I’ve been noticing in recent times an increasing number of people questioning the need for the City Rail Link. I’m not sure what’s causing it but it might be that Auckland Transport have been remarkably quiet on the project for the last six months or so. With this post I thought I would highlight some of the key reasons why the project is needed and it’s all related to capacity.
It’s commonly mentioned by those that oppose the CRL that the CBD is only 15% of all regional employment. What’s not mentioned is that 15% represents ~100,000 jobs. While the 15% figure is true it ignores a couple of key points.
- City Centre employment has grew by about over 20,000 jobs between 2000 and 2013
- The numbers are based on a fairly narrow definition of the CBD. Expanding that to include the city fringe areas which are also likely to be directly affected by the CRL means the total number of jobs in the central city is 24% (~153,000).
- At ~100,000 jobs the level of employment in the CBD is still significantly larger than any other single area in the region. The second largest number of jobs is the massive commercial area covering Onehunga, Penrose, Ellerslie and Mt Wellington which combined has 60,000 jobs. Areas like the airport (including around Ascot/Montgomerie Rd), Manukau/Wiri, East Tamaki, Albany and Wairau/Smales Farm each only contain between 20,0o0 and 30,000 jobs.
- In addition to the CBD, employment areas all along the rail network would benefit from the greater frequencies the CRL would deliver.
- Employment isn’t the only thing that happens in the CBD, there are also 40,000-50,000 students at the two universities plus more at other education institutions.
Both employment and tertiary student numbers are expected to grow significantly in the future. AT say that by 2041 employment in the city and fringe areas is expected to increase to over 200,000 and student numbers to around 72,000.
That’s a lot of growth but why do we need it in the CBD, why not encourage it to other parts of the region?
Despite decades of anti CBD policies one of the key reasons the CBD is the size it is, is simply because of its location – it’s central. A large part of that is simply its historical location and how the city has subsequently developed but it means it’s an area that has relatively equal access from the North, South, East and West. That means employers in the CBD have a much larger pool of potential talent to choose from than ones in say Albany or Manukau.
Auckland is home to 60% of the top 200 companies in the country and a many of them based in the CBD due to the reasons just mentioned as well as to gain the benefits of agglomeration. It is why even companies like Fonterra who make their money from the rural sector have their head office functions in the Auckland CBD. The types of roles found in the CBD also means those workers tend to earn on average 27% more than workers in other parts of the region. So yes we could encourage or even require those new jobs to be elsewhere in the region but it’s because of the factors mentioned that growing the CBD is something that can help improve our economy further in the long term.
However if we are to enable that growth to happen we need the capacity so that people are able to get to the city centre and that’s where the problems begin. The roading network is already at capacity at peak times and the costs to increase that capacity from now onwards by any substantial margin are likely to be astronomical. Over the long term there is also likely to be less road space in the CBD to handle traffic thanks to the focus on making the city a more pedestrian friendly area. In short we will have to find a different way of getting more people the city centre and that’s where PT comes in.
Thankfully we’ve already been seeing significant change when it comes to PT use and the city centre. Since 2001 the number of people entering the CBD by car in the morning peak has actually decreased while the number entering via PT has increased substantially and resulted in an increase overall in people arriving in the CBD.
Over the coming years we will see further enhancements that will deliver greater capacity and frequency to the CBD (and other places). This comes from a combination the New Network and electric trains both of which should help to revolutionise travel in Auckland.
But why not just use buses?
The New Network greatly simplifies the regions bus routes and provides more capacity in many locations. However over time an increasing issue is going to be bus congestion and it’s predicted that on Symonds St alone there would need to be over 250 buses per hour in the peaks. In short we would end up with a wall of buses situation and that’s not what anyone wants to see. The map below shows where the most congested parts of the central city are expected to be by ~2041 if we don’t build the CRL .
The City Centre Future Access Study looked at a huge range of bus solutions to solve the capacity problems but found none were as good as the CRL – although it did say some improvements were needed to surface buses.
While the road networks are at capacity the one network we have that has plenty of capacity just waiting to be unlocked is the rail network. The problem is that despite an estimated 40% increase in train capacity from the new electric trains it simply won’t be enough long term. It’s expected that the strong patronage growth we’re seeing will continue and will be aided further by the new network which sees more buses interchanging with the rail network. While the services we have might be run to capacity the rail network itself is far from capacity and is being held back its own constraints. The tunnel leading into Britomart acts like a funnel limiting how many services we can run. It has long been said the maximum number of services we could run is 20 per hour made up of 6 per hour per direction from the west, south and east and two per hour to Onehunga. We’re already very close to that mark and have been for some time. Other options for expanding Britomart or the approach tunnel have been investigated but are also quite costly and don’t give the advantages of delivering people further into the city centre.
So a large part of the CRL project is not so much about making the rail network better but simply about providing the capacity to allow the CBD to grow. The other options for increasing capacity are more costly or aren’t able to deliver enough extra people to the CBD to allow the growth to happen..
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Yay, finally an article explaining and admitting the CRL *is * all about the CBD.
Which doesn’t in and of itself mean it’s not worth doing – but at least have the right argument.
And just like most of the services in Sydney don’t actually run to Town Hall as the primary hub, neither do all services in Auckland *need* to run to the CBD.
As the CFN shows reprioritising spending in other ways than assumed can often bring larger overall benefits (and yes I know the CFN itself currently assumes the $ on CRL, I’m still just one of those utterly unconvinced that we can’t unlock way more benefit by spending that in a different way)
Let’s not fall into that “CBD vs rest of Auckland” trap. The CRL benefits all of Auckland (including the North Shore by freeing up space for Shore buses) but it does most strongly benefit the CBD and the west.
Yes the CBD is important and the CRL provides it a lot of benefit but I do say that this is just some of the reasons why it’s needed. Other locations benefit from the CRL including the north shore whose residents will have faster trips via PT to other parts of the region.
I should mention I think many of the benefits of the project won’t even be realised till it’s been built.
Also I’m also an example of someone who would benefit from it despite not working in the CBD as I transfer through the CBD. In other words faster more frequent trips make that transfer easier
It is not about “admitting” anything. There is no dark conspiracy at work here and it is childish to imply otherwise.
If you have been paying attention to TransportBlog for any length of time you should by now understand that the CRL is the essential missing link required to unlock the entire Auckland metro rail network. The CBD will accrue benefits in proportion to it’s importance as a workplace and that is what today’s article discusses. All outlying suburbs adjacent to the railway lines will benefit as well but that is not the point being made today.
The CRL is as much about Papakura, Glen Innes, and Swanson as it is about the CBD, because it gives those places, and all other points on the rail network and within reach of the them, an incredibly upgraded level of service. A supercharged level of access to the whole city, the Centre, through to the opposite sides, and frees up surface space for the efficient North Busway services. Its benefits will touch everyone in the region, including those on the Shore, even those who still only use their car.
It will be as transformative as the Harbour Bridge was when it opened: It will change the shape of the whole city and how we use it.
People will find that the best way to get around for a whole lot of journeys will be on Auckland’s integrated Transit system post CRL so it will attract thousands and thousands of new users, people who currently, and quite rightly, don’t find the mess of systems we have now competitive.
And it will take tremendous pressure off the road network, especially at peaks, it will spread the places that it is viable to live by expanding the quality of connections to work and study, it will help both with dwelling affordability and with strengthening Metropolitan centres across the region.
Is it about the CBD? Well of course, but as it spreads access to the wealth of opportunities there to the whole region so much more efficiently, it can hardly be considered to be only, or even mainly about the land above the tunnel.
If you don’t think that greater frequency / more capacity is required into the CBD then I suggest that you try and catch a train on the Eastern Line between 7:30am and 8:30am. This morning was fairly typical – standing only when pax get on at Glen Innes and closer to Britomart, and then an unscheduled stop outside Britomart waiting for train to leave. It’s school holidays so the train I caught was not quite as busy as usual, but standing room only.
With regard to buses it is rare to hear any suggestion that double deckers might help ease capacity constraints. Theoretically a double deck bus can carry twice as many passengers on roughly the same road space. In the short term at least that would help keep total numbers of buses at about the same level as now while significantly increasing available passenger seating.
Are there too many low bridges or power lines around the city to make it cost effective? As far as I know they are working well on the Northern Busway.
There’s only one on the northern busway so far but hopefully more in the future. Also I believe other bus companies are gearing up to use them on other routes. Mt Eden Rd likely to be the next to have them.
It is not as simple as moving from single deck to double deck buses.
Rail Transit and Bus Rapid Transit can both have high capacity but they generally have different constraining factors to their capacity. Rail tends to be constrained by the frequency of trains on the same track . . . it is difficult to get more than a train every 2 minutes even with significant investment in signalling systems.
Buses can travel much closer together but are constrained by their loading/unloading speed which is by many high capacity BRT system have multi-door (3 – 4 or more) buses and dedicated stations barrier ticketing systems just like trains.
Buses themselves have substantial capital and operating costs. I suspect these narrow the cost difference substantially, even before their limitations are counted. Has this work been done in the CCFAS or elsewhere?
The CRL isn’t a bad project just like the AWHC isn’t. It’s just a question of what can we afford and priorities. The current (and very likely next) Government has promised both.
Except that the AWHC, as a road crossing, is a truly shite project: http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2014/06/19/how-awhc-is-a-waste-of-5-billion-unfinished/
+1
Another road crossing of the harbour makes no sense. Bring on the rail tunnel to the shore!
15% of jobs in one place is A LOT. Growth in that portion shows that many employers continue to choose that location despite the negatives. The fact of urban development is that a high density center is a natural effect of economic activity that seeks centralisation, no public policies necessary. 7000 years of human development history support this. The other natural form of economic geography is rural. Again, it just happens. Nowadays, we need policies to maintain those two natural functions because low density suburbs are a direct result of transport policy, and other actions. That’s why fewer policy actions are needed to “preserve” those areas today because those policies were enormously successful. Those policies undermine the natural economic forces that form central and rural development, so the game has been rigged in favour of suburbs. Another not incidental reason to preserve downtowns is all the sunk costs represented by them. Public and private investment in central Auckland amounts to many billions of dollars. Does it really make sense to throw that away, just to replace it somewhere else? That’s what suburban policy can do. (And suburban policies destroy farmland which is irreversible because you can never replace that soil. And you can’t have too much good soil.) Since suburban “market forces” are now so strong because of the huge policy bias towards them, it naturally costs a lot to go counter to them and fight fire with fire. If the CRL helps save 6 or 7 generations of investment in downtown at a very high cost, so be it. It will continue to pay an economic return for 100 years.
“And you can’t have too much good soil” is rubbish. Only Mangere and Pukekohe has “good soil”. Albany has soil so bad it wouldn’t even grow gorse. Pukekohe has so filled their soil with chemicals it may be too dangerous to build suburb housing. If high density was so “naturally” attractive, why isn’t there a rush to build apartments. There are no Council rules that forbid it in the CBD area.
Well Neill there is a rush to build apartments in Auckland right now, despite the planning regs that make that a very difficult option. Regs that basically, as Steve rightly points out, all but enforce suburbia.
Steve is completely correct in his description of the history of human habitation. The city and the country are constant patterns repeated through all ages, places, and cultures. And are the function of timeless economic forces. The city in general, and Auckland in particular, doesn’t need ‘help’ but it could do with natural levels of reinvestment in what is working and not unnatural attempts at limitation and restriction.
We tried pretty much as hard as possible (outside of bombing) to destroy the Auckland City Centre in the second half of the 20th C. Thankfully it survived this assault by bulldozer, motorway, and car, just. And is now booming again. And it isn’t wise to knock what works in terms of successful economic order and spatial form.
The CRL is the best possible way to link this boom back to its hinterland too. If you like suburbia, you’d be wise to be interested in improving its connectivity as well as its own inherent place qualities. Proper Rapid Transit makes the detached house in its little garden more viable by enabling those within it to engage in the wider city’s opportunity more freely. No one is going to make you live in an apartment, but we do want everyone to have lavish access to the benefits that that density brings at the centre, while living wherever you want.
Are there any cities which have successfully maintained the type of suburbia we have, in proximity to the centre, and implemented a functioning mass transit system, like train, at the same time?
Is it the case that The City itself ( as a thing) needs to sacrifice this kind of environment, atleast in proximity to the centre ( and I would include parts of the North Shore here) to make this work?
Patrick, I wasn’t commenting on the CRL, which I hope will only be stage 1 of an advanced rail network. I was commenting on the myth that the suburbs have destroyed “good soil”.
I guess suburbs in New Zealand haven’t encroached on previously productive farmland, only on infertile and despoiled land. That’s a relief. Of course, it is surprising because it goes against all evidence of how and where suburban sprawl takes place. (Cities often grew near food supply (people like to eat), and thereby diminished the capacity of those places to produce food.) So, Neil, before you call it rubbish, look at maps of land use development in the Auckland region over the past 70 years, and check the inventories of Class 1 and 2 soils and those trends. Once the best soils are gone there is no replacing it. And not incidentally, what was the point you were making about poor soil in Albany and toxics in Pukekohe? And the density thing. None of that supports your assertion that my assertion that you can’t have too much soil is rubbish.
Neil, there is a big rush to build apartments at the moment! Just check out the cranes on the skyline or look at the development tracker on this blog.
Try telling the previous tenders to the orchards in Albany that they couldn’t even grow gorse there.
Albany had a few small orchards presumably growing on pockets of fertile soil. Most of the farms were struggling to grow grass for dairy. The more productive orchards were/are around Riverhead.
Actually Stevenz, it’s more like 25% of jobs in one place being a lot! As Matt points out the definition of the CBD is arbitrarily small, for example it doesn’t include half the K Rd area and none of Newton at all, not to mention none of the lower parts of Parnell or Carlaw Park. So three of the four proposed new stations aren’t in the CBD. So let’s forget the CBD for a start!
There’s no doubt that the CRL is good for Auckland. But the real question is: is it the best use of 3 billion dollars?
Needs to be remembered that the $3Bn costing includes significant package of other development works on the network (including more EMU’s), and not just the link itself. It also includes a large contingency component to cover any unforseen cost-blowouts which may occur. Historically this is a rare occurrence with rail projects, so the actual costings may well come in under budget.
It is inescapable that *something* needs to be done to ‘fix’ Auckland. The strategy of of trying to out-build congestion by adding ever more expensive roading capacity has failed.
The apparently cheaper alternative of “more buses” does not stack up either, simply because of the scale of the overall people-moving task in the CBD.
The CRL is the best and arguably the most cost-effective option for taking Auckland forward. Had it been built in the 1970’s it would have long become an accepted and vital part of Auckland’s infrastructure and we wouldn’t be wasting time still arguing over it now!
“Historically this is a rare occurrence with rail projects” [budget blowouts]. Maybe this is too sweeping a generalisation. Yes, there have been some spectacular historic cost-overruns with rail projects (Channel Tunnel springs to mind). However the art of planning and costing modern rail projects seems to have been fine-tuned in recent times. One of the best examples is the Channel-Tunnel-Rail-Link (new high-speed line from London to the Tunnel, built 15 years after the Tunnel itself). This massive project came in on-time and on-budget.
You believe the Chunnel “came in on-time and on-budget” ?
Interesting that some use it as an example of a major project that did not:
“The Channel tunnel, also known as the ‘Chunnel’, is the longest underwater rail tunnel in Europe. It opened in 1994 and connects Franse and the UK. When the Channel Tunnel Treaty was ratified by the French and British parliaments in 1987, total investment costs for this privately financed project were estimated at 2,600 million pound (19985 prices). Upon completing the project in 1994 actual costs turned out to be 4,650 million pounds (1985 prices) resulting in a cost overrun of 80 per cent. Actual financing costs turned our to be a steep 140 per cent higher than forecast.”
Page 13. “Megaprojects and Risk: An Anatomy of Ambition” By Bent Flyvbjerg, Nils Bruzelius, Werner Rothengatte.
Read a little more carefully: “Channel-Tunnel-Rail-Link (new high-speed line from London to the Tunnel, built 15 years after the Tunnel itself)”
He said the Chunnel itself was a disaster. He is talking about the line to link with the Chunnel which came in on time.
I realise you think the Chunnel was a disaster as it should have been an underwater bus line – but at least read the comments before jumping on that hobby horse of vested interests.
The Chunnel, what were they thinking?
Obviously it’s a plot by the Russians to more easily move their tanks when they invade to get hold of British Bitter.
Personally, a land bridge, and a canal as in Guetemala ( not Dr Ropara ) would have made more sense. Think of all that extra land for housing.
http://www.worldmag.com/2014/03/china_digs_deep_in_central_american_canal_race
Auckland could do this too, as apparently it has more than one harbour. Granted, it would take some imagination, and a business case.
Apologies . . . I stand corrected on my interpretation Dave Bs statement.
The Channel Tunnel’s other problem is that its estimates of the volumes of passengers it would carry, turned out to be wishful thinking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel
At the time of the decision about building the tunnel, 15.9 million passengers were predicted for Eurostar trains in the opening year. In 1995, the first full year, actual numbers were a little over 2.9 million, growing to 7.1 million in 2000, then dropping to 6.3 million in 2003. Eurostar was limited by the lack of a high-speed connection on the British side. After the completion of High Speed 1 in two stages in 2003 and 2007, traffic increased. In 2008, Eurostar carried 9,113,371 passengers, a 10% increase over the previous year, despite traffic limitations due to the 2008 Channel Tunnel fire.[70] Eurostar passenger numbers continued to increase, reaching 9,528,558 in 2010.
Eurostar volumes are just over 10m passengers per year’; total Tunnel volumes, including the car shuttle, is now about 18m passengers per year. What happened is that at the point the Tunnel was opened, the ferries still on the English Channel proceeded to ‘fight their corner’, and then the other problem was the advent of low-cost aviation.
Just to ask the question. Is there a reason we ruled out cut and cover all the way up Queen Street, along Karangahape etc? I realise this would cause disruption, as most things do eventually, but in dollar terms?
Two main geometric reasons: The trains can’t turn tightly enough to get from Britomart onto Queen Street in the first place. But also the tracks need to rise at their maximum gradient the whole way in order to get to the right level at Mount Eden. Even then, we still need to lower the existing rail line at Mount Eden by a few metres to make it fit. Queen Street’s too low down at the northern end to allow that, while Albert Street being a bit higher gives a bit more headroom.
Does anyone know how large cable cars can be? The view would be wonderful, although Precinct are going to destroy this with a tower. Perhaps that could act as an anchor point for one end of it.
You mean cable cars as in ski lifts, rather than like in Wellington or San Francisco? But if you’re suggesting it as an alternative to the CRL: a cable car system doesn’t achieve the capacity objective of the CRL, since heavy rail trains cannot transform into cable cars at Britomart. Thus the bottleneck and the 20-trains-per-hour capacity limit remains, and we’re not able to get any more people into and out of the CBD (as opposed to getting them around it).
I’m also not sure by what you mean by “Precinct are going to destroy [the view]”. What view? What can you see through the airspace above the mall that you wouldn’t be able to see if a tower were there? But if it were the anchor for the cable car, you’d get a pretty good view from the roof of the tower.
There is an economic limit to how deep you can go with cut and cover before tunneling becomes cost effective.
And it needs to go deep after Aotea because the slope becomes too steep for heavy rail.
As for why not cut-and-cover all the way: it’s too deep. The tunnels are about 40 metres down at K Rd / Newton.
It is true that few can understand the outcomes of transformative change before it happens. This was the case with the Harbour Bridge before it was built; even those pushing for it had huge fears that no one would use it!
The CRL is not a mere incremental improvement, like more lanes on the motorway (on which our government has just casually dropped 800million) or even the new trains, it is nothing short of an entire reinvention of the whole city as multimodal multi-optioned city with lavish access and radically upscaled connectivity.
It is the transformation of the entire idea of Auckland from auto-dependant, clogged, and overblown provincial town into a 21stC Metro city. A sophisticated varied place suitable for every kind of resident and business.
This doesn’t mean the end of what there already is but a whole new layer added to its existing condition.
This is Transformative, shape and quality changing. And, unfortunately, in terms of getting it funded, hard for most to imagine. Till it’s done, that is, then all will wonder what took us so long.
It will likely cost much closer to 2bil than 3, over five years, and so compared to the multi billions spent on adding to the already oversupplied motorway network there is clearly no project that comes close to it for value.
I suspect you could argue that building the harbour bridge at all was a mistake. I write as someone who benefited from living in Sunnynook in the 70’s as a result, but it may have been a better choice to push South, and leave the Shore as the cities playground.
I don’t agree. That would have left the CBD at the extreme edge of a city that sprawled away to the South and made transport problems even worse.
However, the real mistake was connecting the bridge to SH1. That was never the plan and the current work on the Waterview connection is actually finishing what was originally intended to be the route of SH1 – along what is now SH20.
Most traffic would have gone the Upper Harbour Highway route (which again would have been SH1) and left the inner city untouched by horrible dividing motorways. Similar to what happened (or didn’t happen in Vancouver).
We could have then concentrated on keeping the inner city PT friendly. It wouldn’t have been culturally too difficult as Auckland up until the 1960s was a very strong PT city thanks to the trams – just like Los Angeles.
“The CBD at extreme edge”.
I would argue, The CBD is simply “A CBD”.
As for sprawling in a limited number of directions, if you picked an edge of London, you could make the same argument.
wouldn’t the central city and environs be the main source/destination of most SH1 traffic anyway? so it makes sense to hook into the bridge.
No, SH1 is a national route, and should have been routed to minimise disruption to Auckland, and to traffic passing through, this would have been as far from the CBD as possible. The only reason that SH1 is so focused on central isthmus journeys is that we put it there.
I am actually seriously wondering at the moment why the government don’t declare SH16 as SH1 after Waterview and then start doing the urgent safety works needed on that road as a RONS while adding huge capacity Northland to Waikato.
The issue with CRL right now is not how much it costs or how much it’s needed, but how does the mayor finesse keeping it in the budget. He knows it’s the biggest project in town in a very long time and he wants credit for it. Problem is, it’s a big target and it’s his to justify. How will he do that?
Re : best use of 3 Billion Dollars.
Has or is anyone looking at how development, using land which is acquired through compulsory purchase or active encouragement, might be used to make 3 billion dollars to fund it?
Apartments , lots of apartments. I pass on shoebox, it’s a personal thing.
Sweet, you take a big expensive one, I’ll take a samll and cheap one and we can both be happy :p
But seriously the council should really be looking to do this.
Must learn to sail, may start with paddleboard,
Warning : Theory :
I think people need space. There are lots of ways to provide this.
An efficient way to house people would be a pod with inbuilt plumbing, and a communal kitchen, I suspect this would have a certain level of popularity too.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsule_hotel
You just described the student flats on Whitaker Place haha. But seriously, I love my tiny apartment, many people won’t but the market will respond to size better than regulation will.
A good idea. By aquiring the whole block, you remove NIMBY as no neighbours to complain
Nick,
The Governments own approved/annointed panel asked exactly all those questions as part of the CCFAS study a few years back. (go look here for the details and links to CCFAS http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/our-analysis/city-rail-link/)
The CCFAS panel participants looked at every option you can think of and a lot you probably haven’t. – and except for a few right out there ones like hover cars and matter transportation they looked at a lot.
And came up with the conclusion that whether the cost was many $Bs, it all stacked up as the best option to anything else they could conceive. And that was using “worst case” estimates for the CRL tunnel and costs.
So who are we to argue with the panel who asked all these questions and came up with the conclusion that CRL *IS* the best (and more to the point, only) valid option for the $Bs of spending Auckland City requires that can deliver the most results required, in the time required?
We can rearrange the motorway lanes and re-purpose roads to bus lanes to our hearts content – but that won’t actually deliver a better outcome for the same $ than CRL.
It may deliver an outcome for less $ but that won’t be anyway near close to the benefits CRL can deliver in its timeframe.
And also note: the $3B cost of CRL is the Governments own “total cost at end of project, inflation adjusted to end of project date” e.g. its a 2030 $ take on the figure.
The only true costs actually determined so far are those Auckland Council worked out as $1.8B to build the CRL in the dollars of the year the money will be spent in (and that means not everything is inflation adjusted to the same “2030 year” like the government likes do to hike that CRL figure to $3B).
Also note Governments never “inflate” their motorway project figures the same way – they always base it on the $ cost when its first estimated – as it helps makes road projects look cheap.
To compare apples with apples on CRL and AWHC you’d have to inflate the AWHCs $5B estimated cost by more like 20-50% at least to get it in same post-project inflated $ as that CRL $3B figure is.
Or deflate the CRL “$3B” figure to the same base year e.g. 2010 figures (i.e. about $1.5B) – to compare directly with the AWHC “$5B” figure often bandied around.
So when you do that you see the true $ gap between CRL and AWHC when comparing the same spend in the same timeframe is that AWHC is more like two to three times as much, not the “50% more” people are lead to think it is.
And for 3 times the price of CRL I’d expect a whole lot more than just a tunnel for some cars and trucks. I can get a tunnel for trains and people that can move the equivalent of 10 lanes of bumper to bumper motorway traffic – EACH WAY for 1/3rd the cost – so why should anyone but a tunnel nerd want to build a harbour tunnel just for cars and trucks for 3 times more $?
And lastly, the AWHC will be tolled (as will the Harbour bridge) to pay for itself. Not even *all* the cash from the Governments Assets sales program could pay for AWHC.
But you could buy 2 or 3 CRL’s for cash for the same Asset sales $. Or you could buy one CRL and have lots of cash left over for a ton of other future investment fund projects.
Really is a no brainer isn’t it?
So if I understand what you are saying, which often I have confusion with, it is this
“The CRL is perfectly logical. The case stacks up, even against hover cars. It is actually something we need and is desirable but having looked at the evidence it seems we should mumble about it a little longer and do something else instead?”
What on earth did you read?
Think the point of these posts is pretty clear. The CRL stacks up economically against other similar, and other dissimilar projects, thus we should invest in it.
I read Greg’s post. Perhaps if I use four words instead to sum up the CRL:
“So build it already”
I accept that on 1st reading I thought they had investigated Hover Cars and think it’s a shame they didn’t. I find the idea of a Street Legal Bumper Car more useful anyway.
Your 4 word summary hits the nail on the head haha.
> Street Legal Bumper Car
I don’t know which supermarkets, malls, or parallel-parking-marked high streets you’ve visited, but I’d call every car in New Zealand a past, current or potential future Bumper Car.
You got there in the last paragraph. Access to the CBD is bottlenecked and CRL will allow the CBD to grow. The jobs growth you have plotted is only around 2% (straight line) per year. CRL should allow a step change.
A big reason for the CRL is the ability to commute to various points in the CBD. Many people drive to work in the CBD because their workplace is nowhere near Britomart. Auckland’s CBD is large, hilly and rainy and the more train stations the better.
A lot of people hope it will work as an inner city distributer but give it is one line with three poorly placed stations that seems unlikley to me. You will be better off walking or getting a bus for most short trips.
But you are assuming that nothing changes and nothing new happens around those stations.
The fact is that 10 years after they are built most new development will be happening near the stations, as has happened in every other city in the world with a decent metro system.
Why are they poorly placed? Where would you put them? Are you wanting stations at Wynyard Quarter and the University? There has been some pretty detailed analysis on here as to why that won’t work.
Ignore it. He or she is just being a special little naysaying pain in the arse.
I think that’s just a failure of the imagination MoFo, just yesterday I was downtown and decided to check out the shops in Newmarket. Wandered into Britomart and straight onto a train and there seamlessly and swiftly. Post CRL, that kind of trip will be no longer limited to that journey alone. That trip was so much better than any drive or bus option, but currently only works from the bottom of town and to Newmarket [soon Parnell too]. Perhaps as a Shore native you are not familiar with just how near impossible getting between Parnell and Ponsonby is right now, especially in a car. The Link buses have helped a lot but both are often stuck in traffic but also do that crazy stopping all the time, and are way less frequent than CRL trains will be. Consider:
Aotea-Parnell
Britomart-K Rd [certainly something I will do- bike to K Rd and on from there]
Aotea-Grafton
Parnell- K Rd [for Ponsonby]
etc
But in particular, remember right now the rail system is still a secret in Auckland, the CRL will raise not only the usefulness of the network radically but also its visibility. There are literally thousands of Aucklanders who currently [and with good reason historically] never even consider the train as an option. The CRL will completely change that.
Auckland will be a very different city. Folks on the Shore will still be complaining, but post CRL they’ll be howling for a Shore Line, not for that the rest of Auckland shouldn’t invest in the system. And short trips, fast and fequent, out of the traffic and weather, will be second nature.
Think you may have also missed the original point mfwic which was that someone who works near K Rd wouldn’t consider catching the train at the moment due to the possibility of rain and the likely hilly walk, that will change after the CRL.
Your comment about the improper placing of the stations for an internal distributor is naive as well. I for example live on top of the Aotea Station, would frequently use it to get to the clubs near Britomart, or to see my mates at the pizzeria on K Rd, or my flatmate would use the train to get to dance practice in Newton, or to get to the hospital from Grafton, or the engineering campus.
I am sure if it is pouring with rain they might. But most short trips will be easier walking, including up to K Road if you go through Myers Park or using a bus. Newton you are leaving the CBD so not really a job for a CBD distributor. CRL is needed and we should get on with it but FFS don’t try and sell it as a distributor or you will just disappoint people. (perhaps I will get the train from Wynyard to Quay Park, walk to Britomart, walk from Britomart to Quay Park). As for Patrick’s idea we will be howling- well I can accept that, we will be howling about paying 35% more rates and getting worse service from the Council than we have ever had.
These trips will happen, but the CRL is in no way dependent on that kind of trip, more of a useful little added efficiency, it’s the long distance to-town, through-town, and from-town connectivity that is transformative. And at such high capacity without negatively impacting on land-use anywhere.
Not like the CMJ which displaced 50,000 people and demolished 15,000 buildings, and still severs the city from its inner suburbs.
You have obviously not walked up from Britomart or Aotea to K Rd,or tried to catch the City Link, any sane person would catch a train that went 18 times an hour.
Actually I have . I used to walk from the ferry up to the top of Vincent St daily. Do you really think it will be worth while to walk out of your way to a station. Walk down into it and to the platform, wait, then arrive somewhere other than where you want to be and then walk to your destination for one stop? If you were really determined you might. As for 18 times an hour I will believe that only when I see it. That is a train every 3 min 20s. I just dont think they will be that good even at peak.
Well I already do that with the city link, the frequency is lower, and the service slower, 1000s of other people do the same every single day. Also, why on earth not, we are going to be chock full on 18tph into the city in peak before the CRL is built, do you really not think that we can fill 36 post CRL? Especially once the airport line is built and AMETI feeds people into Panmure.
ok you just said airport line so I had best change the subject. I mean, it is like I just met someone who tells me he is Napoleon, it would be unfair of me to ask him about the battle of Austerlitz.
“Auckland’s CBD is large, hilly and rainy and the more train stations the better” Well said Blair. Hopefully it is only the start of a complete metropolitan rail network
Along with providing new destinations the CRL will form the Spaghetti Junction for the entire PT system; North, South, East and West, connecting rail, ferry and bus.
Does anyone remember what driving across Auckland was like in the late 1980s/90s before the current CMJ links were built?
90’s driver.
It took me about 15 minutes , give or take, leaving at 8:40 in the morning ( ish) to work in Freemans Bay.
Even then, I complained because it seemed to be taking longer and longer.
From Sunnynook, where once upon a time, the motorway north terminated, and we could have built anything we wanted, going North.
I sure do recall what it was like, Khyber Pass Road was chockka with cars and trucks 2 lanes wide all day every day as people who came up the southern got off at Khyber Pass Road, fought their way up Khyber Pass road, over the hill across Symonds St/Khyber Pass Road intersection and then down Newton Road to get on the North Western at the Newton Road Overbridge.
And it was only exceeded by the volume of traffic making the reverse trip from Newton Road off-ramp of the North Western, up Newton Road, across Symond, down Khyber Pass and on at Khyber Pass heading south.
The improvement in traffic volumes reduction as soon as the Southern to North Western link and then the North Western to Southern links opened up was dramatic.
So yep, I can remember Auckland pre-main CMJ links.
Warning : Contains Fact : may be off topic
( now will you listen o moderators, and help me play Tropico 5? I’d be out of one job if you brought the ban hammer down, and momentarily without a blog to bother, but do you have a sin bin?)
ah, Kyber Pass, how I don’t miss you
1. Does anyone remember when the building on the corner of Great North Road and Ponsonby Road was a Brothel? ( before it became a legal high)
I do as I lived there, although after it became a flat for the general public (sadly) , the flock wallpaper was terrible.
The police busted in one night looking for a previous resident, who was no longer there. They couldn’t get into my room, because I’d fitted a lock.
This proved nothing is all bad or good, because someone else tried to get in to my room, and couldn’t , see lock
2. K Road
Living above Dick Smith (ish) great flat, great neighbours, terrible problems with interlopers. Deni’s, passable curry, video games…….I think we may have had a view of the CMJ ( beck on topic ), but I never looked.
All of these places may still be there, but I haven’t visited any time in the last 20 years, it may all be car parking for all I know.
Re Bridge.
I imagine what it would have looked like, if all the coastal part of the Upper North Shore, which would have been a park, entertainment, and roughly untouched environment, had been linked by train.
Weekend camping, check. Cycling, check. Fun, check. Cars? No. People, the population of Auckland enjoying downtime.
The density elsewhere would have paid for this, see Japan.
Re : Cable Cars
I’ll fess up to having done no research into them really. But as you have, yes just like those places.
What I’m wondering, is that given we accept PT is about lines perhaps most wonderfully drawn in the example of the London tube map, how might we connect a line, or equally many lines, between Britomarf and other parts of the rail network at less cost, or perhaps digging is the best option.
The thing about lines, is they can be more flexible than a fixed tunnel, as it seems there are all sorts of places ( Hospital, University, Wynard if that’s where we are sticking apartments) that need to be connected.
Boring tunnels are just one way to do this. The impact ( credit to Sam Morgan ) we probably all agree we want is to move people ( or breathing widgets), where they need to go.
It’s always a good idea in any cases, largely, to avoid bankruptcy whilst doing or trying to do this.
> The thing about lines, is they can be more flexible than a fixed tunnel, as it seems there are all sorts of places ( Hospital, University, Wynard if that’s where we are sticking apartments) that need to be connected.
Public transport inherently runs along particular lines. No one line can serve places not on the line. But it doesn’t need to. And there’s no use in a line being “flexible”. What people want from a particular public transport route is the exact opposite – dependability. That it always runs along the same path stopping at the same places. The “flexibility” comes from having many different routes to choose from, going to different destinations. It’s the system that’s flexible, not the individual route.
The point of the CRL is not to serve every trip, door to door. It’s to provide more capacity to get people into and out of the central city generally, including people who are just there to connect to a service going somewhere else. There’ll be a lot of people who use rail to get to the central city and then connect to a bus to get to somewhere like the hospital or Wynyard. (The universities are actually pretty close to Aotea station – about 500 metres – and I think most people would find it simpler to walk than transfer to a bus for one or two stops).
You comment is literally:: I have done no research, but I’m going to ignore everyone else who has, all the thousand dollar reports to argue that we should be doing something other than what all of those people have done research have said is very clearly the best option. Wow.
I’m not sure that comment was aimed at me, but as it included the words “No Research”, I suspect it might have been.
I’m not ignoring anyone as should be obvious from the number of replies I give ( note to the moderafors, do everyone a favour an implement a post limit for me, it will help me find time for Tropico 5).
I am simply asking questions, and depositing theories in return. This is how I practise, and learn.
As for research in general, and the internet in particular…..
“One of these could be termed “Do No Research”. You might think this is a stupid way to go about things, and who am I to disagree, however Use of The Internet is as often likely to be as unhelpful to your doing anything, as it is in the reverse instance.
There is no quicker way, not to bother doing anything, than to perform a google search on the subject you are considering the practise of.
Don’t believe me, think of something you might get out of bed to do, google it.
So long as google has not forgotten this particular thing, you will in most cases find someone else is already doing it, and you’ll probably convince yourself they’re doing it better than you ever will. ”
Transportblog is research, in action. I have no problem with being corrected, particularly if I am wrong. I think this is healthy.
The problem with preaching to a choir, is when you leave the church and forget your choir, spreading any message proves problematic as you find you lack believers and they want evidence, although that varies.
My research says that the head office staff that will work in central Auckland will still drive their Beemers to work as they live in areas with no rail links, high property value East Coast Bays and Howick. And my research has identified that many companies have shifted HO out of the CBD, Fletcher Building has not been there for years! Okay Penrose is now part of the CBD.
I believe there is a very good case for a decentralized Auckland and I am seeing SME companies moving out to the suburbs, Manukau, Albany, East Tamaki etc.
We do not need to have this mythical like dream of a CBD like New York, London etc. as it is to expensive.
The simple issue is that the cost of the CRL is to expensive, the existing rail and bus link ticket costs are to expensive (read that here this past week) and somewhere along the way we need to cut our costs.
Down trou Brown has realized this fact today with his 10 year budget dilemma.
We cannot afford a CBD only for the rich……and it does not deserve the support (the cost of the CRL) that you claim it requires.
Re : Research
Please help clear up my confusion.
1. If I read Greg’s post, it seems the analysis has been done, and there is a clear Business Case for the CRL
2. Your research seems to suggest there is no business case.
Q : Is it not a case where the CRL “stacks up” and has a business case, in which case build it, or The CRL does not stack up, and we go and do something else like the Northern Busway and Busways in general.
I am confused, how can it both stack up and the reverse.
Does this mean there is both good ( correct, this works ) and bad ( as in hokum) research?
Surely, use of evidence sorts this out one way or the other. Belief is a personal thing, nobody is asking me to believe in the existence of Choo Choo trains and a Red Kaboose are they?
It’s Rolf Harris all over again.
Re : bumper cars. I embed this response in an irrelevant reply to cut down on use of web forms and boxes in general
Steve, I think I may understand your confusion. This is a Street Legal Bumper Car.
It is in fact a project, but I cancelled it when I researched and came to the conclusion I am not a Mechanical Engineer and have no desire to be one. I am looking for those with an interest, and/or skill in the area but cannot pay you in actual paper.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Project-Number-One-Street-Legal-Bumper-Car/1454944291423360?sk=info
LSJ Herbert,
You read my post correctly, the research has been done, and the conclusions drawn.
Work was done by a Central (and Local) Government sanctioned panel who produced a report some time ago called the “Centre City Future Access Study” (CCFAS).
The options and various cases it looked at came to the inevitable conclusion that CRL stacks up in every which way so much so that the yay-sayers well outnumbers the nay-sayers.
And more to the point it also found that:
1. The CRL is the central-key that unlocks all that follows, including the fact that it requires there to be way more buses used than we have now.
2. Even so less buses will be needed with CRL than would be the case if no CRL was built
3. And if no CRL is built, the CBD will within 30 years grind to a halt in effect for most of each business day and that traffic jam will mostly be due to tons of buses not (as at present) cars
4. The base case of the “do-nothing” option usually put up as the straw man is not in fact a practical option. The cost of “doing nothing” (which is basically what we have now while we wait for CRL to go ahead), will be pretty expensive (many time more than CRL would cost) in the long run, both in direct costs and also in indirect costs when compared with the impact lack of CRL will have Auckland and NZInc’s economic growth over the next 30 or so years.
5. The main alternative option of a bus tunnel doesn’t deliver anywhere the same benefits as CRL does, costs a lot more and will reach capacity much sooner than CRL.
Furthermore, every damn political and government agency who has actually read CCFAS generally supports it.
The only folks who don’t are Joyce and Brownlee. Key will go whatever gets him another term in office so if the masses howl loud enough he will listen.
So basically, Brownlee and co, just admit you’re wrong, grin and bear it, and agree to break out about a half a billion from your “Future Investment (aka rainy day) Fund” as a commitment, so AC can just commit to build it already.
Oh and by the way, if you want to cancel some of those dodgy motorway projects as well, that would be a great kicker as well.
Don, both New York and London have plenty of other centres, places with lots of activity, and plenty of distributed head offices. Both those cites like all others also have plenty of people still driving. And yes they tend to be the more well off. No one is suggesting that everyone has to stop driving because other options are improved.
Of course people can only still drive in those cities because so many others are using the much more spatially efficient modes of the Tube and the Subway. It is the same here, as can be seen by the fact that all the growth in people accessing the city centre has been by PT. Drivers are huge winners from the CRL, cos otherwise there will have to be hundreds and hundreds more buses on all our streets not just in the centres, but also out where ever it is that you imagine this growth will be otherwise.
You have a mistaken idea of both what other cities are like and what Auckland and is becoming.
Don not sure what your research is but it clearly doesn’t take into account facts as already over 50% of people arrive in the CBD by a method other than a private vehicle. You should also not many organisations have been consolidating their operations into the CBD due to inter company agglomeration benefits provided.
Don, it doesn’t “deserve” the support? Why, didn’t it eat all its peas?
So how do we howl loud enough?
These citizen referendums aren’t binding are they? ( see asset sales)
How do you make it a condition of having a comfy green seat in a beehive that leaks , that all politicians regardless of beliefs in actual evidence or otherwise , have to do what is logical and not proven to be incompetent?
Ps. I’m not sure about what you did there by leaving out the white space.
Much as L SJ Herbet can be erroneously mistake for a troll ( which does not exist to the best of my knowledge), LSJ can be easily mistaken for something else that begins with L, and about which I have only the words of Wolsey ( cardinal, dead) to say
“Be very, very careful what you put in that head, because you will never, ever get it out”
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Wolsey
Not that it will be any cheaper, but Q:
Would continuing the rail line straight from Britomart to the North shore help the capacity to a similar or greater degree as the CRL?
No. The Shore is only 20% of Auckland’s population and the Busway is not at capacity. The city is struggling to cope with the number of buses from every direction, and better to reduce the buses from 80% of the city with the existing rail capacity than the other way round. People on the Shore often have a peculiar idea that they are about half the city, or more. Just not true.
The best plan I’ve seen has the eventual North Shore line joining at Aotea, with a station at Wynyard. Whether this ends up being heavy rail or light rail will depend on how the project costs and benefits stack up at the time it begins.
The real reason I see for the CRL is to reduce buses from lots of parts of the region, for two main reasons:
– Cost of drivers, 1 bus 50 people, 1 train 373/746 people (3 cars/6 cars). Wages being a significant proportion of operating costs
– Less bus operating contract shenanigans
Rail to the Shore implemented as light rail could do away with the driver, depending on how/what is chosen.
Because a rail line to the north shore, while good for the north shore, does absolutely zero for the other 80% of the city, or the CBD. The existing rail network would be exactly as constrained as it is today (approx 20 trains an hour across four lines), with exactly the same number city stations (1).
The CRL buys us a four line high frequency metro system with four central city stations and lines stretching to the suburban fringes west and south. North shore rail gets us one line extra to the north shore, to replace the busway. CRL definitely must come first, far greater benefits means far greater priority.
No, this is not true. Yes, a rail extension through Britomart out to the Shore WOULD de-congest Britomart, even without the CRL in place. How? By allowing at least a proportion of trains to pass straight through Britomart and perform their turn-around procedures elsewhere, rather than all trains having to do it in Britomart as at present. This would of course require that the North Shore line be heavy rail, compatible with everything existing.
Note: The CRL would still be necessary to do the job properly.
Turn around capacity isn’t the constraint at Britomart (five platforms after all), it’s the movements through the twin track throat tunnel that is the weakest link. Unless the extension links back to the existing network you won’t get any significant capacity increase on the existing network.
Current Britomart ‘turn-arounds’ involve two congestion-causing components: i) Criss-crossing across the station throat, and ii) End-of-run recovery dwell-time. Were it not for these, Britomart would function happily with two platforms only (as indeed will other stations on the CRL, carrying the same traffic). The minimum headway in and out of Britomart in signalling terms is 2 minutes. Therefore 30 trains per hour could pass each way through Britomart, if they didn’t have to perform functions i) and ii). This would be a big increase on the 15-16 per hour under the current timetable (maximum possible, say 24), even without these trains linking back into the existing system.
Note that I am not suggesting that 30 tph should all continue across to the Shore! Simply pointing out that if even a few did this it would reduce the numer of i)’s and ii)’s choking Britomart, and relocate them to somewhere else. (But I am not not NOT suggesting that we don’t need the CRL!)
Wellington Station has 9 platforms and 3 approach tracks (4 including Johnsonville) but would struggle to cope with more peak-time movements than it currently has for this same reason. Every turnaround has somehow to cross from Down-line to Up-line, and in so doing it obstructs all or part of the throat for the whole time that the route is reserved.
This post was on the CRL. Why are you posting your copy / paste avalanche of irrelevant words here?
One question: the first chart reports “100,000 jobs in the CBD”. The second chart shows close on 70,000 people entering the CBD screenline in any given am peak. Given that of the 100,000 jobs in the CBD I would expect about 90,000 of them to be at work at all that day – and most to arrive in the am peak – what is the difference between the coverage of the first chart and the coverage of the second?
Quite a few people both live and work in the CBD, and then there are those who work in bars, shops etc and might not come in in the morning, and then there are the people who just don’t come to work on any given day…
Yes CBD residential growth has been rapid; 46.5% between last census. But I assume walking and cycling are not included, and if it’s like the CCFAS ferries weren’t either…?
John/Patrick – thank you; if we:
* Go from 100,000 jobs in total to 90,000 working in the CBD on any given day
* Take out a further 8,000 journeys to work into the CBD which occur after 9am (and thus place no significant demand on the current infrastructure), we have 82,000 workers arriving in the am peak. This is the back-of-the-envelope number I have been using for some separate sums.
Now, if we then allow for:
* 3,000 ferry journeys, and
* A further 4,000 people walking/cycling (whether they live in the CBD or not), we have 75,000 motorised journeys crossing the screen line – so, within range of the advice of “just under 70,000 jobs” given above.
Can anyone do any better? The key need is to remember the distinction between the number of jobs and the number of workers arriving in the am. peak, as this is the major pressure point.