There was an interesting interview of Australian transport academic David Hensher on National Radio’s “Nine to Noon” programme this morning. It’s well worth a listen. From listening to the interview, I felt that Hensher made three major points:
- That we need to strongly consider congestion charging to alleviate urban traffic congestion – and now we’re starting to develop the technology to do congestion charging in new ways (through GPS), if we’re smart we can develop quite a fair system (or a system that’s certainly a lot fairer than what we have now.
- That we need to give full consideration to bus-based public transport solutions, simply because they are enormously cheaper than rail.
- That public-private partnerships (PPPs) for transport infrastructure could work, but we’re probably going to have to do them very differently in the future to how we (well, Australia much more than NZ) have done them in the past.
I’m going to look at the three points he makes in turn, because I think that each of them is an interesting observation. In parts I agree with what he says, but in other places I disagree.
Looking first at congestion charging, I like the fact that Hensher says we need to completely rethink the way we charge for the use of transport, because the current tools (vehicle registration fees and petrol taxes) are very crude and often very unfair. Fuel taxes are unfair to some extent because a person who drives along a very congested road (and therefore contributes to making that road even more congested) pays the same amount – roughly – as someone driving along a free-flowing quiet road at 2am in the morning. Yet chances are most of that fuel tax money is going on projects that really only benefit people who are on the road at peak times. Annual vehicle licensing fees are extremely unfair because you pay the same amount whether you drive 1,000 km a year or 30,000 km a year. Perhaps where I disagree with what Hensher says is in terms of him proposing “cordon-based” congestion charging – which I think could be a disaster as unless it was done very carefully it would achieve very little other than disincentivising businesses from locating in central areas: the opposite to what we want! I talked a bit more about my thoughts on congestion charging in this previous blog post.
Probably the main part of what Hensher says in his interview that I disagree with is his dismissal of rail in favour of bus projects. While I understand the point that he’s trying to make: that we shouldn’t lose sight of how cheap and quick it is to make significant improvements to the bus network, I think he oversimplifies the point by seeming to say that buses will be the best solution in every circumstance. In this respect, he falls into the same trap as many others, by focusing too much on promoting a particular technology rather than focusing on what I would call a “horses for courses” approach. In some situations a bus-based system will work best, in others trains will work best and in some situations you probably need something between the two – and trams/light-rail might work best. Each situation is different, each transport corridor has its own characteristics and trip patterns, each transport problem may have a different solution. Perhaps what Hensher doesn’t realise, when he talks about the CBD Rail Tunnel project, is that the business case for that project specifically looked at bus alternatives and whether they made any sense. The answer was a resounding “no” – as either it would have been required to turn most of Auckland’s inner arterials into double or triple lane bus lanes (including most CBD streets) or we would have had to build a bus tunnel under the CBD that was around 40% more expensive than the rail tunnel. While in many cases buses will be the best solution (and this probably includes the North Shore for the next 20 odd years) in other cases the obvious answer will be rail.
Finally, Hensher briefly talks about PPPs, and in particular transport-related PPPs. He has much the same opinion as I do when it comes to PPPs – in that I’m suspicious they’re just accounting tricks to get the debt off government books and onto someone else’s books. The problem with such an approach is that generally the public partner ends up paying a heck of a lot more in the long run – because private agencies generally have much higher interest rates for borrowing due to the risk. He proposes a few ways that PPPs could work in the future – which sounds much like how our public transport system operates at the moment (and which I would hardly call a model that anyone should emulate).
All in all, it’s an interesting interview to listen to. I’d quite like to have a good sit down and chat with him one day, as a few of his thoughts (particularly his seemingly one-eyed obsession with buses being the solution for everything) surprise me a bit.
Processing...
I did take his point though about the great strength of buses being their flexibility. I liked his idea of doing a trial with bus-lanes and increased services, for example during the school holidays when there are spare buses and drivers. Perhaps not long enough though.
The Herald has a story about his views on busways this morning saying we shouldn’t even consider rail to the airport with a comment about the CBD tunnel saying it might be alright but busways are better
Busways far cheaper than rail says expert
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10691760
“When you look at Auckland, which is fairly low density, I’m absolutely amazed that you’d even consider heavy rail.”
..aahhh so the counter attack begins. Wonder who’s funding David Hensher?
Well, well wasn’t it good timing for SJ that in the middle of the debate this “expert” should pop up. Has anyone heard of David Hensher, what work has he done with regrds to public transport? The thing that gets me about this is that the only benefit he really comes up with for buses over rail (aprt from the old flexibility argument) is that they are cheaper. Surely we have learned from experience here that cheapest does not always equal the best solution.
Perhaps someone should interview Peter Newman or Paul Mees for a counter view?
Actually Paul Mees is very supportive of bus based systems in order to achieve his network effect, he might even go so far as to say stuff the busways, just run buslanes on every main road in the region.
It’s worth noting that David’s support for bus sytems goes back many years. Simply, he doesn’t see the point of investing in rail systems in situations where bus-based systems can do the job almost as well for a lot less money.
That is certainly not be the case, of course, for the CBD rail tunnel – but it is often the case when you look at light rail systems. At the traffic levels that most LRT systems run at (up to 4,000 peak pax per hour per direction), generally you can get a bus-based system to do the job at between a third and a quarter of the upfront cost. Yes, the LRT system will generally have more market appeal, but he would question whether that extra traffic carried (20-25 percent on top of the demand for a BRT system) is worth all the additional money. Anyway, this article is an introduction to his views on BRT/LRT.
http://www.ltaacademy.gov.sg/doc/David%20Hensher.pdf
I was disappointed by the interview. Once again, both the interviewer and the interviewee had not bothered to do their homework on Auckland and instead had a general discussion based as much on their ignorance of the topic as anything else.
“…Perhaps what Hensher doesn’t realise, when he talks about the CBD Rail Tunnel project, is that the business case for that project specifically looked at bus alternatives and whether they made any sense…”
Kathryn Ryan is in dire need of getting up to speed on this issue. She has no excuse – she is a full time journalist who has just three hours on air five days a week with plentiful time off. Even if she just worked a standard eight hour day she should be able to devote 25 hours a week to preparation and backgrounding for her show. Perhaps Mr. Arbury ought to email her and offer to do one or two hour long, backgrounding interview(s) on the Auckland PT scene?
Hensher was clearly only superficially familiar with Auckland’s particular transport needs, and he was essentially just pushing his particular bus barrow. What Auckland also doesn’t need is a parade of transport experts with no clue of local conditions turning up to basically just muddy the waters.
Prof. Hensher’s comment are a general puff for bus rapid transit, and implicitly a denigration of the Auckland CBD rail project, in circumstances where it is unlikely that he has the local knowledge needed to justify that position.
As you say, it really is ‘horses for courses’. For greenfields urban fringe development in car dependent cities, his comments are fair enough. For retrofit projects in existing urban areas, other factors may be more important; for example:
– space available: exactly how are fast, fully segregated, high capacity bus roads going to pass through Auckland CBD?
– state of the existing system: rail projects may be cost effective to complete missing links or make best use of existing assets (the obvious motivation for the Auckland CBD project).
Related points:
– Relative costs of BRT and light rail are very disputed. Light rail is obviously dearer on capital costs but may be cheaper on running costs and whole of life costs depending on the load to be carried. Again, it is really a case by case calculation.
– Statements like ‘bus rapid transit’ can carry more people than rail’ are mostly irrelevant to ANZ issues. There are few places in Australian or NZ cities where maximising line haul capacity is the most important issue. Usually the more important issue is: how to provide, at affordable cost, a good enough service quality to attract ‘choice’ riders in a wealthy car-owning city?
– Prof. Hensher’s comments, including the article that another commenter links to, are very focussed on technicalities of bus vs rail cost and capacity, and do not consider the interactions with urban planning policy. It is widely argued that rail, being more permanent and visible, is better at promoting transit oriented developments. I’m not saying this should be accepted uncritically, as it risks becoming a ‘fudge factor’ in cost benefit analysis; but it is a point that should be addressed.
– The poster children of bus rapid transit are Curitiba and Bogota. These have segregated median bus lanes on VERY WIDE arterial boulevards (see photos on flickr). There is no chance of introducing such busways on a typical ANZ four or six lane urban arterial without very disruptive road widening (assuming general traffic capacity should be maintained). The alternative is a completely separate Brisbane style busway (similar to Auckland’s North Shore busway), which is very expensive.
– Brisbane’s mostly-praised busways have been hugely expensive, and some argue that it would have been better to put some of the money towards improving the railways that already existed nearby.* Brisbane’s busways are also extremely CBD/commuter focussed, and not well suited for promoting ‘anywhere to anywhere’ cross suburban public transport use, which should be encouraged as Prof. H. rightly says, given that commuting to the centre is only a small proportion of total travel. I guess that Auckland’s North Shore busway is similar.
There is no prospect of developing either a Bogota or a Brisbane style busway network (comprehensive and fully segregated) in other Australian or NZ cities without:
– very high cost (including environmental/urban amenity cost of road widening and/or complete new corridors );
– willingness to abandon past investment in existing rail networks;
– serious problems of how to get buses through congested central areas with adequate level of service.
In my view the public transport future for ANZ cities is:
– continued improvement of the rail networks which we are lucky enough to have already; this may include modest extensions in favourable situations; but extensive new networks (as has been suggested for Sydney**) are unlikely to be cost-effective given low population densities;
– Brisbane style busways in favourable situations;
– light rail in favourable situations;
– much more emphasis on WIDESPREAD bus priority roadworks on existing roads to free buses from traffic congestion (the improvement to reliability is just as important as the higher speed).
I think the last point is actually most important, to encourage ‘anywhere to anywhere’ suburban PT use (not only commuting to the centre). But it tends to be neglected in all the shouting about multi-billion dollar headline projects. Multi-billion dollar rail projects, and slightly less expensive multi-billion dollar busway projects, BOTH have little to offer congestion-bound short distance suburban riders like the folks at http://www.ptua.org.au/2010/11/25/the-smartbus-crawl/
* For example see http://www.racq.com.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/19650/RACQ_Submission_to_Infrastructure_Australia_Oct_2008.pdf
** See http://www.transportpublicinquiry.com.au/
Interesting commentary on what I said. It is amazing how the focus on road pricing in the radio interview got totally ignored and up pops the emotional ideology on bus vs rail yet again as I predicted. For pundits who have never heard of me I believe I can claim international reputation in the field and they should check out our web at The University of Sydney: http://www.itls.usyd.edu.au. I also have good knowledge of the Auckland system, with respect but I do understand that some would say (happens everywhere) “what does some one from overseas know about us?” The issue of permanence of LRT vs. BRT is a red herring that started with my friend Peter Newman. Indeed we took the trams away in Sydney and there is growing evidence of value capture and land use impacts of serious BRT in some countries. BRT for those ignorant of it looks like a railway, acts like a railway on dedicated roads etc. and has stations and not stops n(much better spaced for connectivity than typical rail stations). I will live with the label anti-rail but it is sad and shows a lack of maturity in the debate still laden with ideology and modal bias. I am interested in value for money and that includes high levels of service for the dollar spent, and it is nonsense to argue for cost minimisation which I would never do – you start with service levels required and seek the best value solution.
Hi David,
Firstly, many thanks for commenting here. I was very much hoping that somehow you’d find this post and take the time to comment.
If you have a look at my post, you’ll see that I did dedicate about as much space to discussing road pricing as I did to “trains versus buses” debates. I guess most comments focus on the second issue because of the NZ Herald article and because we’re at a very delicate stage of things with regards to one particularly large (and necessary) rail project.
The reason I would question how well you know the Auckland system is because what you’re seeming to propose doesn’t match up particularly well with the facts – at least as I know them. I’ll work through the reasons for me feeling this way (of course I can’t speak for others):
1) When you say that you believe Auckland’s density is so low that you struggle to think of why we would even consider rail, how well do you actually know the data? My understanding from Demographia research is that Auckland’s density is comparable to Sydney and Melbourne’s, and nearly twice that of Perth and Brisbane. Yet, as I’m sure you are aware, both Brisbane and Perth have outstandingly successful rail systems that have been greatly expanded upon over the past few decades. If it has worked well for them, then surely rail can work well in Auckland?
2) When you promote busways as a cheaper alternative to rail for Auckland, what corridors are you actually looking at? And what standard of busway are we talking about – something completely grade separated like the Northern Busway or just superior bus lanes along a road like Dominion Road? If it’s the former, then aside from the SH16 corridor, I don’t really know where else a busway makes sense. Out to the airport – but then what happens between Onehugna and the CBD? The southeast corridor – but then what happens between Panmure and the CBD? As an alternative to the CBD Rail Tunnel? The business case looked at that option – it cost 50% more than rail.
If it’s the latter, then I completely agree with you that we need more bus lanes and we need them to be of a better standard. That has proven to be quite politically challenging – as we saw with the Dominion Road debacle a few months back – as people are unwilling to give up on-street parking and our arterials are fairly narrow. But overall, if we wanted to achieve maximum PT benefit for minimum cost over the next few years probably the best thing we could do is double our bus lane system and extend their operating hours. But that complements improving the rail system, it doesn’t replace it – what’s the point of building a busway south when there’s already a railway line? What’s the point of building a busway west (as opposed to northwest) when there’s already a railway line? The beauty of the CBD tunnel is that it unlocks capacity that already exists throughout the existing rail network, by making it possible for us to run trains at much higher frequencies. Having invested $1.6 billion in the rail system over the past few years and in the next few years, surely it’s sensible to squeeze as much capacity out of it as we can?
4) I guess to summarise, yes BRT is a very good idea because it can often achieve the same benefits as rail at a fraction of the price. But that’s only in a theoretical sense. We need to look at the reality of a city like Auckland and ask questions such as “what is the existing infrastructure?” and “what corridors do we need to serve” and “what space is available for new transport infrastructure?” Because of Auckland’s geography we actually have relatively few main travel corridors, we have an existing rail system that covers a few of those corridors, and an excellent busway that covers another. We also don’t have room to put new busways through the isthmus, unless they’re next to motorways – and in the case of the southern motorway we have a railway line next to it – so it’d be stupid to put a busway there.
As I said in my post, surely we want horses for courses – the best solution for each problem. In Auckland, that means rail in many cases because of the particular circumstances, not because of some ideological belief that rail is always better than buses.
3) I guess that brings me to my main point, where I wonder whether you fall into the trap that you’re accusing others of – focusing too much on the technology. Yes I agree there are rail & tram fans out there proposing rail-based solutions for issues that could be fixed through better buses. Ideas of rail to the North Shore may fall into that category – especially as the busway is pretty new and not yet at capacity. But don’t you think you’re falling into the same trap: proposing that buses are the most suitable solution to all our transport issues? I would suggest that you are focusing too much on the technology rather than simply saying that we should find the best solution to each individual situation. Sometimes that will be rail, sometimes trams but probably most often it will be buses – especially in Auckland. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t build rail when it does make most sense: like the CBD Tunnel, like to the Airport and (probably) like in the southeast.
David great to have you in the debate, seen you’re here, perhaps you could answer the question: who paid for your visit?
David – Thanks for joining in and it would be great to hear further ideas from you.
On the road pricing issue, it is something I completely agree on and have commented on here about it before. We are going to have to do something in the future anyway as with cars becoming more and more efficient it will lead to a reduction in the amount of money collected via a petrol tax alone while maintenance costs will not reduce and future improvements to the roading network will be jeopardised. At the same time as doing that it would be the perfect time to introduce into the mix a form of congestion charge into the mix but as you say the hard part is the political will not the technology.
As for the bus vs rail, if Auckland had no form of rapid transport at all then I would think that busways are the cheapest and probably best solution but seeing as we have rail already it seems stupid to either duplicate that to allow us to put busways in or not invest in it to allow us to get the most out of the network we have. For the CBD tunnel we have just produced a business case for it and it is positive, yes it is a big investment but one that is needed. For the Airport, rail is in a way over half way there already now that the Onehunga line is reopened, surely we could look at extending that even it if meant doing just a few stations at a time.
My last comment. My visit was as guest speaker at the launch of the new Institute of Business Research at Waikato Univerity. No one paid me from the transport sector but when people know I was in NZ they wanted to talk to me. And finally I do not do lobby work but work with objective arguments.
Thanks David