Following on from the completely unsurprising story about the holiday traffic the other day by the NZ Herald it seems they have now taken to another of their favorite pastimes, bashing rail. Today in their editorial they have attacked the current rail shutdown for electrification works and questioned the validity of upgrading the network. There are so many issues with this piece I’m not going to try and answer them all but effectively boiled down there seem to be two common themes:
1. They are saying that if we can afford to close the network on the 2-3 quietest weeks of the year then we should shut it down permanently and replace all with trains buses.
In that case, it may be wondered why the city is getting an upgraded rail service to run at untold operating losses, if buses can do the same job.
If that it is the case that we should close things if they are not needed during the quietest time of the year then does that also mean can afford to close two lanes of the harbour bridge seeing as they are closed for resurfacing work, how about the Newmarket viaduct southbound which was closed for a weekend for upgrading works, another thing is we could close off half of the motorway lanes seeing as they aren’t busy with not many cars on them.
2. That the patronage growth that we have seen since 2003 should be ignored, they also said something similar about the CBD tunnel study
The case for upgrading rail rests on assumptions that it will attract many more people to live near a station or become employers in the CBD. It is a gamble the Auckland Council is willing to take with the Government’s money. “Build it”, say our civic visionaries, “and commuters will come”.
They point to the growth in rail passengers since the Britomart terminal was built. But it was apparent to early assessors of the business plan for rail project that it would probably draw passengers from certain bus routes rather than increase public transport patronage overall. That impression is reinforced by the ease with which buses have been substituted for trains during this rail shutdown.
What they haven’t said is that while train patronage has skyrocketed from about 2.5 million trips a year in 2002 to about 9 million now, bus patronage has also increased so even if rail has taken some bus users, those have been replaced by new ones.
Speaking of the rail works, here are some photos courtesy of regular commenter Andrew, there are more posted at the CBT forum
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Just to note – the word is ‘pastimes’, not ‘pass times’.
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Wow. Real electrification masts. An impossible to miss sign that electrification is truly happening.
I hope the wires are strung up by September between Britomart & Kingsland.
Check it out – these masts have shadows, too!
I wonder if anyone can dig up a Herald editorial predicting that Britomart won’t attract any more passengers?
And have you refuted this editorial.
Er? what’s your point here, that Britomart hasn’t been a success? The numbers are huge, you’ve got to be kidding, and bus ridership has gone up at the same time… Like that editorial are you trying to argue that it is somehow bad that more people ride the train?
Does anyone take John Roughan and his half baked opionions seriously? After all this is the man who thinks the cheap ass four lane harbour bridge was a shining example of how to get things done and a credit to those who commissioned it. He himself is a shining example of all that has been wrong with Auckland in the past.
Unfortunately there are people who do. I once saw an opinion on a blog that stated that we should remove all railway lines in the country to stop the government from spending more money on them. I also saw a hilarious comment that said that rail was good at transporting bulk cargo like coal, but trucks were better at so called ‘door to door’ transport. I guess the person thought that when a cargo is picked up it is transported straight to the destination with no intermediate stops.
When they finally release it from the moderation queue, my comment pointed out that line-haul trucks don’t deliver your parcels.
Replacing line-haul with rail would be completely feasible for a lot of what currently goes by road. Couriers and smaller trucks do the “last mile” right now, and in the case of stuff coming off ships there’re rail lines right into pretty much every major port (except Onehunga, AFAIK) that could avoid the road-based trans-shipping entirely.
I find their commenting system shocking, comments can take hours or even days to appear and as a result it tends to destroy any chance of a meaningful debate. I do think they should be moderated but perhaps they need someway to let comments from people who have been ‘approved’ to appear instantly.
Agreed. Maybe have users on probation for their first dozen-or-so comments, and put them back if a “report” is upheld. As the system stands, they’ve got to be paying far more people than necessary to approve comments sometimes, as you say, days after they’re submitted.
Just looked, and still no sign of my comment. That’s over 24 hours later. Appalling.
And still no sign of it. Obviously they’re not publishing any more of the comments on that column. I wonder if there was a deluge of “Your writer’s a total moron, and I can’t believe you publish this crap”-type responses.
The rest of the comments have now been released, 49 of them and having a quick skim through about 45 of them are saying the editorial is a piece of rubbish/uninformed/biased drivel which is great to see. Also many of the original comments slamming the editorial have had over 100 ‘likes’ recorded against them.
My favourite comment: Ugg says cars good rail bad.
Sums up the editorial beautifully.
I am very disappointed in today’s editorial criticizing the upgrade to the rail network. It lacks any depth and shows a complete misunderstanding of what is actually going on. I am no rail expert but this upgrade is necessary to ensure we have a modern running rail network. The New Zealand Herald has failed to ensure that the editorials they publish are fair and without bias. There are so many errors and inaccuracies within the editorial that it doesn’t warrant a response other than rail patronage in Auckland has tripled in the last 8 years and will continue to grow in, double figures, in the foreseeable future as oil prices rise and continued rail investment is realised.
Editorials are under no requirement to be balanced, they are opinion pieces. They should, however, publish a dissenting argument. I believe the broadcasting charter requires equal time to contrasting opinions, e.g. if you have the Prime Minister on your show to talk about a new policy they must get the Leader of the Opposition in as well. I don’t know if there is one for newspapers though.
I wonder if in a 1-newspaper town, most readers can’t help but take any Herald editorial seriously. Their campagin against public transport reminds me of the spinning half truths employed by Fox News.
The fact of the matter is that ignorant jackases like John Roughan, Jim Hopkins and the other columnists who don’t know much but “reckon” plenty can spout this tripe all they want. The horse has bolted – patronage continues to skyrocket each year and we are about to get a modern electric rail network which means it will grow further meaning rail will become an issue for more and more Aucklanders.
In addition public support for investment in improved public transport is beginning to grow and will continue to. It’s impossible to argue to the majority of people sitting in gridlock every morning that simply widening the motorway will solve their problem, they can see with their own eyes that’s not true.
Also political pressure is mounting for the CBD loop and local politicians across the whole spectrum support the project. There is a momentum building and i think that we cansider this kind of ignorant garbage the death rattle of the old Auckland. That’s not to say we dont’ have a battle on our hands with central government, however they wont be in forever.
Patronage has been rising steadily at high levels yet despite this the likes of Roughan say we should ignore it as there is no proof that people will use rail if we build it. The more you think about the more they are starting to sound like they are part of the flat earth society or any other group who ignores the facts no matter how conclusive they are.
The real issue is that these guys know rail use will increase with every improvement and they are determined to try to prevent this, if for no other reason that it is proving them wrong. But also because their type and the their friends are jealous of the lavish state support they now get and are terrified of it having any kind of rival.
Yesterdays men, but still causing trouble.
@Matt exactly. Its seems facts don’t matter to people like this (including our transport minister) they don’t like rail, so they’ll construct an argument against it regardless of merit or facts. Evidence to contrary does not matter, these type of people are not interested in that. To me it looks like they are fighting to protect an ideal.
This seems to be a particular mindset that is entrenched in the NZ babyboomer, anything remotely urban terrifies them. They like to pretend they live in small villages rather than suburbs in a city and they seem to see a city as something you have to endure and try to escape at any opportunity. So whatever the merits of an improved urban rail system people like Roughan will fight it tooth and nail it’s not rational.
I personally do believe they can only slow things down not stop them, we now have a city approaching 1.5 million a proper PT system is ineviatble sooner or later reality is just goin going to overwhelm them. They already sound out of touch and irrational. I mean if you read this article it’s truly ridiculous, if someone didn’t know better they would swear it was satire.
I am firmly of the believe that if some mystry billionare came along tomorrow and said they would donate $10 billion for building new rail lines in Auckland as long as the government paid for the CBD tunnel they would still oppose it.
I think the problem is not that they are anti-rail but anti-pt. They believe that PT should be reserved purely for people who can’t drive. They therefore see it as a social service and thus the minimum possible should be provided to stop it from being a “burden on the taxpayer”. PT = Socialism. They fail to see it as a useful tool to get cities moving.
Not even “can’t drive”, but rather “are too poor to drive”. Public transport is for the prolles, and anyone who’s anyone, or aspires to be anyone, ought be getting themselves about by means of private automobile. End of story.
That “too poor to drive” will encompass large swathes of the population within the next five years if petrol prices continue their inevitable upward trajectory at current pace is irrelevant to the Member for Double-Dipton, and the rest of our overlords on their six-figure remuneration packages. Who cares what petrol costs when you get paid a minimum of $140k? Such concerns are only for the workers, and what do they matter to anyone who’s anyone?
You can do better than that. Two arguments in rebuttal?
One is nonsense…
You should know only too well that the marginal cost of maintaining high density roads is tiny per vehicle, so closing roads at times of little use is a fatuous response to the money that Auckland commuter rail bleeds. Roads are closed at times of minimal usage for maintenance, which is entirely logical and efficient.
The second one has more merit, but still doesn’t fundamentally address the point that the entire project is based on being able to replace existing car commuter trips. Commute patterns don’t correspond well with the rail network.
It comes to the deeper question – Auckland today does not match the trip patterns of the rail network, but could the rail network change Auckland’s urban form to encourage CBD oriented growth and commutes based on rail? Or is it a multi billion dollar gamble which could be better spent on a flexible, lower cost and high capacity bus oriented option?
That is the fair question. Those who support rail can really only do so as a very long term “investment” in major changes in urban form and travel patterns.
Libertyscott,
Nobody is suggesting that rail replace all or even a majority of car trips, as your second point suggests. That is an ‘all or nothing’ knee-jerk response to a recent but modest PT policy shift that riles so many road supporters. They see the arguement in terms of ‘cars only or rail only’ – maybe out of frustration (?).
The point is that commuter patterns do correspond well enough with commuting patterns to remove enough vehicles from the local road network – for both the benefit of that road network and justification of any rail upgrade (including tunnel) costs.
Dan. I didn’t say all or a majority, given rail couldn’t cope with even 10% of car trips without massive transfers from other people. Besides not being a “road supporter”, my point is that the only serious economic justification for rail is reductions in traffic congestion on a scale that justifies its premium over buses.
You see the mode share for commute trips to the CBD is already quite PT intensive, certainly for a new world city of this size. 12% of commutes terminate in the CBD, the rail strategy is dominated by serving those people, so already more than 4 out of 5 Auckland commuters aren’t having this network designed with them in mind. Yes a handful will find rail useful to access intermediate stations.
So for rail to be beneficial, it presumably needs to grab a share of the two-thirds of so of car commuters that go to the CBD, or rather 8% of all commuters. Given a fair half of those wont be remotely near a railway (e.g. North Shore, isthmus southern corridors), it’s a long shot. The report I saw from ARC was that average road speeds would increase by 0.5km/h on the major parallel corridors, rather poor value.
Which means it can only be about changes in land use patterns to make Auckland more CBD focused, and the central planners wet dream of people living in London/Paris style high density flats on top of railway stations. I doubt if too many voters actually understand that.
Again, that report predicates on no population growth. ie: Do this with the current population and average speeds will increase by 0.5km/h. What’d it say about what average traffic speeds will do if it’s not done and the population grows by 600k over the next 30 years? Because they will very certainly not increase, though average journey time absolutely will.
Yes Dan. Indeed, my partner, who usually catches the train in to town, has reverted to driving in and paying $12 a day parking while they’re not running. She is happy to use the train (usually park and ride, occasionally 25-min walk) but not the bus.
(clarification: for work)
Does anyone know how many vehicle trips there are annually in Auckland? I cannot find a number.
What concerns me with all this anti-rail attitude (and I firmly include Scott in this) is that it’s spouted in the vacuum of no population growth for Auckland. The only way we can continue with the current rail system is if the population remains static, because it’s blatantly obvious to anyone with half an eye and a couple of functional neurons that we cannot keep expanding roads. The CBD has no lateral space along its road corridors, and there’s no width to keep building out the motorways (thankfully).
If the CBDRL’s projections of 45m rail boardings by 2041 are accurate, at an occupancy of 1.4 passengers per vehicle – from here, rounded up from 1.39, and using a whole-of-day figure that’s much higher than the peak-hour average occupancy- that’s about 32m car trips that don’t happen. If we consider the average occupancy of work/education, 1.19, it goes to 37.8m. That’s a whole hell of a lot of vehicular traffic, and even if we used full buses at 50 passengers per bus that’s 900k extra buses. Simply not feasible without rail.
I don’t have traffic figures but Stats NZ estimate that Aucklands population is growing at about 1.6% per year, based on that in 2007 Aucklands population was about 1.39 million, in 2010 it is estimated at about 1.46 million, a growth of 5% in 3 years
By comparison overall PT usage in 2007 was about 52.1 million trips and in 2010 was 60.6 million trips a growth of about 16% so above the rate of population growth. For the rail network specifically there were about 5.74 million trips in 2007 and 8.47 million trips in 2010, a growth of over 47%
Matt, is the only answer to ever increasing demand for transport capacity to keep supplying it, or could it be that pricing existing networks efficiently that people might decide to consolidate trips, use active modes or use technology instead?
The whole premise that the only choices are to build roads (and there is plenty of physical if not economic scope to do that), or build public transport networks is very 20th century. With the exception of healthcare, no other sub-sector ignores price so blatantly.
You cannot price people out of their cars unless there’s an alternative. Making it prohibitively expensive for anyone less than the very wealthy to drive into the city is all well and good, but if the alternatives are a bus that comes once an hour and even in the dead of night takes 45 minutes to get to the rider’s destination then you’re not actually doing a good job of managing transport demand.
Similarly, your fantasy of charging public transport users the full cost (ignoring all the benefits to road users) would make it unaffordable to all but the very wealthy. Combine the two, and you’re in a situation where low-income workers, those whose jobs are the hardest to do other than when you’re on the premises, may not be able to afford to travel to their places of employment. That’s the outcome of what you really, really want, and is pretty typical libertarian thinking: fuck the poor, they don’t matter, if they mattered they could afford to pay for it.
Right now, Auckland does not have adequate alternative transport to private vehicles. For some people, it never will. For most others, high-quality alternatives can be delivered for a moderate capital cost and that will provide benefits to road users by keeping cars off the roads. Everyone wins, except you.
It is good to see the rail network being upgraded. Just make sure that the train lines are kept apart- you never know, when you want to run trains at high frequency, they might get in the way of each other.Frequent services are key (at least 15 minutes in both directions, off peak, all day)
Replacing rail with buses isn’t such a good idea. You need both actually. Rail is great for high capacity backbone services, buses are great for doing runs in suburban streets and then feeding into rail or filling in the gaps where there is no nearby rail service.
There are even places overseas which run Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) to Rail.
It is the best of both worlds.
i am from Auckland but live in Tokyo. i have lived here for 15 years and never owned a car. i rent one a few times a year for holiday trips. Auckland needs a cental rail loop, and a gradual expansion of lines to more suburbs. it needs a plan that is realistic but not out-of-sight slow. people need to know that there will be rail available in the medium term.
here, underground and overground trains are the default transport option. driving around Tokyo by car between 7am and 9pm is a huge waste of time. you walk, cycle or bus to the station from home. if you live in the outer suburbs you might go by motor scooter or car to the local station. i think Aucklanders can figure this out. it’s efficient and convenient. the population density and hills will mean bus feeders into suburban stations are the main short-term solution, but longer term you build residential along rail corridors. the national party f-wits trying to prevent the development of decent public transport will get their comeuppance.
“It comes to the deeper question – Auckland today does not match the trip patterns of the rail network, but could the rail network change Auckland’s urban form to encourage CBD oriented growth and commutes based on rail? Or is it a multi billion dollar gamble which could be better spent on a flexible, lower cost and high capacity bus oriented option?”
LibertyScott, your “gamble” argument (I am presuming you support further roads, rather than rail investment) becomes pretty shaky when one looks at how incredibly dangerous the “more roads!” gamble is in light of fuel price risks, and increasing intensification (whether fast or slow, Auckland will become denser).
Further, the “build it and they will come” philosophy is not a gamble – if you do something that substantial (build a motorway OR build a rail line) then people will react to it by taking advantage of it. There’s no gamble involved – the only real discussion on can have is whether investment X delivers enough outcomes Z.
And most of us here believe that rail investment has enough positive outcomes, and the current National government doesn’t. That’s what it comes down to. Since statistics describing the FUTURE can be tweaked (or outright faked) until the cows come home, there’s little use in my opinion of discussing that endlessly, even though we will.
All we know is that rail investment has so far worked quite well in Auckland in the last decade, and that real cities the world over that have good, extensive rail systems are doing quite well and are pretty pleased with them. We also have clear statistics about the downsides of our existing motorways, and the ginourmous costs of extending them even further. I wish that would be enough to close the case, but not for SJ.
NZ might have a lot of motorways, but with a little creativity, even these could be turned into public transport corridors.
Busways can be formed out of existing median lanes. And with a few tricks, you can put
trains down the middle of freeways. Perth, Australia has extensive lengths of train track that
run down the middle of freeways, some of which were formerly express bus lanes.
It can be done.
I would be looking very closely at the Auckland-Kumeu Motorway/North western motorway.
It has a nice, direct alignment. Motorways aren’t usually sited in areas where it is easy
to access, but people can be brought in on bus and in park and rides. Again, Perth has used
this concept, and it works surprisingly well. Some bus-rail interchanges are up on stilts
above the motorway, because there wasn’t space elsewhere.
Sorry, maybe I didn’t compare LibertyScott’s argument well enough – bus system vs rail system. So I’ll just list a couple of advantages of rail over bus:
– Ride comfort better than buses
– Does not get struck in traffic jams (busways are almost as expensive as rail, so no, buses can’t compete)
– Assuming a modern system, that is not affected by run-down rolling stock and upgrade works, will be much more dependable than bus systems
– Improved “sexieness” of an ugraded, 21st century rail system (on par with our motorways which are constantly being upgraded themselves) over buses, which, even if modern, are “old tech” whereas rail is new for most Aucklanders
– Planning certainty – if they upgrade a rail line to your suburb, you can be pretty sure it will still be there 3 years later, or 20 years later. Your bus service might disappear in a month, if SJ cuts the public transport subsidy, or Council decides to reorganise their route system
– Runs on electricity (fuel price issues don’t affect it much in NZ, while buses WILL be affected)
– More capacity than anything short of a busway
More capacity than anything including a busway. The only way to increase the capacity of the North Shore Busway is to upgrade it to heavy rail. Once it hits its limits in terms of headway between services, that’s it unless they build heavy rail. A single six-car train can carry more people than 10 ordinary buses, in a small fraction of the total distance required to have that many buses running along the busway, and could run at 30 trains an hour allowing a two-minute headway. That’s 300 buses, or one every 12 seconds.
Some thought needs to be given to how conversion will take place.
If you have 10 000 persons/hour/direction using the busway, how do you shut it down
to lay rail lines, but avoid catastrophic disruptions?
There needs to be some kind of plan, over and above simply saying “the busway
is designed accommodate rail”.
One would think the conversion could be fairly simple: just turn two of the normal motorway lanes into the busway while you’re doing the works 🙂
Yes, but you don’t have any stations on the freeway, so you would have to find a way to set them up and allow safe crossing or simply not have stations at all.
I think the point is being missed entirely.
In any large city, a mix of modes is required.
Rail lines are something that Auckland already has. Much better than starting over all again and building Brisbane style busways everywhere.
You already have the rail lines, they need upgrading, electrification and passengers brought in on buses. This is what Perth does.
The strengths of bus systems are their abilities to run on suburban streets and get close to where the passenger lives.
The strengths of a rail system is its ability to run at high speed, high capacity and high comfort, as well as land use impacts
around the stations.
Why not combine the two?
Auckland is where Perth was in the early 1990’s in terms of patronage. You have all the ingredients to make it work now, get some frequent
train services going (every 15 minutes as a minimum, to all stations until at least 7pm at night) and start running buses to train stations
so that people who do not live near rail can get to it. (this does not have to be all of them, but you get the idea).
Bus systems are good, but even Brisbane’s SE busway is now at capacity, with buses every 8 seconds at is busiest point in peak hour, flooding
our CBD with buses, and even we have to start thinking about the next step up, which will probably be rail.
The BrisUrbane blog published something that might be of interest:
Perth’s Rail Revolution: Peter Newman on why Perth chose rail: http://brisurbane.wordpress.com/2011/01/09/why-perth-chose-rail/