There’s an article in yesterday’s NZ Herald which notes ridership on the Wynyard Quarter tramway has, unsurprisingly in my opinion, dropped away quite a lot in the past few months.
Figures given to Auckland Council member Cameron Brewer show the two heritage electric trams carried fewer than 20 per cent of forecast passengers over their 1.5km circuit in March, when patronage slumped to 1933 people.
That was well below October’s figure of 15,322 – after which patronage previously boosted by the Rugby World Cup plummeted to 2391 before rising to 4357 in December and then falling again.
But council organisation Waterfront Auckland said yesterday that the figure for April – which was not given to Mr Brewer – rose to 4664 passengers after a successful Easter holiday programme for children.
As the tram is currently rather overpriced and goes from nowhere to nowhere, it’s unsurprisingly that hardly anyone catches it. I certainly haven’t been on it and don’t really see the point of it while the only route is takes is a loop around Wynyard Quarter. However, the whole point of the Wynyard Quarter tramway was to be a “beach-head” as many people described at the time, to just get some tracks in there before Wynyard got built up, get things going so it was then possible to look at options for taking the tramway to Britomart and then potentially elsewhere.
Which means that it’s pleasing to see later on in the article that thought is being given to extending the line to Britomart – so that it can actually be linked in with the rest of the network and serve a useful transport purpose:
The council had also included $8.2 million in the first year of its draft long-term budget for an extension of tramlines across Viaduct Harbour.
There will always be endless arguments about trams versus buses, but I think if you ask most Aucklanders they generally consider the ripping up of our tram system to have been one of the biggest mistakes in the city’s history, and the effect of ripping up the tracks on PT patronage was disastrous. The vertical line in the graph below shows approximately when the tracks were ripped out:
Of course the network was quite extensive back then and just as a reminder, here is a map of our former tram network:
If we can get the tram tracks across Viaduct Harbour to Britomart then we really open up the possibility of further extending trams in the future – most likely up Queen Street and potentially in the longer term along Tamaki Drive. We also provide a really good transport link from the main PT hub of Auckland to a fast-growing employment area.
We’ve had a bit of time for the trams at Wynyard to be a tourist plaything. Now it’s time to make the infrastructure actually useful.
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Damn right! $8.2 million is bugger all cost in the scheme of things to get the trams extended through to Britomart.
What $8.2 million earns you:
1. A transport system that handles about 1 passenger every 8 minutes (based on 10 hours a day service).
2. The suggestion that if this transport project has delivered 20% of forecast demand, then so might others. Business cases might contain numbers that are pure fantasy.
This system was a joke right from the start. It was a line-to-nowhere with ancient trains salvaged from a Melbourne museum. If it had been managed as a tourism project then it would be a failed tourism project. But now it is a failed transport project championed by Mike Lee, and it has probably damaged the tram brand for a generation. That’s a shame, but if the lessons are learned then it might not be a complete failure.
Obi the $8.2 million is the cost of extending the little toy loop over to Britomart to make it a functional transport link between downtown and the Wynyard development area. The actual cost of setting up the loop was about three million if I remember correctly, and it was paid for out of the waterfront precinct budget.
In that regard the existing tram loop is on the same page as the Silo Park, the children’s playground and the big steel observation platform. They all cost quite a bit of money, the all run at a loss, and are all functionally useless from a transport perspective, except for the fact they make Wynyard an interesting place to go visit.
I’m glad we have the useless loop, because it makes a not-useless line to Britomart all the more likely. Like Odaikorob says $8.2 million is chicken feed to get a rapid transit link between the Britomart terminal and Wynyard, and once we have that then extensions to the likes of Queen St are also more likely.
If it weren’t for the ‘line-to-nowhere with ancient trains’ wouldn’t be having the discussion over whether eight million on an extension to Britomart was a good idea. We wouldn’t be talking about trams at all.
I don’t understand how anyone could look at the problem, which is people wanting to get to Wynyard, and think that the problem was best addressed with trams. Especially trams my grandparents might have ridden on when they were children. The problem is best addressed by walking. Or if walking isn’t good enough then by a minor adjustment to a bus route. There are hundreds of buses and a bus lane along Fanshawe St, and the distance from Fanshawe to Jellicoe is only 500m. It is only 700m between Britomart and Jellicoe, along one of the nicest walkways in the city.
If the ultimate objective is a useful route like running out of the CBD along Dominion Rd, then basing it on a service where the business case was out by a factor of five is not going to make it an easy sell. That would require hundreds of millions of bucks to buy non-antique trams, and if I were asked to pay then my first question would be “why should I trust your business case this time when your last business case so so incredibly wrong”.
“hundreds of millions of bucks to buy non-antique trams”
Obi- you know you don’t have to buy the gold plated ones made of cocaine yeah?
Nice guess
Why would you even glance at the tourist loop business case when thinking about Dominion Rd light rail? You might as well run through the books from Rainbows End or the harbour bridge bungy jump, they are about as relevant.
Please send it around past Vodafone etc. For one, it would expose the service to more people and secondly, I don’t want to see another bridge accross the Viaduct Harbour. It’s a pain for the boaties now, imagine 5 minute services? May as well fill the whole thing in.
Totally agree.
Modern rolling stock. I dislike faux heritage, and I think the service needs to be attractive and comfortable. Not to mention accessible.
Hear hear!
Mayor Len was effusive about extending up Quay, Queen and Karangahape in this interview last year with Dame Edna. (From 5.07->)
http://tvnz.co.nz/q-and-a-news/len-brown-interview-9-48-video-4383045
This isn’t really a “loop” until it goes down Ponsonby Rd though, but every bit helps.
And there’s a Facebook page too if anyone wants to debate vintage/contemporary, mid-block/intersection stops etc..
https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Auckland-deserves-a-Tram-System/217282094980382
Odaikorob- yep. $8M is nothing. What did the “we don’t know if we’ll use it Wellington St onramp cost to refurb- $30M? $44M? One could lay a metric shitload of track for that money!
Slightly off topic but looking at the old tramway map reminds me that I have never seen a map of the North Shore tramlines. Does such a map exist?
I have been told that the concrete strip running down Queen St from Onewa Rd to Northcote Point covers the buried remnants of some of the Shore network but the truth of this seems hard to verify.
Personally I would be happy to see a tram, heritage or otherwise, running from Devonport to Takapuna. Mind you, considering the local car driver’s antipathy towards cyclists and cycle lanes on that route I imagine any such suggestion would be greeted with outrage.
I’m guessing images can’t be placed in messages, so if it doesn’t appear, paste the link into your browser instead. Takes you to a map of the North Shore tram lines.
[img]http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8141/7207251126_90aa814391_b.jpg[/img]
That doesn’t include the Northcote network FYI.
I’m not aware there was ever a tram network in Northcote. Just the Devonport and Takapuna lines, as shown on the map.
It might have been horse drawn, but there was definitely a tram of some kind from the Northcote point ferry up to Lake Rd.
Thanks Geoff
Interesting that it didn’t go down to the waterfront at Devonport. Presumably Bayswater and it’s wharf was more important in those days. Also interesting that a depot was sited where the Takapuna buses now stop. Not a coincidence I imagine.
The Bayswater-Takapuna line was more a cross between a tram and a train, with a tram-style “locomotive” hauling 2-3 carriages. See http://www.localhistoryonline.org.nz/ROWANS/gsdl/collect/supercol/index/assoc/nsim-T08/03.dir/T0803_access.png as an example.
Great image Geoff, thanks for that.
I lived in Auckland for 4 our years in the 1980’s and used PT all the time. I had no idea the extent of the tram lines and removing them has got to be one of the worst decisions ever made in this country. Unbelieveable.
It’s good practice to acknowledge sources of images, particularly when they are within copyright (as the Auckland map is). It’s from the NZ Railway & Tramway Atlas, published by the Quail Map Co in Exeter, England.
I remember when I read ‘Going West’ (Maurice Gee) soon after arriving in NZ being quite taken with the description of the tram ride into town from New Lynn (was it?). Early in the book. Particularly impressed at some of the hills those things tackled, like from Western Springs up to Grey Lynn along Gt Nth Rd. Can’t imagine what possessed them to get rid of them. They are Melbourne’s USP (except for maybe the MCG).
What possessed us? An all in gamble on the car, and we’re still paying the costs.
Thats not entirely true. While there was no doubt a large element of clearing the way for the automotive revolution, the end decision was probably financial. At the dawn of the fifties the trams and tracks were entering their fifth decade, and they had a huge backlog of maintenance an investment from the war period. It would have been cheaper and easier at the time to replace the system with buses than to replace the fleet and rebuild the trackage entirely, and at least some of the decision makers would have genuinely thought they were making the best move for public transport users.
Councillor Dunlop may have led that charge?
Can anyone tell me if this line to Britomart will need to be dug up shortly after it is layed to make way for the CRL construction works?
Shouldn’t do, it would run along Quay St which would be clear of the CRL site.