With the demise of light rail, the question arises of what next for public transport in Auckland. That was the topic of an interview I had on Radio NZ yesterday, but I thought it was worth expanding on that some more with what I think should and shouldn’t be the focus.
First of all, it’s worth noting that public transport use In Auckland is still recovering and is currently 80-85% of pre-COVID levels. To put some context around that, that’s still puts usage around the same level it was in late-2016/early 2017.
Rapid Transit
Expanding the Rapid Transit Network (RTN) has become a one of the key priorities of transport policy in Auckland over the last few decades, and it’s easy to understand why. Our small RTN, comprising at the time of just the rail network and Northern Busway, has been a huge driver in the growth of public transport use, with about as much growth on it the 10-15 years prior to COVID as the rest of the PT network combined. This is not surprising as many cities overseas have seen similar strong growth in PT usage as a result of investing in their own networks.
Auckland’s proposed future Rapid Transit Network has only seen minor modifications over the last few decades. This is the most recent version which comes from the Auckland Rapid Transit Plan work released last year.
The government have said they want to deliver a busway to the Northwest, continue the Eastern Busway and build the Airport to Botany busway – though in all cases, with part of the funding from other sources which makes them less likely. In the chart below, the costs are just the government’s contributions to them, with the actual cost of the remaining sections of the Eastern Busway and Airport to Botany route likely to be double what is shown here.
These costs also highlight the big issue with rapid transit, it’s great but it can be very expensive (and take a long time to deliver). This has been made worse in recent years by massive construction cost inflation. That’s not the only factor though, we’ve also seen a trend of more heavily engineered designs so as to never to inconvenience a car driver – such as the Eastern Busway deviation at Burswood, and of course the idea of tunnelling light rail.
I think this has opened the very real question of whether the focus for Auckland in the short to medium term should be on these large infrastructure solutions or if that money could be better spent on other improvements across the network.
So what else could we do with that money. Here are a few ideas.
Build an Interim RTN
One of the big issues I have with our current RTN plans is that we seem to have taken an all or nothing approach to it. This means that some of the routes could take 30+ years to be delivered and we will see almost no improvement to PT in those corridors until that happens. In many cases there isn’t even appetite to run a regular PT service on the likely rapid transit route in order to help start building ridership in advance of infrastructure investment.
I think we need to look at options for delivering interim rapid transit solutions with the idea of having some form of basic infrastructure and service on all rapid transit corridors within the next few years. In their most recent Regional Public Transport Plan, AT have said they want to take this approach to the Airport to Botany route from 2027, which is great, but we need it on the other corridors too.
While certainly far from perfect, the roll out of bus improvements to the Northwest gives an idea of what this could look like – building some basic stations at key locations, supported by some bus priority infrastructure, such as on motorway shoulders. Routes like Upper Harbour, the lower isthmus crosstown and even between Onehunga and the Airport are all candidates for this kind of treatment.
Bring forward the RPTP
Speaking of the Regional Public Transport Plan (RPTP), this is a statutory document that lays out how Auckland Transport plan to develop and operate all public transport in the region. Last year they consulted on plans out to 2031.
AT have a lot of plans for improvements to existing services, infrastructure and to the overall customer experience, but many of those changes are years away. For example, the AT’s proposed changes to how buses work in the city centre are not expected to happen until after 2028 and future threats to funding, from either the council or government, could see that pushed out even further.
Investing to bring these improvements forward could result in some significant improvements to our PT network.
This is the longest bus sausage I've ever seen.
Light Rail solves this! pic.twitter.com/uSpqp6OQRn
— scoot! (@ScootFoundation) January 30, 2024
Make further RPTP improvements.
One good thing that was unique to the new version of the Regional Public Transport Plan was that AT laid our what they would do if they had more funding.
If more funding for both operating services and the necessary infrastructure to support them were available, we would like to:
- Improve the all-day frequency on frequent routes from every 15 minutes to every 10.
- Add more routes to the frequent network.
- Expand the hours of frequent network operation from 7am – 7pm to 6am – 11pm
- Increase the base frequency on connector routes from 30 minutes to 20 minutes.
- Significantly expand the rapid transit network.
Let’s bring some of these forward.
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The problem with Wellesley St is the left turn onto Hobson is restricted to at most 3 vehicles per cycle. If it went Hobson, pedestrian Barnes Dance, Wellesley then the snake would likely be solved tomorrow. That would of course require AT to allow a Barnes Dance crossing on our city centre motorway onramps /s
Or complete grade separation for all public transportation. Ultimately, that’s what is required.
Yeah but maybe we could try reprogramming the lights first?
One thing to note regarding A2B is that is central government’s share (half). Auckland Council needs to find their share.
Auckland Council would do far better to scale it back to a project that provides protected cycling and the bus way entirely through road reallocation.
According to a Herald article the project required the buying up of 400 properties, which area an enormous cost. The road is so wide; there’s no good reason for this at all.
The effing deviation makes me so angry. I drove past the area yesterday and refusing to run the busway straight down Ti Rakau Drive, where people actually go to work and shop and dine, is shooting ourselves in the foot. I think it will be viewed as a mistake as soon as it opens.
The problem with developing an interim RTN ,and then implementing proper RTN is,the interim RTN is disrupted in the building of proper RTN. On the North Western,what will happen with the “shoulder bus lanes,” during construction?, will a general traffic lane be offered up to keep bus lanes. The cycle lane could easily become a casualty ,during construction. It shows that you have limited opportunities to get this stuff “right”,and trying to shoe-horn RTN after catering for general traffic is ,massively disruptive,expensive and time consuming,these are three things tax/rate payers/voters don’t like.
This is a significant problem for delivery of constantly-improving PT. Looking on the bright side, major disruption does lead to traffic evaporation in many cases. We haven’t been very good in planning how to lock in those benefits. Another positive to staged build for busways is that first stage benefits can compensate for some next stage disruption delays. This can be seen with the Northern Busway, recently extended from Constellation to Albany and with City centre bus lanes, and with Eastern Busway staging.
The shoulder bus lanes are just the shoulders of the motorway with the words bus lane stenciled on.
Basically nothing would happen to them if a rapid transit line was built alongside the motorway, they’d stay as they are and eventually go back to being shoulders.
It would be very wise to start looking,planning, what is going on, re Harbour bridge/2nd crossing and tying rail to that
E.g.
Type crossing,where each end
Because in 20yrs we need rail from OREWA TO CITY AND WESTERN AREAS
You absolutely do not need rail to Orewa while there are other parts of the city who don’t even have a basic busway like the Shore has had for over a decade, since extended.
He is on to something, the lack of regional level PT really hurts.
Orewa to Auckland is about 30 kilometre. In many places you can cover this sort of distance on an intercity train in half an hour or so. From a major centre like Auckland, you may have such lines to a few directions, eg. we could have Auckland to Orewa, Auckland to Kumeū, and Auckland to Papakura. These places then would be, in terms of PT travel time, as close to the city centre as Birkenhead or Ellerslie currently are.
A lot of choices would become available. Live somewhere near Orewa, ride bicycle to the train or bus station, take PT to city. So, basically the choice of living in a small town, and still have a 45 minute commute to the big smoke. A bike ride from Massey to Westgate, and then PT to the city would be 30 minutes or so.
Like, imagine the situation on our streets/roads if we didn’t have motorways at all.
They wouldn’t be small towns for long if you build that kind of investment.
Orewa via the bus way to the City is 45 mins. Not sure why rail from Orewa is important right now. Kumeu isn’t likely to get rapid rail unless it’s via Light Rail along the NW.
Yes, it does. But there’s plenty of other places that need regional PT instead of just endlessly extending it into the Shore while other areas take on more housing, more development and still have nothing approaching the Northern Busway; which has already been extended, no less.
Examples of Busways actually being converted to rail or light rail are few and far between. Once you have a Busway it generally stays a Busway forever. I think we can and should aim higher.
“It would be very wise to start looking, planning, what is going on, re Harbour bridge/2nd crossing and tying rail to that.”
This planning is already under way. see: https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/phased-tunnels-second-harbour-crossing
Some major work tweaking what we have now is also needed. It is great seeing AT consider things like dynamic lanes etc but they need to start looking at improvements to their westbound buses. Having buses trying to use Wyndham Street is not working (yesterday there were delays of up to 20 minutes on westbound buses). This now needs urgent attention because it’s only going to get worse as we head into winter.
“It is great seeing AT consider things like dynamic lanes”
Haven’t most recent AT dynamic lane projects not been
a) mostly for general lanes (or “fake PT” like T2 transit lanes)
b) mostly not proceeded after consultation?
Serious question. What dynamic lane project, except the redoubt road one, has gone anywhere in recent years? And that wasn’t for buses, as far as I am aware (as per my point a) above.
The one they have consulted on most recently is for bus lanes on Great North Road. This is a great start. https://haveyoursay.at.govt.nz/great-north-bus-lane
AT classify GNR in Waterview as a cycle route of “regional” importance, and a primary walking route. It is a road that divides two major residential areas: the Unitec development and Waterview both have many new homes) and needs to be suitable for all ages to wall and cycle along and to cross on foot and bike, at frequent intervals, etc.
It’s utterly unsuitable to reallocate space to a dynamic lane, worsening safety further. And AT have the gall to refer to the Redoubtv Rd and Whangaparaoa Rd dynamic lanes as “successful”. They are not. They were places where the gross deficiency was in safety for people on foot and bike, and the dynamic lanes simply exacerbated the problem.
On GNR, putting in dynamic lanes will induce traffic, and will prevent them from ever putting in safe cycling. AT are simply demonstrating, again, that they have no intention to prioritise children, nor to take straightforward steps of.
… space reallocation to reduce traffic volumes while improving walking and cycling safety.
Nothing will happen if no funding is available. The National Party promised to fund its “Transport for the Future” program by reallocating money in the NLTF.
“National will allocate $7.5 billion over ten years from the National Land Transport Fund towards the
Transport for the Future programme, including:
• $3 billion from the Public Transport Infrastructure activity class for specific public transport
projects.
• $1.5 billion reallocated from the Public Transport Infrastructure activity class for Roads of National
Significance.
• $3 billion reallocated from the Road to Zero activity class for Roads of National Significance.”
The mayor said there isn’t any more money so it won’t be funded locally either. It all got spent on CRL.
Haven’t you heard Miffy? It is all coming from the foreign buyers tax, because those incoming potential immigrants can think of nothing more that they would like to do with their tax, than voluntarily pay it to a foreign government…
SUGGESTION: Reintroduce the Foreign Buyers Tax by ten fold. They will still come.
See: https://www.1news.co.nz/2023/11/24/nz-first-scuppers-nationals-foreign-buyers-tax-plan/#:~:text=The%20tax%20changes%20included%20a,million%20on%20average%20per%20year.
@Zippo – Absolutely appalling if that is true.
@Miffy – I’m glad the prioritised the CRL for funding so at some stage a very important part of our rapid transport spine can run trains every 7 to 8 minutes at peak and every 15 minutes during the day.
Matt’s article does somewhat assume our hope there’ll be reasonable decision making from government. That’s not what we’re likely to see.
Luckily we can tap into international assistance for what to do when central government isn’t coming to the party. This, essentially, is what C40 is about: cities meeting their climate targets despite national governments being so lax.
Auckland has the TERP for when the national government is reasonable. Council now has to cut to the quick, and push forward with a programme that still makes our targets without assistance from government… But it will require serious improvements in both democratic practices and transport planning.
Not just upping the connector frequency but also some local bus routes like our 298 (Sylvia Park to Onehunga via Ellerslie) have in the plan to be “upgraded to Connector from 2027”.
And regarding our trains:
Train on the current Southern, Western and Eastern lines will be able to run more frequently – every 7 to 8 minutes at peak and every 15 minutes during the day.
Achieving these aspirations is likely to take a long time. Improving frequencies on train services to be every 10 minutes all-day, for example, will require significant investment that will take many years (into the late 2030s or early 2040s) to deliver.
Wow how about fixing the current state of all roads! The amount of vehicle damaging potholes bumps and manholes is huge. Currently there is not enough demand for more public transport so why not do a referendum type survey to see if more people would actually start using PT. Interim anything is a waste of taxpayers and ratepayers money. Making frequent routes from 15 to 10 mins please what a waster of time. The eastern busway have a look at the buses I only see about 2 a day that have people on them. FIX THE STATE OF THE ROADS I have just got my suspension fixed this is due to roads being unforgiving to all vehicles. And remember AT is not just for public transport it’s for cars road users ands roads too. DONT FORGET THAT. AT SHOULD BE PROVIDING GOOD QUALITY ROADS TOO MAKE USING THEM NOT A STRESSFUL PAINFUL AND UNCOMFORTABLE TIME LIKE IT IS NOW. EVERY MANHOLE ON THE ROAD IS ALWAYS LOWER THEN THE ROAD SURFACE which creates a very hard bump for the cars. Why can they not be level with road?
You clearly don’t know much about public transport. Going from 15 min to 10 min frequency saves a PT user on average 2.5 mins waiting time. That’s actually quite a lot, compared to a car driving around a pot hole (yes I’m quite aware of them, big ones near our house). Making PT more attractive to users by dropping waiting times means more will use it and less will drive which is a win win for all.
Hang in there me Julie!
At what point in their lives do car drivers realise that more people in PT and walking/cycling might actually make driving faster?
Love an unhinged CAPSLOCK. Especially when it’s about potholes
That’s not you again is it, Philmore? Are you back to your old cross-dressing habits again?
There are not manholes “Julie”. That’s blatantly sexist.
Get with the program. They are personholes.
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Avery T Deacon-Harry® ; Fighting sexism…occasionally.
“And remember AT is not just for public transport it’s for cars road users ands roads too”
Roads and cars are practically all they care about.
I see AT’s new marketing slogan is in use on the bus,”Modern Warfare: AT”.
Kiwirail need to be brought into line over their sub-standard stewardship of critical commuter rail routes.
Kiwirail need to explain why the constant faults are happening after weeks of closures. I can understand that taking things apart and putting them back together is likely to cause issues that only become apparent after a few days use. Cable issues, joints not fixed correctly, rail slightly out of alignment, destressing still to be done while very hot days are happening etc etc. But they need to front up and explain each daily occurence not hide behind a wall of silence. And not dump it on AT either.
Come on man, Kiwirail is only accountable to Wellington commuters for trains.
Remember when they had three days of disruption and Kiwirail got a ‘please explain’ from the government?
Getting kids onto PT as a means to relative independence might help build future ridership.
As a commenter pointed out recently, buses and trains are pretty safe compared to biking, scooting and walking.
When they come of age, they will have a choice to stay with PT instead of throwing their minimum wage into an elderly, polluting, unsafe car shaped object.
“As a commenter pointed out recently, buses and trains are pretty safe compared to biking, scooting and walking.”
Freaking sad way of seeing it. Technically true, but you need to also realise that kids need to get to the bus first. All the countries with real good PT also have tend to have pretty safe walking and cycling (I am thinking of Japan, Netherlands, Germany). Goes twice for longer-distance PT. If I can’t send my child or teenager safely to a train 1-2km away, they are unlikely to catch that train, full stop. Meanwhile, in those other countries, most parents would blink at telling their kid to go on their own for such a distance, especially once out of primary.
“wouldn’t blink” obviously.
At the risk of anecdata, I cycled over 10km to school in high school, and those of my peers who didn’t would walk or cycle 2k-3km to the train station first. Here and today? Neither happens. Not safe enough. We made it less safe. We can make it safe again (but not with the current govt and AT leadership).
“Getting kids on to PT as a means of relative independence”. Yes, this government is way ahead of you. It is encouraging young people to use PT by ditching the free fares for under 16 year old.
Realistically, if NZ cities remain car dependant a lot of folk will move overseas. NZ will need to keep that migration tap on to replace everyone.
Not sure I agree with you. I’m not seeing this stopping people moving to the UK, USA, Canada and Australia. All places as bad, and sometimes worse, then NZ.
Even if the evening peak was extended to 8 or 9pm rather than the 11pm proposed that would be a great help. I took PT from Mount Wellington to Henderson last night around 8:30pm and the lack of frequency was an issue when the bus drove past with “not in service” on the front with no passengers.
“the lack of frequency was an issue when the bus drove past with “not in service” on the front with no passengers.”
..that could have been a bus from a different route, that was returning to its depot, or a bus that was being re-positioned ready to run another service.
“While certainly far from perfect, the roll out of bus improvements to the Northwest gives an idea of what this could look like – building some basic stations at key locations, supported by some bus priority infrastructure, such as on motorway shoulders. Routes like Upper Harbour, the lower isthmus crosstown and even between Onehunga and the Airport are all candidates for this kind of treatment.”
Fully agreed, but they didn’t really manage to achieve the quick or the cheap parts of the ‘quick, cheap and nasty’ stops. Isthmus crosstown probably doesn’t need bus stations initially, but instead just bus stops, the money is much better spent on some paint and signs in the worst areas and on improving the frequency. The places that need physical infra is where buses run along motorways, and need an easy way to drop off passengers without having to add the time to go onto the local streets.
Running an UHEX Constellation to Henderson via Westgate, then adding bus stops on the offramps as NZTA permits, then adding frequency to the 120 for local trips. Eventually it could be something better, but in the interim it’s a relatively quick trip along SH18 for North to West or West to North trips, while local trips are sorted by the frequent 120(renamed 12?).
Onehunga to the Airport likely doesn’t need any infra at all – and the crosstown one could also be similar, just would need bus priority added sooner. It’s more just getting the buses to run the services.
The isthmus crosstown should be the Avondale southdown rail line. No need to invest in bus infrastructure if we already have a rail designation there. That’s just throwing money away.
In terms of cost, the rail line can be staged and done slowly. First the spur from Avondale down to mt roskill, then maybe the connection between the eastern line and the onehunga line through Westfield southdown., then completing the line at a later stage. All useful in their own right.
Doing something right slowly and in stages is much better imo than investing in half baked bus changes that won’t have the same impact. Do it right the first time.
Agree that ASD should be the goal, but you’ll be waiting at least a decade for it to be operational.
Surely some basic bus infrastructure is worth the investment for 10+yrs of rapid transit, regardless of mode.
“All useful in their own right”
Are they though (honest question)? I have always wondered why someone in Mt Roskill would need an indirect train line to the CBD, via Avondale, rather than just better bus priority up Sandringham and Dominion Roads.
Mrb – you might be right on the need for A2S for the passenger network, but that is not Kiwirails focus. Its freight. Hence why this won’t be built by them in the next decade.
AT/AC hasn’t got the funds, National don’t support HR and while NZF do, they seem weirdly besotted only with North port.
We shouldn’t let best be the enemy of better, not in the next decade.
Crosstown buses – the advantage is that there isn’t a need for infrastructure. You can run them without any new infra at all, but a few basic bus priority measures can drastically reduce the trip time (and therefore number of buses needed on the route for a given frequency). Painting in some bus lanes (and bus lanes also require the signage) in appropriate spots is tens of thousands (or maybe hundreds of thousands depending on much AT gets ripped off), vs millions for rail. Also – regardless of Avondale-Southdown, there likely will still be buses running parallel, like how there are buses running on Dom Rd, but also on Sandringham etc.
Avondale – Southdown will happen eventually – but not soon, and the passenger component will be added on as an afterthought as part of a freight plan. Meanwhile buses can be rolled out tomorrow – but realistically within a month or two, and only requiring OPEX of the buses – rather than a lot of CAPEX in the form of millions on rail. Avondale – Southdown will be built purely on the merits of freight.
Re the usefulness – it’s A for crosstown trips, and B, because it’ll be faster for anyone @Mt Roskill or further west to use which will reduce crowding on the Dom Rd etc. corridors. You can only do so much with priority measures on a road, as end of the day, you’ve still got cross traffic/driveways/risk of cyclists/pedestrians. You can minimise that, but you can’t remove it unless you do full grade separation, which is expensive.
In a time where everything is getting cut due to ‘no room in the budget’ – which is a partially political problem (not keeping rates up with what’s needed) and partially an organisational problem (paying too much to get too little results), big new projects (even staged) are less likely to get funded, while projects that don’t require any significant funding are more likely to (as they can still say ‘we’re doing something’ when there is little else to point to).
“Avondale – Southdown will be built purely on the merits of freight.”
I think that is wrong. The a-s is crucial to auckland passenger transport network. It creates a connected circle line, along with the eastern and inner west line rather than just radial lines to the centre.
Have a look at the metro maps of seoul (line 2), Tokyo (yamanote line), Shanghai, Beijing, Berlin, Singapore, Moscow, and many others. They are all planned around a circle line with North-South lines or east – west lines intersecting on both sides of the circle line to create.
A circle rail line is the best way to create a network and auckland is very lucky as it already has 70% of its circle line built, and the remaining 30%, the a-s line, designated.
@MrB
Sure – that’ll be the case in the future, but this is Auckland where we’ve not got all the radial routes to the CBD. All the radial examples had good service towards the CBD before they added circle lines.
Meanwhile, the Avondale-Southdown link is needed for the links to Northport, and there is a lot of people with a financial interest (and therefore political pressure) in Northport doing well.
I agree the Avondale-Southdown will be great for passengers etc. – just it’s not the must have project compared to other more needed ones – and interim demand can be served by buses until the freight line happens anyway, but that’ll be freight pushing for it.
We’re nowhere near the size of those other centres you mentioned. Eventually, sure, but I view the freight case pushing it through before the passenger case picks up steam to have done it itself.
With the ending of LR and KR announcing they are looking to build ASD in the medium term, it could be a good move to build the Avondale-Mt Roskill Spur now as per https://www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2011/11/21/the-avondale-mt-roskill-spur/
Quick win, not too expensive, future proofed, adds good capacity and reach. Tag on a bus transfer with bus lanes on the SW and you can get from Roskill-Onehunga-Mangere-Airport quickly and easily.
I’m a long time supporter of Greater Auckland’s tramway and BRT proposals, but it would be quite helpful to address the cost of construction to realize these plan.
Toulouse, which used to be France’s most car centric metropolitan area, is building 30km of new automated subway route for 100 millions Euros per kilometre, that’s 5 times cheaper than the cancelled Auckland light rail project. And the 30 km of light-metro already in service (also automated, using good old VAL technology), transport more people daily than the entire Chicago metro system…
Did Toulouse (great city) put their light rail in a tunnel?
80% is in tunnel, the remaining runs on viaducts (its fully grade separated with platform screen-doors at station and all).
I still think ASD is quite a way off (it was in Kiwirail’s 30yr plan) and I don;t think there will be any appetite to move sooner just for passenger rail’s sake (their motivation is freight).
We should run a busway from the NW Busway, a deviation via Avondale HR station, and then down SH20 to Onehunga and on to the airport. Major stops at Mt Roskill, Hillsborough, Mangere etc.
If you want inexpensive, cheaps wins for rapid transit, thats it. Everyone can jump on the train tracks when KiwiRail finishes ASD in 2035…
Response to Realist, above, on the Mt Roskill spur
“What should be next for public transport in Auckland?”
More public transport of course!
Light rail would be good. Something that complied with the KISS principle; only as complicated (and expensive) as is necessary.
Looks like Toulouse and Melbourne are good models for how to do it. Let’s get started. No time Toulouse!
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Avery T Deacon-Harry® ; Alarmingly sensible…mostly.
All the radial examples had good service towards the CBD before they added circle lines.”
Source for this?
I’d prefer we plan, not for. Radial lines but for proper through routed lines. We shouldn’t be planning for radial lines from the city at all but through routed lines from north through to south, or east through to west. The city should just be a stop on the way. The circle line then intersects with these through lines on either side to create an integrated network.
The obvious one is the western line runs completely through to the southern line as one continuous line post crl. It intersects with the circle line at avondale and a new transfer station north of westfield.
If they build the northwestern busway would be good to see it planned through the city and out the other side to eventually get to the eastern busway to form one continuous busway that intersects with the circle line maybe at k rd/ Mt eden and also panmure on the other side.
That was a reply to freddy
On a somewhat related matter, I have always thought that the Eastern Busway should extend past Panmure and down the Ellerslie Panmure Highway to Ellerslie train station, to connect to the Southern and O’ Lines (currently) and potential cross-town line (post-CRL opening)
I think I pretty much agree with your ideas re through running being good. Re NW busway (I’m hoping for another mode, but assuming private sector doesn’t step up and build a light metro), why would it flow into the Eastern Busway rather than the Northern Busway?
Between the Eastern and Southern rail lines – there isn’t really a massively underserved section that’s needing a busway the whole way, if anything the Eastern busway seems like it’s better directed towards St Lukes after Panmure.
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Also re ordering, Seoul had their first circle line after building Line 1 which connected the main nodes of Seoul, Incheon and Suwon. Going through the other examples, they’re all after other lines. That said, you can argue that we’re at that point now – where we have at least one radial line with ‘good’ service.
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Regardless of all this, where is the money coming from? KLK said it earlier much better than I could, but AT/AC doesn’t have the cash, most of the parties in gov have no interest, apart from NZF that want it as part of Northport, and KR also who want it as part of Northport (for freight, but they’ve said they could put passenger trains on it too).
“KiwiRail head of capital projects Dave Gordon said building the Avondale-Southdown line meant any freight to and from the north would not go through the CBD, and open up a series of loops for passenger rail on the Auckland isthmus.
He said the new rail line would largely depend on moving the Port of Auckland, and a possible inland port in West Auckland.”
So while (in other public statements) they recognised the importance of the line to the passenger network, its seems port and freight driven as to when it happens. And no one else can/will come up for funding for it.
I note that he also mentions in this article how “disruptive” it will be and if you search elsewhere there are councillours and groups lining up to oppose it ripping through Onehunga and environmental areas. So its going to be a complex process.
Let’s get a busway in ASAP, because it will be needed even when rail runs along the alignment.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/kiwirail-unveils-plans-for-new-6b-rail-line-between-avondale-and-southdown-in-auckland/JZ2AUGYHZZGUZCBHV7M5IYFTM4/
I think you can make the argument that building a busway would make the rail line less likely rather than more.
The point of the rail line is that it can create a continuous circle with the existing rail lines. A disjointed circle doesn’t have the same network effect.
In regard to building it, that’s largely down to the council and government, not kiwirail. And that will be when the government /council can see the passenger utility of the a/s line. Hence using it as a circle line to form a network rather than just some crosstown route
“And that will be when the government /council can see the passenger utility of the a/s line. ”
So never.
Passenger utility matters little to our governments, and not at all to National and ACT.
The only hope is if Kiwirail can convince central government from the perspective of freight.
There is a fundemental mismatch between the objectives of increasing public transport provision, and the objectives of the current government.
Better public transport provision requires more government spending, both local and central. So more demands on rates and taxes.
Better public transport provision suppresses business opportunities.
Business opportunities are largely confined to provision of buses, and their staff, and train crew and station staff. As well as labour for permanent way works, and some passenger rail rolling stock servicing.
In contrast private transport provision in vehicle supply and servicing, and roading, and carparking provision is absolutely enormous.
The massive business opportunities, that are the prime focus of our current government
Reducing road injuries and deaths, emission reductions, the provision of healthier and more efficient local transport options, and just reducing the absolute road based clutter in our cities and countryside, are not supported, and some, like cycleway provision are actually suppressed, if they mute current business interests.
We collectively voted for this.
Unfortunately at the last election Labour was not offering any coherent alternatives
In Auckland, actually all they were offering was ever increasing incoherence.
It’s legacy after six years, was ever just increasing the size of the bodge in their ill found single mega proposal, and near zero actual implimentation of anything.
In this area they deserved the hammering they received in the election.
Where is the money & will ?
Where there is money, there is will.
There is no money, as yet. So…
INDUCED DEMAND: Go here for an explanation of how building more roads is not always the answer to congestion: https://youtu.be/pCzCJzwrB_c?si=Be_mkYuUJD6EZNV5