I have been reading through the council’s draft Long Term Plan which looks at what will be done by the council over the next 10 years and how they fund it. I will do a post on the details of some of the spending related to transport in the next few days but as I was reading through it I decided to check a few numbers and I could quickly see that some things just didn’t add up so first I want to address some of these weird transport numbers in the document.
The document has a table that shows the current and expected patronage broken down by mode over the next 10 years. The current patronage most closely matches Decembers results but they are not exactly the same (note: numbers are in thousands)
At first glance things seem OK and look like they move fairly logically but that is until you look deeper, specifically at the percentage increase year on year. Looking at rail specifically I have added on the annual patronage results since 2003 for a comparison and put it all into a graph so this post doesn’t become a huge amount of boring words and numbers.
The key things I have taken from this are that we go from a period of consistent double digit patronage growth down to low single digit increase over just a two year period. This is just as we finish getting our nice and shiny EMUs, which are much cleaner, faster and quieter than what we have now plus will have almost double the capacity yet we see patronage increases drop away to about 3%. What you can see from looking at the numbers is that from 2016 they have just increased the total by 500k per year which seems to have no relevance to what has happened in the years before this and it is pretty clear that someone has just put an arbitrary number in. One part of me thinks that this is OK as it means that when we get to that point we will see patronage well ahead of projection but the other part thinks that this underselling on the impact of electrification is quite serious, after all one of the reasons the government rejected the CRL business case was that they said there was still plenty of capacity available after 2021. It also goes against the ‘sparks’ effect seen in a number of places where electrification leads to big increases in rail use and one of the best example is Perth where it was truly transformational as Patrick mentioned yesterday.
On the issue of rail projections, when putting this post together I went looking through other recent documents to see if there were any similar tables. Sadly none of the other official plans or strategies and this info and the closest I could find was some post electrification figures which tell an interesting story in their own right. ARTA’s 2006-2016 Passenger Transport Network Plan suggests there will by 15.6m trips on the rail network by 2016 (with 79m trips across the entire PT network), another document, a working group report on electrification from 2009 suggests 15.7m trips by 2016. Fast forward a few years to now and we see patronage expectations are now over 17m per year by 2016 which is quite a jump and by the time 2016 actually rolls around it could be quite a bit higher again.
These odd numbers aren’t just for rail though, the busway projections also have some quite big questions in them.
Patronage has been increasing at about 15% for a number of years now yet it is only forecast to increase by an average of about 5% from now till 2018. At that point it then jumps by quite a bit for a two years before settling back to lower than it was before. There is nothing in the plan that suggest why this would be and the only reference to further development of the busway is a station at Rosedale/Greville but that is planned for the very end of the 10 year period.
There are lots of other oddities in the plan and I won’t cover all of them but I will look one more and it isn’t a patronage forecast but an expected revenue source. In the financials it breaks down where the money is coming from to pay for these things. There is one particular line that seems to refer to the amount of money that will be collected by fares as it is called Activity user charges and fee (this is a generic title used in other parts of the document). As you can see in the table below there is one month that stands out above the others with no explanation as to why this is, I have added on the % increase (numbers are in thousands of dollars).
In my submission on the plan I will be saying that these need to be clarified and because at the moment they almost seem like a joke but more worryingly is if we are basing our infrastructure development off them then we could easily be spending big money at the wrong times for the wrong projects.
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Wow those numbers are really weird. You would think that patronage will explode post electrification leading to 20% annual increases taking us to 20m + trips a year by 2018/2019 pushing the argument big time for the CRL.
Obviously the sparks effect gains are going to be heavily balanced by all the fresh new motorways that will open up in that period, and the government’s upcoming Fuels of National Significance subsidy (“Auckland’s favorite transport energy source!”).
But kidding aside, good point.
Though I still think that since there’s no way they are going to get the tunnel funded right now, having a massive “beyond expectations” PT growth just when we will be revisiting the matter in 3-5 years time will have some powerful benefits. Sure, not as good as having sanity prevail from the start, but… Robbie’s Rapid Rail didn’t have anything like the groundswell the tunnel will have.
They don’t seem to hold much hope for the rail system to maintain its growth – perhaps that’s why Len Brown appears to have shifted his focus to building more urban motorways such as the new missing link in Onehunga that has suddenly become the no#2 priority without which Auckland will collapse. $1.1 billion would sure go a long way to improving PT infrastructure around the city or improving railing freight links to Onehunga.
Just a quick side note. I have been informed from a couple of Councillors that the 60:40 Brownfield:Greenfield Split and the softening of the RUB per deliberations in Chapter 7 of The Draft Auckland Plan have been confirmed after today’s deliberations. I thought in bringing this up quickly here as new growth no matter brown or green-field will influence the LTP one way or the other.
To the post at hand – I have also been running a ruler over the last few days on the Draft Long Term Plan and agree with Matt L that the numbers he has mentioned above are somewhat skewered.
That one called “Activity user charges and fee” aka fare box revenue got me thinking – 2016 we see a blip around the 71% mark – you telling me is that when Auckland Transport finally gets HOP rolled out fully and working on all PT modes – or is that when AT ditches HOP and goes for something more sensible and reliable in the year 2016 [runs to duck the incoming missiles from AT]. Jokes and mocking aside 2016 is still an unusual blip.
As for the rest – I wonder if growth might start pettering out due to infrastructure issues. All very well having EMUs doing 136km/h but when maximum regulated line speed for passenger trains is 90km/h and this is before speed restrictions all over the network (including those HEAT-40 restrictions when it gets too hot), lack of high speed turn outs (the NIMT Westfield Diamond Turnout is at 40km/h), getting stuck behind increasing freight trains thanks to POAL and Port of Tauranga getting the goods, and some poorly located stations – the dream of achieving a high speed frequent service that Aucklanders Dream of still seems that a dream unless we get some serious infrastructure upgrades soon.
Oh well, submission writing time
For a starters the EMUs were never planned to be doing 136kph as the design stated a maximum revenue speed of 110kph yet even if speeds were limited to 80kph it would still make a huge difference as it isn’t the top speed that is so important but the average speed and that is impacted much more by the acceleration and deceleration that the units can do. As for the infrastructure side of things, that is an issue now yet patronage still grows but is more impacted by capacity constraints than anything else.
I’m interested to hear what you think is more sensible and reliable that what is proposed for HOP as manual ticket collection is neither of those things.
Never designed but can – but that is a side issue Matt as our gauge is not suited for high speed.
That being true an EMU can get going quicker and pull much quicker than the SA/SD and ADK classes and give an ADL a good run and they are still pretty good units despite being built in the 80s.
Yes there has been growth – I think train users and staff can notice that but heck we have come off a low point from the bad days of the 90s but it will “slow down” soon without the CRL and infrastructure upgrades. Matt you mention average speed – get rid if these restrictions and we can get EMUs holding 90km/h rather than 50km through some parts of the North Auckland Line, Westfield to Middlemore, Wiri (although construction site right now) and at the moment seems to be a nasty restriction down between Papakura and Pukekohe. Get the line at its best and a 53min trip from Papakura to Britomart via G.I should get down to 43mins.
And I agree there are capacity pinch points too – Newmarket and Westfield are classics at that. And for any doubters I am pro CRL – just want to make that clear.
Matt go read the post you did on HOP and the one I did after it at my own site – we both echoed Ruddman’s piece in the Herald – I just followed it up with an alternative that was floating around in the UK and I believe was going to be tried at the London Olympics.
Look lets not get divided over this – that is want the pro motorway lot want – I am sure most here including me want the best for Auckland’s transport and citizens – we have the same goal – just going around it somewhat differently – which happens
Just to recap – AC/AT/ARTA saw the network as having a ceiling of 20m per annum without CRL. As we approach the ceiling fewer people want to ride on the trains as they get more crowded, those with choice go back to cars and those that don’t, have to ride in increasing discomfort. This is then the justification for CRL as it pushes capacity out toward 40 – 50m.
MOT on the other hand see capacity as being 25m as they think they can squeeze in another couple of trains per hour into Britomart, and that you can stuff more jaffas in the box/EMU. MOT therefore see rail growing even slower post 2016 as the trains start to resemble Tokyo rush hour.
As you point out these forecasts miss two things:
1. CRL is open within the 10 year date range and
2. The EMUs are 3x25m not 3x20m plus we ordered more
If we factor in the above two, then the 2022 target is more likely 30m per annum not 20m
There is a common part to electrification that seems to be missed by a lot involved (especially the MOT in their review) is is that at peak times almost all trains into Britomart will be two EMU’s coupled together which for each train would give almost 500 seats and comfortable standing room for another 200. I agree that as capacity starts hitting it’s ceiling patronage will slow as that is exactly what you would expect it to do but as we will still be getting new EMUs coming online in mid to late 2016 then there should still be quite a bit of space for growth in some areas.
Perhaps they have decided to put the fares up when the new trains arrive to recoup some of the additional costs and are therefore anticipating a reduction in the rate at which demand increases?
All very odd indeed. What means are there to get the Council to explain the reasoning behind the numbers? How about Official Information Act requests? (I think Admin has done this in the past…? new reader, sorry)
If policy is being made, or arguments being made against a clearly intransigent Government, based on such loose thinking then there is cause for concern. Any sort of solid business case needs the most logical and thorough grounding it can get. IMHO the collective thinking of everyone on this blog can only help.
The big jump in activity user charges and fees (which I presume includes PT fares) might be when PTOM gets fully rolled out and most of the contracts shift from being “net” to something where AT gets a share of the farebox on all the buses, as well as the trains (as happens now).
That was my best guess as to why things would jump like that but it seems too far away although considering how fast AT move then perhaps it would be about right.
From my understanding PTOM isn’t something you can roll out overnight. It will be a multi-year process for it to be implemented – although that doesn’t explain why the jump is all in one year.
Yes but I would expect it to be progressively rolled out. My understanding is that the Link services have been designed as PTOM routes even though they aren’t contracted that way yet so perhaps we will see changes made to routes all around the place then them all changed to PTOM in one go.