The feedback on yesterday’s blog post about my suggested alternative to another motorway harbour crossing has been quite interesting – and perhaps a little more mixed that I had anticipated. For a start, it’s probably worth clarifying that I don’t think a railway line between downtown and Takapuna is a particularly high priority for Auckland: I would put it behind the City Rail Link, rail to southwest Auckland (including the Airport), busways along State Highway 16 and in the southeast, as well as a huge overhaul of our existing bus network.
The spanner in this approach is the big push we’re starting to see from various parties in relation to Auckland’s supposed need for another Harbour Crossing. As I explained in yesterday’s post, my personal feeling is that we don’t really need another crossing for at least 20 years – and chances are if we’re clever about things, we shouldn’t need another road-based harbour crossing ever. The push for another Harbour Crossing is pretty strong. Even the Waitemata Local Board (who are pretty onto it when it comes to transport issues) support the project, though only as a tunnel and only with rail being part of the mix.
Reading through the comments to yesterday’s posts there were a number of points:
- Why not improve bus priority downtown if that’s the real problem?
- Do we really need an Onewa Station?
- It’s incredibly expensive for its limited catchment.
- Would the transfer at Akoranga/Takapuna put people off catching public transport?
The most common critique was that the project shouldn’t be a priority compared to other transport projects around Auckland – and on that matter I completely agree. But for one reason or another, the idea of another road-based harbour crossing has gained a lot of legs, and Steven Joyce seems keen on playing the crossing project off against the City Rail Link (presumably so that the holiday highway can pass under the radar). And compared to a $4-5 billion road crossing, what I’m proposing is cheap as chips.
So let’s look at the issues raised in the comments. Firstly, about improving bus priority downtown I could not agree more. In previous posts I have talked about things like a Sturdee Street busway for Northern Express services and high-quality bus lanes along Wellesley Street for non-NEX bus services to the North Shore. These measures could be introduced in the next couple of years and would make a big difference to how things are now – but eventually, if bus patronage increases as expected, it’s not going to be enough.
NZTA’s report on passenger transport options to the North Shore expected around 250 buses an hour to be trundling along Fanshawe Street at peak times in 2041 – compared to a capacity of around 110 buses an hour. Quite a big problem.
Even if we filter off some of the buses via Cook Street, we are still going to run into massive problems. Proposals like building underground busways, or the like, seem at first glance like a decent solution, but often turn out to be more expensive than rail tunnels due to their greater width and the need for exhaust ventilation.
The overall point is that at some point (2020, 2025, 2030 or beyond, it’s hard to tell) the city really won’t be able to cope with any more buses from the North Shore. So the “let’s improve bus priority in the city centre” delays the inevitable for sure, but it doesn’t avoid the inevitable.
On the matter of an Onewa Station, after a bit more thought about the logistics of the station and whether people would really want to transfer onto a train when they’re pretty damn close to the bridge and the opportunity for the train’s speed to make up the wait was limited, I think we’d be better off not bothering. So our line looks something like this:
From end to end, the line is almost exactly 8 kilometres. Yes, this means it is a very short railway line – but they do exist. And being short has its advantages in terms of not requiring particularly many trains to operate very good frequencies.
To get some idea about the speed of the line, and how long it might take to travel between the various stations, I took some cues from the Mandurah Line in Perth – which has some pretty wide gaps between some of its stations, but smaller gaps between others. I then used the average speed of trains on the Mandurah Line to provide an estimate of travel time for this line:
So heading from Aotea Station it would take us two minutes to get to Wynyard, then another four to Akoranga (the under harbour bit could get up to some really high speeds) and then another two from Akoranga to Takapuna. Eight minutes all up. How does that compare to bus travel times? Well let’s consult the (somewhat bizarre) Northern Express timetable for Akoranga to Britomart times:
I have a suspicion that at peak times, the 15 minute figure is somewhat optimistic. But even if it isn’t, the railway line would offer a six minute trip into town from Akoranga – saving nine minutes and easily making back the waiting times at stations on average (assuming 5 minute peak frequencies and 10 minute off-peak frequencies).
How about for bus trips between Takapuna and the city? Well here the time savings are huge – as the current travel times are extremely slow according to the timetable:
Travel times seem to vary from 20 minutes early on a Sunday morning to a staggeringly bad 45 minutes during the weekday peak. Needless to say, an 8 minute trip would be a vast improvement over current trip times.
For a pretty wide variety of trips the time savings, even when you take into account a 4 minute transfer penalty (my guess at an average wait time for the average passenger), are quite impressive:
Obviously the biggest gains are for Takapuna to CBD trips, but even Northern Express trips from Albany would shave around 20% off their travel time if people transfered onto the train at Akoranga. So I think it wouldn’t be too difficult to sell this as an improvement for the public transport catching public on the North Shore. The trips would also be much more reliable.
Now this isn’t to say that we should necessarily progress this project any time soon – but rather that I think it is a viable alternative to another motorway across the Waitemata Harbour. And I’m yet to see another option that would provide this type of additional people-carrying capacity between Takapuna and the city.
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If you’re going to dig another tunnel under the CBD, it might as well continue onto Newmarket or the Strand to provide better connectivity for people not going to the CBD.
Yes, admin prefers to connect from Aotea to The Strand and the Eastern Line, I quite like a similar route but popping out of Constutution Hill above street level and staying at that elevation bridging across the highway and connecting the Southern Line just west of Parnell Station. This would make a North South line; Takapuna via Newmarket to the Airport and Manukau City. And a Western/Eastern Line. There would also be direct South/West services, and some Southern services that enter the city via Grafton. One advantage of linking to the Parnell line is that would mean a large number of services coming from Newmarket would be able to avoid the slow loop around Vector Arena and head straight to Aotea, surely to become our busiest station. Good time saving for Southern Line trips to Midtown, Wynyard, and the Shore.
Either way there’s a fair bit of tunneling, but a great deal of additional network value.
I like that idea.
Lines should be kept as straight as possible to ensure the shortest trip times. If we can tolerate short station spacing a uni station could be easily added. The curve around vector is painfully slow.
Adding the line as Patrick R has describes would free capacity from the CBD tunnel allowing for future expansion, and freeing some Britomart slots to get terminating intercity trains in.
A far better idea than a four track CBD tunnel that has been argued for elsewhere in the past.
Why drop Onewa, there is plenty of Onewa Rd traffic it could pick up. A station isn’t a huge cost. You haven’t dropped Wynard by the same arguement.
The tunnel alignment should be straight from the CBD to the north side of the Onewa interchange. The tunnel has to pop out around this point due to harbour depth & grade limitations (according to the last hardbour crossing study).
Consider the advantages of linking the major tertiary hospitals …. Smales-Grafton-Middlemore…. 25,000 employees +patients + visitors + students …. $4,188,000,0000 (2010) DHB annual budget….. currently big differences in medical outcome depending on which hospital you go to …. chance for centres of excellence …. use of off-peak express services … . 10 minutes by train between hospitals.
You are missing the $4.2b elephant in the room.
Might be worth going another couple more kms
Still difficult to see why 246 buses per hour couldn’t be dealt with. Not ideal, sure, but a rail link to Takapuna will be very expensive. If you really don’t want the busses downtown, even with some grade separation, conversion to light rail could be an option, but I doubt it would be worth it. As for peak time commuting from Takapuna, how bout a ferry?
Rail replacing 246 buses an hour. Think of it like using Pantene:
“It won’t (have to) happen overnight, but it will (have to) happen”
But presumably not for any amount of money. I readily understand 246 buses per hour is a problem. But I do not believe it is beyond the wit of man to solve, particularly if the alternative is spending billions on a railway.
I agree with the thrust of this post, that is there is a cheaper alternative to another road crossing. I just think it is alot cheaper than a rail crossing. The road crossing is simply not required, the MOT review this year showed that. BCR’s were less than 0.5, and if a toll was used to improve the BCR, it would reduce demand to less than current usage. Just because some people are blindly calling for an uneconomic road crossing, does not mean a slightly less uneconomic rail crossing is a good idea.
Swan: Why would you run an 8km LRT line that is incompatible with the major form of rapid transit in the region? The problem with 246 buses an hour is that it requires a bus to pass Vic Park every 14 seconds. Once traffic light phasing and set down times are factored in this quickly causes congestion in itself and seriously erodes the time saving that the Busway has.
Rail to Takapuna rather than converting the entire Busway would mean that both sub-regional centre on the Shore (the other being Albany) are hooked into the rapid transit network rather than Takapuna being isolated so it makes sense to extend there providing the cost is not prohibitive, especially when you look at how long some of the buses take – ferries could be another option as you point out.
Well I dont think light rail is necessary personally, but it would be cheaper to run LRT over the existing bridge rather than a new heavy rail tunnel. It will be cheaper to run a branch to Takapuna at grade rather than more tunnelling.
Why does it need to be compatible with the rest of the network? Go to Paris and London and you will see different vehicle types on different lines.
If the bottleneck is fanshawe st, why not bypass it with a ferry from a new onewa rd bus station? With integrated tickets, of course. Ferries can carry a lot of people and can be very quick.
Just a quick note on the busway capacity. An 80km/h lane across the bridge can handle 250+ buses an hour, so the short term answer it to utilize some of the other city exits, in particular cook street and perhaps Shelly Beach Rd, maybe even send some right around to Wellesley St east or Beach Rd.
OK, I take the point of the post: Compared to another road based crossing this is better. But I really take issue with the fact that we’re just trying to meet demand – at all costs. The “must meet demand at all costs” attitude is what brought us the central motorway junction as well as Nelson, Hobson, and Customs Streets.
At some point it’s just not worth building any more transport infrastructure. I would suggest that in 40 years time (with the busway cranking at full capacity, with double decker buses, and median bus lanes on Fanshawe and elsewhere) Auckland may have reached that point.
If we can only run 200 buses per hour (for reasons of capacity or urban form) then so be it. Maybe at that point we should just put up the price, stop subsidising peak hour PT travel from the North, and let people sort themselves out? Or maybe the solution is to develop Takapuna as really just an extension of the CBD – so there’s more jobs on the shore.
So, while I understand that this suggestion is motivated by Joyce’s motorway madness, I just don’t think in this case we should be fighting “fire with fire.” The only scenario that would make this type of project feasible is if Auckland’s population “booms” more than we’re currently anticipating.
P.s. Assuming Auckland’s population does not boom, then I’d actually rather see this money get spent on something else . Let’s not take public transport so seriously that we allow it to divert funds from other areas that are more worthy of govt investment, such as alleviating NZ’s appalling child poverty rates. I do worry that the City Rail Link, Airport Rail, and North shore rail (of whatever form) that we could be approaching that point. This scale of project is less about “rail versus bus” or indeed even “PT versus roads” and actually more about “transport vs education.” Just wanted to put that context on the discussion – which of course also applies to Joyce’s stupid RONS.
Yes, of course, and it won’t cure cancer either but it is fairly clear that a private car dominant transport structure is a cause of social inequity in itself. Affordable and equitable accessibility greatly assists freedom of employment and access to services and pleasures. If we can help liberate households from having to try to own and run so many cars yet still get to work and education affordably and reliably and effectively
Not a bad thing to link up Takapuna beach with Mangere Shopping centre!, the Mangere Line itself, if well designed, will do a lot to help fix the severance of that community caused by the highways, connecting Mangere Town Centre back to its community.
Sorting out AK’s transit and urban form can go a long way to helping make AK a happier, healthier, safer, and fairer place… not wanting to over egg the pudding but within it ambit, ie more roads or better PT, there are social outcomes.
P.P.s But I suppose if it’s many decades into the future then MAYBE it’s affordable within the transport budget. I’ll sleep on it and see if I’m feeling more positive about the idea tomorrow morning :).
I think you discount the CBD bus tunnel too quickly. After all, tunnel costing of the Central Bus Tunnel option with 3 stations outlined in a CBD Rail Link Business Case biaised against this option will cost “only” $1,665M whereas the rail link under Waitamata is predicted to cost $2,700M before additional rolling stock.
What a horrible way to spend ‘only’ 1.665 billion [not counting buses and endless imported diesel]. If we are going to spend any sums like these can we please consider the quality of what we are making as well as the price?
A great line which would be well used. To add my 2 cents I think this could be extended to Uni, Parnell and finishing under the Strand. (with an underground walking route to Britomart.
I think a Northcote Pt station would make a lot of sense, particularly for those who live in that part of the Shore. It’s a long way back to Akoranga, and currently their only real alternative is driving.
A hospital connection could make a lot of sense.
Also, Swan’s idea should be given consideration. LRT over the bridge, with separated lanes, could deliver much of the benefit for a fraction of the cost. Possibly.
err, Northcote ferry? or bus on the now emptier bridge with full bus lanes? And not clear how LRT is better than bus lanes, certainly more expensive and less flexible, and does not offer enormous additional capacity and no additional cross harbour route. Yes, Hospitals , Schools, Unis, are all good targets and should be considered and aimed for.
The main reason I suggested LRT was because some people apparently consider too many busses to be undesirable in town centres. I am not sure whether this is because they are bus-shaped, or because of emmissions. LRT has the advantage of having more passengers per vehicle, and having no emmissions. It doesnt offer as much flexibility as busses, but it has a whole lot more flexibility than heavy rail. LRT could reduce bus numbers not just in the CBD, but also in the north shore sub-regional centres such as Takapuna, Browns Bay, Birkenhead etc.
With regard to capacity, LRT would have the capactiy to take *everone* crossing the bridge in the morning peak according to admins original posts numbers (circa 30,000 over 2 hours), and possibly more than that depending on set up. Would the capacity potential of heavy rail ever seriously be needed from the North Shore to the CBD? I doubt it. Remember that 25% of bridge users come down Onewa Rd.
Manchester, UK, has been in the process of converting heavy rail commuter lines to light rail for the last 20 years and is currently massively expanding its network. Why? Higher frequency for less cost, and more flexibility in terms of street running, operating gradients etc. No need to dig expensive tunnels with LRT – in Manchester the CBD crossings are at grade through low traffic/ pedestrianised areas.
Personally I think busses and ferries will serve the north-shore just fine – if fuel prices become a problem, they can be converted to trolley buses. But LRT has some advantages in some peoples eyes and would be a lot cheaper for the similar benefits as heavy rail.
Unfortunately attempts to get any of the bridge given over to PT priority, either LRT or buslanes, will be used as an argument for another road crossing. ‘Look the bridge is full of buses/trams, we need a 10 lane super highway for trucks!’
LRT also cannot integrate with the existing rail network [and we’re not ripping that up] so cannot offer the breakthrough transformative linkages that rail can, and it still costs a lot. But yes, electricity is way way better than diesel.
I do think an Onewa station would be a good idea because it would allow to say catch a bus along Onewa Rd to the station and then a train to Takapuna.
Probably a direct bus across the shore would be quicker, the buses no longer going all the way to the city would be free to deliver frequent services to the busway and train stations and connect across the region. Transferring is less useful on shorter journeys.
One thing that really needs to be considered is the scale of interchange that NZTA would demand for any new road crossing at the city end. Just looking at the vast scale that has been added with the [crazy half-a-job] Vic Park half tunnel imagine what they would insist on to knit together any new crossing- bridge [heaven forfend] or tunnel. I’m sure they wouldn’t simply bury SH1 as that would mean there would be no redundancy for the main route if there was any kind of problem on the new crossing. A huge interchange would be be even ghastlier than what we’ve just got by exponential powers.
BTW Another reason I’m pissed off they didn’t put both sides of SH1 under the park is that we would be rid of the vile Cook St exit that destroys a potential vibrant bit of commercial Freemans Bay. I see no reason we that traffic can’t exit at Fanshaw, especially now that it’s motor width…. There’s alot of wasted city real estate there that will never have much use or value until that speeding off ramp has gone.
Penultimate sentence should read: ‘I see no reason why that traffic can’t exit at Fanshaw, especially now that it’s motorway width’
Trying to type to fast- like those drivers exiting at Cook St.
Big NO from me to any crossing..any kind.
Density is where it’s at Pe0ple!
Thanks for y0ur input St0nefields…N0t!