I was sad to miss the movie night earlier this week, as it sounded like a real blast. Hopefully something to be repeated in the future! I have had pretty good weather in Vancouver – although this is the best time of year to be here, apparently in winter it rains a lot.
But anyway, as my trip here is not just for holiday purposes, but also to assist in my studies (and fuel me with ideas for blog posts once I return to NZ and have better computer access) I have also learned quite a lot about a variety of matters which are likely to be of some interest. Here they go, in no particular order:
Firstly, house prices are scary – even by Auckland’s standards. Vancouver is close to having the least affordable housing in the world on average, however that simple statistic masks the truth to an extent. That truth comes through a bit clearer in looking at some recent real estate trends here. 
The massive gap between average prices for detached housing and attached/apartment housing is what one might expect in a place where the real value is sitting in the land. Attached houses and apartments use the land more efficiently and therefore have a lower cost. What’s really interesting here is that improving housing affordability in Auckland by building more apartments and attached houses is often dismissed in favour of more sprawl – for a number of reasons, including apartments and other attached housing being too difficult, too expensive and too unpopular to build in a way that’s affordable. I’m not entirely sure how Vancouver is getting around these issues, but clearly they are.
Secondly, it’s quite clear from travelling around Vancouver that – unlike Auckland – Vancouver is building houses. Though once again what is mainly being constructed are apartments and other attached housing types. Again from the same source as above: 
Looking back a bit further it becomes clear how Vancouver’s managed to really ramp up the number of dwellings (mainly apartments) over the past few years. This is shown in the table below (from here):
Like most places, housing starts in Vancouver declined hugely in 2009-2010 due to the economic situation, but Vancouver experienced a big resurgence in 2011 and the stats in the graph above show this trend has only accelerated in recent months. This shows that it is possible to quickly increase the supply of housing without having to resort to urban sprawl. Hopefully over the week or so I have left here I might get a bit more of an understanding around how Vancouver has done this.
Thirdly (and finally for now) I have been impressed and interested by how unfocused on the city centre Vancouver’s public transport (or “transit” as they call it) system is. Many of the busiest Skytrain stations aren’t actually downtown, the transit modeshare of trips to the city centre is quite possibly less than Auckland – but elsewhere is much much higher. It seems as though this is largely because their transit system is actually useful for these other trips, highlighting the enormous latent potential of Auckland’s PT network to better cater for trips beyond peak time commutes to the CBD.
After all, Vancouver’s Skytrain system is roughly similar in lengthy and station number to Auckland’s rail network – yet carries around 14 times as many annual trips. This suggests that we haven’t even tapped a fraction of rail’s potential market in Auckland.
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Vancouver and Auckland aren’t the only place with out of control house prices.
Recent article on The Guardian UK website says house prices over the decade from 2001 to 2011 went up by 94% yet incomes (wages) rose by 29% according the National Housing Federation.
(nearly 3 times faster house price increase compared to incomes).
Link here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/aug/17/house-prices-rise-faster-wages
(sorry can’t work out how to make links work with the new blog site.)
Putting house ownership ever further out of reach of first home buyers – sound familiar?
Of course these are average house prices and average incomes becong compared.
The usual culprits get the finger here too for the cause i.e. not enough houses getting built (new homes build at 3 year low), rising rents, lack of first home assistance packages, banks wanting too high an initial deposit.
So, perhaps the UK needs to relax its MUL as well?
Two ends to this equation, Greg. You suggest that constrained supply is the problem to be unlocked in the UK; perhaps it is the way the demand arises. As an earlier Guardian article puts it, even when prices are falling buyers can find it harder to buy. Problem? Dependency on excessive lending related to wages:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/blog/2010/dec/14/first-time-buyers-house-prices-fall
My comment on the UK relaxing its MUL was a poke at the folks here who suggest that all we need to fix high house prices here is relax the MUL.
Desirable city = expensive to live in. It’s no surprise the likes of Auckland, Vancouver, London, Melbourne etc have high housing costs, that’s because lots of people want to live there.
Peter, I agree we haven’t tapped a fraction of the potential in Auckland. Rail technology plays a small part there, with their excellent driverless system Vancouver can afford to run very high frequencies all the time. But the biggest thing is how people get to the station, I can’t remember the stats but wasn’t it something like 3/4 of patrons got to the station via a connecting bus? Here in Auckland our rail catchment is almost entirely walk up with a smattering of park n ride. Once that new integrated PT network is rolling we’ll see some huge gains in rail patronage.
The UK prices relates to the entire UK, not London (thats a different story).
could be though that Desireable country also = expensive to live in.
I wonder if anyone has plotted net migration against housing costs? I’d imagine the two covary.
nick,there is an excellent report published by the great wellington regional council about the general PT useage in the wellington region,IIRC the report mentions that the most preferred mode of transport to the nearest train station is by car,only 12% of the communters take the buses to their train stations the reason being that cars are far more convenient.
auckland is no different..
Indeed, the poor connectivity of buses and the additional fares required make bus connection to trains (and between buses) quite unattractive. Luckily Auckland will soon start rolling out an integrated PT network and integrated fares, so shortly is will be much more attractive to transfer from train to bus or whatever.
completely wrecked the the railway lines in auckland and replaced them with an elevated rail network similar to that of vancouver,then you have the vast potential,otherwise dream on..
It isn’t the Sky Train’s elevation that makes it so good for the city but its frequency and long hours; It’s fully turn up and go damn near round the clock. That can happen at any elevation, from subterranean to at grade to elevated. You are confusing the form for the service. And that this is pretty much without any operating subsidy [I believe] has a lot to do with the trains being driversless, as Nick is always explaining to us. Very low staff costs, cheap, quick, and clean electric propulsion too…. things that most bus systems can’t do.
So for Auckland? Well we’ve got a long existing rail system in place, soon to be electrified…. just needs joining up and run more efficiently and we’ll be most of the way there. No need to change the height of the rails. That’s not the problem.
Although there is some issue with the non-direct nature of some of the rail corridors in Auckland, poorly setup junctions etc.
if height of the rail isn’t the problem then why did you and peter m repeatedly compare the auckland system to the skytrain? you know thats something completely different and its definitely not what auckland is getting. I understand that you are enthusiastic about anything rail but please compare apple versus apple not orange.
as for the frequencies and hours of operation,i personally believe the trains in auckland are overall running very frequent,the lack of late night train services is a shame but surely no-one could afford to run empty trains every night.
Auckland trains are not frequent at all, only one train every 15 minutes out west at peak and only one every half hour off peak. On weekends it is only hourly and there aren’t even trains past Henderson on Sunday’s (I live past Henderson so I simply don’t have a choice to use them).
On my current travels around Europe is common for cities not much bigger than Auckland to have trains running on their metro networks at 5 minute fruquencies off peak. At that sort of frequency you don’t need to look at timetables you just turn up which drives additional patronage by itself.
apart from the sky trains,vancouver seems to have 3 BRT lines as well as a relatively comprehensive trolleybus network,do we have any in auckland?lol
You’re right that Vancouver has a much better bus network than Auckland. I don’t think that comes down to its technology though, but more the extent and frequency of service.
Vancouver only has 2 BRT lines now. The 98 b-line became the Canada Line. Another BRT line will become the Evergreen Line over the next few years while the last one (the 99 b-line) is also likely to be upgraded to rail in the future. Vancouver is pretty clever in building patronage through BRT improvements for routes that eventually become rail lines.
Vancouver has zero BRT lines. The 99-B is just a limited-stop diesel bus with all-door boarding. It’s not like there’s a hierarchy of rapid transit > light rail > trolleybus > bus here. They just use trolleybuses on the city-proper local routes; the limited-stop buses, including the 99-B but also less specially branded ones, use diesels so that they can pass the trolleybuses more easily.
I think the rail investment bit boils down to North American vs. Australasian mainline rail rules. Auckland, like Australian cities, has reasonable mainline passenger rail, so the upgrades involve the mainline network – i.e. electrification, and frequency boosts. Vancouver has North American freight-dominated rail; the only commuter line runs 5 roundtrips per weekday. So Vancouver’s investments – like those of other Canadian cities – have been about creating a separate rapid transit network. And if your transit network is grade-separated and also separate from the mainline network, you might as well go driverless.
Don’t doubt that Auckland can improve if it puts its mind into it. Vancouver is not New York, which is trading on transit ridership and development that it had in the 1910s and 20s. It’s had a real transit revival, with a large increase in mode share, from 14% in 1996 to 21% in 2010. This comes from investing heavily in rapid transit (in 1984, Vancouver had zero kilometers of urban rail) and also aggressively upzoning around the Expo Line stations. Hopefully something similar will happen around the Canada Line and the UBC extension when it gets built; the Millennium Line’s ridership is a disappointment.
One thing that Vancouver has going for it in the housing department is its laneway houses. These are small(ish) detached homes (typically less than 80sqm) built on the back of large lots. The detached house is always going to be popular because of our desire for privacy, but it’s not going to be be an affordable model unless the size comes down. The average home size for a detached house in NZ is 200sqm – that’s actually a pretty damn big house, especially considering that family sizes continue to shrink. Downsizing home sizes is going to be a key part of providing more affordable housing.
http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/12/vancouver-policy-rental-housing-laneway/