A fairly extensive agenda item (page 17 onwards, and then here and here) to tomorrow’s meeting of the Auckland Council Transport Committee looks once again at the concept of Hamilton to Auckland rail. Over the past few months a working group has been thoroughly investigating the proposal, especially after last year’s local body elections when it became quite a big issue in the Waikato. The latest report notes progress to date, and discusses a possible further avenue for funding – from within the Auckland region if the service can be shown to also provide a benefit to Aucklanders.
A summary of the paper is outlined below:
The Working Party recommended, in August 2011, a preferred option of a two-year trial of “Hamilton to Auckland service via the waterfront route (through Sylvia Park/ Glen Innes) on to the Strand Station and carrying on to Newmarket as the termination point for the peak service” in its Final Recommendation Report of the Rail Working Party on Hamilton to Auckland Passenger Rail Service (the Recommendation Report) in Attachment 1. The full list of recommendations is on pages 30-31 of the Recommendation Report.
The Recommendation Report includes a recommendation that Auckland Council be approached to contribute funding to the proposed service, in line with demonstrated quantified benefits for Auckland. However, the service, as currently structured, provides few benefits for Auckland as it does not provide for travel within Auckland. There are potential financial implications for the Council if the service can be restructured in such a way as to provide more benefit to Auckland and Auckland Transport is unable to fund these benefits (by way of payment to the Waikato region) within its resources.
It also recommends all partner (Waikato) Councils formally endorse by 31 October 2011 that the proposal proceed to public consultation through the 2012 Long Term Plan (LTP) processes for the Waikato councils. The public consultation will be used to gauge Waikato public support for a rates increase to subsidise the operation of such a service.
Subject to sufficient funding being included in LTPs, and a range of technical and operational issues being resolved, a Hamilton to Auckland commuter rail service could begin operation in the 2012/2013 financial year.
I have always thought that this service should, in the longer term, be able to operate commercially without subsidy. After all the Capital Connection between Wellington and Palmerston North is run by KiwiRail on a commercial basis – and both Auckland and Hamilton are much larger than Wellington and Palmerston North respectively, with more potential for patronage.
Some more detail on what’s being proposed is outlined:
The preferred option in the Recommendation Report is a Hamilton to The Strand/ Newmarket Silver Fern service, running two return trips per weekday. The peak service would operate between Hamilton and The Strand and then on to Newmarket with a possible transfer at The Strand to a dedicated bus service to the Auckland City Centre (to be worked out at a later date, as part of implementation planning). It is likely that the interpeak service could use Britomart depending on its timing.
The Working Party recommended a single stop in Auckland at Papatoetoe Station to enable passengers to transfer to and from metro train services and the route 380 bus service to and from Auckland Airport. It would not pick up nor set down passengers there travelling to or from Auckland. Apart that one stop, the service would run non-stop in Auckland but it would need to follow an all-stops urban service for at least part of the way, even if the train from Hamilton were on time. However, a delayed service would have to be held until a slot opened up in the peak Auckland urban rail timetable and it may then have to follow an all-stops service. In a change from previous thinking, the preferred option is proposed to run via the Eastern Line and the peak service would terminate at Newmarket after stopping at The Strand Station. The reason for this is that there will only be six peak metro services per hour on the Eastern Line as opposed to eight services per hour between Penrose and Newmarket and 14 services per hour between Newmarket and The Strand. This would mean a significant likely improvement in reliability for a service via the Eastern Line as compared to a service via the Southern Line.
The advantages of the preferred option are that the Silver Fern railcars are available now; space is available at peak times at The Strand (but not at Britomart Station); there is no requirement for passengers to change trains at Papakura (as per previous options terminating the service at Papakura); and it does not involve the more significant capital costs for longer station platforms and additional rolling stock. It would allow a limited service to start up initially at lower cost that, if successful, could be improved over time.
The key disadvantages of the preferred option are the inability of peak train services to use Britomart Station owing to it having exhausted its peak train capacity; the overall travel time to The Strand Station (detailed further in the issues section below); the isolated nature and low level of amenity at The Strand Station, such as the absence of shelter; and the additional time required to transfer to a bus from The Strand Station to complete the journey to the Auckland City Centre.
The Working Party has assessed likely peak patronage per direction in a range between 65 – 142 per trip with the central forecast at 109 passengers per trip. Based on a middle point between the low and central forecast, it is estimated to require a subsidy of $1.23 million in the first year of operation.
The impact of Britomart’s capacity constraints are certainly starting to show, with the inability of the preferred option to access Britomart seeming to me like potentially a big hurdle to this being a success. After all, Auckland’s rail system only started being successful once again after Britomart station opened in 2003.
Other options that could be considered are extending an existing Pukekohe train further south, or perhaps sending one train from the south directly to the West (with passengers to Britomart transfering at Newmarket) in order to free up a spare slot at Britomart. A real solution, and therefore any real expansion of inter-city/regional commuter rail, will need to wait for the City Rail Link to be completed.
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I think we’re at the point where direct South-West services have to be considered no matter what. Even if the CRL was granted full funding tomorrow it’ll still be at least five years before it’s open. In the interim, we’re only months away from running out of time slots for services into Britomart and there’ll still be at least two years following full introduction of the electric trains where no services can be added if we persist with the “all services originate/terminate at Britomart” model.
Once trains are on HOP, there should be no technical impediment to having cost-free transfers at Newmarket. Beyond that, it’s just down to a willingness to try other ways of doing things. Plenty of other cities run services that intersect rather than having a central hub.
Britomart is a centre not the centre, and, as Matt points out, using the network for various destinations will become more of a practical reality with integrated ticketing. The Strand is absolutely nowhere and should not, in my view, be considered as any kind of destination.
If there are difficulties with running a direct service among the local trains so why not run a Waikato service to Papakura, timed to connect with the local service, travelers from the south can then reach any part of the network via transfer. Or, if this is not such an issue, it is time to seriously consider a south-west service. Stopping pattern and kit would need to be worked through.
Britomart is full, and the Strand is a poor substitute. Please don’t launch such an important new service on a flawed model.
While I agree with you Patrick, the Hamilton Station is hardly handy either. Maybe time to reopen the old underground station in the central city in Hamilton?
re ‘and both Auckland and Hamilton are much larger than Wellington and Palmerston North respectively’
The Capital Connection picks up 60%+ of patronage at Waikenae and Paraparaumu because it is a handy express service from these locations (around 10 min faster than Metlink expresses).
The equivalent with the Hamilton service would be to stop at Pukehoke and Papakura, and offer better journey times which it doesn’t sound like it will given the constraints on the Southern Line, and the fact that the terminus is 15 minutes walk from the commuter terminus.
Adding a stop at Tuakau would be a boost, and there’re a bunch of other intermediate stops that already exist (Ngaruawahia, Huntly, Te Kauwhata) that would also provide patrons.
If people start moving because of the MUL, and certainly some will, offering them a fairly quick, cost-effective way of commuting would be a way to keep their intellectual talents within Auckland while allowing them to make a lifestyle choice about where to live. The alternatives are either that they commute by car or that Auckland loses them entirely, neither of which is particularly appealing.
Of course the fares would have to be realistically priced against the costs of operating a car for the journey, and I’m far from convinced that that will be the case. Rail transport at present is far more expensive than taking a single-person vehicle between Hamilton and Auckland, never mind splitting the costs with others.
There aren’t any remaining express services between Papakura & town, so perhaps this service could fill that demand and help boost its popularity in the same way as happens in Wellington.
Stop pattern would therefore go something like Britomart-Papakura-Pukekohe-Tuakau and then on to Hamilton with whatever stops are proposed in the Waikato.
The train will run via Newmarket meaning people can change there – the Strand is meant as a terminus as I understand. However perhaps running it west at Newmarket would make more sense?
However reading above they’ve chosen a waterfront route which IMO will provide no real transfer point esp. which is a major flaw.
That has to be balanced against the fact that if it went via Newmarket it would almost certainly have a slower journey and get stuck behind all-stopping services.
Ironically the annual subsidy at 1.2 million would mean the service could be funded for the next 80 odd years using what has been wasted on investigating the holiday highway (100 million) – it’s a shame the transport priorities are so backward in NZ.
Thats a false dichotomy though. At 1.2m a year the subsidy looks like it will be $10-$20 a trip, depending on how you read the forecast numbers. There is already an unsubsidised, commercial bus service for this route, with margins presumably well under $10-$20 a passenger.
How would you like it if the council decided to prop up a competitor with over $1m of public money in your line of work?
This won’t be a commuter service – it just looks like it’ll take too long to get to Britomart for anybody to even consider that. However, it would be a useful intercity service and an alternative to intercity buses. It really only needs to get to Papakura, where intercity travelers can transfer to either Eastern or Southern lines; from the Southern line they can transfer to the Western line at Newmarket.
It should definitely stop at Tuakau, etc.
A Diesel service between Papakura and station under the Warehouse Hamilton makes sense to me. Ventilation?
Passengers transfer to/from an electric train at Papakura.
Stops at Tuakau, Pokeno, Te Kauwhata, Huntly, Ngaruawahia, Te Rapa.
Looks like the best option to me too Antony, unless progressing further north can really offer an express service and terminate somewhere real.
Make it more of a Waikato local service and surely cheaper to run per trip and able to be more frequent?
Swan wrote “There is already an unsubsidised, commercial bus service for this route, with margins presumably well under $10-$20 a passenger.”
As mentioned many times before, there are NO COMMERCIAL bus services for this route with a departure from Hamilton between 6 & 6:30am with pick ups at Te Kauwhata township or Tuakau. I wait for you to prove me wrong.
There is an Intercity bus service that leaves Hamilton at 7am and arrives at 8:45. I presume that if there was a demand for a service that arrived earlier and stopped specifically at two arbitrarily selected no-where places in between then Intercity would organise it. Coaches are flexible like that.
The coaches also benefit from the network effect. There are services running at reasonably high frequencies all over the country. They integrate in a way that lets people transfer easily between services. As far as I know they’re all unsubsidised. Whenever I have used them they have been busy with locals and overseas tourists. If you cheery pick one route and run one or two trains a day then Intercity still have to operate the coaches over that route. But it might have to operate them as a loss.
Not that it’ll matter in the long term. Any trial won’t last any longer than the last one. I think the patronage last time was 20 people a day, or similar. $1.2million per annum is a lot to spend on 20 people. You might as well give each of them $50k if they’d stay home, and you’d still come out on top.
What has changed since 2000/2001 when between 12 and 30 people a day rode the Waikato Connection (until it got to Pukekohe)?
The Capital Connection is not a useful parallel, because its commercial viability was largely dependent on it providing a fast service between Wellington and Waikanae (which of course is now eroded by the electrification). Indeed, the presence of a commercial express bus service from Otaki and Waikanae to Wellington every morning made that viability clear.
There have been people living in Otaki, Levin and Palmerston North willing to commute to Wellington (although only about 30 start in Palmy), south of Auckland there are simply not towns that most people who will work in Auckland’s CBD could imagine ever wanting to live in (and there are virtually none between Pukekohe and Huntly in any case).
Even more absurd is the idea that it should run Papakura-Hamilton, as if people would rather ride a train to a suburban stop, then wait to go on a stopping service (or even limited stopping service) to Auckland (obviously it should stop there for people connecting, but hardly competitive for the whole route).
If the demand existed, there would be an express commuter bus service on the route, particularly given the convenience of the downtown Hamilton bus depot. Yet all of the enthusiasts for this make the same fatal error in believing that commuters in Auckland predominantly want to go downtown. They don’t.
I also find it rather odd that people who want to rigidly constrain growth of Auckland within urban growth limits, on high density hubs, suddenly think it would be great if people started commuting from well outside Auckland region – but by rail. Wellington’s Kapiti Coast has grown enormously in the past 30 years, the electrification of the rail service to Paraparaumu has contributed enormously to that, but it is not high density new urbanism living – it is low density large family homes, with cars (and while rail commuting has become more popular, so has driving).
Do you want a compact high density Auckland, or does it not matter as long as people go by train, sometimes? Bear in mind there are probably enormous benefits for the likes of Huntly and Ngaruawahia etc if they DO become commuter towns for Auckland, but let’s not pretend this is environmentally friendly, or that it is inherently any different from growing Warkworth or Helensville.
Quite a lot has changed from then, Auckland’s rail patronage has increased five-fold in that time for example. Petrol prices have also probably doubled.
Interestingly the Capital Connection has still proven to be viable after the electrification extension.
So what? Just because people somewhere else catch trains doesn’t mean people will magically decide to live south to Pukekohe to commute to the Auckland CBD. You may as well say lots more people now fly from Hamilton airport. They are not connected. The rise in petrol prices has probably reduced demand for long distance commutes.
The Capital Connection is hanging by a thread, it is far too early to tell at the moment, but it isn’t returning its cost of capital.
The arguments about this remain empty:
– Surveys are meaningless. People can say what they want, but they have to put their money where their mouths are.
– If the demand existed, there would be a commuter bus service, which is what happened in Waikanae and Otaki. It isn’t happening.
– Setting up a service to woo car commuters is ludicrous as there is little evidence of great demand (we are talking about commuters to Papakura and CBD Auckland, not “Auckland”) and little evidence it would make any meaningful difference to congestion.
– The Waikato expressway will further improve the competitiveness of the road against the railway.
– The rail enthusiasm remains a delusion that commuters to Auckland want to go downtown. More than 4 out of 5 don’t.
– Do you want Auckland to grow along a corridor south to Hamilton? How can you reconcile wanting an intensified high density Auckland with that, or is it really just about trains rather than urban form, or indeed environmental impact?
OBI “There is an Intercity bus service that leaves Hamilton at 7am and arrives at 8:45.”
I am again proven correct, there is no commuter bus service from Hamilton departing between 6 and 6:30, picking up in Te Kauwhata and Tuakau townships. Nothing, rien du tout.
I do note that the bus Obi refers to often is very late hitting Auckland Southern Motorway traffic, let alone on wet Auckland days.
As ADMIN states, things have changed dramatically since 2000/01. Rail up, petrol up, more people live in Tuakau, Te Kauwhata and Huntly (as houses were cheaper). General acceptance of rail as a mode of transport is clearly higher than 10 years ago.
“I am again proven correct”
Only that if you pick an arbitrary start time and two arbitrary stopping points of no significance then you have made a factual statement. Similarly there is no Palmerston North to New Plymouth public transport option leaving between 5:30 and 6:00 and stopping at Kaponga and Pukengahu. But there is an existing unsubsidised public transport option between Hamilton and Auckland that fits in with Auckland business hours. And the frequency of the current service suggests that the operator could lay on an earlier coach if there was any demand.
There are some serious transport projects being progressed in Auckland at the moment. Both the CBD rail tunnel and Puhoi to Wellsford motorway will handle tens of thousands of passengers a day. AIA handles 13 million passengers a year and is an example of how successful a transport hub can be. By contrast, Waikato Connection V2 will probably move about a single bus load of people each day, and you’re wanting it to stop places where it might pick up one or two passengers if it is lucky. This is trivia. All it shows is that no matter how minor a transport requirement, someone will think up an impractical train scheme to fill it.
Jon R wrote:
“I am again proven correct, there is no commuter bus service from Hamilton departing between 6 and 6:30, picking up in Te Kauwhata and Tuakau townships. Nothing, rien du tout.”
Good to see you have an excellent grasp on the fact that there is no demand for such a service. Yet you want one anyway.
The proposed train leaves Hamilton at what, 6am? No PT option to get to the station, and no start point of Claudelands, east of the river, where everybody lives.
So, each train user will need a car. Brilliant! Leave home in a car at 5:30am, so you can get to Auckland CBD at 8:30am, instead of leaving home in a car at 6:45-7:00am, to get to Auckland CBD at the same time of 8:30am.
You are not going to get 109 people a day choosing to replace a 3 to 3.5 hour commute by car with a 6 hour commute involving car from home to Frankton, train to the Strand, then bus to the CBD.
Leave Hamilton at 6:45, get to the Auckland CBD by 9 if you’re lucky. You’ll be hitting the rush hour tail-back at Papakura right around 7:45, if you don’t get held up along the way. The trip time variability with driving Hamilton-Auckland for a peak hour arrival is significant. Hell, it’s significant at weekends, never mind trying to commute with all and sundry.
Actually Geoff, nice to see you back here. The original concept was for a departure around 6:30am. Of course, now being located in Switzerland it is harder to be involved in the discussions with the key stakeholders. The fact still remains there are no services for commuters between these two cities. The communities along the line want the trains, but anyway arguing the facts on this point with your personal belief is pretty much a waste of time.
As far as I can tell through all the documentation total times and timetables have not yet been finalised. So it is realistically too early to judge on this point.
I do look forward to you positively lobbying for some form of transport improvement somewhere, for once.
The Base, located north of Hamilton, has been tagged as a park and ride. I would expect that this would be a popular departure point for many.
Just as an aside, there has been a “charter” special between Hamilton and Kingsland most days that there has been a game at Eden Park.
I shall see if I can find its running time, but I do know that it was a struggle to find a path through the commuter services.
Just looking at the existing timetable, unless there is a wholesale revamp to a pattern of inners and outers any fast service trying to get into Auckland in the peak will run into a wall of all stops services. The fastest Path would appear to be to leave Pukekohe at 0706 and follow the 0703 departure, force a path at Papakura ahead of the 0725 departure from there. Then, ignoring pathing and platforming at Britomart, the best that can be done is to catch up the 0654 departure from Pukekohe and arrive at say 0803 at best.
So – a whole 6 minutes faster than the 0703 at 57 minutes! It would be better to knock out stops out of the 0703 to give it an hour’s journey from Pukekohe to Britomart, and have it start back from Hamilton.
But isn’t the bigger question about the purpose of the train.
If it is about commuters it needs to get to Auckland in the peak and leave in the evening peak, and you are going to have to find one or more peak paths to make it credible.
If it is to get business travellers, the service needs to be say hourly with the first arriving in Auckland a little after 9 am, and a service that allows a return journey even after a long day of meetings (say 7pm last train?)
In the shoulder of the peak, you could leave Pukekohe at say 0831 and have a clean run all the way in as fast as you like (though I suspect that is because there is a freight path already in that gap!)
I but the economic benefits come from capturing business travellers rather than commuters.
I had a look: it really is a busy railway in the morning peak, and the 15+km single line sections on the route don’t help. I think that 2 hours Hamilton – Auckland is a credible target if the train is near enough “first on the graph”. If it is “last on the graph” it is probably more like 2½ to 3 hour journey time.
Of course, if there were a route to the airport and you were looking to capture the Hamilton – Auckland flying market, the rail journey time would be shorter and to a degree easier to path.
Some stray thoughts:
* Intercity can get the coach from Hamilton to Auckland in 1h45m because the service only has two stops (Huntly, and Manukau Central). A normal coach service over this route, with more stops, takes twenty minutes longer.
* It would be interesting if the 0700 service has any regular commuters on it, or whether it is serving people coming up to AKL for a day’s business.
* What enthusiasm would there be for a direct ex Hamilton coach to connect at Papakura for the existing rail services? I suspect not much, but would welcome others’ views.
Jon Reeves repeated:
“The fact still remains there are no services for commuters between these two cities”
There are many bus services all day between Auckland and Hamilton, scheduled for where the demand is. You have correctly pointed out that there is no demand at the times of day that the train service is planned for. If there was, there would already be a bus running then.
I don’t really buy the argument that you can gauge the demand for a rail service by the number of bus services that run currently. Rail will be a different service altogether – more comfortable, powerpoints, coffee and toilets.
We wouldn’t have passenger rail in Auckland if we had waited for demand to be proven by more bus services.
“I don’t really buy the argument that you can gauge the demand for a rail service by the number of bus services that run currently. Rail will be a different service altogether – more comfortable, powerpoints, coffee and toilets.”
Those of us gauging demand for a rail service are using the figures for the Waikato Connection before it closed (and Labour refused to subsidise it) in 2001. It carried 20-30 people a day from Hamilton to Auckland, despite service that included catering and toilets. There really aren’t large numbers of people who want to commute between the cities. And, as Liberty Scott points out, even if there were then we shouldn’t be subsidising this sort of extreme sprawl. I find it strange that people who were defending the MUL last week want to subsidise commuters from 150km away this week.
Obi – obviously you have not followed the information which has come out about this service. It would be of benefit for constructive conversation if you did research beforehand.
Thanks.
I’m not sure what service you’re talking about Jon. The pre-2001 trial that failed? Or the proposed future trial? Which ever, I’m sure you’ll be able to point out things that I have said that are incorrect. And yes, I’ve got your point that there is no service that leaves Hamilton between 6:00 and 6:30 and stops somewhere tiny and somewhere else that is also tiny. It is just that I realise the reason there isn’t a service is because commercial operators realise that there isn’t enough demand for this service to even fill a single bus.
$1.2m? That would build a lot of dedicated cycleway around Auckland each year.
I remember the clamour for the Helensville service. As it happened, I was working out that way while it was operating. Every time I saw the train running, there didn’t appear to be many users. Surveys don’t always = useage.
One of the biggest problems with the Helensville service was timing. Services ran infrequently, and took forever. It was convenient only if you were having a relaxed day out: my aunt lives in Helensville and used the train to come in and attend my graduation, for example.
The schedule was pretty much designed to be a total fail, in much the same way as the schedule design for the earlier Waikato trial was designed to be a total fail. A last train that leaves about 17:00 is worthless for business people, and the cost was far too high compared to the costs of driving to make it cost-effective for recreational users.
Bryce – it would, but as funding is coming from communities in the Waikato where they can catch this train, doubt they would want to pay for your Auckland cycle way.
Obi – Not even worth putting effort into answering you.
Oops….missed that bit. Yes, if Waikato ratepayers are happy to pay that for a trial then good on them.
If one of the key the issues is lack of paths into Britomart, and we are talking about running a multiple unit, why not split and join at Otahuhu with an Otahuhu starter and use its path in and out of Britomart?
Cameron, and others:
I worked for Tranz Metro in the early 2000s as its Business Analyst, and did keep an eye on the numbers using the Hamilton Connection (which were as low as people were pointing out here). The problem was frequency (not enough) and travel time (far too long). The example of the Wairarapa-Wellington trains (ninety minutes from Masterton to Wellington; three trains in the am peak) is the one you need to keep in mind as to how long-distance commuting can work.
Intercity’s 0700 bus works because it only stops twice (a full set of stops adds twenty minutes to the journey time). As a commuter service, and Intercity don’t market it like that, it would work for people working in South Auckland, as the journey time to Manukau Central is less than 90 minutes. Otherwise it is well-suited for Hamilton residents wanting to do a day’s work in Auckland.
So, hence my suggestion that we look at a direct bus to serve Papakura Station, which the 0700 service does not. Since the break-even cost for a bus is far less than for a train, it could be a way of developing the market. We might find that currently, people are driving from Hamilton to park at Papakura.
Out of interest I wonder if the 0700 bus will stop at the new Manukau rail station when it opens? Looking at the intercity website, the bus service suffers from the fact that there is only one return service from Hamilton to Auckland a day. Departs Auckland 5:15pm and that’s it. The proposed rail service would be two return trips a day, ex Hamilton.
One of the issues I have with the proposed service at the moment is that the Silver Ferns will be stabled in Auckland Westfield (I believe). So they will be dead running first thing in the morning down to Hamilton and dead running all the way from Hamilton back to Westfield. This last dead run would actually be a valid evening service I believe – depart Hamilton 7:30pm, arrive Auckland 9:30pm, assuming the 2 hour time can be achieved.
#Cameron
If a bus got to Manukau Central by 0825, what are the chances, at that time of the morning, that it could get to downtown Auckland by 0900? (it is timetabled to get there by 0845, which sounds optimistic).
If so, then anyone getting off at Manukau to get the train will not be using it to get to downtown Auckland. There would be no real time saving in their doing so, though for an intermediate destination like Newmarket, it could work.
Ross – interesting points. However, the Waikato Connection never picked up pax at Te Kauwhata (unlike Ngaruawahia and Huntly has no Intercity buses) or Tuakau. So a number of people would join or alight there.
As I lived in Sth Akl until I left to live in Switzerland this year, I have seen the Intercity bus from Hamilton, and I can tell you, most days I saw it stuck in traffic between Otahuhu and Ellerslie between 8:50 and 9am when I would regularly be in my car. In fact I took photos of it and included it in some CBT presentations. I very much doubt it regularly arrives at 08:45. Anyone with inside knowledge from Intercity that can help here?
Richard D – your proposal has already been investigated as an option by the WDC RWG and found it was not feasible. You can find the details on the WDC website.
Only way I can see Auckland-Hamilton would be viable in the long-term would be high speed running (at least 200km/h) to make it competitive, assuming additional transfers are likely to be required at either end. Would obviously be a capital intensive option. Perhaps thinking long-term you could reopen the underground Hamilton railway station and push the line out to Hamilton airport.
This would potentially solve any future ‘Auckland needs a second airport’ debate as you could now have the capability to expand Hamilton airport, which would be within reasonable commute with high speed rail.