Tomorrow the council’s Transport, Resilience and Infrastructure Committee meet and agenda has a few interesting papers.
Council’s Letter of Expectation to Auckland Transport
Every year the council provide a Letter of Expectation to Auckland Transport which is part of the process for informing AT of the council’s priorities and feed into AT’s Statement of Intent of what they plan to do for the year and council will be approving the latest one in this meeting. There are a few items in the current proposal which stand out.
This process is especially important with the changes announced by the government last year which will see a lot of the functions of Auckland Transport moved to the council. Unsurprisingly, supporting that change features strongly in the proposed letter.
Work with council on government transport reform for Auckland
- Auckland Transport is expected to work with the council to prepare for and enable the proposed legislative reform announced on 3 December 2024. Legislation change will enable:
- strategy, policy and planning functions for transport to return to Auckland Council
- establishment of a new Auckland Regional Transport Committee with a focus on longterm, integrated transport planning
- Auckland Council to assume the role of Road Controlling Authority
- greater local decision-making over certain transport decisions for local streets and neighbourhoods
- Auckland Transport to be retained as a CCO focused on delivering transport projects and services (as decided by Auckland Council).
- These changes are substantial and will necessitate a thorough, joint process for effective implementation. Engagement with the government on the reform is to be led by Auckland Council and for transparency, all Auckland Transport engagement should be recorded and noted in the quarterly performance reports to council. Information required to assist with transition should be provided on time and in an open manner.
- The Government has signalled the intention for local boards to be given greater transport responsibilities, and this will require us to work closely to understand the implications of and plan for these changes.
This is a substantial change for AT and not just shifting one of their functions and it looks like the changes could go further.
Non-structural reform changes
- As part of the future operating model arising from CCO reform decisions, the Mayor has asked for advice from the council’s chief executive on the:
- principles to guide council’s approach to transport reform that reflect the overall intention of this CCO reform package and legislative change
- detailed analysis about how transport functions could be delivered in the future state
- a proposed phased approach to implementation prior to legislation being enacted
- This advice is to be prepared in parallel to the government’s legislative process.
- Auckland Transport is expected to actively support and provide full cooperation with the council in the development of this advice and its associated implementation, pending Governing Body decisions. This includes the provision of timely information when requested by the council.
As well as the changes to the organisation, council want better communication to the public, especially public transport users.
Auckland Transport must continue to improve communication to customers about the transport system, particularly in the coming year due to rail disruptions. This is a critical factor that impacts the experiences of transport users, and it is essential that information provided is reliable and up-to-date across all communication channels. Given the forecasted disruptions on the rail network and changes to the rail and bus system to support the City Rail Link, clear communications will be vital. Refocusing communications and marketing activities on basic customer communications (especially for public transport) and away from promotion of Auckland Transport’s brand and successes is expected.
And something to warm my heart, Council are finally asking AT to sort out the stupidly long dwell times on trains ahead of the CRL. We’ve been highlighting this issue for years, why has it taken a decade to get council catch up?
Implementation of mega projects like the City Rail Link (CRL) and Eastern Busway
- As the CRL construction work winds down, the role of Auckland Transport within the project will increase and day-1 readiness will become a stronger focus. This includes removing level crossings required for day-1, asset testing, acceptance, station and precinct readiness, driver training, way finding and passenger transport operations. Auckland Transport is expected to provide a clear programme through to day-1, with regular reporting to the Transport, Resilience and Infrastructure Committee.
- As part of delivering to Day-1 and to ensure we get the most efficient use out of our investment Auckland Transport is expected to:
- work with Auckland One Rail (AOR) and KiwiRail to decrease planned dwell times at stations and report on progress as part of their quarterly performance reporting.
- work with Auckland Council and other partners to ensure we accurately assess and capture the benefits of CRL. This will require Auckland Transport to input into the benefit realisation methodology and in some instances own some of the benefits.
Finally, council want AT to also publish agenda items for not just their board meetings but also their various board committees where much of the discussion actually occurs.
Auckland Transport’s subcommittee agendas should be published
With Auckland Transport’s board meeting six times a year, and Auckland Transport’s committees playing an important governance role, the agenda items for each board committee should be published online, and, where possible, reports to be included in an open agenda.
Rail network update
Kiwirail will be giving an update on their work over the summer shutdown and what’s planned for the rest of the year. Some of the detail was included in their press release last week, which I covered here but there are a few other interesting bits of information.
Along with the works that were undertaken over the Christmas/New Year shutdown, they included this chart showing the progress on the various projects
This timetable shows all of the upcoming planned full and partial closures with the next big one being for 16 days around the Easter and Anzac long weekends.
The planned works at Easter will include a lot more works all around the network. The progress chart also shows that it will result in the completion of both the Britomart works and the third Main.
Flood Recovery
There is quite a bit in the papers about the cost to council of buying out flood affected properties and some of their plans for what to do with the properties they have/are buying. I won’t cover it in this post but may do separately if there’s interest.
AT’s update also notes this good outcome.
80% of 800 roading slips across the region repaired under budget and almost 12 months ahead of programme.
I wonder if being ahead of programme and under budget is in part because they’ve been able to focus on it and build experience and capability. If so, I wonder where else they could do that, for example a big push on level crossing removal instead of a piecemeal approach.
Trackless Tram a scam?
Last year it was revealed that Auckland Transport was to trial a trackless tram in Auckland before the end of the year.
Auckland Transport is set to trial digital rapid transit vehicles, also known as trackless trams, in Auckland after coming to an agreement with a Chinese company.
Auckland Council’s Transport and Infrastructure Committee were presented with the idea of trackless trams for Auckland by China Rail in May.
AT is now working with China Rail and tram provider TransitNEXT to organise a trial slated for late 2024.
The trial is set to take place on Sundays on the Northern Busway between Akoranga and Albany.
AT says this will allow them to have a trial without making major infrastructure changes and to ensure they do not interfere with busy weekly bus timetables.
As a reminder, while they’re often promoted as some kind of innovative solution using new technology, they really just represent a slightly better bus making use of a bunch of existing (and sometimes failed) technology meaning a gadgetbahn is a better term for them. This isn’t to say they might not be useful on some corridors, such as Airport to Botany, but they’re not a replacement for something like light rail.
The trial now won’t be happening and a memo to the committee explains why, because they expected Auckland to buy a vehicle.
An indicative date (March/April 2025) and location (North Harbour Stadium) were arranged, and a wide range of supporting activities were scoped, following advice from Perth colleagues who undertook a similar trial in 2023. The supporting activities included insurances, maintenance, charging equipment and power costs, cleaning, security, shipping from the port, translation staff, construction of a temporary platform, etc.
The overall costs of the activities listed above are expected to be over $1.5million. As part of this, a moderate amount of AT funding was expected to be required (beyond staff time) to pay for activities which were considered to need to be AT-led, such as the independent assessment, managing media and stakeholders at the special event day, and managing and surveying users.
The cost of this to AT was estimated to be in the order of $300,000. Although AT has no dedicated funding available for the demonstration, it was anticipated that budgets could be reprioritised to cover this scale of cost.
CRRC and their local representatives have recently advised that their expectation is that AT would be responsible for many more of the costs of the demonstration and, critically, the purchase or leasing of the DRT vehicle upon completion of the demonstration.
AT has never offered to acquire the vehicle and in fact this approach does not align with NZ’s public transport procurement model, where bus operators own the fleet and then tender for AT service contracts. AT staff have reiterated this many times to CRRC and their local representatives.
Way forward
AT now considers the situation at the point where work on the demonstration should not continue. CRRC require AT to acquire the vehicle or heavily invest in the demonstration (which was unsolicited) and we do not consider this reasonable to the Auckland ratepayers.
We wish to draw this situation to your attention, so that you are aware the demonstration will not progress under CRRC’s requirements. AT has advised CRRC and their local representatives of this, and offered to re-engage at a future date if their situation changes.
Try before you buy, but if you do try, you must also buy.
This post, like all our work, is brought to you by the Greater Auckland crew and made possible by generous donations from our readers and fans. If you’d like to support our work, you can join our circle of supporters here, or support us on Substack!
Processing...
The context and phrase “planned dwell times” suggest this directive possibly only refers to dwell times at the new CRL stations. If so, a pity, but probably not surprising.
I do wonder if they would’ve specified “at CRL stations” if that were to be the case, since dwell time improvements across the whole network would fall under the goal to “capture the full benefits of the CRL”
“to capture the full benefits of the CRL”’
What exactly does that mean?? It sounds like it was written by a PR hack.
DWELL TIMES
Finally, honestly its a joke
All dwell times are based on the departure time from each station , if they arrive early the dwell time is longer than if they arrive late .
Some drivers are faster than others .
Planned dwell times are too long, for psuedo-technical and poor operating practices reasons.
https://www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2016/12/19/guest-post-emus-not-much-faster-than-steam/
A slack timetable and congestion also contribute to the long dwell times compared with normal overseas practice. Te Huia did Papakura Pukekohe in 13 minutes, electric trains 15-16 minutes. The AT schedule is 19 to 20 minutes so much time is wasted sitting at Papakura.
Trackless and tramless.
In your discussion of the proposed reform of AT you mention at point 2 the suggested new Regional Transport Committee to devise an “Integrated Transport Plan” for Auckland. Most would assume that the word integration refers to strategic planning that balances all transport modes but the commentary coming forth from the Mayor suggests that it is about Council collaboration with Government so the planned new committee in charge of the plan will be stacked with ministerial appointees (equalling the number of Council representatives). This is completely unlike every other region, which for the last 27 years have had their own Regional Land Transport Committees with zero government appointees. Auckland had this same arrangement prior to the creation of AT in 2010. I shall be presenting on the RLTC system on Thursday, in the hope that a majority of Councillors will be persuaded to reject the foolish proposal to have a whole bunch of the Minister’s mates in a position to steer the Regional Land Transport Strategy away from further investment in public transport towards a more road-based system. My PowerPoint presentation is attached to the TRIC agenda.
Good luck Graeme – I hope they listen!
Wow yet another trackless tram project that did not end up happening!
I do wonder why we would need a trial, especially if they have just tried it in Perth. Just ask them what they thought!
Well it appears you are not really allow to trial them.
Can you take a trackless tram in Perth right now? No. Well there goes that then.
Reminds me of all the hydrogen powered vehicles ‘trials’ that repeatedly show that they are not efficient and not economically viable, yet you still see the odd city launching into yet another hydrogen trial that is doomed for failure.
Wasn’t the number 70 bus doing one of these?
Yes, though I don’t recall seeing it steaming along this year.
Auckland’s case is a rare exception where hydrogen can work, if limited in demand.
The hydrogen for Akl was green hydrogen, generated by solar at the port.
In general though, the hydrogen economy is a scam.
“they really just represent a slightly better bus making use of a bunch of existing (and sometimes failed) technology” – aren’t we talking about a significantly better bus that can solve most of the same problems as LR at a tiny fraction of the cost? Not sure why Greater Auckland are so opposed…
“Not sure why Greater Auckland are so opposed…”
Because the magic is in the dedicated right of way – allowing you to bypass congestion – not in the specific bus/tram/horseless carriage.
Basically, it’s fixing the wrong problem, or fixing only a very small part of the problems. And therefore, it’s not what it’s cracked up to be. It’s not revolutionary at all, unlike what some proponents claim.
Yep. On most routes, if we had the dedicated RoW, we could put off LR and TTs for deacdes by using regualr buses or doubl-deckers.
Of course, some need the extra capacity now. Like the NW. So while we were prepared to learn from Perth on TTs, let’s now learn from the GC on LR shall we?
The dedicated right of way could only cost a few million on many Auckland routes – some paint and signs. Dominion road wouldn’t take much.
But then it also needs more capacity – this is where trackless trams comes into it.
And don’t discount the advantage of looking like a train; many people wouldn’t catch a traditional bus if their life depended on it, but something resembling a train is fine.
Those routes already have “some paint and signs”, Dominion Rd included.
Running the fancy long buses on those corridors will perform the same as the current buses, except the with a bit lower speed and reduced capacity because the stops aren’t designed for them and would work less efficiently.
The next step in corridor priority and stop design is a lot more than some paint and signs.
Also long buses don’t fit city stops, which is a reason we have double deckers. Bus congestion in the city is a key constraint, one that covid and WFH has delayed a little, but is still coming.
This is ignored by max bus proponents.
The stops would work more efficiently as you wouldn’t need as many buses due to the higher capacity. The speed would be much higher as you would get rid of many stops and make it all door boarding. You could also consider traffic light priority with less frequency. And being electric I don’t think there would be much objection to them using Queen Street, compared to noisy smoky diesel double deckers.
How are trackless trams using Queen Street any different to those with tracks? The only real difference is that tracked ones can have higher capacity; but do we actually need all that capacity in Auckland.
This is the argument I keep hearing: trackless trams are better than standard buses, but they aren’t quite as good as light rail, but we can’t afford light rail, so the only option is standard buses.
The bus stops on Domininon Road are long enough for two double deckers to enter and or exit independently, but only long enough for a single DRT bus at a time. You would have to half the frequency and clear the entire corridor for only that service, and hope there is no bunching for that to work.
Given the impact of signal cycles, you’d be swapping two double deckers in each two minute cycle with one DRT in each two minute cycle. With no real change in performance or capacity.
But the route includes the city centre too, where multiple buses push through multi bay stops… so you’d need to clear the city corridor for the DRT buses too. So it would need to be similar to the plan with LRT, dedicated Queen Street transit mall.
So yes, in the circumstance where you clear the whole corridor and rebuild Dominion Road and Queen Street to suit, you’d have a good outcome. But you’d be doing works with impacts similar to LRT in terms of corridor changes and capital costs. It’s no free lunch, buying the vehicles doesn’t mean you get away with paint and signs.
To put it the other way, we could already give our current buses more dedicated lane length, signal priority, rebuilt stops, all door boarding, a dedicated transit corridor on Queen etc.. nothing much about these vehicles makes any of that happen, and if we don’t do it now why would we do it then. Likewise, if long buses are a good idea we could simply order extra long conventional buses. No need to pay this one supplier twice the market rate for a 24m long vehicle.
So i’ll paraphrase you: Trackless trams are better than standard buses, but only when you build all the fixed infrastructure to support them. And if you do build all that infrastructure they aren’t as good as light rail. We can’t afford all that, so there’s no point to spend extra on vehicles that don’t work better. And if we can afford it, we should do it for light rail.
For not a huge amount more than the paint an signs we could just lay some tracks down the existing bus lanes and run some trams. It would be an absolutely rubbish light rail design but it wouldn’t be any worse than a paint and sign trackless tram.
Let’s not forget extra wages for driver to passenger ratio would be higher than light rail.
Wait what do you think is running on the northern busway?
We’ve said there could be good uses for it in Auckland but I don’t think it’s at all a replacement for light rail.
There’s a lot of hype and all the signs of classic gadgetbahn. Almost all of the features of these have been done before. Perhaps the only thing that is ‘new’ is using bogies.
Putting aside the technical considerations, we should absolutely not be buying tech that can only be provided by a single company. Other cities have been burnt in the past by doing so then finding in the future it’s no longer supported.
No it is a significantly worse bus in many ways. It costs vastly more, are slower and can’t use normal roads.
Is there any plan to build a platform at Puhinui on the third main?
First train through the CRL tonight?
Cool. Oliver Lewis says yes (paywalled):
https://businessdesk.co.nz/article/infrastructure/first-test-train-for-city-rail-link-land-sales-still-some-way-off
Wonder how many people will feel it?
City Rail Link has a video showing the test train going through the tunnels took 2 and half hours so very much highlights in this video
Haha, the exciting music is a bit of a stretch for this slow train 😀 But it is really great to see the first train moving through 🙂
In the video it looks like tracks run in two separate tunnels. Does anyone know why they did that and not one big tunnel? Just ground stability?
Modern safety requires two tunnels with regular connections in case of fire. same as the water view tunnels
Another thing, trackless trams elsewhere have had a nasty habit of causing ruts in the road. Meaning roadway needs digging-up and strengthening. While they’re at it they may as well put down some rails.
What a joke CRRC tried to pull. Hardly a product ‘demonstration’ when you are obliged to buy it at the end.
Horrific that the Letter of Expectation on the Statement of Intent is instructing AT to be a willing accomplice in the crime of its own suicide, despite the damage it is going to do to the entire region.
Council has utterly failed to comply with the decision making requirements set out insection 76 of the Local Government Act 2002. It has done no assessment of the possible options to solve the problem with the current road controlling authority arrangements – the problem that it has not even identified (because there isn’t one). The act requires them to know the pros and cons of significant decisions but council doesn’t even understand what is involved in being the road controlling authority. So how can they think there will be benefits from splitting those powers up between 21 local boards? Undoing a decision based on the detailed work of a fully informed commission that invented the single RCA model back in just 2009.
I’m saddened by how little attention Greater Auckland blog is paying to this isdue and why it isn’t calling it out for the travesty it is.
Council staff are complicit in sucking up to a Mayor who has no understanding of what he is doing here and just wants to Trumpet his power and success at fixing AT (by destroying it) know that many voters will vote for him over it with even less understanding of why its actually a really bad idea.
AT should be freed from council control on this issue so they can provide independent advice to council, Government and select committees on why the Mayor and the ex-minister were wrong to mess with the road controlling authority powers. The lobbying should be all about getting the new minister to take a more practical approach and not break things before understanding them.
If giving AT road controlling powers to the local board politicians was considered the best idea why is no one taking the same road controlling authority powers away form Waka Kotahi and having the minister decide where all the traffic and parking controls should be placed?
Because this is not stuff that should be given to politicians who care more about winning votes than road safety and efficiency.
“As the CRL construction work winds down, the role of Auckland Transport within the project will increase and day-1 readiness will become a stronger focus. This includes removing level crossings required for day-1”
There is no budget t do this work.