This post was originally published on Linked In by Nicolas Reid. It is republished here with permission.
Here’s the thing: the City Rail Link is almost certainly going to be overcapacity from day one, with crowding on the trains at peak times. In the simple terms of popular transport discourse, it’s going to “fail” immediately.
While the CRL greatly increases the capacity of the network with many more train services being planned, it won’t have enough capacity to avoid rush-hour crowding, and it won’t provide as good a service as anyone could ask for. That’s because, like any other transport link, the CRL is subject to induced demand: the simple effect whereby making transport faster, easier and more accessible means more people use it.
But that perceived “failure” at the outset is exactly why it’s such a good project.
Let me explain.
Successful transit works because many people share the same vehicles to do different things: that’s what puts the “public” in public transport. It’s also why public transport services aimed at doing just one thing – like peak commuter buses, or airport express trains – tend to be less effective or economical. They just don’t serve enough transport sub-markets to attract a large enough user base to gain constantly high ridership.
By contrast, the City Rail Link simultaneously achieves four big things for Auckland’s rail system:
- It doubles the number of tracks through the core of the network,
- It adds new stations in the middle and south end of the city centre,
- It provides a much more direct route for the western line, by cutting out the three-point-turn dog leg through Newmarket and the east side of town,
- And it allows trains to run through from one side of the network to the other.
This means that from day one, the City Rail Link will effectively double the number of trains that can run across the system. Current and potential passengers at every station in the region will enjoy the benefits of more frequent trains, which includes more seating capacity, shorter wait times, and more flexibility on when they can travel. In this way, the “city” in City Rail Link is about everywhere else, not just the centre of town.
Of course, the new stations will provide direct access to parts of the central city that have Aotearoa’s highest concentrations of people who work, live and study – but who are currently a long walk from the sole downtown station, Waitematā (formerly Britomart). This will open up a lot of new access for many people who’ll find convenient train travel from their doorstep and work, home or school.
At the same time, the shorter route from the west will shave ten minutes off most trips on the western line. And, for a swathe of people living within a walk, bike or short bus ride from western line stations, this will make the train much more attractive and competitive compared to driving or other modes. Likewise, the new ability to catch a through-running train will make trips from one side of Auckland to the other much easier and more appealing for many more people.
Does the CRL do all these things perfectly? No. Does it do any of these things perfectly? Well, no, not that either. A “perfect” rail project for Auckland – on paper, at least – would provide vastly more capacity on day one than we could conceivably need for decades or even a century. It would also have many more stations, here and there, in other parts of town that don’t have stations yet. Plus, it would carve its way across and through the landscape to straighten out all of the curves, giving more direct routes and allowing trains to run from everywhere to everywhere.
But the thing is, this “perfect” day-one combination is perfectly unachievable in the real world, not that they didn’t try.
In the lead up to the CRL being approved there were calls for it to have four tracks with doubled-up stations, like those in Melbourne or Sydney, to add twice as much additional capacity. However, that would have meant a much more complex two-level tunnel with huge double-decker stations to fit under the road corridors.
For a while, the preferred option was to build a new terminal station between Mt Eden and Kingsland station, where all the trains could run through the tunnel and bounce back, avoiding some conflicts at junctions and allowing more trains to run. But this would have meant building a big mess of platforms and trackwork, and it would have resulted in a lot of near-empty trains moving back and forth through the centre of the network, of little use to passengers.
Likewise, for a while there was an extra station (Newton) planned for the top end of Symonds Street. This would have required both a tricky underground junction, and a super-deep station box accessible only by express elevators from the surface. Ultimately, this difficult and expensive station was dropped in favour of expanding the existing Mount Eden-Maugawhau station nearby.
At the time, there was a campaign of thinly veiled concern-trolling claiming the CRL hadn’t planned enough stations, and that to be worthwhile, it would need to swing over to Wynyard Quarter and then double back to the middle of town before carrying on to the universities. However, such a plan would have doubled the length of the tunnel and doubled the number of new stations, effectively doubling the travel time… and doubling the cost.
In short, for each of the things the CRL will do, there were people saying that it wouldn’t do enough, and proposing huge expansions to the scope of the project to further increase future capacity, improve travel times, or add extra stations. But if these things had been acted on we’d not be looking at a 2025 opening date for the project, and we might not be looking at an opening date at all.
They say politics is the art of the possible – and transport projects are very political.
The CRL is the best project for Auckland because it is the one that Auckland is actually building, and will actually open and operate. It improves on all the things it sets out to do: it doubles capacity on the network, has two new stations in the priority locations, and it makes routes faster and more useable.
While each of these might not be the perfect ideal for each goal, the point is that the CRL achieves its goals within a project scope that has proven politically viable, reasonable to procure and construct, and perhaps most importantly of all, fundable. This is due to the fact that the CRL is pretty much the simplest and easiest version of a city rail tunnel you could design for Auckland. The route is a near straight line on the shortest alignment possible between Britomart and the Western Line. The two tracks are the minimum you need for an effective operation. And the two new stations are as few as you could consider to provide access to and for the heart of the city.
In other words: the City Rail Link is literally the minimum viable product for delivering on its goals, and because of that it is affordable and cost-effective enough to actually proceed, and because of that, it will soon be up and running and delivering all the promised benefits. Yes, there have been delays, construction complexities and cost increases, but these have been relatively minor and manageable. Certainly, the “blowout” is nothing in comparison to what they might have been, had the tunnelling been loaded with umpteen billion dollars’ worth of scope creep and additional infrastructure aimed at chasing down marginal benefits.
Undeniably, the CRL won’t deliver completely on every aspect. Double the capacity won’t be enough for peak hour in the long run, and crowding will still happen in the future – but it’s still double the capacity, which means twice as many people being able to travel at peak time by train. And even if the trains are still busy on weekday mornings, there will be twice as many of them, which means twice as many travellers and twice the benefits to travellers.
This is the key difference between transit projects and traffic projects.
Traffic projects do fail, by “falling over” when they get full, because traffic congestion slows down all the vehicles on the road, drastically reducing the capacity and reliability of the corridor, and spreading that congestion through the network to clog connecting roads and streets as well. On a highway, being over-capacity (where there are more vehicles than can fit on the road at the same time) is indeed a failure of the network, because the cars just keep piling up in the queues.
The irony of traffic is that the best-performing roads – in terms of speed, reliability and accessibility – are the ones that almost nobody uses.
By contrast, on a rail line being overcapacity is a different kettle of fish. It’s when you have more people show up than can fit in your trains, not where you have more trains than can fit on the tracks. Congestion effects on the trains themselves are minor, and are much less likely to cascade across the network, because the vehicles are controlled by the operator rather than the users.
The folks at CRL know that they can run about thirty-six trains an hour through the tunnel before things get properly “congested” and clog up the network, so that’s the most they will run on opening day. If that doesn’t quite meet demand, then some potential travellers will get left behind, perhaps for a quarter of an hour or at least until the peak of the peak is over and they can hop on one of the next trains. But nonetheless, at full peak capacity, the line still functions for those who are on board, carrying the full amount of people that the line can possibly carry, at about the same speed and only slightly less comfortably than if nobody at all was riding the train.
This is a huge difference that road users and traffic engineers probably don’t appreciate when they put their minds to public transport. With transit, providing the full capacity to meet all conceivable peak demand doesn’t really matter. In fact, trying to do so is often a hiding to nothing. Literally.
Auckland’s transport history is a litany of grand, excessive transit schemes that never went anywhere because they zoomed in on maximising all possible benefits without worrying about cost and deliverability. The City Rail Link bucks that trend by delivering a mountain of benefits and improvements, albeit imperfectly, at a perfectly viable scope and price. The fact that, in conventional traffic-engineer terms, it may “fail” by quickly becoming a victim of its own success in reality, rather than working perfectly in some never-never fantasy, is exactly what makes it the perfect transport project for Auckland.
Now, what other pressing transport gaps can we solve by right-sizing the approach, so we can get cracking and deliver the benefits within a decade?”
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Which is right sizing?
Tim Tam cycle lane protection along Lambie Drive, a high throughput 4 lane motorway connection.
Or
Retaining the motorway overbridge at Tuauiwi Street/Barrowcliffe Place as an exclusively active modes route into the heart of Manukau from a residential area stretching back to Browns Road?
Answer – Lamble Drive, because you can only stuff so many vehicles through signal intersections at each end, so plenty of room for bikes. Barrowcliffe bridge has room for cars as well as good active mode space.
As Barrowcliffe was already active only for years, what was the value added by putting in a 5th car access over the motorway within a kilometer?
Where is Orsman’s op-ed on that extravagance?
I guess the right size for active modes is always in the margin.
Hot off the press, Simeon has just released 2 new projects to in included in the GPS!
1. Queen St will be turned into a motorway to enable fast convenient travel for car drivers i mean commuters
2. 4 land motorway to be built from Cape Reinga to Stewart Island. We need convenient fast travel the benefits speak for themselves.
Please can we all support Nats wunderkind
You forgot the East West Link from Gisborne to Haast.
I would also like to go in straight line, high speed motorway from New Plymouth to Akaroa. There is a cruise I need to catch.
…and the bridge to Waiheke.
Sadly with the current transport minister it does feel like it would have to be another road somewhere. I live out west so I’m more familiar with this part of Auckland.
The next game changer would be light rail along Gt North Road and then the NW out to Kumeu with a section heading out to Hobsonville point as well. The current busway is an improvement but is not a proper solution at all. There would be significant passenger volumes missed by not using Gt North Road I think that could make it more viable.
Sadly with the current transport minister it does feel like it would have to be another road somewhere. I live out west so I’m more familiar with this part of Auckland.
The next game changer would be light rail along Gt North Road and then the NW out to Kumeu with a section heading out to Hobsonville point as well. The current busway is an improvement but is not a proper solution at all. There would be significant passenger volumes missed by not using Gt North Road I think that could make it more viable.
The current Minister proposes a true rapid transit corridor (busway) for the NW, rather than what is currently proposed. I just don’t know if it will survive this morning’s announcement on the blowout in costs for planned projects.
Yep… I know that but I have real concerns that his cheapest is best mentality will cost us in the long run and our children won’t thank us for having no vision for the future. A dedicated all day Busway like the Northern busway would be a significant improvement but needs to be a truly dedicated busway not just using the shoulders. As long as it was built with adapting to LR once the numbers of users becomes too much for buses to effectively manage. The trouble is that is the inevitable outcome so why not do it now when it will be cheaper than in 15 years time?
Really wish they would actually act on their claims to being concerned with costs- surely the cheapest way to provide rapid transit on the NW would be by reallocating space.
100% Vinny. Sadly we know that Labour seem to want to be seen like they are investing billions and National want to be seen like they are cancelling those things that never actually happened thus saving billions. Politics gets in the way of sensible, evidence based policies like giving traffic lanes over to mass transit.
The NW busway wasn’t funded in their promises but was dependent on some kind of PPP, which we know is just code words for we want it sound like we will do something but really won’t.
excellent summary
This is why the CRL is our city’s greatest achievement. It cannot be stopped.
It is not a former mayor’s considered idea that was defeated by blind counsellors.
It is not anti the ruling political parties lack of infrastructure rhetoric in Wellington.
Britomart will no longer be a dead end. For a person born fourish decades ago, it is a dream that this city will have a subway, a tube, an underground metro system, like all the real grown up cities around the planet.
Now how about building some more residential apartments so we can really compare ourselves with other cities?!?
Bah humbug
Now why didn’t AT or the CRL Team write and publish that. Best piece I’ve read yet on the CRL. Well done. I will share widely with attribution.
Good article with the ultimate clickbait title!
“At the time, there was a campaign of thinly veiled concern-trolling claiming the CRL hadn’t planned enough stations, and that to be worthwhile, it would need to swing over to Wynyard Quarter and then double back to the middle of town before carrying on to the universities. However, such a plan would have doubled the length of the tunnel and doubled the number of new stations, effectively doubling the travel time… and doubling the cost.
In short, for each of the things the CRL will do, there were people saying that it wouldn’t do enough, and proposing huge expansions to the scope of the project to further increase future capacity, improve travel times, or add extra stations. But if these things had been acted on we’d not be looking at a 2025 opening date for the project, and we might not be looking at an opening date at all.”
I was searching on this blog for Joel Cayford’s article recommending precisely that but can’t find it? Maybe he published that somewhere else? Pretty sure it was him anyway
Yes they doubled the cost without needing to swing over to Wynyard. No diversion necesary.
Many large projects all over the world have had cost blowouts over the past 10 years. Even at double the cost CRL is still a bargain for Auckland. Doubling our rail capacity is a great investment for the long term.
Now if only Kiwirail were competent enough to maintain the railways.
It is hardly a bargain. It struggled to get a benefit cost ratio greater than 1.0 before the price went up. They are now doing their very best to not tell us the cost. Think of all the cycleways, hip replacements, cancer drugs, welfare increases, tax cuts etc that our society now misses out on.
“Think of all the cycleways, hip replacements, cancer drugs, welfare increases, tax cuts etc that our society now misses out on.”
lol as if a cycleway would have been built.
You’re thinking as if that money was sitting there waiting to be spent.
A more accurate quote would have been
“think of a new road that society misses out on”
If its a choice between tax cuts for wealthy and public infrastructure….
What exactly counts as wealthy these days? I used to work with a bunch of people who used to complain about the rich without realising they were mostly in the top 1% in their age cohort for renumeration. They were the rich.
The point is there is an enormous opportunity cost. What ever you value will get less because the money was squandered on some expensive holes in the ground intended to make a few politicians popular.
Elephant in the room is the dozens of level crossings yet to be grade separated. There is a plan to complete removal of the Southern Line crossings (NOR hearings shortly) but no budget available. Doubling the number of services will double the down-time for the half-arm barriers so will probably be delayed for a decade or more until Government and Council can agree on funding – and how long will that take?
Taking away all the funding for grade separation and closing level crossings is the best effort to sabotage the benefits of CRL while everyone queues up to watch the trains go by.
I have always thought that future proofing stations for 9 cars was unnecessary, money would of been better spent removing level crossings in the network,
It would be one of the upgrades needed to run trains every 2 or 3 minutes, if a train ran every minute, you would only need a very small 2 or 3 car set and still meet capacity.
And this would make it a true turnup and go network.
Can you provide the numbers to back that assertion up?
Well in any case the next major upgrade could be the signalling system allowing for 1-2 min headroom.
There would be some serious and expensive signalling upgrade required to run trains every minute.
Level crossings can be upgraded at any time, there was only one chance to build the platforms for 9-car trains and thankfully they took it.
But why would you need 9 car trains, I’m only thought would be to move extreme numbers of people over a short period of time, like a stadium event.
Yes 9 and 12 car trains are common over seas but only in much much larger cities then Auckland.
Apart from adding the Beresford square entrance, I think extending the platform was a waste of money, yes if you looked at the current or proposed timetable and wanted to future proof capacity it is a logical
solution, but in the name of getting people onboard I would rather a train be more frequent then be a longer train if I could choose either option.
The 9 car platforms are for in 30 years time when we need them, not now.
“to move extreme numbers of people over a short period of time, like a stadium event.”
Yeah, or a commuter peak on weekdays.
It’s cheaper and easier to lengthen platforms and run longer trains than it is to run higher frequencies. A train a minute is impossible on Auckland’s network. Even one every 2 minutes would need billions of investment.
It’s reasonable to expect 6-car trains to be jam packed at peak hours in 20 – 30 years time. Yes, it added cost upfront but you only get one chance with stations like K Rd and Aotea.
The proof will be revealed within a couple of years. In the meantime we are faced with many days when Britomart will need to be closed and even when the CRL is up and running it will need to shut for maintaince and there will be unplanned closure due to breakdowns and other causes.
So what I think we should do is introduce a plan B. I am going to call it short looping. So I am proposing an alternative network which can rapidly deployed when the tunnel is shut. All parties involve including the public will understand what is happening as soon as short looping is flashed up on the boards. So Western line trains will terminate at Newmarket. Eastern and Southern line trains will divert through the Strand station and I would suggest that Southern line trains stop at Parnell and skip stopping at the Strand. Vice versus for Eastern line trains. Onehunga trains can shuttle to Penrose. This is just a first attempt without putting to much analysis into it and I am sure it can be improved apon. But I think the concept is sound one code word will convey a meaning to all wether their staff or passangers or media for that matter. Anything would have to be better than what we have now.
It may well be extremely rare for both tunnels to close at the same time. A better plan B might involve reduced frequencies where trains only travel one direction through the CRL.
However it will be still be necessary or expedient for the tunnel to be closed sometimes and your one way scenario will also happen. What I would like to see is a plan so passengers understand what they will need to do to complete there journey. For example if the destination boards flash up east west tunnel blocked then passengers travelling from Panmure would know there train will be routed through the Strand. And they would need to transfer at Newmarket to a service running through the tunnel the other way.
In London the appropriate response to tube congestion is wait things out in the pub.
The same can be true for Auckland.
Hit the nail on the head with this – especially the last sentence.
“By contrast, on a rail line being overcapacity is a different kettle of fish. It’s when you have more people show up than can fit in your trains, not where you have more trains than can fit on the tracks. Congestion effects on the trains themselves are minor, and are much less likely to cascade across the network, because the vehicles are controlled by the operator rather than the users”
I am lucky that I don’t need to sit in long commuter lines daily, but yesterday, due to an unusual school sports event, I found myself in a big queue of cars in Albany. With two teenagers in the car who usually bus everywhere, we had a long discussion to pass the time about transport and why the “users” in their vehicles felt the desperate need to sit their day after day even though it’s massively inefficient use of time.
Automation is about to make people more neutral with respect to the time they spend in cars since they won’t be driving them. Soon time spent in vehicles will be work or recreation time. Also is there an easier place in Auckland than Albany to get to by bus?
Driverless cars will prove to be completely unworkable once pedestrians and cyclists figure out that they can bring them to a complete standstill by getting in their way. Civil disobedience by the proletariat against the parasites. It’s going to be fun!
I’m sure Elon will be able to add flamethrower and plow accessories for the cybertruck if it really becomes a problem. The tech to differentiate between errant children and smelly hippies who should know better and gently yeet protestors off roadways should be fairly easy to develop.
and once again the establishment bootlicker says the quiet part out loud: ‘we’ll happily murder anyone who doesn’t conform to our car-brained middle-upper-class utopia/delusion.”
Conformity über alles, amirite? let’s joke about running over cyclists and pedestrians while hooning around in vanity utes and destroying native bush for our 6-lane motorways and McMansions, it’s all fine and dandy.
The attitude that it’s OK to tempt death just to make point about how evil cars are is the wrongheaded one.
I’m sure the AI would be able to detect the difference between fine upstanding citizens just accidentally in the wrong place and smelly hippies deliberately trying to get themselves run over. The former of course would not get torched or yeeted. And I did say gently yeet, not murder. Of course the system would need to be designed and calibrated to provide the softest landing possible and use the minimum necessary amount of flame. Boring company flamethrowers are not even real flamethrowers. If AI dealt with protestors kindly and directly I’m sure it’d quickly become a non problem.
But also there’s a simple answer there, have a bit of respect for other transport users. If you don’t want to activate such a system don’t be standing in front of cars. After all most car owners don’t go around throwing themselves in front of trains and those that do are not generally doing it as a protest against trains.
Oh yes I’m *sure* the only situation when pedestrians or cyclists are hit by cars is when they’re actively trying to get hit. No, no, it never possibly could be car drivers being selfish careless dickheads who swerve into the cycle lanes and hoon through residential streets at 70+km/h. And it never possibly could be urban design that encourages such reckless driving and puts pedestrians and cyclists in danger or makes their journeys long and inconvenient.
Because the status quo that you benefit from is always correct and morally good, right? As long as everyone follows your doctrine, sitting in their AI cars like the fat and boneless future humans on their floating chairs in WALL-E, then everything will be hunky-dory, right?
/s
Actually AI is the biggest hope for fewer pedestrians and cyclists being hit. That and separating them out from vehicle lanes which isn’t maintaining the status quo, just taking the next reasonable step.
I’m not sure what the difference in exercise level between riding a bus or train and riding in a private car is. Not much I’ll wager. Oddly enough an e-bike or e-scooter (or their slightly upsized cousin the mobility scooter) is probably closer to your vision of a personal floating chair than an EV is.
The narrative that motorists intentionally run over cyclists is a silly one. Those travelling at unsafe speed for the conditions should of course slow down. However there’s plenty of documented evidence of smelly hippies intentionally gluing themselves down in front of cars in an attempt to be run over for TikTok views. A kind and gentle hippie plow to remove them from the roadway in the most equitable manner while respecting their lived life experience yet still preventing microagressions against the car owners combined with AI to ensure it’s not scooping up anyone not actively trying to be run over seems a quite practical answer to meeting their needs. Modern problems require modern solutions…
“The narrative that motorists intentionally run over cyclists is a silly one”
Well it is rare, but not unheard of, and in many places you can actually do this and be reasonably sure you will not be prosecuted for it. (I suspect Auckland is one of those places)
Aren’t current driverless cars actually 1 driver in some remote call centre with a video link in a low wage country for every 1.5 “self driving cars”? Actual self-driving has been “a few years away” for what, 10 years now?
Here’s a few precursor things I would look for:
– self driving trains. Arguably a much simpler problem than self driving cars, and how many railway companies have trouble finding enough train drivers?
– self driving on motorways. Arguably a simpler problem than self driving on city streets. Maybe not as alluring in New Zealand but in a lot of countries, a lot of longer trips mostly happen on motorways so that would be a big deal.
– self driving on trucks, these drive huge distances on motorways.
“Actually AI is the biggest hope for fewer pedestrians and cyclists being hit”
Actually AI is BS.
‘I’m sure the AI would be able to detect the difference between fine upstanding citizens just accidentally in the wrong place and smelly hippies deliberately trying to get themselves run over. The former of course would not get torched’
So AI on there vehicles is going to use images to determine who is a fine upstanding citizen and who is not? Remarkable!
Who will code the AI? Will it learn by being presented with pictures of what humans determine are fine upstanding citizens?
It makes dystopian sci-fi look tame.
This could only be dreamt up by someone who is both a psychopath and a sociopath.
AI is BS
Throughout history those that don’t understand technology have protested against it.
And with smelly hippies, images are pretty conclusive. You can show 100 people images of smelly hippies and they’ll pick them out with very high reliability so there’s no reason AI can’t be trained to recognise them too. Of course adding a smell sensor may be needed for final confirmation before yeet mode is activated.
Smelly hippies may learn and fool the system by bathing but arguably that’d still be a win for society.
Also the system could record the yeeting and post it directly to social media using facial recognition to identify and tag the hippie. That’d totally obviate the need for the second smelly hippy who is aways there recording the protest for social media. By eliminating the need for the cameraperson either twice as many hippies could have their yeeting needs met or half the hippies could go get a haircuts and get real jobs.
Hot off the YouTube press: CRL completes tunnel track laying – green light for testing trains:
will the public get a chance to ride on these tester trains?
Let’s hope they got the spacing right.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018926914/new-rail-tracks-too-narrow-for-carriages-in-wairarapa
Probably the biggest issue with the project is Mt Eden stations missing platforms. I’m expecting some sort of screen doors will be required at Aotea and K Rd to manage platform overcrowding, or they could just have staff managing the numbers down the escalators. But that can be figured later.
The operating patterns of CRL pretty much all make transferring at Mt Eden the optimal point for transfers, but the trains going from CRL to Newmarket (and vice versa) won’t stop, forcing transfers at other stations further away adding travel time.
I’d understand not fitting a set of platforms from the Western line to the Newmarket section, because it’s possible a line might not use it, but every operating pattern has the CRL-Newmarket section used.
Great article BTW.
Transfer at K road. It’s less than a km up the line
And its just a cross-platform transfer rather than going up stairs or lifts
“Now, what other pressing transport gaps can we solve by right-sizing the approach, so we can get cracking and deliver the benefits within a decade?”
What about 3 surface light rail lines with modest stations like Sydney? Or anywhere that you can think of. With a new consenting process that seems to be that, the rules are that there are no rules, it should easily be delivered in 10 years.
Will it be delivered in a timeframe that allows Auckland to meet emissions reductions targets? Sadly that opportunity already seems to have passed.
There is not, I believe, any chance whatsoever that a National-led government will invest in surface light rail. And given we almost always give new governments a second term, that means its off the table till 2030, at the earliest. And even with a change of government, only then would “planning” begin.
From a PT perspective, of greater concern is the news this morning that the transport plans in the election manifesto come at a price tag twice that expected. There is going to be some cuts to those plans, surely. And the most expensive plan is the NW Busway.
If it wasn’t for that, I would say that the next decade looks rather rosy from a rapid transit perspective; CRL operational in 2025, completion of Eastern Busway in 2025/2026 and then Airport to Botany and the NW by 2030. Quite the progress compared to the last 6yrs. We may even have an Avondale-Southdown line (whatever mode) ready to break ground by then too.
However, I fear PT will take the bigger hit in downsizing the land transport expectations and so we’ll get bare minimum. Again. Or, who knows, congestion charging will be accelerated.
Having missed the opportunity to build the NW busway affordably when widening the mway after Waterview Tunnel, it now needs to be built urgently when land and construction are most expensive. Wish the new government well with that.
Streetguy – yes, I think even National see there isn’t any option on that route but to build proper rapid transit. The can has been kicked down the road too long.
Done right, it might even justify further investment in BRT and (from National’s preferred perspective) kill off any remaining support for LRT.
> And even with a change of government, only then would “planning” begin.
Ah yes, we saw how that worked with the change of government in 2017…
Yes, and let’s hope Labour learn from that.
Don’t let best be the enemy of better.
CRL live testing has been scheduled for July 1 for some time but with hundreds of drivers to train in its use under all possible scenarios the test phase will last at least a year – possibly longer
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Miffy,
The cost benifit ratio is an easily manipulated fairly artificial concept anyway.
But the Auckland CBD has the highest growth in GDP, employment, and population of anywhere in New Zealand by a considerable margin. See the preceding GA topic.
This growth concentration is not occuring in a vacuum. People and employers want to be based there to compete on the world stage, in spite of huge costs. The benifits obviously outway the considerable costs.
These are benifits that suburban office parks and suburban housing cannot offer because of their isolation from one another.
The inefficiencies of being isolated from those they need to transact with most often.
And these Auckland CBD benifits are unavailable elsewhere in NZ, but are available in our competing economies, especially in the Australian big cities.
But further growth here is totally dependant on enhanced transport connectivity with the rest of Auckland.
Increasing roading and car storage capacity actually subtracts from that very scarce land available for these very high value activities to take place.
This is a huge impediment, because it degrades the very concentration that sets the Auckland CBD aside from all other areas in Auckland and in the rest of New Zealand.
So increasing spacially efficient people access between the Auckland CBD and the rest of Auckland is vital to ensure that this economically out performing small area continues to flourish.
So then you have to look at the alternative ways of transporting the increasing number of people to and from the CBD with all the consequential costs.
Here the CRL excels by doubling the considerable capacity of the existing rail system with absolutely no demands on scarce land.
It is a bargain, simply because it so so spacially efficient.
Compared to sacrificing very scarce premium land to more lane kilometers of road and many more hectares to the daily non productive inner city car storage space.
The CRL has suffered about the same proportional cost increases as our recent major roading projects, Transmission Gulley and the Auckland Northern Motorway extension. So not an outlier. It is just another testament to crap estimating and the massive disruption that Covid had caused worldwide.
If you’re competing on the world stage it doesn’t matter much if your office is 10,502km or 10,545km from head office and/or your customers. Most of your dealings with them are virtual. When was the last time in the CBD it was quicker to travel and see someone than IM, email, call or videoconference with them? How many office workers even leave their building for anything but lunch, personal errands or to go home? Less than 20% of Auckland’s GDP is generated there and about 3% of Auckland’s population lives there. Hardly anyone over 30-35 wants to live there. Yet it gets a very outsize focus in public transit infrastructure. Most Aucklanders want to get efficiently past the CBD or to some other place not to the CBD. Feel free to pitch me on why I’d want to locate a company in the Auckland CBD other than that’s what people used to think was important and prestigious.
If you stick a company out in the suburbs you attract disinterested halfwits who turn up late moaning about traffic and leave early to go pick their kids up from school. If you try and recruit better staff they all don’t want to drive out to Henderson, so you only get applications from people who happen live in Henderson already. Nobody has any engagement with the area and all the do is complain about parking and drive away as soon as they can.
Ok, so 97% of Aucklanders are disinterested halfwits because they don’t want to live in the CBD. good to know. And as people become older and have kids their desire to live there or commute there wanes as they seek a better lifestyle for their children. The city fringe and inner suburbs are not the CBD, so it’s a big jump from ‘CBD’ to Henderson and Henderson city centre isn’t particularly well connected to anywhere by motorways so a poor choice in that regard.
I hear more moaning about traffic and parking to the CBD than I’ve ever heard about traffic to Henderson, Westgate, Albany or even Takapuna.
But to be fair Henderson needs to gentrify a bit before it’s seen as desirable place to put an office unless it’s a WINZ office.
I think you’ve completely misunderstood the halfwit comment. People who live in the suburbs aren’t halfwits. However, businesses in the suburbs struggle to recruit as their pool of people who are willing to commute to get there is smaller.
When you’ve got a smaller pool the chances of hiring halfwits increases.
The reason we have such a concentrated CBD is the building restrictions in the immediate surrounding suburbs.
You’ll have to ask the people building those office towers around Britomart, and their tenants. Or you have to wonder why most of Albany is still paddocks after all that time.
Our opinion on whether it is a good idea to locate a company in the Auckland CBD doesn’t matter. You can go out and observe that this is what companies are actually doing.
So why does premium CBD office space in the premium CBD’s of the world continue to extract an ever enlarging premium?
This is the space occupied by the biggest and most prestigious commercial entities. Perhaps they are don’t know what they are doing when everybody knows they could massively reduce their rents by relocating out in the burn’s. But the vodaphone experience when they relocated from the Viaduct Baisin to Smales farm was that a very significant portion of their talent immediately sought other employment in the CBD to remain close to the centre of employment action.
burbs not burns!
DonR that’s actually not true. Lets take the five biggest companies in the US by market cap and see where their headquarters are located:
Microsoft’s headquarters is its own private campus in Redmond not the Seattle CBD. Google(alphabet) is located in suburbia in Mountain View. Apple and Nvidia are also located in suburbia, Cupertino and Santa Clara respectively. Amazon has some downtown properties in Seattle but the official HQ is in suburbia in Arlington Virginia.
To give you an idea of the difference in scale with the Auckland CBD, Microsoft’s Redmond campus has about 50,000 people working there, about 1/3 the size of Auckland’s entire CBD workforce and it looks nothing like the wasteland that the Auckland CBD is. Apple’s main campus is a 70 hectare park in suburbia. The biggest parking garage has fourteen thousand spaces and also has office space large and small throughout the suburb of Cupertino.
I wonder what they know that you don’t. One thing they know is nobody wants to travel to a downtown CBD every day if they don’t have to and another is that people want to work somewhere nice.
Contrast with New York City where the biggest employers are financial services, accounting/consulting and insurance companies which have typically liked or felt they needed the prestige of CBD addresses, or arose in the days when a lot of their business was face to face.
Can’t really compare custom-made huge corporate headquarters with their own town centres etc with downtown general office spaces.
My point remains that well built suburban campuses and office buildings are the clear livability winner especially when you throw the drag of commuting to a CBD into the mix. They’re all right next to the freeways that serve them and run their own extensive transport networks (buses, shuttles etc). And these campuses mostly don’t really have ‘town centers’. The primary facilities are cafeterias to stop people needing to leave for food.
The US outside perhaps New York City, Chicago and some other major East Coast cities major does things differently. Private transport, carparks and motorways reign supreme.
No wonder our motoring vested interests wish that only we would become more like America.
This difference is graphically shown in todays GA Weekly roundup in the photos of their major stadiums surrounded by square kilometres of car parking space.
So if satellitite cities are the answer why are Henderson, Albany and Mangare centre struggling?
Similar struggles are occuring in Satellite locations of Sydney and Melbourne. And London? Slough is absolutely dire, and even Canary Wharf is seeing major Tennants uprooting and moving back into the City.
The only employers in NZ that go even remotely close to 50,000 are Ministry of Education and Te Whatu Ora. For obvious reasons they won’t be building a single campus anytime soon.
Even in the US where there is a stronger focus on building for cars than anywhere else most cities have the strongest concentration of employment in their CBD.
Commutes in many US cities are horrible, you are either stuck in traffic trying to get to one of these campuses that you describe or you’re taking public transport that makes ours look good to get to the CBD.
At that scale they’re effectively building their own CBDs. As to why they win for livability, that is a good question.
In principle, a city centre does these exact same things as those companies. Run their extensive transport networks. Well so do cities, obviously. And Auckland CBD just so happens to be next to a motorway interchange.
So why are they nicer? One answer is probably money. According to the estimates on Wikipedia, that Apple Park has cost apple something like 5 billion — 300,000 USD per employee. How does that compare to your rates bill?
And maybe a few less pig headed design choices. Find an image of Apple Park and see if you can see huge roadways criss-crossing it. Or huge surface parking lots.
Roeland Apple Park is nothing like a CBD. It’s just a big round building in the middle of some grassland that really only covers a suburban block between three main roads and a freeway it’s about a sixth of the size of Auckland’s CBD in total land area. And most of the parking is in the two large above ground pill shaped buildings you can clearly see from the air that have six lane “highways” (even wider at the security gates) going into them. So yes it has a pretty big road running right across it. It could never fill or empty those garages fast enough without it. It has nothing in the way of services except cafeterias and a gym. I’d be like a CBD that only contains office space, no shops, services etc. Most of the Silicon Valley area has quite low max building heights which does force companies to build out rather than up. But on the other hand that probably results in nicer campuses vs everyone just building a skyscraper in the CBD and calling it done.
“sought other employment in the CBD to remain close to the centre of employment action.”
That statement doesn’t make any sense. Why would you want to be ‘close to the centre of employment action’ unless you were looking for another job? Also it’s not like you’re just walking down the street in the CBD and you see a sign on the footpath ‘CEO wanted, no experience needed, enquire within’ and whip up in your lunch hour for the interview.
Many at Vodafone were of course actively restructured out. But also I don’t doubt there were some faced with the trek north across the bridge combined with the layoffs of their colleagues that decided Vodafone was no longer for them.
In our now much more fluid employment regimes it is actually prudent to always be looking for alternative employment.
Here networking is a vital tool. The CBD provides vastly more coffee and lunch break networking opportunities then available in the burbs.
It’s called clustering.
And obviously it is important reflected in the recently reported GDP growth for Auckland CBD far exceeding average GDP growth across the country.
It works the other way too, at least in the professional services space. You need to be in the CBD to attact the best employees from competitors.
There is a talent war out there, particularly for graduates and the newly experienced. They don’t want to spend 4yrs on a business degree to end up in a cublicle in Henderson.
Henderson is not even where people who live in Henderson want to be. And it’s not easy to get to. If you’re going suburban that is probably the second thing you should be thinking about after ‘is the suburb I’m choosing a ghetto’. So why not give a realistic non CBD example rather than keeping pointing out nobody wants to live or work in Henderson. I agree with you on that.
Don’t most people commute to a suburban business park as well, just like they do to the CBD? Whats the difference?
The difference is it’s from more diverse origins to more diverse destinations often resulting in commutes that are a shorter distance or take less time even if they are longer than a trip to a congested CBD.
If trains are setup right won’t be a problem ie post CRL. Highly efficient huge numbers. No congestion apart from on the motorways.
“The difference is it’s from more diverse origins to more diverse destinations often resulting in commutes that are a shorter distance or take less time even if they are longer than a trip to a congested CBD.”
So forcing everyone to drive to disparate locations when the CBD is in the middle of everyone and provides the greatest choices for transport…
Firstly the CBD isn’t in the ‘Middle’ for everyone. It’s also less about distance and more about travel time and as you approach the CBD your travel time per km becomes highly non linear, even by train as you have to get from the station to your work still. It’s much harder to make provision for 150k people to go one place efficiently than for a million to go to a hundred different places.
CRL likely won’t move the needle much on congestion. I’ll be happy to be proved wrong but lets see how that plays out.
Who cares about congestion? Good bus lanes and cycleways and the congestion problem goes away. If motorists don’t like congestion they can stop participating in it. It’s a self-limiting system with an effective feedback loop.
That’s absolutely true, you never see a highly utilised cycleway or busway in Auckland, so congestion on them really isn’t a problem.
“That’s absolutely true”
So we are in agreement that road congestion is not a problem that has to be dealt with.
Excellent.
And as to transport choice. You don’t just need a choice that ends at the CBD, and runs a few routes out from there. You need one that starts near where you live and ends near where you want to go. Otherwise it’s not really a choice, it’s a boondoggle. And only a fraction of Aucklanders are office workers or students who are heading to the CBD.
One of Auckland’s biggest problems is everything going north or south goes near or past the CBD whether people on it want to go there or not. That’s even true of the new megadollar western ring road which starts off great at each end but still gets caught up in CBD bound traffic at the point it needs to be bypassing the CBD totally.
You are starting to conflate a whole lot of issues….and I really don’t get what you are trying to say on transport. If you have an issue with the coverage of the rail network, no argument there. But the best serviced location, transport wise, in the region is the CBD.
Suburban clusters or business parks work for some businesses obviously, because we have them. Typically its where they don’t get the agglomeration benefits in a CBD. Even amongst the corporates, its common to have the cost centers (e,g, call center, finance function) out in a cheaper location while the people interacting with clients face to face on a daily basis at HQ are in the city.
For the majority of professional services, banking and finance, Big 4 and 2nd tier consulting, larger law firms, etc, its the CBD and always has been. The reasons have been outlined above. Its not changing.
Landlords in the CBD are following demand and spending lots of money on fitouts for large corporates who want a modern building in a CBD or CBD fringe location, and a big part of that is attracting the right talent. They have chosen the CBD over Northcote, New Lynn, Manukau etc.
I do see the CBD fringe growing however. We’ll see more take up options in places like Sylvia park, Newmarket, Mt Eden (once developed).
The fact remains 80% of Auckland’s economic activity occurs outside the CBD and most of New Zealand’s largest companies are not headquartered there. As you note most businesses there are “Ark Ship B” organisations or those where most of the value they generate is managed from but not occurring in the CBD.
And if you look at the construction of office space in the US the trend for over two decades is for 90%+ of office space construction to be not in the CBD, with maybe 20% of that being in urban areas adjacent to CBDs and fully 70% of it suburban. It is possible for a limited supply of CBD space to be fetching high prices among certain classes of business that feel history or prestige demands they have a CBD address while simultaneously most of the new activity being in the suburban space where land is cheaper and more human friendly campuses can be constructed.
…and the bridge to Waiheke.
Optimist.
You are right probably 80% of NZ’s economic activity most likely occurs in the more then 268000 sq kilometres that are not in the Auckland CBD.
But if nearly 20% of the country’s economic activity, and it has fastest growing
economy in the country, occurs in less then 5 sq km, then this is an potent indication of the economic power of concentration.
It is a unique area of New Zealand in it’s contribution to our economic health.
It is this uniqueness that demands unique, to New Zealand, but far from unique to other peer cities of the world, transport solutions.
Homogenising transport solutions around the country will fail us.
Similarly sized cities in Australia, Perth, Adelaide, and Brisbane, have far more comprehensive mass transit options to moar roads.
And like us their CBD’s are continuing to concentrate economic activity.
Firstly that’s 20% of Auckland’s GDP in the CBD not 20% of New Zealand’s. It’s only 8% of the nation’s.
8% obviously isn’t nothing for the area but it’s also clear 92% is headquartered some place else.
As far as being a ‘potent indication of the economic power of concentration’ I’m not sure Spark would do any more business if it was outside the CBD, and it’s network that actually earns it’s contribution towards that 8% is nationwide. And Fonterra sure as heck doesn’t have many farmers in the CBD and would likely suffer little by being anywhere else. Air New Zealand doesn’t fly a single aircraft out of the CBD and likely gains little answering telephones from there vs anywhere else, in fact correcting the decision to be in the CBD and locating at the airport obviously resonates with them. Most banking and insurance firms’s customers are also not in the CBD and are dealt with through websites, email, telephones and videoconferencing.
So sure, there’s some advantages to being there, especially in the old days, you’re close to where the sailing ships come in and can toddle over to your bankers, accountant, lawyer and so on vs having to hitch up the horse and buggy for an arduous journey down the Great South Road to Greenlane to see them. But in a much more modern connected society and one at least internationally just had to learn very quickly how to work in distributed ways (if they didn’t know already) the value of the CBD and a CBD address is less than it used to be. Old habits die hard I guess.
I am in the consulting industry (forgive me) and we are not going anywhere except the CBD. Same with all the related industries in question. I’m 25yrs in and the desire to be downtown for all the agglomeration, transport and convenience reasons I mentioned early is as strong today as it was when I first started out. I travel, on average, to half a dozen countries a year. Without question, its all the same.
What if we told you an enormous mutant star goat was going to eat the CBD?
The result would probably still be more favourable than Henderson.