When might we need North Shore Rail?

Hidden among the vast number of ‘roads-mad’ documents that form the review of options for a future harbour crossing is one document that provides us with more of an insight into North Shore rail that we’ve probably ever seen before. In this post I will look at the issue of when might we need to introduce a North Shore railway line, while in a future post I will consider the matter of what form that rail link might take (ie. whether it should simply go up the busway or whether it should take a different alignment).

The document, prepared by Parsons Brinkerhoff, takes a good look at how public transport works between the North Shore and the city, both now and into the future. It assesses the busway capacity, parts of the busway route that will need upgrading in the nearer future, as well as giving us some clues about when the busway will no longer be sufficient for carrying the number of required people between the North Shore and the city.

If we start with that issue – busway capacity – the report notes that while the busway itself has a very high capacity for dealing with buses, certain parts of the route have a much lower capacity which can cause problems. This is outlined quite nicely in the diagram below:
As you can see, the real capacity constraint is at Fanshawe Street (in actual fact it’s probably on Sturdee Street and around where the Northern Express starts and stops its run but we’ll leave that issue aside for the moment). Unless we start sending more buses off the motorway at Cook Street (which could be an option once the Victoria Park Tunnel is completed) we are actually going to reach bus capacity along Fanshawe Street in the reasonably near future.

While there are some options for increasing the bus capacity of Fanshawe Street (although they’re pretty ugly like grade separating intersections with Beaumont and/or Halsey streets) or sending more buses via Cook Street, the main point to make is that ultimately I don’t think it will be the absolute capacity of the busway (in the form it has between Constellation and Akoranga stations) itself that determines the real ‘limit’ to the system: it will be what happens in the city centre. The report suggests a number of measures that could be taken around 2020 to increase the capacity of the city to take buses – these being:
With these measures, the report suggests that the busway could cope with projected demand right through to 2040 – much the same conclusion that the RLTS made.

However, this requires a pretty massive number of buses to travel into the Auckland city centre from the harbour bridge – and there are some interesting questions to ponder about that issue in terms of the effects of all those buses on the quality of the city centre. This is outlined further below:
So shifting people through a city centre in buses is certainly preferable to shifting them in cars (cars require much more roadspace and parking space), but there certainly seems a point where buses started contributing to, rather than alleviating, urban blight in the city centre: particularly if we’re interested in creating a world-class pedestrian focused city centre.

The report looks at this issue, in terms of analysing the question of at what level do buses start to become a problem: in terms of congestion, a reduction in service quality and, inevitably, effects on urban quality. The diagram below shows the levels at which (in buses per hour) things can start to get problematic: The current situation in Auckland generally works OK for arterials that have bus lanes (although personally I think the Albert Street bus lanes leave a lot to be desired in terms of their continuity): Even with the CBD Rail Tunnel in place by 2041, things start to get quite problematic on a number of bus corridors: Without the tunnel things are far far worse:
Hmmm… these maps are actually quite useful in proving the point that a surface bus option really isn’t a viable option, but that’s slightly besides the point in terms of this post.

Even if we’re a bit optimistic and assume the CBD Rail Tunnel will be in place by 2021, as planned by Auckland Council, a lot of the bus lanes will still start to experience problems in the relatively near future:
Fanshawe and Albert Streets are main thoroughfares for buses travelling to and from the North Shore. While Some of the problems can probably be fixed through changing bus routes (sending more buses via Cook Street exit or along Wellesley Street instead of up and down Albert Street), it seems fairly clear that the city centre does not have a limitless ability to cope with buses from the North Shore.

It is this issue: whether the city centre can handle all these buses without being ruined, that I think will ultimately determine the timing of a North Shore railway link. Furthermore, what might also prompt such a rail connection would be timing with a second road crossing. If it can be shown that a rail connection would alleviate the need for another road crossing (in a capacity sense), and that a rail connection was cheaper, it would seem like a logical thing to do in order to avoid having to spend $4-6 billion on another roading link.

I’ll look at the details of where a North Shore railway line might go in a future post.

Share this