With the news that Auckland Rail ridership hit 11 million for the year to March 2014 it is time for some quick back of the envelope math:
Readers will recall that when PM Key announced support for the City Rail Link in June last year it was coloured by a disagreement with the Council over the timing of the need for the project. The Council wants it to be operational by 2020 and the government doesn’t think construction should start until that date. However he said that if ridership was heading to 20mil in 2020 that [along with Centre City employment growth] would support the case for the Council’s view on timing. Matt considered both these metrics at the time here.
So where are we at now? Ridership at the end of June 2013 was almost exactly 10mil: http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2013/07/28/june-2013-patronage/ Less than a year later and it is now 11 mil. 3 months to go and already 10% growth. To reach 20mil by 2020 a rate of 10.4% is sufficient.
So what do you say Mr Key? How about we wait till June just to be sure then you can send a note to Treasury to ringfence the funding over the construction period?
Good to have that sorted then…
OK, I can hear the cynics out there saying that you can’t just extrapolate ridership growth from one year out indefinitely and that is indeed true, almost as absurd as assuming traffic growth will leap upwards from a flat line; well almost. So we must ask are there good reasons to believe that ridership growth will continue at this rate? Well no, but there are three good reasons to be confident that it will in fact accelerate from this year even more strongly;
1. The vastly more attractive, higher capacity, and able to be more frequently run New Trains
2. The new integrated ticketing and fares system
3. The New Bus Network that is focussed on coordinating with the Rail Network to help speed and improve many journeys, from new transfer stations like the recently completed Panmure, New Lynn, and coming Mangere and Otahuhu.
Ok what else? Are there any precedents elsewhere for this confidence? Well, again no, because to our knowledge no other city has improved so much at once, but there is the example of Perth, where they did both electrify and extend the existing rail network in the 1990s then add an underground inner city link and a new line in the 2000s, both investments rewarded with the big jumps in ridership visible in the chart below. And interestingly they started with both a similar population to Auckland [a bit higher, but more dispersed] and a similar rail ridership at the start [10mil]:
So because of these already underway changes we consider it highly likely that ridership will hit 20 million well before 2020, although that will be inhibited by the constriction caused by the deadend at Britomart, which will continue to restrict AT from responding to higher demand with the really high frequencies, the very problem which of course the CRL will address, elegantly and efficiently, as well as improving reach and speed. It is clear that the Council’s plan to stage the construction in order to spread the works disruption and their understanding of its near term need is compelling and necessary.
We should also remember that rail ridership has grown by some 400% since the opening of Britomart [annualised: 18% pa, so this has been a consistent grower since even simple improvements were added to what was a completely under invested in system. Build it and they will indeed come.
It is also worth noting that no motorway network shows or is required to show anything like a 10% demand growth in order to get even 50% funding from government. In fact the government had to invent an abstract and novel category of road –The Road of National Significance– in order to get around the low traffic demands all over the nation and overcome their often appallingly low business cases. For example traffic demand in and around Wellington is going backwards, actually falling, but NZTA can’t stop drawing lines down every fault-line for new motorways there. How about 10% demand growth hurdles for investment all transport systems?
Anyone looking for a sure-bet infrastructure project certain to return a transformational shift then here it is: the CRL.
Here’s a chart for the more visual among you, spot the outlier? Off the chart at +384%:
From: http://chartingtransport.com/2010/11/13/public-transport-patronage-trends/
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[edit] the RONS, build the CRL.
[edit] the National Govt and build the CRL.
For me it is more about keeping the government of the day to their word than taking sides. The PM set up this challenge for Auckland and it is already clear that the doubts of his colleagues and advisors are quickly and clearly being proven misplaced. How will they respond? I prefer to believe that either it was a sincere doubt on the PM’s behalf, or a deal struck with the more conventional types in cabinet who just can’t believe something outside their own experience; and they only ever drive, or are driven.
Some people I have met from the MoT seem to be hardcore ideologues in their mode bias [rail always bad for some reason] so i look forward with interest as to how they will frame these numbers or somehow make them disappear. Absolute silence is probably their only hope so we have to make sure the government is questioned on this.
Oh and silence seems to be the herald’s only recourse at this stage too.
Yes, I can confirm following my comment earlier this morning….no mention whatsoever in the Herald of Auckland rail cracking 11 million, in online or hard copy versions.
And that is going to be the big challenge in the media this election year on CRL and a range of issues.
There is enough evidence to conclude that Auckland businesses as a whole want CRL to happen sooner than later, as do the majority of Aucklanders.
The critical group as far as CRL is concerned are the 10% of swinging voters in middle NZ who switched to National in 2008 and are critical to its electoral chances in future. And they are hermetically sealed within a view of the world delivered to them by the media “establishment”.
However the government were concerned enough that CRL could become an election issue within middle NZ that they gave ground last year. If they feel vulnerable, they will give ground again this year……let the pressure go on.
time for some more questions from Julie Anne in the house?
So rail patronage has grown by an average of 18% a year, every year, since Britomart opened.
If we can maintain that rate we’ll hit twenty million in three and a half years, however I expect as those new trains, the New Network and integrated ticketing come on the growth rate will increase. My guess is mid 2016, before the new trains and new network are even fully deployed.
Yes, and my gut feel is that the new train service will become too popular – within 18 months of the new trains entering service.
And while its a nice problem to have,
I agree. They will argue that since rail patronage is so high, there is no need for a CRL.
To finish off my comment, which was interrupted by my flights boarding call…
While too much success is a nice problem to have, its still a problem, and if not handled properly, it could well become a BIG problem – as big as the earlier problem of too little usage we’ve had until now.
You can see the opponents (cue Brewer, Quax, et al…) lining up and all saying “You spent how many billions (of our money) on fixing up the rails and now you say you want **even more** spent on it – to fix up even further as its now creaking at the seams only 2 years since the last upgrade!”
Not that they’d ever say that about a road project which, 2 years after opening is now choked full (again) of the very traffic congestion it was supposed to cure”.
Nope they’d simply demand yet another round of widening for that sort of problem and double quick too, can’t have cars delayed for even 1 minute you know.
All the while never questioning if there is a better way.
There is a “Tidal Wave of Change (and Rail Passengers)” coming to Auckland, and when it arrives, it will change everything, and right now, we’re in the holding pattern, right after the large earthquake, but before the sea retreats, confirming that the arrival of the Tidal Wave is imminent.
And once we see the sea retreat, it will be too late to escape the onrushing tide.
Why, you ask do you say there’s a tidal wave coming?
Well once you shovel bus loads of people onto the rails from the new network then passenger numbers on Rail will absolutely Skyrocket – all day – every day.
And the current 18% Year on Year Growth will become 18% Quarter on Quarter growth (and possibly, worse – 18% **Month on Month** growth) in very short order.
Thats why I am saying its coming.
And I also hold that the current plan to have the last of the EMUs coming on stream late in 2016 may be about 1 year too late.
And if CRL is delayed too long (even 2020 may be too long), then AT may also find itself back up against the wall, and needing to order another some more (e.g. 23 or so) EMUs to manage to hordes – and if it happens, then **there** will be a big cost of not starting CRL early – needing more EMUs sooner – as well needing to re-jig how Newmarket Station works to cope with the numbers of trains going through it.
There is NOT the capacity either at Britomart or Newmarket to add many more services Some extra capacity could be accommodated with substantially longer trains filling each platform but thats not possible either because Britomart’s Platforms will only accommodate 2, 3 car Electric units at one time. (2 x 3 car electric units will hold more passengers than the current 6 car set) but its not a whole lot more in the scheme of things.
Newmarkets other issue is access. This problem is not been addressed and it will make itself felt very shortly if more services especially at peak are added! For both stations as soon as one train is delayed, (and there is any number of reasons why, not just technical failure of equipment), the whole timing issue slotting in trains in order goes out the window and exacerbates issues.
Newmarket and Britomart’s access and capacity must be looked at now and something done in the interim!
And I’m pretty confident that John Key with all his advisers knows this will make achieving this goal near impossible. Tricky…………I reckon!
At the peaks 6 car sets will be needed. These are efficient in terms of operating cost and are great for moving quantities of people but often higher frequency of 3 car trains offers much higher value to the customer as true turn up and go frequency is gold for the user. So given our extremely constrained junctions (like at Newmarket and Britomart), having a high base frequency with shorter trains building up at the peaks with doubled units will be the best we can do pre-CRL.
Waspman what reasonably could be done at Newmarket to add capacity?
Its reasonable to say there simply isn’t any room for growth at the current station to do anything else, so;
Option 1: Reinstate the Newmarket West platforms (at Kingdon St) albeit longer sheltered permanent structures with all the usual wheel chair and infirmed type access. Logic suggests it would go into the Davis Cres tunnel and must be directly linked by easy to traverse walkways to the current station. This walkway will allow West South transfers or better still they could transfer at the soon to be built Parnell platform.
Newmarkets Kingdon St platform was a popular station when it was operating as it reached the other side of Newmarket where a lot of workers were/are.
Having a separate but accessable West platform would allow trains to use the direct link to Britomart and vice versa avoiding or at least minimising the hold ups that go on at present with trains queuing for the current 3 platforms both up and down and importantly its avoids the turn around time for West trains.
I realise that its close to Grafton but I don’t think its an option to delete Newmarket from the Western line services.
Option 2:, Onehunga could then also run a shuttle to Newmarket and back during peak to save on clogging up Britomart with duplicated Newmarket/Britomart bound trips and with a dedicated West link this could work. Have trains coming to/ from Papakura/Britomart uplifting or dropping off Onehunga passengers. Having said that its not without its fish hooks either if delays elsewhere occur. The last thing they need is trains taking up platform space waiting for feeder services.
But both options give them room to move and its workable I believe.
Aren’t the conflicts at Newmarket at the junction north of the station as much as much as at the platforms themselves?
If NM overloaded but the junction ok, then perhaps run Western Line trains direct Grafton to Parnell (south bound travellers can transfer there) and Britomart where by far the majority are headed, without any need for NM west platforms, which anyway will be redundant with the CRL. Much faster for the majority of travellers, and NM bound from city just have to use Southern Line trains, a bit of a delay for Western Line NM bound riders is the only cost.
Onehunga could be a high frequency shuttle to Penrose except that the platforms are too distant and exposed. So perhaps your Onehunga to NM only is the best solution especially if Western line trains still visit there, or if Southern trains can be much more frequent….?
In any case high frequency is much more important than preserving one-seat rides. Transferring in a high freq. system with fare integration is no big penalty.
Once Parnell is built they won’t even need to go all the way to Britomart. Would love to see data on boardings for Western trains at Newmarket.
We need some clarification from key about the employment target
Hopefully it won’t be needed as he, BS BrownLee and “Can’t fix NovoPay” Joyce, won’t be around calling the shots…
So after pouring multiple billions into the development and maintenance of motorways over the past 60 odd years, numbers of users pa are diminishing even while congestion is appearing to grow. And in spite of gutting the railway system over the same period, aside from relatively insignificant capital investments made more recently (Project Dart and electrification – thanks to decisions made prior to 2008), numbers of users are growing in the region of 18% pa. There’s something fundamentally wrong in the institutional mindset that allows for this disconnect to not only survive but to flourish. Mind you too, the single most obvious result of all this private motor vehicle focussed ‘development’ is a trashed environment, not the efficiencies claimed by its promoters and beneficiaries. Even the tourists are beginning to notice, if the letters page of today’s Herald is anything to go by.
“Why should we pay to build/upgrade something I can’t personally drive my car down?” {}
Hi Christopher T, Congestion is not ‘genuinely’ growing. How can it be with stagnation in usage numbers. I’ve been driving the full length of the North-Western daily, for over 20 years and in the last ten it has hardly got more congested except when there is hard out construction works as now. So you are correct it is a mindset problem within the planners and engineers. Maybe we should picket the next Institute of Engineers conference and lay the responsibility for the trashed environment at their feet.
Superb comment, Christopher.
Very exciting times ahead
We have a chance to vote Key and the National Party out this year! Vote Green/Labour for a better greener future
it’s ‘maths’ damnit
There are a number of Americanisms I like and ‘math’ and Transit [for public transport] are among them.
To make it all work, the existing bus routes, bus only lanes and timetables need to be re-jigged immediately, starting tomorrow, not some time in the future. Our transport planners need to stop having visions and get off their arses and do something now.
Already rejigged, see here:
https://www.aucklandtransport.govt.nz/improving-transport/new-network/Pages/default.aspx
Having travelled on the Mandurah line several times over the past few months I can say it is a fantastic service. The bus from our house to the station was only 5 mins walk away, The train was there 5 mins after getting off the bus, and we were in the centre of the City well before it would have been possible to to get there by car and park. CBD busses are free. Speeding past the cars on the Kwinana freeway doing their 110km, is even more satisfying and then at rush hour! One wonders why those drivers bother. Fares are also very competitive. For my wife and I to travel from Warnboro (last stop before Mandurah) to the International airport in the evening cost $11.60 for the two of us.
Speaking of Perth and its booming suburban rail network, transport blog readers, do please go along to the free lecture being given in Auckland this Tuesday 1 April at the Lower NZI Conference Room of Aotea Centre, by Professor Peter Newman of Curtin University in Perth. Prof Newman has been a key figure over the years in the reviving and extending of Perth’s rail network. He recently received one of Australia’s highest honours by being appointed an Officer (AO) of the Order of Australia for his contributions to urban design and sustainable transport. Prof Newman will be talking about the positive difference that rail has made to Perth as a city, and draw lessons for Auckland. More info on the 1 April lecture can be found at http://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/EN/newseventsculture/events/Events/pages/aucklandconversations.aspx
This will be a lecture definitely worth attending.
Now that would be a treat – but living out of town makes it impossible 🙁
The difficulty in advancing an economic argument for the early starting of the CRL is that economic arguments do not seem to figure largely in this government’s policies. The selling of 49% of Genesis is a prime example. We are told that we have to sell this to invest in other assets such as schools and hospitals. Schools and hospitals produce absolutely no economic return for a government. Conversely Genesis is expected to be a high yielding stock and that return is expected to be over 10%. Why could the government simply have retained the high yielding asset and leveraged the balance sheet?
I read this week that the government expects assets to grow by 10% before 2020 and the author of that report thought that a marvellous achievement. Really? To match the rate of inflation.
We need some fresh ideas. What if we do it another way will we achieve better results? What if we build an Auckland public transport network? Will that obviate the need for masses of extra roads? Will it make portions of the population more healthy because they have to walk somewhere other than to get the mail?
What we are doing is not working -let’s give something else a go.
Just read the expansion plans for Auckland airport. It seems that they are expecting the same number of passenger journeys to and from the airport as the number who travel the harbour bridge. But here’s the totally bizarre thing! They seem to be contemplating a rail link! Wouldn’t 2, 3 or 5 roads do the job better?
And just as a matter of interest who is going to be paying for that rail link? And is there a growth target before that starts?
Auckland Airport have had a railway station on their plans since the 1980’s. Every decade or so they re-aanouncement their intention to build it 20 years down the track, so I wouldn’t get too excited! It keeps the share price up to always have exciting plans in the pipeline.
I didn’t read that AIAL were planning to build a railway station, they have made space for AT to build it. AIAL are very responsive to their customers. Frequent travelers are not asking for rail access, they want parking, because when you have to catch a plane to Sydney, Melbourne or Wellington, you have to check in at 5-7am and car traffic is not a problem. Those who are travelling during the day are tourists, who have large suitcases that PT does not provide for very well.
Neil I am a frequent flyer I long for a rail connection. I absolutely hate the waste and boredom of driving or taxing to the airport, and the bus is still subject to the uncertainty of traffic. Please where’s your data from? Surveys regularly put rail to the airport at the top of the wish list for AKL.
More credible is that they are attentive to parking provision because it is so profitable, and of course a real RTN connection would undermine that monopoly. Remember they are also very tough on taxi access. It’s competition to a very lucrative part of their business.
And where will these 45 million travellers being travelling to or from in 30 years time when oil is $500 a barrel?
Auckland airport will never go for a rail link as they make too much money from car parking.
Yeah it’ll be like Sydney – a $3 train ride to the station at the airport and $20 “station pass” is needed to exit or enter the train station to go to/from the airport proper.
Well Simon a cynic might conclude that the airport is indeed doing a fine of at the least delaying rail through Mangere to the airport by claiming that it has to be underground to suit their possible future runway plans, while of course seeming to be all for it. Underground is expensive which is why it is reserved for high value inner city areas. We can see other much less expensive options. Will examine further.
Now how big is that carpark they are planning to build there again?
Patrick underground at the airport is expensive if you do it after the buildings and runways above it are already built.
Do it before and you can do it cut and cover like CRL proposes, and you don’t have all that pesky road corridor malarkey like Britomart to Aotea will need.
But yes, its not in the Airports commercial interests to build rail outside the airport anytime soon – theycould well build a rail network within the Airport confines – for the reason that if they build an onsite rail link that connects far flung carparks to the Airport, they can turn marginal land into even more of a money spinner.
They talked about car park prices ranging from $5 to $40 per day – $5 a day carparks are pretty remote and so need good links to the airport to be of any use.
Cue a “within the airport only” rail link.
However linking that rail network to the outside world – might not happen.
Underground is expensive regardless, particularly when the geometry forces you to stay underground for long stretches even if there is nothing on the surface to avoid.
22500 I believe!?
I wouldn’t be too concerned about gold-plating Auckland International Airport’s underground station. From the visuals, it could just as easily be a little like Manukau terminus, or New Lynn. These are grade separated at a subterranean level to avoid conflicts with surface traffic (both vehicular and pedestrian). New Lynn in particular could be defined as strictly underground for maybe a few metres around the escalators and concourse above. Away from the terminus zone, the tracks beyond New Lynn and Manukau head back to the surface.
The AIA plan itself from the press releases seems visionary and interestingly has ambitions to position Auckland as a hub between Asia and South America. Once on the international stage then international thinking has to come into play. To be attractive as a hub in the international marketplace, and to ensure those benefits flow through to Auckland as a whole requires high quality rapid transit into the city, end of story. I think Auckland airport gets it, Auckland business gets it, and the present anti-rail rantings of a small minority of provincial minded ideologues need to be forgotten.
Across the Tasman, Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne are the case studies on Airport transport links. Melbourne is the stand out contrast – no rail, and a journey out to the airport that is a nightmare regularly during the afternoon peak, and especially on Friday afternoons and leading into holiday weekends. No matter how much car-parking is provided, and despite the toll road into the city, there is no way that Melbourne Airport can function as an effective hub under their current transport arrangements, and I’m sure that AIA management will have taken note of that in their plans.
Oh, and by the way the Stuff article has the bit about AIA’s future as a hub….. http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/9879883/Auckland-Airport-unveils-30-year-plan
They seem to have grasped this critical plank in the growth strategy much better than ‘ol provincial granny herald.
I disagree, Melbourne Airports airbus is the fastest and most frequent airport transit link I have used this side of Asia. Well, Sydney’s is faster but only by virtue of their airport being so close to the city centre, it’s certainly not frequent though.
Melbourne lacks at peak times when it”s buses get stuck in traffic on the motorway, but a bus lane would fix that (there is already one on some bits at some times). So it’s really a case of a congestion-free dedicated rapid transit corridor being the goal. In Auckland the easiest way to deliver that to the airport seems to be a rail extension, but in Melbourne it might just be some bus improvements.
Nick R, I’ve used that airbus in Melbourne on a Friday afternoon and it wasn’t pretty. Although there is a transit lane over part of the journey, that too is also congested. Adding lanes is also not especially straight-forward given that large chunks of the toll road and freeway are either through built up areas, on bridges, are generally grade separated from the surrounding countryside, and have other freeways merge into and out of this particular road en-route.
If you are going to build separate buslanes along a considerable length, as per the North Shore Busway, than that is a separate and costly exercise altogether. And if you are going to do that, given Melbourne’s size, than it would make sense to put up a range of options for comparison; could be heavy rail, could be an extension of an nearby tram line, could be a dedicated auto light metro, or could be a busway. But just saying, that for Melbourne the transport mix to the airport doesn’t work during peak times at present…..which is potentially good for Auckland 🙂
I’ve also used that bus many dozens of times, I’m aware of what it is like at all sorts of hours. It ranges from brilliant to wrist slittingly frustrating.
That’s why I said a bus lane would fix it… I didn’t say anything about adding lanes however. They already have a bus/taxi/truck lane thing that works well where and when it operates, they just need to extend that along the whole way by replacing one of the four or five lanes that exists already. FYI they are planning to widen that motorway north of the Flemington Rd interchange anyway.
The problem with heavy rail to the airport in Melbourne is simply that the airport alone isn’t very big (about as busy as Auckland, it’s no Hong Kong) and it has very little else around it. You would be building a rail line to serve one station with relatively limited patronage potential, consider what that means in terms of the service delivery. Right now they have demand to fill a bus every five minutes at peak times, but that’s only about the capacity of one Melbourne train every hour and a half! If you wanted to run it at the same sort of frequency you’d need to run twenty times the number of trains as you could justify with patronage. Even if you doubled the number of people taking PT from the airport there you’d still be looking at trains that were 90% empty.
In reality, you’d see one train every 30 minutes, maybe hourly in the evenings. That’s what happens in Brisbane. I’m not keen to wait an hour to get in to southern cross.
Sydney is a little different, there the airport is on a loop line with two other stations in densely developed areas, and it also provides a path for other long distance services.
In Auckland we would have some success, but not as an ‘airport line’. Ours would be the Mangere line that happened to terminate at the airport terminals. It would get the vast majority of it’s passengers from Mangere Bridge, Mangere, the Kirkbride area and the office park development planned for the airport itself. Even at the terminals most of the users would be workers. A convenient service for air travellers is just the icing on the cake. In Melbourne it would only be icing, and no cake.
Thats why I think the old suggestion that we run an airport branch of the southern line to run into town is foolish to the extreme, a whole branch line and new services just to serve a single station at the airport. It would be a failure, another thing running once every half hour if we are lucky with nobody on board.
If we do an airport line in Auckland it really needs to be the four main radial line and add five or so stations on the way, it will never fly on the airport alone.
Nick is probably correct that few passengers would come from the city. Singapore’s Changi is also the last station on a branch line, and it gets very few passengers, in contrast to the main East Coast line which is always full.
So I take it you’ve sat on that Melbourne Airport bus stuck in traffic as the time ticked inexorably on toward that final check in time 😉
As an aside, I would have thought that new toll-roads such as East Link and City Link, and proposed additions could provide a great opportunity for a busway network to piggy-back onto the new roads working “across the grain” of the existing hub and spoke commuter rail network. There must be considerable commuting in Melbourne to and from quite densely developed regional “sub-centres” that is not CBD centric.
Anyway, back to Auckland. The lesson from Melbourne is that having a rapid AND guaranteed travel time for a connecting service between airport and city is everything.
Never been quite that bad but had a few moments for sure, not saying the skybus is already perfect but it could easily be very good. The corollary to that is if you’re train is only running every half hour and you just miss it, well half an hour wait for the next can also mean the difference between checking in comfortably and getting turned away.
Neil, perfect example. Even in the great Asia Pacific air hub of Singapore. the airport is on the branch line that you have to transfer off the main line to get to. Probably quite telling that the three suburban stations out to Pasir Ris are seen as the bigger priority for the main line than the airport.
Of course the ideal would have been to have them all on the one line, but I guess the geography just didn’t suit.
I suspect the Changi Line was an after thought. Connecting at Tanah Merah can be a problem for those with large suitcases as the main East Coast trains are full, and have no where for luggage.
To follow up on my previous comment….I did make that plane in Melbourne, thanks I’m sure to the skybus drop off being right outside the main terminal. A relatively painless sprint to the international departures, round the corner and up the escalator. Would have been quite a different story if the bus (or train) stop had been out beyond the car-parking building. And that is where Patrick Reynolds has made a very valid point. To be a serious proposition, any rapid transit terminal needs to be close to the main entry, not ‘on the other side of a highway and new huge parking buildings’. I think very close attention will be given to AIA’s planning.
If they were actually serious and not PT washing they would be building the rail station as part of the terminal expansion, right in the middle of the thing.
It wouldn’t be some nominal corridor allowed for a tunnel to be dug, ending on the far side of an enormous new parking building.
Would be more convinced if the station was integrated with the new terminus and not on the other side of a highway and new huge parking buildings, after all if it’s underground then taking it under the ticketing hall is a no brainer.
But yes, just an opening bid from AIAL, details should be improved, and as you say the line can be trenched and would only actually need to be bridged if they ever get round to extending that second runway out to the extra length. So costings shouldn’t be for underground just lowered, as the road would need to be too, according to AIAL.
If we forget about the airport for a bit and run the line into the Richard Pearse Drive area to service the workers then eventually AIA will have to respond to the inevitable pressure from customers. Meanwhile, I would think there is enough potential patronage from the surrounding commercial area alone to justify the line without the airport at this time.
Yes i get the idea, but it would be fairly mad to go all that way then stop short of the high profile destination. AIAL will have to see sense eventually they have expansion plans that can only be served by spatially efficient systems.
QUOTE: [there is the example of Perth, where they did both electrify and existing rail network and add an underground inner city link between lines in the 1990s]
The underground inner city link was between two lines, the Mandurah and Joondalup lines, that didn’t even exist in the early 1990s, so it is apples and oranges to compare the huge jump in patronage on the Perth network.
It would make more sense to compare the early 1990 figure to the three Perth legacy lines the Fremantle, Armadale and Midland, which currently total roughly 26 million from about 10 million in the early 1990s, which means that the patronage on the legacy lines increased by an additional 160% over 20 years which is roughly a 5% pa increase, far below the 10.4% pa mentioned in the post, and that was with the increased catchment with the new railway lines.
That makes the target of 20 million in Auckland a little more sobering, and I think it will be more difficult than the Perth vs Auckland chart leads us to believe,
http://www.pta.wa.gov.au/NewsandMedia/TransperthPatronage/tabid/218/Default.aspx
Maybe but as Nick points out we’ve had 18% Year on year growth since Britomart opened (some 10 years ago now) and thats without electric trains or underground tunnels and using your old DMU cast-offs as well.
And we’re making sure the bus and train network will complement not compete, so most people will use a train for the backbone journeys they now take by bus.
That all means that Perth’s experience is probably not ideal comparison material, but its in the same ballpark at least, and if anything we should be able to out-Perth, Perth.
Wagon the different stages of development in Perth that you describe are clearly visible on the ridership chart above in the two separate big jumps. So the Auckland analogy holds because we are also facing two separate events: first the three changes listed above which are comparable to the 1990s improvements in Perth, then the City Rail Link. Yes these are both different from Perth, in particular Auckland’s Link is a longer and further reaching project in the city and links existing lines not one new one to an existing one [but thanks- I have clarified the text above].
No two cities are identical the Perth example is as close as we are able to find. Remember the challenge here is to get towards the first jump in order to justify the second. Perth does show what we can expect so long as AT and AC work hard to complete their current plans well and at detail.
Not at all clear how you arrive at your 5% growth pa figure, why are you spreading it out over 20 years the jump in ridership from below 10mil to 26mil only took a couple of years post electrification as the chart above clearly shows?
The 26 million is the 2012/13 ridership on the legacy lines that actually existed when the chart began, the Armadale, Fremantle and Midland lines. The Joondalup and the Mandurah lines both began service after the beginning of the chart so I didn’t include them in my estimation.
If new lines were to open in Auckland I’m sure you would see a huge jump in patronage also. My point is, that without the new lines the increase in patronage in Perth would have been much less dramatic.
My estimation of 5% increase for Perth is for the original lines only, which have increased over 20 years from about 10 million to about 26 million. Using the compound interest formula FV=PV*(1+rate)^n we get 10*(1+0.05)^20=26.5. so roughly 5% growth
That’s not to say that electrification won’t be a boost to the network, just to say that 10% growth seems to be very optimistic,
10% may seem optimistic if you compare Perths older lines only.
But you are overlooking the transfer of bus passengers to rail for part of their journey via the “New Network” to be rolled out with the Electrification process.
This alone will easily add 5% growth to rail (as a minimum, could easily be 10% on its own), so add in another 5% from improvements and electrification and 10% Year on Year growth is very achievable.
But Wagon the 10 to 26 million jump only took a couple of years as is clearly visible above. Around 92-94, still don’t understand why you are choosing to call that 20 years?
The 10 to 26 million includes the opening of the Joondalup line in 1992, which opened up the northern suburbs of Perth, that were underserved until that point.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joondalup_railway_line
that is to say, your 10 to 26 milllion
Yes I understand that, as I said no cities are identical, in AKL we are doing some things they didn’t in Perth too, and I have not claimed that we will add 16mil riders in two years, but that our changes will mean we will comfortably beat 10% pa.
And seven years to add 10million? Certainly will happen, and more and more quickly if AT are able to smartly integrate fares, quickly build good interchange stations, and run both trains and buses to ‘turn up and go’ frequencies.
All going to plan 2017 should see the system bursting at the seems, and that’s conservative.
Here is one thing to consider, what if Auckland doesn’t need a Freemantle or Joondalup line? What if we already had rail lines going to the extremities of the urbanised area to the west and south, and an eastern busway and a series of integrated frequent feeder bus routes planned to link the whole region to the rail network?
What if our Freemantle line is already there (i.e. the Papakura/Pukekohe line) and just waiting to be unleashed with new trains, a new integrated bus system and integrated ticketing?
Apart from the north shore and it’s busway, we don’t have any significant stretches of development to add new long lines to even if we could.
Yes the Perth growth IS relevant to Auckland. The Mandurah experience is where you will be if the North Shore got rail. I have a suspicion though, some of your electric bounce is already ‘priced in’ as stock analysts would say as I don’t think the ADLs are that bad.
The real challenges are:
Get bus rail interchange happening not just the routes but the physical interchange and good time tabling
Transit oriented development
Reliability on the network eg signalling
I still think if you can just build Britomart to Aotea alone you should do it and as a stupid Aussie contributor I don’t get why a north shore line rather than the CRL is not priority. Thee would be nothing wrong with just running the Western line through the underground to Takapuna, and leaving Britomart just for the South and East corridors, with some connection between the two networks at Newmarket.
We already have a “North Shore Line”, its done using Express buses, with its own busway for most of its run.
So to all intents and purposes its a train on rubber wheels.
At AM peak times, this carries the bulk of the people crossing the harbour bridge.
Yes if you were to add the northern busway and measure the patronage of the “Congestion Free Network” (after adding the missing bus lanes) the chart would start to look a lot more like Perth.
Sadly the 20 million patronage target by Key, is for railway patronage only which makes the target harder to get,
Couple of points Riccardo.
1) Some of my best friends are stupid Aussies, don’t take it so hard 😉
2) Bus-rail interchange is happening big time. Google Panmure Station/South Eastern Busway, Otahuhu Station, Manukau bus interchange for the main ones. Every station but two on the network have some level of bus-rail connection. Some are already convenient at town centre or existing station bus stops, others are being looked at in more detail.
3) The plan is to run ten minute service all day every day on the rail, so that avoids the need for especially close timetabling. If that isn’t delivered most routes are planned to run to a 15/30 clock face so pulsing them at the terminal station, at least, shouldn’t be difficult.
4) Signalling is all brand new now, as is most of the track. With the new trains reliability should be very good.
There are two good reasons why a North Shore line is not the priority. Firstly the cost, a north shore line requires a city centre tunnel plus stations and tie in to the existing network. That alone would cost about the same as the CRL. But it also requires a harbour tunnel and a widened causeway to build the line up to Akoranga. After that there is a lot of work to convert the busway or run the line on another alignment if you want it to be useful for much. I wouldn’t be surprised if that cost more than double what the CRL would cost (to do to our heavy rail specs).
Secondly, there is limited benefit. A shore line only takes the busway and turns it into a rail line, some benefit but not worth four billion bucks. What it doesn’t do is anything for the existing three lines and two branches south of the harbour. Our primary constraint is squeezing three lines down to one flat junction and a single twin-track tunnel into Britomart. One track in, one track out. If you built the CRL you connect one end back to the existing network which means through running with two tracks in and two tracks out of the core. So a bit more than double the capacity and frequency for the existing network, plus new city stations, shorter routes from the west and the ability to interline from one side to the other.
If you build to the shore instead you could run a whole mess of trains up north, but south of the harbour everything is exactly as constrained as it is today, it would all still have to go in and out via that one twin-track tunnel to the east of britomart. The outcome is you’d still be limited to about twenty trains an hour for the Western, Southern, Eastern and Onehunga lines, you’d just add the ability to run those same twenty trains though to the shore. No extra capacity on the existing network, no new city centre stations (not in the middle of town at least), Western line still takes it’s circuitous dogleg around town and the interlining is limited to sending everything to the north shore. Net result is exactly the same rail network we have today, with lots of trains going north instead of a busway. Not worth the cost.
Our problem is not being able to deliver enough frequency and capacity on the existing network, the CRL fixes that beautifully and turns the whole lot into a veritable metro system.
Lots of capacity in the busway still and plenty of additional work to really make it fly, especially in the city but also with extensions and priority and much better services to the stations.
But Ricardo you are right about bus integration. That is the other similarity between AKL and Perth, as Paul Mees wrote in Transport for Suburbia: ‘At many stations the majority of passengers arrive by bus, something unheard of in the rest of the country’. Because of course they designed it that way, with interchange stations and high frequency feeder buses. And this is necessary in Perth because many stations are isolated from much local community by the freeway lines they run down. Not unlike much of the the Southern Line in AKL.
Looking forward to Peter Newman tomorrow. To quote the sadly missed Mees again:
‘By reviving Perth’s rail system and extending it into the suburbs that are sprawling even by local standards, Newman has demonstrated that high densities are not required for successful urban rail.’
Both quotes page 127. The book also has a withering chapter on AKL’s sorry postwar Transit story. Recommend.
“We already have a “North Shore Line”, its done using Express buses, with its own busway for most of its run.
So to all intents and purposes its a train on rubber wheels”
Have you ever taken the journey on the way back to the Shore? The “rubber tyred trains” frequently spend 30 minutes on Albert/Fanshawe. The reason trains are so successful is that this just doesn’t happen.
And yes rubber tyred trains are great. If only we could have a system like Santiago.
Then the most effective solution is dedicated bus lanes across the bridge and all the way to the city-side terminus. A cheap and instant fix that would further enhance the route.
I think its a long time before we see rail across the harbour and even then it might be light rail for reasons of cost.
Well they are working on fixing up the Fanshawe buslanes as announced the other day. That’s a quick and cheap fix compared to a rail tunnel under the city, across the harbour etc. As much as I love the idea we have bigger fish to fry just now right?
I agree that light metro is the answer.
It seems that projections suggest that buses will clog the central city within a relatively short time and that other alternatives will be necessary. Currently it appears that AT is limiting the success of the Northern busway by their tardiness in reconfiguring the network to provide regular feeders; the lack of a continuous busway; and excessive pricing to more remote parts of the Shore amongst other things.
Well all three of those are scheduled to be fixed, the New Network fixes the feeders, the Fanshawe improvements fixes (some) of the continuity, and the proposed fare zones will sort out the pricing.
Still going to be a bit ugly on the bridge at peak times, but there is a lot more value to be squeezed out of the busway just yet.
Yup and how expeditiously AT is able to make all these changes will have a big influence on not only rail and bus ridership but also on how efficient and successful our city is can become.
Worth updating that Perth – Auckland comparison. Perth ridership rate now running at over 65m p/a
Yes good point, Auckland too… Be good to find a good source of data for Perth going back to the 80s… Anyone?
Note- new chart added to end of post above.
Thats a nice graph Patrick. Do you have a plot of absolute numbers on each of those systems rather than indexed growth? How does 11 million a year compare?
Well that is a tendencious graph to say the least, kind of use of statistics that Steve Joyce routinely enjoys [though he’ed hate this one!]. Of course Auckland is a world beater there because of the extremely low base at the chosen start date. I didn’t make it, it comes from the Aussie site linked below it. They’re not really interested in Auckland so didn’t mind it not fitting the chart… follow the link.
As you can see from the Perth/Auckland chart above 11 million is around 1/6th of Perth’s 65+million. Latest annual figure for Perth is 2013 65.7mil. Although Peter Newman used 70 mil last night which may be the latest annualised figure.
I like it because it clearly communicates the trend, which gets to the nub of this argument. But also because it’s funny; blowing off the top….
The new trains will add 40% additional capacity so that should help in the peaks. To get us to 20m we will need a lot more. If we assume 60% of the 40,000 daily customers travel in the core peak periods 7-9, 3-6 that gives us 24,000. Let’s assume a 50/50 split so we have 12,000 travelling in each. A 40% increase in capacity will allow a maximum extra 4,800 people in the morning peak. Let’s call it a round 5,000 inbound, then the same again home again later on. That gives us 10,000 customer trips per weekday. Based on 250 weekdays per annum that would give us an extra 2.5m annual patronage. This might be a touch generous with 4 weeks annual leave, sick leave and the all important school and tertiary markets, but let’s not quibble too much at this stage. I think the main issue is how do we get 5,000 extra people to the train stations. We have 42 stations across the network which would give you an average of 250 extra people wanting to get to each station for the peaks. Not all of them are going to walk, some might be lucky enought for a morning kiss n ride and I suspect a low proportion would take a bus, then transfer to the train. That leaves us with a serious infrastructure conundrum. Do we build multi-storey Park n Rides (Constellation Drive probably needs this for the Busway)? How do we build local bus networks to shuttle people to trains – and will they take them? Having 8 storied buildings by main transport hubs will no doubt help, but this will take longer to eventuate. I suggest investing in real estate within a 5 minute walk of train stations. You will make a great return over the next 5 years if the patronage demand and growth is 10%+ each year!
Park’n’ride won’t do it, a very poor allocation of resources, so happy then, isn’t it, that the bus network is being completely reordered right now to deliver people directly to interchange stations that are also being added, and at no additional operating cost. Perth does it with buses; 80% of rail journeys on those outer stations in Perth start or end on a bus according Prof Peter Newman. Also weekend and longer hours, counter peak, and off peak, are all growing now, so it is less about about commuters.
I know Park’n’Ride feels intuitively like the best source for current drivers but the numbers don’t stack up. Recent spending on more parking at Albany didn’t add a single bus rider to the busway, it just shifted some from feeder buses to the the local roads. Hardly a good outcome. And Park’n’Rides that fill early need to be charged for, at least to the level of a local bus fare. Why should that be the part of the journey that’s free? They important at rural stations at the fringes, but then the land is cheap there.
Park’n’ride would do it for many more Auckland drivers than a feeder bus that take 10-20 mins more than driving, and means standing in the rain on wet days. There is no reason why drivers would object to a reasonable daily fee deducted from the HOP card on entry.
Yeah I get the convenience; it just can’t add big volumes to the ridership, and certainly not the next nine million. And yes it must be priced.
Neil park and ride I’ve looked at internationally doesn’t tend to make up more than about 10% of a systems patronage, even in cities with tens of thousands of car parking spaces. That’s not to say we shouldn’t invest in it, it is certainly useful in some places and I agree charging for it is the right way to go but P&R isn’t the panacea to getting lots more patronage.
Glen Innes parking is full before 8.00am so there is certainly unmet demand there. Watching college kids standing in rain makes me feel AT is working hard at making sure another generation hates travelling by bus. Toronto had a very successful park and ride, but their weather is more extreme.
Sure lots of demand when it’s free, but how much demand if a charge was applied? No problem with park n ride if charged to recover costs (even if just to a farebox recovery ratio like PT) but doing it to that level is likely to kill that demand. The problem is surface level level parks cost about $10k per space but that means you need a lot of land. Elevated structures cost about 25k per space
Park and Ride needs to be multi-level to work (be close to the station platform) so $25,000 over 50 years = $500pa, say $2/day which would probably be acceptable if combined with an electric train to the city.
Not quite that simple as that the capital to build it is obtained through lending and there’s also an opportunity cost associated with that cash i.e could it be used better elsewhere. Further you aren’t allowed to assess a transport project over 50 years, if you did the CRL would be built tomorrow as most of it’s benefits are at the tail end of the assessment period. The NZTA recently changed the rules allow up to a 40 year assessment.
Ignoring the opportunity cost, lets say each we were paying an average of a 6% interest rate over 40 years. That means each park would have a cost of about $1,660 per annum. On top of that you need to pay to maintain and operate the carpark, being an elevated structure that will be higher than an ground level park so probably 300+ per space. Lets round up the costs to $2k per year. Now lets assess it at 50% farebox recovery, like PT is required to get, after all a P&R structure is competing kind of part of the PT system. That means each and every space needs to recover $1,000 per day. There are ~250 working days per year so that’s about $4 per day. How many would pay $4 per day on top of their fare?
BTW meant to mention, Toronto is an interesting example for you to reference as they charge quite a bit for parking
It would be very interesting to see how many train stations are going to be fed by buses. It is a great stat from Perth with 80% in the outer sections being fed by bus, but I suspect we only have a quarter of Akld stations being well serviced by feeder buses. Many follow the rail line or main corridors rather than bi-secting the rail lines. The new network plan seems to feed rail in some instances, but suspect a lot more could be done. Happy to look at someone’s analysis of the bus routes that feed rail, but patronage/demand would also be an important factor.
37 of 39 rail stations on the New Network will have feeder buses, and furthermore almost all routes outside the isthmus terminate at stations and require a transfer to rail to go toward the city.
There is almost nothing more you could do.
Oh and yes, all main roads still have a bus on them. In some cases that is still parallel to the train line, to serve the areas between rail stations. Those are also feeder buses, many people will catch the bus along to the next station then transfer.