My post on Tuesday, which looked at the ongoing debate occurring over the economics of the City Rail Link (and the huge under-counting of benefits under New Zealand’s system, by comparison to the UK’s system), prompted some interesting debate in the comments over what the real benefits of this project are, and who experiences them. In particular, commenter Libertyscott made the argument that as the primary beneficiaries of the project are (supposedly) downtown business, they should be required to foot the bill:
The arguments made here don’t address the limitations of the Auckland Council’s own appraisal of the project. Indeed, if you are really honest about the project, it does very little for traffic congestion (Auckland’s CBD has a high PT mode share as it is), and does a lot for downtown businesses, so the question ought to be, why is it not being almost entirely funded (road users should pay for the small congestion reduction benefits) by a special rate on businesses (and homes) within a radius of the stations?
The inner city rail project is NOT about fixing a transport problem (which comes into the categories of congestion, safety, environment, access and route security), but about Auckland’s ambitions to revitalise its downtown. So its funding shouldn’t come from transport budgets.
I don’t think there’s any doubt that the city centre will benefit significantly from the project. This is reflected in the City Centre Master Plan, which is completely reliant on the CRL to achieve its many goals of a much better city centre. By enabling much more of the city centre’s traffic to be carried on the rail network, the CRL will enable the city centre to grow without the street clogging up completely. Furthermore, it will also enable many of the streetscape upgrades the Council is proposing, which typically result in the reduction of space dedicated to through traffic. For example, Victoria Street:
Many of the wider economic benefits from the project will also arise from it encouraging more economic activity downtown rather than elsewhere in Auckland, leading to higher productivity levels. This isn’t really a transport benefit, so that’s why it gets chucked into the list of “wider economic benefits” from the project.
But that’s not to say the project doesn’t have transport benefits. As is so often stated, in February next year Britomart will hit its train capacity of around 20-21 trains per hour. This is through the following service pattern:
Once our electric trains come online we will get some relief, with the trains generally being much longer and with much higher seating capacity. So the point at which the system reaches passenger capacity will be delayed a bit. However, of course longer trains does not equal more frequent trains so therefore unless we have more trains bypass Britomart, we can’t ever get above the frequencies outlined in the map above until we build the CRL.
With the CRL built, the train capacity of the system increases significantly:
The important thing to note is that each part of the rail network (perhaps with some signalling upgrades) can currently handle this many trains at peak hour, if it wasn’t for the Britomart bottleneck. So we have, in the form of our rail network, a piece of transport infrastructure that is vastly underused, except for a small portion of it. By contrast, most of our roads are at capacity during peak times and have very limited capability to increase this capacity in the future (proposals to do so are mind-blowingly expensive).
The point of all this isn’t about how many cars the CRL will remove from Auckland’s roads, but how to provide a key part of Auckland’s transport infrastructure (that being, the entire rail system) with a huge amount of additional capacity so the city can grow without becoming gridlocked. A useful analogy is to think about Manhattan Island in New York, and the myriad of railway lines that feed into Manhattan – the streets still get congested, but the rail system enables a vastly greater number of people to move into and out of Manhattan than would ever be possible with just its roading infrastructure. The rail system in New York doesn’t prevent congestion, or even take cars off the road, it enables much more city to happen at a certain level of congestion.
Ultimately, the CRL is a transport project, and a very important one at that, because it unlocks capacity of the whole rail system support and enabling Auckland to grow over the next few decades without having to spend vastly more money (and destroy more city) on additional roadspace. (Of course it also shortens Western Line rail trips hugely, brings close to all the city centre within a short-walk of a train station, makes trips from the south to midtown/K Road significantly quicker and many many other benefits).
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How many trains would we need for the ‘every-5-minute’ timetable?
$2b isn’t that much, auckland council should just go to the chinese who seem to be happy to lend for infrastructure.
How many units to operate that service?
At a “back of fag-packet” level of accuracy:
Red route –
Pukekohe – Britomart – 67 minutes
Britomart – Onehunge – 24 minutes
with I’d suggest 15 minute layover
and then the same back for a total of 212 minutes
requires 43 units
Green route –
Manakau – Britomart – 38
Britomart – Waitakere – 58
With again 15 minutes layover
And then the same back again for a total of 222 minutes
Requires 45 units
And if we assume 85% availability that’s 104 units
We’ve just bought 57 units for $500m (incl depot), so that is just another tranch of the same again.
Of course we don’t need that many trains for quite a long time, and you would not need 12 tph to Onehunga until you build the Airport Line.
The routings above go Swanson – Papakura (red line) and eventually Manukau to Manukau via Eastern Line and the Airport.
The purpose of the diagram is to show the potential increase in capacity the CRL creates.
I think there is an intermediate diagram that would be useful to see: if only the CRL were built, and no improvements made elsewhere, how much of the additional capacity could realistically be used.
Demonstrating such intermediate positions could also demonstrate a migration route from now to the end point and show that the whole sum does not have to be spent in one go.
For example, the barely yet built Manukau station will need a complete rebuild to handle the 48 trains an hour you suggest as the end game. If the thing runs like a 5 minute metro and doesn’t much care about the timetable the 2 platform dead-end layout may cope with 12 tph, but 10tph might be a bit more robust.
You really don’t get it, do you? Either that or you’re trolling. The south-western line would link Onehunga and Manukau to the airport, turning both stations into through stations on double-tracked lines. 48 trains an hour is only 24 trains in each direction, and the station is completely capable of handling that.
Pub- yeah sort of. Ak is 33% of the population and contributes 36% of the nation’s GDP. Auckland is, in fact, in New Zealand and a more successful AK makes for a more successful NZ. And train line is no more stuck in one place than any road. It is land transport, We have a National Land Transport Fund which at the very least come to the party on this.
We have as much right to demand clever investment of our tax contributions as anyone else in NZ. And petrol tax is just a tax, and it makes no more sense in arguing that this money has to be spent directly back on vehicles than suggesting that alcohol excise only be used to fund more bars. In fact the reverse is usually argued, it is usually understood that these taxes are there to fund externalities- ie the negative outcomes of the use of the tax’s source. So using petrol tax to fund the growth and spread of an electric powered alternative to polluting, imported petrol is logical, even ideal. I say would urgent.
“I say would urgent”
Are you green, short and have big ears Patrick?
Just borderline dyslexic….
Just a minor point – but I think the last diagram raises unrealistic expectations. Even with the CRL link built and even with “perhaps signalling upgrades”, the Onehunga line will not take 12tph. It is a single line with 6 minute transit time: so 10 trains an hour, tops, making 5 each way. Getting to 12 tph will involve not insignificant track doubling and platform doubling. The existing layout does not appear to have been built with ultimate doubling in mind as an end game, so for example Te Papapa will involve rework, some newly positioned electrification stantions will need to be removed and I would not be surprised if the junction at Penrose needed work too.
Richard, the CRL business case costings included several peripheral improvements, including double tracking and grade separating the Onehunga branch and works at Penrose junction (plus if I recall correctly removing every level crossing on the western line, among other things). So yes it would involve a complete rebuild of the Onehunga corridor but this has been factored into the project already.
Onehunga will not remain a single-track line. A run to the airport will require that it be double-tracked, and it will have to be double-tracked at some point in the medium term because three services an hour (which is about the maximum safe capacity of that line) is a completely unacceptable level of service. That will happen, and must happen, and I doubt there’s anyone at AT who thinks that the current installation is acceptable. It is, however, the solution that got trains running to Onehunga. A full double-tracked line wasn’t going to be funded, but the corridor does have sufficient width to be double-tracked in the future.
Of course there aren’t going to be 12 trains (or even eight trains) an hour running on Onehunga right now, but as Josh says the map is of future, not current, potential. That’s 12 trains an hour each way, by the way, not 12 trains an hour total.
Really it is all very ernest and polite of us to answer to views of risible flat-earthers like Mr Liberty. Yes there is some entertainment to be had watching the self-delusions unroll as he tries to make the actual world fit his high-church models of theoretical purity, but ultimately his posts are really just jargon filled trolling. And here you are feeding that troll, admin, but then perhaps you are right. Perhaps it is useful to see what crazed processes go on behind the opposition to the best chance we have to help Auckland to fulfill its great potential.
So take his biggest laugh for example: The CRL is not a transport project. Well this is telling in more ways than the obvious one. Clearly it is a transport project, what he really means, is that it is not *only* a transport project. It will have positive outcomes and impacts on urban form and efficiency, on productivity, air quality, intensity, Fossil Fuel use, and ultimately on Auckland and NZ’s prosperity and quality of life. This is bad, how? On his planet this is a disaster because if it were built from transport funds and had these outcomes that would break the great and only TRUE LAW of user pays. No matter how good an outcome is the process must be pure, so better to oppose it at all costs, no matter how self-evidently great its outcomes will be.
This brings us to another fantasy, other projects, somehow, and always roading ones, are apparently only transport projects. Pure, no impacts beyond moving things. Really? Motorways have no outcomes on the built and natural environment? Another 10, 20, 30, thousand cars dumped into a city centre has no outcome on the urban form, doesn’t have any externalities around air quality, wasted land use given over to carparking, increased building costs, lower health outcomes due to less walking,…. I could go on. This is a really important fantasy that Mr L has thankfully reminded us of: The crazies in the road lobby really do believe that they aren’t building anything, giving shape to our world, they are just getting from a to b sort of invisibly.
So this goes to the heart of admin’s original post about assessing the value of potential projects: Surely we make transport investments in order to improve our lives, they don’t exist on some parallel and theoretical universe outside of life. And just like all of our investments they must be subservient to our needs and desires. Trying to retain some kind of sectorial purity is not only impossible it’s also undesirable. And nuts.
You can say the CRL project will have all sorts of positive impacts, in fact you say it is so glowingly wonderful that one would have to be insane to say no to it, then put up straw men as if it represents my point of view. Sadly for you, not only are your claims of CRL being insanely good largely hyperbole, but I’ve never been an advocate for the “road lobby”, nor advocated unrestrained growth in road traffic. You evade that because it doesn’t fit your rather childish binary argument on transport policy.
If CRL is such a fantastic policy then you wouldn’t object to it being mostly funded from the property owners who are within the vicinity of it, impose special rates on the CBD because after all, doesn’t matter where the money comes from – or do you just adopt the notion that there are no distortions around who or what you tax, as long as you get the money somehow.
I have yet to advocate a single motorway project to bring more traffic into the Auckland CBD, in fact unlike CRL (which will have a derisory impact on road traffic demand), what I advocate (network wide road pricing) would dramatically deal to air pollution, CO2 emissions, fossil fuel consumption, urban sprawl, demand for road building as well as enhancing the use of public transport, walking and cycling. However, since you abhor user pays, you’d rather the family with a car living in Waiuku pay the same as the car commuter from Herne Bay to use roads and make both pay for a railway. So fair, so equitable.
The fundamental issue is that there is a framework for public funding of transport projects. It is based on delivering benefits to transport users and those who pay. You can oppose that framework (bearing in mind it is largely unchanged from what Labour introduced in collusion with the Greens and Peter Dunne), or recognise that you should be honest about how the project is NOT about addressing the highest profile issue – congestion.
It DOES provide capacity and DOES allow for more users, but the main beneficiaries are the property owners and the users. Given the users wont pay, motorists should pay for the benefits they gain (they are not large numbers of lawyers and doctors with new cars and big houses), and property owners pay for theirs.
However, it would be entertaining to see what other areas of life you’d like paid for by taxation – presumably electricity, telecommunications, housing, food, indeed anything you deem as being beneficial to everyone. Which begs the question, why not abolish money? Perhaps because most people in the country tend to consider user pays to be remarkably fair by and large, with the main exception being cases of providing people in need with subsistence, health, housing and education.
Who is arguing that the CRL should be paid for by anyone other than those who benefit from it? The debate is actually about the breadth of who benefits. I think motorists do benefit hugely, so do property owners and so does the general economy.
So funding should come from a variety of sources.
Did the CRL price tag just go down?
A guy from Infrastructure NZ (or something similar) showed up at the Waitemata Local Board meet with a list of projects and prices.
I recall the CRL formerly being $2.4B, but this guy had it on his list at only $2.2B.
Put the contract out to a real International tender and who knows how much lower it could drop?
There are a bunch of things that made up the CRL project’s quoted price, including extra trains. Given that we’ve now got all the trains required, their price no longer has to be included in the project cost.
It should indeed be put out to tender, given the limited experience we have with boring tunnels beneath cities, but until the route has been designated and protected it’s rather difficult to get parties to tender.
The price of the tunnel itself was $1.9b but they had identified other things that would need to be done to the network to also allow things to work properly. These extra costs included double tracking the Onehunga Branch, grade separating a number (but not all) western line level crossings and additional trains to run through the tunnel. I think they suggested we would need about 78 trains all up but that was using their routing which doesn’t seem as efficient as suggested above as it seemed to focus on avoiding transfers. These extra costs amounted to an estimated $400m-$500m worth of spending which pushed the cost up to $2.4b
Its also worth noting that the costs themselves already include contingency costs and property purchases so there is definitely scope for them to be reduced.
I think the CRL price tag thats quoted should come down. If I remember right, the $2.4Billion included additional trains. Those additional trains have now been catered for in the recent purchase from caf. So the Price for the CRL shoudl come down. PLus that also means the BCR should go up!
Additional trains, double tracking and grade separating the Onehunga branch, removing all level crossings on the western line, etc etc.
I would like to see how much just the tunnel would cost.
The tunnel costs themselves are here, could be as low as $1.5b
http://www.aucklandtransport.govt.nz/improving-transport/current-projects/Rail/Documents/AT_Report_CBDRailLink_Appendix_E_Construction_Costs_Summary_Final.pdf
Cheers Matt.
Interesting to note that Aotea station will be built by cut and cover. That gives some exciting possibilities for a multiple story station with integrated retail or commercial, or perhaps a bus station at the first level down.
One of the things I found really interesting about transport stations in Vienna, and to a lesser extent Berlin, is that the concourses all have shops in them. Some, such as the Karlplatz station (which is not even one of the principal stations, it’s just an exchange point for several subway lines) in Vienna, are almost like mini shopping malls with a rail station attached.
Such developments, run like a shopping mall (but without Westfield’s rapacious ownership behaviours), have been suggested as a way of helping to fund construction of the CRL. It’s a model I think is well worth considering.
A number of stations in Singapore are malls. You can literally go straight from the station to the mall and back again without ever seeing a street.
Wynyard Station in Sydney seems to have simiar integration with the Woolworths (?) next door.
It’s an extremely common model across most of the world, Melbourne Central station is impossible to access without going through Melbourne Central mall. They even changed the name of the station once the mall was built.It is what allows MTR to run the Hong Kong metro system at a healthy profit. From their business model point of view the transport service is simply a loss-leader to get foot traffic through their station-cum-malls.
We may see an example of this in Newmarket once the development integrated into the northern station concourse is built over the junction.
Looks like Aotea will be about 18m underground. That should be enough for a bus station just below street level, the train station at the bottom level and one or possibly two levels of retailing acting as a concourse for both in between them.
Nick – The whole line from Britomart to Aotea will be in a cut and cover tunnel about 10m below the ground level which could present some interesting opportunities to us. I made a suggestion earlier in the year that we could look at a bus tunnel on the top part but there are lots of other potential ideas and they might be things that would boost the economic case.
http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2011/05/08/could-we-have-a-cbd-bus-tunnel-as-well-as-a-rail-tunnel/
$1.5B! The BCR should go into the stratosphere…
So now it’s only 3 times the price of the Vic Park Tunnel.
Patrick R- grab your spade, we’re starting as soon as it gets dark.
We stayed at a hotel in Hong Kong where there was rail downstairs. It wasn’t on the MTR at the time (2001) but the MTR changeover was just 1 stop away. Brilliant.
I think Auckland is in desperate need of the CRL. Instead of changing Queen Street, the Auckland Council should work on improving Albert Street to look like Queen Street, palm trees, lighting, more restuarants, take aways, 1 or 2 dairys, gaming stores etc. It will ease traffic on Queen Street and make Albert Street a powerhouse. Then when the CRL is built, the city will be running smoothly. 2 powerhouse streets instead of one and a City Rail Link. The Auckland shouldn’t bother with the light rail route. They should just improve Albert Street to the quality of Queen Street & build the CRL. If the Auckland Council made Queen Street pedestrian only with the exception of a tram and buses, Auckland City Centre would become a ghost town. So they should leave Queen Street as it is, turn Albert Street into a main street, so it pretty much looks like Queen Street, build the CRL. Done