Media on City Rail Link

It has been interesting to see the media’s response to last week’s release of the City Rail Link’s business case review. Initially it seemed that the reaction was quite negative towards the project – with many outlets reporting that it seemed as though the original business case had (in the words of Steven Joyce) “massaged the figures”. The Herald editorial on Thursday basically said that Auckland should pay for the project itself, if we believe so strongly in it:

It appears national transport planners would have no objection to Auckland financing the whole project if the council could convince its ratepayers to carry the debt and operating costs. That would be the most reliable test. No matter how exciting an underground line sounds, no matter how essential it may be to the mayor’s “vision”, would we pay for it?

Aucklanders readily agreed to finance a harbour bridge because they knew they would use it. Underground rail is a bigger gamble but it is one a Super City can take.

The editorial was also reasonably sceptical of the assumptions made by the council in its work:

Perhaps the most useful explanation for the divergence has come from a PWC director, Chris Money, once a senior official in the Transport Ministry.

He said the officials’ report had worked from past trends to predict the effect on the city whereas the report he helped to prepare had focused on the region’s plan for greater urban intensification.

That means, the council’s consultants have assumed rather a lot. The region’s plan for greater urban intensification depends on the rail loop. The planners are confident that if Auckland can be equipped with fast, frequent, reliable trains, the living and travelling habits of its citizens will change. More of us will want to live in higher density units close to train stations and work in the central city.

Well, maybe. It is not a lifestyle that has attracted much interest when previous councils have tried to encourage it, but maybe a central city loop would make a difference. If trains can run through Britomart rather than terminating there, more services can be provided.

While this is fairly stock standard from Herald editorials, it wasn’t supported by other articles – which seemed to outline quite clearly the differences between the two reviews in a non-biased manner.

Furthermore, Brian Rudman had an excellent opinion piece the next day pointing out the flaws in the MoT’s review:

Government officials bemoan the lack of detailed investigation about the bus tunnel which “would have a much larger effect in removing buses from the city streets than the rail tunnel” and complain that “the on-surface bus route improvements option is not worked up into a specific scenario that could be evaluated and costed”.

Vaguely they conclude the latter “is likely to be significantly cheaper than the rail tunnel but there is no indication of how much cheaper …”

While acknowledging that if future transport growth is restricted to the streets this will add to congestion, the officials seem to imagine this is manageable.

They request that “someone with expertise and a belief in bus systems should develop the best possible configuration of bus lanes, bus stops, bus types, traffic management arrangements etc that achieve the critical success factors. Current bus ownership arrangements and contract forms should not be regarded as constraints”.

To Aucklanders just seeking a reliable ride to and from work, this sort of theorising is just fantasyland musings. In a rebuttal of this “more bus” proposal, Auckland Transport’s experts argued that without the rail loop, by 2041 Auckland would need exclusive busways, four-lanes wide, running out of the city.

“In many circumstances in Auckland this would take the entire width of the roadway and effectively stop all general traffic from using those roads.” How happy this would make motorists is not discussed.

Yeah, this is the kind of street that would be necessary to deal with the quantity of buses we’d end up with without the rail project proceeding:

While this might be a good model for what to do with the Northwest Motorway in the longer-term, I can’t quite see it working on Symonds Street. Rudman makes the excellent point that this is not to mean we shouldn’t look at cost-effective ways to improve the bus network – in fact it’s probably something we need to embark upon immediately – but rather that relying on bus improvements alone will not be enough in the long-run.

Adding to the fantasy is the suggestion that Auckland planners should not regard “current bus ownership arrangements … as constraints”. There’s no doubt they are a huge constraint, but the present Government has made it plain it is not going to alter the private ownership system or impose more controls.

Of course, improvements to the existing set-up are to be encouraged. A redrawing of the route map is 50 years overdue. So is policing by Auckland Transport to ensure bus operators actually provide the services they are contracted to deliver. More bus lanes are needed as are new priority measures such as forcing motorists to give way to buses pulling out of bus stops, as happens in Sydney.

But none of the above improvements are going to cope with the predicted 32,000 extra passengers into the CBD in the 2041 morning peak. For that we need the rail loop.

I like the saying that “a redrawing of the route map is 50 years overdue”. I wonder if Auckland Transport took notice of that?

Finally, there was also an excellent article by Sunday Star Times columnist Rod Oram – who focused once again on the giant flaw in the government’s review: their ignorance of whether the CBD’s streets can handle the number of buses and cars projected by the transport modelling:

Building a rail loop to open up Britomart, however, would allow up to 60 trains an hour. This would help maximise the existing 200km of passenger rail lines by, for example, allowing better bus services to local rail stations rather than running most services into the city centre. This would reduce the number of buses coming in from the west, allowing more buses to come from the north where there is no rail alternative.

Without the rail loop and allied reorientation of bus routes to train stations, the downtown bus volumes become horrendous, according to analysis done for the council last year on the impact of the next harbour crossing.

It concluded that the number of buses using Fanshawe St during the peak morning rush would rise from 86 per hour today to 246 per hour in 2041; from 77 per hour to 245 per hour on Albert St; and from 106 per hour to 318 per hour on Symonds St by the university.

Could any of the streets cope with a bus every 10-15 seconds? Yes, but only if the city built South American-style Bus Rapid Transit systems with two dedicated lanes in each direction and dedicated stations every 800m. A BRT would take up all existing road space on Symonds and Albert Sts, denying access to cars. And the streets would become pedestrian hells.

Imagine, for example, the University of Auckland trying to sell itself to overseas students as a delightful place to earn a good degree with a bus every 11 seconds running down the main road dividing the campus.

This is not the city Aucklanders want or the council plans to deliver. But this is the city the government wants us to have. It made its views very clear in its “advice”. It pushed for more roads and low density, which would force Auckland to ooze inefficiently, uneconomically and unattractively over the surrounding countryside.

Oram also looks at the other area where Council disagreed with the government’s officials – in terms of the impact of the tunnel on employment patterns. The Council reckons the project will stimulate up to an additional 22,000 jobs in the CBD, the government reckons that even 5,000 is optimistic. This is Oram’s take:

The rail loop will play two critical roles in the plan: as a big stimulus to developing higher density, more sophisticated, higher-value activity in the CBD; and in promoting healthy circulation of people by public transport, thus relieving pressure on roads and thereby speeding the flow of goods.

Experience overseas shows that rail stations gather greater concentrations of buildings, jobs and economic activity. Thus, the council’s business case for the rail loop shows that the new stations built along the tunnel route will significantly increase the number and quality of CBD jobs.

The council and its transport agency have been well advised by international transport and economic consultants well versed in the methodologies of these wider economic benefits of such projects.

But when the council released its business case last year, Joyce ridiculed the methodology. He ordered a review by the Ministry of Transport and Treasury.

They obliged, releasing last week a report that went to extraordinary lengths to try to demolish the case made by the council and its international consultants. They rejected the calculations of wider economic benefits, even though the new methodology is accepted overseas. Instead, they used the old government methodology to calculate a far narrower range of benefits.

Oram’s whole article is an excellent read actually. He has really taken on Steven Joyce over the past year, both in terms of transport and land-use planning issues.

Overall, I think the general media response to what was a pretty suprising outcome from the business case review has been quite good and typically rather more intelligent than how transport is usually reported. Even this TV piece was quite well put together.

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