Whenever there is a large transport project like the CRL, or probably any large project for that matter, the responses tend to fall into four categories.
- The enthusiastic supporters and you can put us in that category
- Those that don’t really have a view either way and this probably covers most of the general public
- Those that object to the project and we can probably put the government in this group
- Those that could be classed as fence sitters or who think they know better
For this post I am going to look at that last group as while they publicly support the project, they don’t back this up with their actions and this is usually manifested in one of two ways. The first is putting caveats on their support by saying things like that now isn’t the time and that we should wait for the economy to improve but of course they find some other excuse when that happens. The second way is by acting as ‘concerned’ individuals or organisations who try to create an uncertainty about the project in the eyes of the general public by questioning some parts of it like the route or the technology used. It is exactly this kind of uncertainty that has been instrumental in holding public transport in general back since the 50’s as while individual groups are bickering over particular aspects of PT the roading groups have clearly and consistently called for more motorways.
It is in this last camp that I would count both the AA and Steven Selwood of the New Zealand Council for Infrastructure Development (NZCID). Both have suggested that the CRL should move westwards to take into account the planned growth at the Wynyard Quarter while the NZCID have also said the tunnel should to closer to the Universities. Selwood has also said “If you don’t serve those areas with rail then you must add the costs of buses or light rail,” he points out. “What’s needed is a ‘whole of life, whole of city’ analysis”. So lets look at the two locations identified a bit more closely.
Wynyard Quarter
Wynyard is obviously one of the key growth areas for the CBD over the next decade or so but just how big will it be. Research conducted by PWC for the Waterfront development agency suggests that eventually 13,000 people will be based in the area and another 7,000 will be living there. Those are some decent numbers but how do they compare to the rest of the CBD, pretty poorly actually. Stats NZ shows that the three area units that make up the CBD currently contain over 80,000 jobs. What this means is that if we were to divert the CRL via the Wynyard Quarter then we would potentially be making the journey slower for majority of passengers who are going to the core of the existing CBD which has a much bigger catchment.
A better solution for the mean time will be the extension of the existing tram line across the viaduct and on to Britomart. Buying a couple of modern trams to run on these tracks and we have probably sorted out the transport needs for the area for a while and at a much cheaper cost than what Selwood is suggesting.
Long term there is another solution but that is at the bottom of the post.
Universities
The universities are a huge part of the CBD, not only employing a huge number of people but of course teaching tens of thousands of students so it is understandable to suggest a station nearby them however the image below shows a 500m walking distance from the 3 stations closest to the universities. As you can see a 500m walk does cover parts of AUT however it falls just short of reaching the University of Auckland but is it enough to justify diverting the route of the CRL, I don’t think so.
Once again just as with Wynyard I think the is another long term solution to this.
The long term solution
So what is the long term solution? It is something we have discussed before and is how we connect the future North Shore line to the rest of our network. Any line from the North Shore would pass through the Wynyard Quarter and AT confirmed in their presentation the other day that it would connect at Aotea. The Auckland Plan also takes this view.
My understanding is the main sewer line for the western half of the city passes under Victoria St so it means A rail tunnel would most likely be under Wellesley St and from there could pass under the university where there could be a station before going on join the existing network at Parnell. Linking the North Shore line and the Southern lines to create one route while the Eastern and Western lines would link through the CRL to form a separate route. With these two routes we would get pretty good coverage all of the key points in the CBD along with much of the region. To me this is a far better option than trying to make the CRL into an all things for all people type project and it only requires that we design the CRL in a way to allow it to happen (which seems to be what AT are doing).
Eventually we can hopefully work our way towards something like the image below for a network of high capacity, high frequency, congestion free routes. Just imagine how much more PT would be used if we had this even today, let alone with another million people in the city all trying to get around.
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I agree the University will be best served by the North Shore line, and you could also possibly build the Parnell-Aotea section earlier than the harbour section.
I wouldn’t be too worried about the perceived 500m limit, as students pour off the trains today, proving it’s not really a problem. Most people are happy to walk a kilometre or more. You only have to follow the crowds off the trains up Queen Street to see that people all over the CBD walk from the station.
Yes you could definitely build the Parnell to Aotea section before the harbour section and it may make sense to do that as the CRL is likely to be much more popular than expected which means it could hit capacity sooner than planned.
In my days at the University of Auckland I took the bus every day. Along with thousands of other North Shore students my bus terminus was directly opposite the Skytower, a good 800m from the bulk of the campus.
I’m not sold on the need for a university station, Shore line or none, as I think Aotea will fulfill that role perfectly well. Waking from the station to campus will be a shorter distance that walking from one side of the campus to the other.
Plus as I understanding it both the University and Wynyard become major nodes on the new bus network.
That bottom right station (Parnell? Beach Rd?) would be less than 500 m if thee walking track were straightened…
Selwood came to a Waitemata Local Board meet a year or so ago, laid out all the projects being thought of- mentioned it would put rates up hugely to do all of them, or we could pick and choose the ones we could afford. In our Auckland Plan submission we listed our projects in order as per Mr Selwood’s hints. Maybe he didn’t read them?
Agree that Wynyard is a resource sinkhole. The 010 was re-routed to go there instead of town. Wonder how busy it is now?
I like the path of the north-south line, with stations at WQ and maybe the uni before connecting with Aotea.
But on a related mater, is a future north shore line realistically going to be heavy rail? I wonder whether it should be a light metro line that heads into the South-east via a converted AMETI busway. One reason for that line being light metro is the lower cost should make it easier to justify. Secondly, the north shore could evolve into an area serviced by a few crucial light-metro lines, linking with the line going south.
New heavy rail lines would be limited to extensions of existing lines (e.g. Onehunga and manukau to the airport), or lines linking the existing lines (e.g. Avondale to Southdown).
While I understand the attraction of ‘light metro’, I personally think there is greater benefit from having the line being able to integrate with our existing network. I’m also not convinced that it would be that much cheaper to build either, as an example the northern busway cost $210m for about 6km of busway which works out at about $35m per km. By comparison the Manukau spur cost about $50m for about 1.5km of double track or about $33m per km
Duplication of the western line cost about $420m all up but once you take out the $140m for New Lynn then you are left with $280m for the rest of the line which included about 14km of new track and 8 new stations along with quite a number of bridges, level crossings and other challenging aspects (like Grafton). That works out a cost of about $20m per km but costs would have been more from having to maintain a working train service. What is clear is that it isn’t necessarily the type of technology used that costs but it is building the dedicated corridor.
I agree with you Matt, but my view would be that a driverless light metro line on the Shore would be the first of a couple of new lines (say outer east or northwest), directly integrated with each other. And of course integrated with the existing rail and bus lines by way of transfer.
There isn’t much difference in cost by technology, the main savings could come where the light track geometry allows big capital savings on building the dedicated corridor. One wonders how much New Lynn would have cost if the trains were capable of grades almost three times as steep and required 1.5m less vertical clearance, for example.
The AA and the NZCID are being silly, you can’t service every area around the CBD with one tunnel. It’s called the City Rail Link, so it can provide the “overall” best access to the city from other parts of the rail network – that means servicing the central location (the CBD), not pandering to areas lying on the fringes. I think both Wynyard and the University have got it pretty good, being only a kilometre away from what will be the central station in Auckland.
“If you don’t serve those areas with rail then you must add the costs of buses or light rail,”
Erm, do you want to tell Selwood that *they already are*, or shall I? 😉
Surely you would have a station at Wynyard from the North Shore line then carry on to Aotea
Wow. So here we have two organisations that have shown little interest in CRL suddenly and some time later coming out and saying it should be expanded. That’s fantastic! The next step from here must surely be that they promote their ideas to the government. But will they do that? No. As you say Matt, simply stalling tactics.
It’s also quite disappointing that the Council for infrastructure has little support for rail infrastrucure. NZ’s beginning to feel more like a banana republic the way it’s being run.
There’s no reason why you couldn’t build a public transport network that links from the stations to other well-used public amenities. Like this. A tramline that ran from the new Grafton station to Britomart, past the two universities and high court (and through a busy employment precinct) would be very useful.
I guess a Dominion Road tram could do that if you ran it up New North Road and along Symonds Street but the argument for having it run down Queen Street is also quite compelling.
Yeah, you could also run buses. The important thing is to have high capacity and frequency priority transport that links with the rail system.
The hospital is a very significant area of employment and also visitor and patient traffic. How does this fit into the public transport network?
About a million buses drive right past there on the central connector which has stops at the hospital’s doorstep and carry on down to Britomart. It’s pretty well served PT-wise.
and the Inner Link and the Outer link. Grafting Hospital is very well served by public transport. Which must be why the building by the Domain entrance was demolished and turned into a carpark building.
Hang on…
How much did that carpark cost again?
By Auckland standards it is well seved, so is Britomart yet we just saw a huge carpark being built there.
I greatly enjoyed reading Matt’s determinedly bold heading and the content in his post. And then in Friday’s Herald the opinion page has somebody who wants drains before train because the city had just been subject to a particularly heavy downpour, Michael Barnett of the Auckland Business Forum wants an East – West Trucking link for freight ahead of the City Rail Link and the redoubtable Jim Hopkins tells us rail is out of date. Three anti’s on two pages – un- believable. I think it is about time the Herald produced some balanced reporting. I thought also that Jim lived in Christchurch so I wonder what he really knows about metro rails possibilities for Auckland.
The opinion pieces in the Herald don’t have to be balanced but I will just say, watch this space. Hopefully there will be something later this week with a different view 😉
I’m bamboozled Hopkins still gets paid to write in the Herald. Never has anything intelligent or witty to say.
Once we’ve got a transfer model it’ll be irrelevant where the CRL runs because anyone who’s deterred by walking (and it’ll still be a hell of a lot closer than Britomart is currently) can just jump on one of the multiplicity of buses that’ll take them right past their destination.
Can we say if Michael Barnett is in the same boat. Supposedly there is a freight corridor (for trucks, of course) that is oh so vital and a better spend of $2 billion. Apparently it just happens to go the same way as an existing rail corridor.
Michael Barnett probably falls into the same bucket as the AA and Selwood. I have heard him say in the past that he supports the CRL but not just yet. I would put him in the lets wait for the economy to improve first camp but then he goes and suggests that the best way to improve the economy is by building a motorway for trucks.
The motorway he is proposing is most commonly depicted as a motorway along the northern side of the Onehunga foreshore, over the railway junction at Westfield, down the northern side of Panama Rd (wiping out a ton of houses) then over the river to connect to Highbrook.