Some of you who have been living in Auckland over the last decade might recall the long-running saga that is the Orakei Bay Village.
When the project was first mooted around a decade ago, it was met with furious local opposition. Thankfully the proposal has now progressed to a “point” where new houses may actually be delivered. Stage 1 is illustrated below (sourced from here); as you can see it’s a reasonably pleasant spot to develop some houses, shops, and some new recreational facilities.
Not only is the development situated on the edge of Hobson Bay, it is also accessible to Orakei Station in the Eastern Line, which is barely 8 minutes by train to Britomart, something the developers are keen to point out. The merits of the development itself, however, are not the topic of this post.
Instead, in this post I want to explore the merits of providing park and ride at Orakei Station. Some of you may also know that Orakei Station currently provides about 178 park and ride spaces. In the above photo you can see the park and ride spaces shown in the bottom right hand corner. Their presence in close proximity to medium to high density housing looked to me to be somewhat anomalous.
In this previous post I explored some of the merits of P&R and discussed the conditions where P&R might work well. Since that post was written AT has released a draft parking discussion document, which provides more specific criteria to guide future investment in park and ride. The key section is illustrated below (p. 44).
Below I’ve undertaken a brief evaluation of Orakei Point’s suitability for park and ride compared to the most pertinent policy points outlined in AT’s parking discussion document:
- Wider PT accessibility. This location will be well-served by all-day bus connections. The all-day network released with AT’s Regional Public Transport Plan shows how both Orakei and the adjacent Meadowbank station will be accessible from local bus services. Indeed, to access Orakei you have to drive past these bus stops. For this reason, providing park and ride at Orakei is likely to undermine local bus services.
- Local congestion around the station. Traffic congestion was frequently put forward by local residents as a reason to decline the proposed plan change for Orakei Point. Their opposition suggests the local area does experience traffic congestion, which is of course likely to be exacerbated by the provision of park and ride.
- Congestion upstream of the station. While there is congestion upstream of the station, the city centre is so close that the resulting congestion relief provided by a park and ride at Orakei would appear to be fairly small, at least compared to other potential park and ride locations located further away from the city centre (where land is also cheaper).
- Land use controls of the area surrounding the station. The recent plan change means that this location is now suitable for high-density development, as evident from the above image. This suggests that park and ride might not be the highest and best use of this land.
- Public transport fare zones. Orakei is only one stage to Britomart. This in turn means that providing park and ride in this location may encourage people drive to the train at Orakei as a way of avoiding paying a higher fare for travelling from further out. In this way, park and ride at Orakei might undermine revenue (although of course the zone structure may change in the future).
When evaluated against AT’s five main park and ride investment criteria, Orakei Point does not appear to be a suitable location for park and ride. Perhaps the only criteria where there is doubt relates to the potential congestion relief benefits of the P&R. We can, however, do some quick calculations to quantify whether this argument has any merit.
Auckland Council’s GIS viewer suggests land at Orakei Point is valued at approximately $900 per sqm. If we use this land value and assume 30 sqm per car-park, then we get $25,000 per car-park. Let’s round that up to $30k per car-park to allow for some capital depreciation/operating costs. Using this figure within a standard discounted cash-flow model (i.e. 8% discount rate; 30 year lifetime) then we can calculate that a benefit stream of approximately $2,500 per car-park p.a. is required to yield a benefit cost ratio of 1, i.e. to reach economic break-even point.
Now we need to asses the congestion reduction that might follow from providing park and ride in this location.
If we assume vehicles using the Orakei park and ride would otherwise travel to the city centre (i.e. somewhere in the vicinity of Britomart) via Kepa Road and Orakei Drive, then each avoided vehicle trip will save about 5km of driving, or 10km per return trip. If we then annualise this distance by assuming 220 days p.a., then we find that each vehicle diverted to using the park and ride as opposed to driving to the city centre would save about 2,200 vehicle km p.a.
This previous post, however, presented evidence on some of the diversion effects of park and ride. Research in the Netherlands found that only 25% of park and ride users would otherwise drive for their entire journey in the in the absence of park and ride. Instead, many park and ride users were “diverted” from alternative options, such that park and rides caused a net increase in driving in many locations. Post-opening surveys of the Northern Express also found large diversion rates, with only 50% of park and ride users responding that they previously drove to the city centre.
This diversion effect can be incorporated into our calculations by factoring down the vehicle kilometre savings down, by say 50%. This suggests that 1,100 vehicle kilometres p.a. are removed from the road network for every park and ride space provided. If we divide the annual cost ($2,500) by the annual benefit (1,100km), then we find that the cost of removing this travel from the road network is $2.26 per vehicle kilometre. This means that each kilometre removed from the road network by providing park and ride at Orakei has to generate $2.26 in congestion reduction benefits to make the investment worthwhile.
Personally, this seems like an implausibly high congestion reduction benefit to attribute to removing vehicle travel from the road network.
To put it in context, the average journey to work trip by car in Auckland is approximately 10km. Using this per kilometre rate, removing the average journey to work trip by car would generate approximately $23 in congestion savings. And even this relatively high congestion reduction benefit would result in a benefit-cost ratio of only 1.0, i.e. an extremely marginal investment from NZTA’s perspective.
Of course, there may be other benefits from providing park and ride. However, there’s also additional costs.
Remember that some of the people diverted to using the P&R would have otherwise used park and ride elsewhere and/or used a connecting bus. Providing park and ride at Orakei therefore might be expected to increase the congestion generated by these journeys compared to an alternative scenario in which park and ride was not provided at Orakei Point.
Finally, there’s also the longer term land use displacement effect. This reflects how choosing to provide park and ride in this location would tend to reduce the intensity of residential development that could be accommodated at the site. Some of the residents displaced by providing park and ride will likely choose to live further out from the city, in locations where they are even more likely to drive.
In conclusion, based on this back of the envelope assessment Orakei Point does not seem to be a suitable location for park and ride.
That’s not to say, however, that park and ride in other locations might not be worthwhile. Indeed, if we consider our simple benefit-cost analysis then investment in park and ride would seem to make the most sense where: 1) land values are low; 2) vehicle trip distances and long; and 3) it does not compete with non-car access modes.
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We could probably build a 5-6 storey building with 400 residents on the same site.
Are we better off with 178 carparks at a train station or 400 residents? Not to mention that we might realistically get more shops there, also right on the train line if we allow 400 more people to live there. Reducing travel from Oaraki to other shops, and allowing others to work on the train line?
In short, by no stretch of any imagination should there be parking here. Even if it were privately operated it would be shit.
Well SB no matter what you want, there will not be 400 residents living in or on the P&R spaces, the number of apartments it will hold will be reasonably small – the total amount of residences will be 30 3 level terrace houses on that land (all of 2-3 bedrooms), so assume 4 per residence for a total occupancy of 120 residents . The rest of the development hopefully will have higher levels of development than this bit, but being south of a hill there makes it difficult to do a proper intensive development.
These places aren’t cheap either, thick end of a 1 million at the entry level.
So we’re not talking about “178 parks or 400 residents”, more like “178 car parks or a smaller number of residents” instead.
Agreed better for people than cars, but there will be lots of car parking here as well, each place sold so far comes with 2 car parks.
Would I rather live there than say Stonefields?, where the prices are similar – yes I would.
I can’t find it right now but I once came across a study from San Fran which found replacing carparks next to a station with the same number of dwellings or peoole (can’t remember which one) would deliver more patronage than the carparks did. In this case residents are likely to use the train both to the city and to places like Sylvia Park
Presumably one park and ride spot generates two trips a day, five days a week, forty something weeks of the year at most. The commuters make five return trips a week and drive for all their other trips.
Someone who lives above a station is much more likely to use it for all sorts of reasons.
Yes. Also from memory the report mentioned that even replacing P&R with retail of the same size will generate more trips than the P&R
Why on earth would the developer be so stupid as to build only three stories.
Honestly, this is less that 10 minutes away from town miles from the nearest residents, why on earth aren’t there apartments on every possible bit of land?
Because the burghers of Orakei have spent years fighting what the developer wanted to do, which was build up, to the point where three story townhouses for the extra rich is the only economically viable plan.
However was in charge of the decision should have responded to them with three words, the first two of which were “Oh, get”.
How on earth are we in a position where a landowner wanted to build something on their land can have it stopped by a group of people who will be in no way at all adversely affected?
Dude, welcome to Auckland. We have height and density limits up the wazoo. If you want to breach that you need to put up a fight, and there are plenty of ‘concerned residents’ with deep pockets and QC lawyers who will do everything they can to stop you.
Same story everywhere, Orakei, Milford, Grey Lynn…
“Remember that some of the people diverted to using the P&R would have otherwise used park and ride elsewhere” Where else would those in Kohi, Mission Bay or Remuera P&R. They are cut off by water from other stations. To use feeder bus would double or treble the time to the city.
Wouldn’t it be quicker for people from these areas just to catch the new frequent bus service straight into town, rather than driving to Orakei Station to catch the train? Also – is anything going ahead with the proposal for a parking building adjacent to Selwyn College to tie in with Meadowbank station?
Exactly, catch the bus and you’d be in town before you’d even made it through Kepa Rd, the roundabout and into the station parking lot.
From Kohi.. across the water. Build a cycling / walking bridge to Meadowbank Station from Kepa Road. P&R (or better, K&R) up by Eastridge.
But where will the Kings College students park their cars..?
This seems to have changed their design again since the plan change was approved some time back.
From this picture of the site: http://e0a.6cb.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/townhouse_map_large.jpg
You will see that the Park and Ride shown there in the picture from Stu’s link will be built on and developed as planned, but it seems it will stay as is for Stage 1.
Presumably so that the Developer can get some return from the initial build to finish the job.
Your costings assume bare “free hold” land is used and only used for parking and that Council owns and retains the Park and Ride and land.
In fact, as I read the original proposal, Auckland Council has sold the land to the developer in exchange for the equivalent P&R spaces in the development, which may not need to be in their present position.
There is a lot of parking (underground) as part of this development ,and the P&R part is about 20% of the total parking so presumably this location, or one like it from Main Street to the road will be used to hold all this.
I can’t see the Transport “centre” any more in those plans – it seems to have shifted/morphed somewhere. I presume its shifted west slightly from the original location which is where the Plaza apartments are now being sold.
Anyway, as far as Park and Ride, goes its totally unneeded here and will only attract those who want to avoid paying for city parking which is not a good use of council funds nor will it assist with the use of PT by those who would not otherwise be able to access it.
So any Park and Ride here should not be handed out for free for the first in first served crowd.
Bit of a side issue is I see is that the bus service is a local connector service, whose frequency and utility is pretty marginal at best. But thats a different story.
Currently the 770/771 buses run past this on their way to Newmarket, but its a pretty dog legged route, train is quicker if you need Britomart, bus quicker if you need Newmarket.
Can they consider mixed-use development on those expensive land?
The development could combine train station, park and ride, retail, and residential?
It could be a joint development between council and developers.
Mixed use is exactly what’s planned by the developer
So just charge $15 per day and only provide as many spaces as people demand at that price. Use the rest for something else, anything else. I think that would give a fair return. I suspect the quantity demanded would be zero at that price.
agree – pricing the parking to reduce the gap between benefits and costs is certainly a viable strategy.
So, at the moment that station is pretty isolated from residential areas, but still a handy station to have. If they got rid of the car parks only Orakai Village residents (who can afford the expensive apartments/condos) would likely use it, and people that drive to the including from poorer close neighbourhoods up the roads couldn’t, simply too far to walk. Or would one counter my point by saying that these people can easily catch a bus from home to the station and catch an 8 minute train ride into town? In all honesty would you? So I’m thinking that full development of the site would make that station more socially exclusive than it is now.
yes, I’d expect them to catch a bus. They could also informally park and ride within walking distance to bus route and/or train station.
Or they could cycle. I cycled there from the city recently and from Orakei it is all quite quiet streets and a pleasant ride into the residential areas. A ride of 3 kms is only 10mins for anybody of even average fitness.
Plus NZTA are about to build a big cycleway down the old Eastern Motorway land.
Dom – You are thinking in the old paradigm. Driving and walking aren’t the only options.
Yeah, can’t wait for the cycleway to be built from there to Tamaki Drive and up the hill to St Johns and then Glenn Innes down the other side.
The board walk from Orakei to Meadowbank is getting pretty busy these days with walkers and cyclists, so cyclists need their own cycleway down there already.
Yes, and not forgetting a cycleway across Hobson Bay to the City..
The Orakei board walk becoming a victim of its own success is evidence that things are on the right track, so to speak. Wasn’t that long ago the only option was the Remuera Road Bus Lanes.
Don’t think of it as a bus ride plus and 8 minute train ride, think of it as a journey from your door to your destination which happens to use buses and trains.
Because with integrated fares, thats what it will be.
And you won’t need to decide do I hop the bus to town (as its cheaper) or take the train as its more expensive but faster or v.v.
You’ll be able to take whatever bus is going past your door, transfer at whatever train station is convenient and complete your journey at the other end with another bus if needed.
This will be just like how it works with the London Underground – you use whatever modes to complete your journey and the system works out the cheapest way to have got there and charges you that fare, no matter how many modes you changed.
So the only issue is making sure that the buses and trains dovetail better and from December you’ll have a train on that line every 10 minutes (6 TPH) peak each way, and so as long as the buses run half decent frequency as well you’ll have got to town quicker now than if you drove. Can’t ask for more than that, and no P&R fees.
And more to the point if your nearest train station is not Orakei, you won’t need to drive to it first like you do now when you want to P&R – you’ll hop your train at your nearest train station, which to use the parlance of the airline safety briefing – “your nearest exit (aka train station/bus stop) may be *behind* you” – i.e. you may find it better to hop the bus going away from town to get to town quicker if it means you get a faster mode as a result. Seems counter intuitive but thats also how motorways work when you think about it – drive to the on-ramp knowing the time spent (should be) recouped.
As for social exclusivity, if they want a vibrant development, they won’t want to price themselves out of the market as a destination for shopping or leisure. It will be too small to work as another up-market Newmarket on its own – it will need a lot of foot traffic, so there needs to be a reason for people to transit through it or use it. Otherwise it will become another in-ward looking dormitory suburb built on a train line.
I guess if the bus transport link through are put in place and the frequency is high than that’s fair, and from what Luke C says things are happening. Regardless I am fully supportive of the development of the area.
Poorer neighborhoods close by like Remuera and on top of the hill at Orakei? Note there will be a new frequent bus service from Remuera Road to Mission Bay via Orakei station and Kepa Road which will connect people to the station. Also people in surrounding neighborhoods have decent bus options along Remuera Road and Tamaki Drive, as well as Meadowbank station. Suspect AT get much better patronage return from improving these bus lanes and station walking access, rather than on this P&R.
In the concept illustration the internal streets seem to be vehicle oriented instead of pedestrian friendly. It would be good to see this as a pedestrian friendly development with the car not used for daily transport.
Doesn’t seem too bad, Here’s the site plan.
The only pity is that combination of density and rail isn’t being repeated all around Auckland’s coastline.
…or rather ‘over whole city’.
How does the proposed cycleway through here up to GI fit into this? Doesn’t appear to be any allowance based on these images, unless it’s going to be submerged in the subterranean tunnel along with the freight trains…
Meh, nobody will live there after the Eastern Motorway gets built.
And before anybody asserts their denial it’ll never happen, the council refuses to remove the motorway designation, and continues to quietly buy up land. A pro-road (well, more pro-road) future council could easily get the ball rolling.
That highway plan is dead. Will never happen. No one even wants it, least of all the QCs who live all around there. These dwellings will sell like hot cakes. Will be a fantastic place to live, that is a beautiful setting, in an area with social cache, with truly amazing proximity and connectivity. Win win win win. A sure bet.
‘Nobody will live there’ funniest comment yet.
Geoff, following on from Patrick’s comments.
NZTA and KR own most if not all the land in the Puwrewa valley and on the GI side of the St Johns hill. AC has some land holdings there but not enough for a highway without the co-operation of NZTA and KR.
NZTA is actively planning to sell the crown owned land at the Merton Road “entrance” to where the Eastern Highway would go for redevelopment (commercial and/or residential) as part of the process for building the cycleway along the Eastern Highway Route, so unless council buys the land from NZTA. Then the Eastern Highway will end up as two highways if its ever built – one ending at Merton Road, the second starting from/ending at St Johns Road – hardly a “motorway” is it?
And lastly, the Environment court set a deadline on the then Auckland City Council (and thus AC) for re-designating the highway route – they were told they by the court then that they could have their highway designation extension they wanted rubber stamped back in 2004 for 10 more years to allow construction of the then proposed Eastern Motorway to start.
But they were told if they did not that they would have to reapply for a full route re-designation and come up with some concrete plans for it – and if they didn’t the designation would lapse, so if that has not actually expired, its pretty close to it and once its expired they’ll never get that back – the rich residents either side of Hobson Bay will fight tooth and nail I’m sure to make sure it never gets a second look in.
So maybe some at council don’t want to let the past go, but they have to do more than refuse to lift the designation – the sunset clause will take care of that.
And with NZTA’s attitude to the land at the Merton Road end of the highway, you can see its a dead turkey idea as far as NZTA is concerned, so if they can smell the rot, surely your council cronies can too?
AT/AC officials may want it to and a future council may actually try and slip something down the valley and across the bay – without the highway designation being in place its a safe bet to assume it ain’t gonna happen.
One small but key point is that it isn’t actually a motorway designation, it’s a transport corridor designation. They were wise not to dump the corridor as Auckland can now use it to build a cycleway, and no doubt it will make building a third main all the more easy. Who knows, one day we might want another pair of tracks for some botany line or similar.
Nick you are right, I recall now that its official title is “The ETC” – The Eastern Transport Corridor.
Which was used to propose the “Corridor” become the “Eastern Motorway”.
So, yes it can be used for all those (non-motorway) purposes instead of a motorway. And at least some good can come out of it.
I guess as far as second tracking goes e.g. for Botany future line, all well and good – will be needed for the freights as well when KR gets around to putting their 3rd main along there.
And of course, that will also need one or two tunnels (if they go for a 4th main too) which cycle/walking or roads won’t need, so like the “Avondale-Southdown” designation through Onehunga it remains a planning note for now. I assume that they couldn’t build a dual track tunnel like the original one is, for safety reasons these days so would have to build a pair of tunnels instead ala CRL, or is that short enough tunnel length to get away with one tunnel with multiple tracks?
Yep and the work has already started on building that as a joint venture between NZTA and Kiwi Rail.
http://caa.org.nz/auckland-transport/tamaki-drive-to-glen-innes-cycleway/
Once the cycle way is built the remainder of the land will be sold off by NZTA.
Developing local shuttle connections to train stations is potentially going to be the thing that really sees PT use take off across Auckland. Been some talk of course, but no action so far.
There seems a perception that Eastern suburbs proximity to the CBD means buses will always be a preferred option. This is wrong. Try going the other way. An 18 minute train ride from Orakei to Sylvia Park is a circuitous hour by bus. All Aucklanders need to have easy access the congestion free spine of the PT system so we can get to all parts of the city quickly and cheaply too.
At Orakei and GI in particular, shuttle services should be trialed and may prove a better solution than the very expensive option advocated by Orakei Local Board of building a new train station in the vicinity of Selwyn College. Expanding Park n Ride does nothing to improve local traffic congestion and no doubt a fair percentage of PnR users at Orakei aren’t locals anyway. Cycleway and pedestrian access in Purewa Valley will be relatively inexpensive and good for the area.
No action so far? Are you not aware of the entirely new network based around rail feeders and frequent connections that has been designed, the one that is being contracted and rolled out in the south as we speak?
https://at.govt.nz/projects-roadworks/new-public-transport-network/
Stand by comment of no action so far on feeder buses connecting train stations. Hope I’m wrong on this (?), but seems just some snappy copy in reports with no detail or proposed routes released that I’m aware of?
Desley Simpson recently pushed for a Purewa train station in a letter to the East & Bays Courier and goodness knows what Cameron Brewer wants for ratepayers other than to (rightly) keep our increases under the 10% average since Council amalgamation. If we had some ‘Bay’s Buses’ running around, cheaply doing the equivalent of what happens on Waiheke connecting with ferries, another rail station in the area would probably never be needed.
Grand plans and hard work that have delivered a world class train service to Auckland and we should now look to apply some comparatively simple local approaches to ensure everybody can easily connect with it.
Jeff I don’t now what more we can do to show you that a complete revolution in bus routes is underway. See the link above. It has only just begun, and takes a huge amount of work. If what you are saying is that the changes haven’t been implemented yet well yes you’re right, but the process is well underway. It requires analysis and planning, working with the community down to the hyper local level [my bus stop is moving!], the private bus operators, construction of new physical infrastructure; stations and stops, dealing with over-entitled moaners, blow-hard bloggers [!], public spending purists and obsessives, Local Boards etc.
Basically it can’t be done overnight, not least of which because it isn’t as simple as reaching into the public money bag and throwing down some additional routes for just your or my area, no matter how deserving or important we think our place is. Next two years are going see big chunks of the city’s new routes rolled out.
To me it looks like are AT are doing this well, including or perhaps especially, the consultation process where that’s already started.
So I promise change, and big improvement, is a-coming.
Already done Jeff, entire Auckland bus network has been redesigned to feed into rail and the busway. It’s being implemented as we speak.
Here is the southern section, notice how every single route feeds into the rail stations.
https://at.govt.nz/media/309580/4A-Final-New-Network-Map-for-Implementation-2015-changes-NOT-explained-.pdf
The OLB seems to me to increasingly acknowledge that the Purewa Station is a very long term prospect. Meanwhile they are cracking on with local feeder bus service plans and cycle infrastructure developments. All good. On the flip side their draft local plan puts “free flowing roads” as a top transport priority. Old habits die hard..
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