Southeast RTN – busway, rail, trolley-bus or light-rail?

When Auckland Transport released details of the latest concepts for a southeast busway: along Ti Rakau Drive between Botany and Pakuranga and eventually extending all the way into Panmure, I hesitated and had a pretty good think about whether this was a step in the right direction. On the negative side, if this busway is built to an RTN standard then I think the chances of us ever getting what I’ve called the “Howick/Botany Line” become pretty remote – at least any time in the next 30 years.

It’s a pretty darn awesome railway line in my opinion – improving access to the whole southeast part of Auckland, providing a Botany to Britomart connection in about 25 minutes, avoiding the “what to do at Panmure question”, the lot. Here’s a map of my preferred route:But if I’m realistic, I realise that there was no real hope in hell that this railway line would happen any time soon. To avoid massive environmental effects, most of the section between Glen Innes and Highland Park would probably need to be in a tunnel, while most of the section between Clover Park and Manukau City would also have to be in a tunnel. All up, a project like this would probably have a pricetag of around $3 billion. While I think it’s probably a better spend on $3 billion than a North Shore Line (and certainly a better spend than another road-based harbour crossing), it’s damn clear that we’re unlikely to have such amounts of money rolling around any time soon to embark on something like this.

If southeast Auckland currently had at least half-decent public transport, the lack of funding for a rail project like the one above might not be such a problem. We could just squeeze out small improvements to the current service while going about the task of designating, designing and eventually funding a rail project such as this. A pretty similar process to what might happen on the North Shore. But the problem is that public transport in southeast is nowhere near half-decent; in fact it is utterly terrible. It needs an improvement that is significant, relatively affordable and – perhaps most of all – can be done quickly. In terms of those matters, I think the AMETI busway idea makes a lot of sense.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t debate what the best solution is, taking an overall assessment of our options for the southeast – including both short-term and longer-term considerations. Engineer and public transport supporter Barry Palmer raised some interesting points in an email discussion and at Wednesday night’s Campaign for Better Transport meeting that I think are worth noting and discussing.

He says (with a bit of paraphrasing):

I was dismayed to read the Herald that there is to be provision for a busway in the AMETI development but not a word about any ultimate plan to convert this to light rail in due course.

I note particularly a recent EU report of research carried out in France, Austria and Switzerland on health hazards of traffic exhaust fumes found that: –

*Traffic induced Pollution costs the health system and therefore us about $700 per year per capita, (for NZ about $3 billion per year)

*Social and benefit costs for dependents of those killed or crippled by exhaust fumes is about $470 per year per capita, (for NZ about $2 billion per year).

These colossal amounts will merely be exacerbated along the corridors of the busways. Every new project that increases our exhaust fumes (diesel is 17 times more deadly than petrol which is bad enough) is another cost on our overloaded health budget increasing our rates of lung cancer, other cancers, bronchial and heart diseases.

I have often heard figures mentioning that air pollution in Auckland causes more deaths per year than the entire road toll across New Zealand. One only needs to walk up Victoria Street at around 5pm to smell the horrific fumes the are being emitted by the diesel buses. So I definitely agree with Barry that we should be concerns about emissions from diesel buses. He continues:

My second point is that apart from the above, light rail, although expensive in the beginning, will over time prove to be the less costly option. From the ATPA figures that I am consistently receive; light rail running and maintenance costs are regularly 20% and often 40% below that of a diesel bus operation. These cost comparisons are not immediately apparent either and ignorance of them amongst those who make critical decisions confer on us another substantial cost we could have saved. An LRV has two to three times the life of a bus, has less down time for maintenance and carries two to three times the number of passengers. When coupled a train of them can replace 10 buses (and 10 drivers).

This is an interesting point, and one that I’m interested in learning a bit more about. Undoubtedly light-rail is much more expensive to build than a busway, but if it’s cheaper to run (less staff per passenger, lower fuel costs, lower maintenance costs) at what point do the capital savings from the cheaper construction start to be a false economy? In the end, this may prove to be the telling matter which decides the point at which it is logical to turn the Northern Busway into a railway line: simply because continuing to operate it as a busway may become prohibitively expensive and inefficient.

I have a third point. Light Rail will always do a journey in 20 to 30% less time than a diesel bus. Because it doesn’t carry fuel and with electric motors with initial starting torques far superior to diesel engines and three independent braking systems (disc, regenerative and magnetic brakes on rails), it can accelerate and stop more than twice the rate of diesels and therefore maintain top speed for longer. In addition because of rail guidance its length can be as long as a street block so that its consequential multiple doors allow embarking and disembarking of passengers to be at least double that of a bus. It provides a smoother, quieter, fume-free ride.

Vehicle speed seems to be most dependent on issues like the level of priority given to the buses or trams, the speed they are boarded and the geometry of the route itself. Busways can theoretically offer many of the same measures – but for some reason they tend not to. You tend to need to validate your ticket in front of the driver, the lanes tend to be of a lower quality geometry and (at least until the median busway route was proposed) on-street bus lanes (as opposed to the Northern Busway) tend to be quite stop-start and are therefore greatly influenced by other traffic.

And now a fourth point. Light rail is independent of fossil fuels and would ensure that the eastern suburbs are protected in the inevitable event of an oil shortage. There are 18 main reasons I can supply that this will occur and electrification of public transport to that area is a must. Trolley bus would be a good interim measure and has a lot of the attributes of LRT including its less cost to run over its lifetime, but it does not equal LRT.

Peak oil really in the “elephant in the room” when it comes to future transport issues – something that I think will have a huge effect and will not be able to be mitigated through “lots of electric cars” as this government seems to think. That said, I’m not sure whether I would support trolley buses – as I think they can end up being the worst of both worlds in a tram/bus debate: they don’t offer the improved ride quality and enhanced capacity of a tram yet at the same time they don’t have the route flexibility and low capital costs of an independently powered bus.

Barry’s final point throws an interesting curve-ball into the whole debate: whether or not we should consider light-rail because of the ability to run ‘tram-trains’.

Now my final point is what I would describe as the king hit. Because of the development and outstanding success of a new vehicle now known as the tram-train we have a mode that can run on street-based tracks taking advantage of congestion-free narrow corridors wherever they are available and then access a rail corridor onto rail tracks (e.g. at Panmure through to Britomart and return) providing an unbroken congestion-free journey to the CBD.

I’m not sure how technically feasible these tram-trains (most famous in Karlsruhe) would be for our southeast RTN. I worry that the more “tram-like” they are, the more they would mess with regular trains on the Eastern Line between Panmure and Britomart; or the more ‘train like’ they are, the greater difficulties we would have actually running them on the street between Panmure and Botany.

Overall, I do think Barry makes some excellent points. But I wonder whether this is simply the wrong transport corridor to be focusing on for light-rail. As I’ve mentioned before, I think Dominion Road is probably the most suitable corridor for light-rail in Auckland: because of its existing high demand, because of its existing intensified corridor land-use patters, because of its enormous potential to further develop as a development corridor and so forth. Ti Rakau Drive really doesn’t have many of these qualities. Most of the passengers catching buses along Ti Rakau Drive would probably be coming from areas further south and further east than Botany, on a bunch of routes that would converge and then travel along the busway. Unless we could get the tram-trains to work, we would be forcing a bus-to-tram transfer at Botany and then a tram-to-train transfer at Panmure. While I’m all in favour of building a system around transfers I think that takes things one step too far! Furthermore, in terms of the pollution issues, most of the buses along this busway wouldn’t continue into the city, where pollution caused by diesel buses is probably worst. Once again, if we want to make an improvement to bus pollution and reduce its health effects, we would be better off focusing on a route like Dominion Road which does run into the heart of the city.

So while Barry does make good points and what he says does make sense, I still lean towards still supporting the busway model over light-rail: because of the particular characteristics of this transport corridor. At some point in the future we may wish to upgrade it (if fuel became exceedingly expensive perhaps), although if we reached that point we may actually be wanting to reconsider constructed the Howick/Botany Line after all. A busway can provide a lot of benefit quickly at a relatively low cost – so I think it’s my preferred option for now. As long as we put it down the middle, not to the side!

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