city, land making the city a bit more walkable/liveable.
The midtown station should be able to open up into the back of the Atrium on Elliot which also gives access to the Crown Plaza. From there its an easy walk to Queen St through either Midtown or Strand Arcade or a little further along Darby St