Over the last year, I’ve been writing a book on the story of light rail in Auckland between 2014-2024. A lot happened – much of it public, and quite a lot not – and the history of the project goes to the heart of our struggle to build things in New Zealand.
The book will be done when it’s done; hopefully next year, and I’m sure many parts of the story will surprise people. But today, I want to go into one highly consequential moment: Labour’s decision at the end of the 2021 refresh to opt for the ‘hybrid’ tunnelled option. Why? Because I kept hearing – over and over again, and from multiple sources – that this was a sudden switch of direction, away from surface light rail.
But I had no written evidence to pin down that claim.
Until now.
Some background, for context
Labour had campaigned on light rail from the city to the airport, but immediately ran into delays in their first term. After their historic re-election in 2020 with a large mandate, the new Minister of Transport Michael Wood decided to take a fresh look at the project. This led to the formation of an Establishment Unit [“the unit”] which under a tight timeframe examined three options via an Indicative Business Case:
- Light Rail: surface-level modern trams using the road corridor on Queen St and Dominion Rd, then travelling along the motorway corridor to the airport.
- Hybrid Surface/Tunnel: modern trams, tunnelled in the city centre and isthmus, then running along the surface to the airport.
- Full Metro: automated light metro trains, tunnelled in the city and Isthmus, and motorway-adjacent or elevated to the airport.
Ultimately the unit recommended the hybrid option, and at the end of 2021 Cabinet endorsed their recommendation releasing the cabinet paper of the decision in 2022. Moving forward with the hybrid option, the government created Auckland Light Rail (ARL) Ltd, which carried the project until it was cancelled in 2024 by the current government.
The claim, which I’ve heard from multiple sources, was that Michael Wood originally intended to recommend surface light rail to Cabinet, with a draft Cabinet paper reflecting that recommendation, and the prevailing belief was that a ‘captain’s call’ by Jacinda Ardern herself meant the government landed on the hybrid option instead.
Ten months since my first OIA request on this, and one complaint to the Ombudsman later, I received on the 10th of June a draft version of the 2021 Cabinet paper in question.
The draft paper recommended… surface light rail.
So let’s have a look, shall we?
What does the draft Cabinet paper say, and how does it differ from the final paper?
It’s important to acknowledge the draft paper is incomplete, and that it’s largely similar to the final version in terms of how the Labour Government was looking to move forward to deliver light rail (such as the delivery entity). At the same time, there are some major differences.
Both papers stated clearly:
The Establishment Unit has recommended the hybrid option ‘Tunnelled Light Rail’ as its preferred mode option, although has concluded that any option would achieve the investment objectives.
The draft paper was authored only by Michael Wood, hence using the first person ‘I’ (whereas the final version also included Grant Robertson, and used ‘we’).
In the Executive Summary of the draft paper, these were Wood’s core reasons for recommending surface light rail (emphasis added):
20 Informed by the recommendations from the Establishment Unit, advice from officials and following recent engagement with Auckland local government, I am recommending that Cabinet agrees that Surface Light Rail, following an alignment along Dominion Road, is this Government’s preferred option.
21 The high costs of all three options means that affordability has been a significant factor in arriving at my recommendation, especially given that the benefits of all options are broadly commensurate to the scale of investment.
22 In taking Surface Light Rail forward, I recognise the potential benefits that a degree of tunnelling between the City Centre and Dominion Road could bring to the capacity of the transport network, including by enabling a potential future connection to an additional Waitematā harbour crossing. A degree of tunnelling could also help reduce disruption to businesses and residents during construction.
Whereas the final jointly authored paper read:
18 Informed by the recommendations from the Establishment Unit, advice from Officials and following recent engagement with Auckland local government, we are recommending that Cabinet agrees that tunnelled light rail, following an alignment along Sandringham Road, is this Government’s preferred option.
19 The Establishment Unit’s work demonstrates the value that tunnelling could bring, particularly ensuring sufficient capacity of the transport network to increase patronage and drive mode shift, thereby supporting higher levels of growth than surface running light rail. Tunnelling also keeps the option of a tunnelled connection of an additional Waitematā harbour crossing, and helps reduce disruption to businesses and residents during construction.
20 In progressing this preferred option, the parameters of the detailed planning phase must reflect a greater focus on the integration of transport and urban development outcomes. This is needed to inform decisions by both Crown and Council on how to leverage investment in ALR in a way that increases density and boosts the supply of affordable housing and employment opportunities
The draft paper did not follow the recommendation of the Establishment Unit. It focused instead on value for money, noting that the government had multiple priorities, and that the lower-cost surface option would leave funding for other projects and policies. It does note the potential for a short tunnel only under the City Centre to better support a future connection to the North Shore, create additional stops, and reduce disruption.
In stark contrast, the final Cabinet paper that recommended the hybrid/ tunnelled option said this:
Note how, as well as locking in a major tunnelling project, the recommendation that went to Cabinet focuses on a higher catchment area. It also looks to have a lot more uncertainty in the design, as point 78 notes.
It’s especially interesting to see the claim that tunnelling would “reduce disruption”, given another section of the same paper (regarding consultation) emphasises the need to take lessons from CRL:
55 We have learned an important lesson from the City Rail Link (CRL) that a clear and principled approach to managing the disruption experienced by businesses during construction of large urban transport infrastructure project is a vital aspect of building and preserving social licence for such investments.
Surely another “important lesson from CRL” is that tunneling also comes with major disruption? It’s also very odd that they seem to have been getting advice that a surface option would be more disruptive than tunnelling.
Perhaps most notable of all is the projected timeline. This is the draft Cabinet paper of late 2021:
83 The next phase of work will involve detailed planning work, directed by significant Crown decisions, culminating in an investment decision in early-mid 2024.
In other words, nearly three more years of development, moving the final decision until after the 2023 election.
Why so long? Especially given that in 2018, the Labour Government had picked up AT’s well-developed plan and was ready to run with it. This garnered optimism at the time, as Matt wrote in 2018:
This is a really positive step forward. There’s always a risk when projects get announced that they can drag on for years before seeing any action. AMETI is a prime example of this.
It seems the extra time-lag is due to the additional priorities placed on the shoulders of this project (found in both versions of the Cabinet paper), specifically the push for greater integration of light rail with urban development and the wider transport network. The draft Cabinet paper, which recommended surface light-rail, concludes by suggesting a planning phase of 18-24 months:
Whereas the final Cabinet paper, which recommended the hybrid tunnelled option, set out a work programme of “approximately two years”:
108 Based on current assumptions, Officials have advised that the above represents a work programme lasting approximately two years, and that this will be necessary to ensure that future funding and investment decisions can be made with confidence, based on sufficient information.
109 In advance of more detailed scoping of the next phase, Officials have advised against making investment decisions in any shorter timeframe. International examples of similar projects being developed demonstrate the significant risks of cost overruns and the need to revisit decisions when they are made early and on insufficient information, and based on. We intend to carefully work these timeframes through with Officials to ensure that we have a considered process, while retaining project momentum.
Because the hybrid option required a lot more design work, it makes sense they’d need at least a few years to develop it while also working on all the other requirements as noted in the final Cabinet paper:
But what doesn‘t make sense is that the timelines for both options would be so similar – even given the additional requirements to integrate urban development. As the next few years showed us, the expected timeline for the hybrid option – which would actually become the metro option – was probably correct, with 2024 being the likely point an investment decision would be made if the government didn’t change. But remember, the surface option had already had half a decade of development work by this point, and there would have been no reason you couldn’t rapidly progress it as a transport project while working on the urban development side.
This raises major questions around what advice was being given to the Prime Minister and other Ministers by their advisors, such that they apparently believed the hybrid option could unfold on a similar timeline to the surface option.
Speaking of which…
What advice was taken into account in making the switch?
While we probably won’t ever know for sure, a few major changes stick out between the draft and final Cabinet papers – one being the section about the business case that arrived at the initial recommendation.
Here’s how it reads in the draft paper:
68 Acknowledging these challenges, I welcome the approach to assurance that has been undertaken by the Establishment Unit, including independent advice to the board with overseas experts providing rapid transit and light rail experience.
69 A Gateway review has also been completed by independent experts. Because of the constrained timeline, there was little to no opportunity for the feedback from the Gateway process or overseas experts to be built into the Establishment Unit Board’s decision-making on the final recommendations.
70 I have also received ‘second opinion’ advice from the Ministry of Transport, alongside advice provided by the Treasury to the Minister of Finance.
71 Overall, while there are limitations to the IBC, no issues have been identified that would materially impact my decision on how best to proceed. I am satisfied that a robust process has been followed. I am satisfied that this project can proceed on the basis of this IBC.
Whereas the final Cabinet paper explains the process differently:
72 Acknowledging these challenges, we welcome the approach to assurance that has been undertaken by the Establishment Unit, including independent advice to the board with overseas experts providing rapid transit and light rail experience. We have also received ‘second opinion’ advice from the Ministry of Transport and the Treasury.
73 A Gateway review has also been completed by independent experts, overall assessing the project as amber on the 5-point scale, noting the high quality of the transport component (which was rated as green-amber) and recommending several areas of improvement, including:
- the next phase being progressed as an integrated urban development and transport business case
- a comprehensive partnering strategy is developed that ensures appropriate contractual and collaborative working arrangements between partners.
74 Overall, while there are limitations to the IBC, no issues have been identified that would materially impact our decision on how best to proceed. We are satisfied that a robust process has been followed and that the IBC provides the basis on which to proceed to detailed planning.
Clearly, the government wanted to progress this project after re-election in 2020 and hoped to avoid delays, which led to a truncated IBC. Hence the acknowledgement in the draft paper that steps like the Gateway review, a process undertaken by Treasury, were not able to be built into the Establishment Unit’s decision-making – along with, seemingly, international advice.
However, there must have been issues that would “materially impact our decision on how best to proceed,” given the decision between surface or tunnelled options changed completely between the two papers.
So what shifted the government’s thinking?
Rumours seem to suggest that “disruption” played a big part in this decision. Given the tunnelled option was presented by advisors as less disruptive than surface light rail, this seems to align with what’s in the papers. (Although as I’ve said, the example of CRL clearly shows that tunnelled transport projects can also be very disruptive – they just represent different kinds of disruption).
However, another key factor that seemed to influence the decision was the idea of building something that would last for many decades into the future (i.e. the tunnelled version), rather than something that would potentially reach capacity sooner, as the surface option was said to. Of course, as has been well argued, reaching capacity quickly isn’t necessarily a ‘failure’ – it can in fact be a sign of success, in that the project has proven eminently buildable, and thus exists and is working as planned.
We can see this difference in the first point of the executive summary. The draft paper talks about the need to prioritise funding, and strikes a prudent note regarding mega-projects (emphasis added):
ALR will be New Zealand’s largest and most complex infrastructure project. Our response to climate change is changing the way we prioritise our investment, including an expectation that we build less to achieve our outcomes. This means the threshold to progress a mega-project of this nature is higher.
Whereas the final paper is more grandiose and oddly specific (emphasis added):
ALR will be New Zealand’s largest and most complex infrastructure project. Our response to climate change is changing the way we prioritise our investment, meaning that we need to shift the focus of some of our investment and to consider large-scale ‘trunk’ transport infrastructure in our larger urban centres.
It’s important to note that while the Establishment Unit’s IBC recommended the hybrid option, it did so with the caveat that all options would achieve the stated objectives. There are reasons you might, say, wish to build a metro over a surface light rail line, as the IBC would outline you would get bigger outcomes for bigger spend – and these are things to be carefully considered. Especially in regards to cost, which looked to be the basis for the initial recommendation in the draft Cabinet paper, to “build less to achieve our outcomes” and thus ensure funding for some of the government’s many other aspirations.
So who made the call to go for broke?
Whatever caused the change between the draft and final Cabinet papers seems to be related to the government and their advisors. In my research, the belief this was due to a captain’s call by the Prime Minister herself has been pretty consistent, from multiple different sources.
Crucially, it should be noted that Cabinet operates under a collective decision-making framework. This means whatever decisions are made inside Cabinet, the relevant Minister – even if they may personally disagree – will represent the consensus. Additionally, since this is the highest decision-making body in the country, these discussions are also very much confidential. But as we’ve seen with the current government, things do leak out.
Regardless, simply by looking at the differences between the draft and final versions of that 2021 Cabinet paper on Light Rail, there are some notable changes that do seem to align with the rumours.
The draft paper’s sole author was the Minister of Transport, Michael Wood, and the paper was lodged with what was called the “Cabinet Economic Development Committee”, membership of which (based on the 1 December 2020 terms of reference) seemed to be:
By contrast, the final paper was presented by both the Minister of Transport, Michael Wood, and the Minister of Finance, Grant Robertson, and was lodged with what was called the “Cabinet Priorities Committee”, which had far fewer members and is chaired by Jacinda Ardern:
Additionally, various parts of the paper changed between draft and final, including more involvement from other ministers.
For example, the draft paper recommends that the Minister of Transport consult with the Ministers of Finance (Grant Robertson) and Housing (Megan Woods) for future announcements.
Whereas the final paper includes consulting with the Office of the Prime Minister:
It seems likely the decision was made by senior members of the Labour Government to switch from surface light rail to the hybrid tunnelled version.
And at this point, I find the suggestion of a “captain’s call” by the Prime Minister most credible, as in my view it seems unlikely other senior government members would be involved in such a major switch given from what I understand only Michael Wood, Grant Robertson, and to a much smaller extent Minister of Housing Megan Woods were closely involved with light rail. In the case of the Minister of Finance Grant Robertson, the prevailing view seemed to indicate that he was unlikely to be in favour of the solutions that came at such a significantly higher cost (the hybrid and metro), and probably favoured the surface option.
Regardless, a call was made, whether by the captain by herself or with many of her crew; and whether out of fear of disruption or confidence about mega-investments… and it would change the course of transport in Auckland for at least the next half decade.
You can read the papers here: the draft paper on pages 1-25, and an unredacted version of the final Cabinet paper on pages 26-69.
As for the rest of the story about light rail over the last decade (and believe me, it’s a rollercoaster!) you’ll just have to wait until I’ve finished this book.
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!
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Excellent, I look forward to this.
Particularly @Connor if there is any information on the timelines on work done on the North West branch, if there really was much done at all to speak of, and any discussions about how we went from two branches at $6b to one branch for $14b+ with the North West never to be mentioned again.
Whoever made the call, it sentenced light rail to probably a generation’s delay – if it ever now happens – as it was 100% inevitable that the cost would see it canned. Failing to anticipate that was political naivety at the highest level. But ultimately, just one more transport decision making failure.
In fairness I don’t think there was much more chance of the $9 billion surface option going ahead. While smaller, that cost was still too much.
There was never going to be another rapid transit corridor built through the CBD so soon after the first one (CRL) was finally built.
My gut feel is the first light rail to be built in Auckland will be whatever replaces the Northern busway.
Replacing the Northern busway is a bad goal. You end up with just the same number of “lines” so don’t serve more people.
Better to put in a line close by (say from the CBD to Takapuna) that peels off a portion of the busway passengers but adds a new catchment.
that would explain why Labour’s preferred North Shore rail alignment was that wacky Belmont–Takapuna–Glenfield–Albany zig-zag.
Generally I would agree but I think the busway is an exception. At some point it will extend up to Silverdale, probably through Dairy Flat and will likely need rail to handle passenger volumes.
If rail tunnels are to be built under the harbour a line just to Takapuna won’t be sufficient to justify the cost.
@jezza
If the tunnel across the Harbour and then to Akoranga and Takapuna then it captures all the Takapuna traffic and some will transfer from the busway to the Train. It means that pressure is relieved off the rest of the busway
A few years later the busway could be upgraded to train.
Whereas doing the busway from the start will cost a lot more, not extended the catchment and take out the busway for a year or two while it is building.
The Northern Busway was built as a possible light rail route. AT was already planning to move the double deckers from the Northern Busway route onto other single decker bus routes that were reaching capacity. A light rail system on the Norther Express “line” could cary more passenger than by using double decker buses, and the frequency of light rail units could be higher due to the lower loading times. If you study any of the network maps at any of the Northern Busway stations, you will see that the new northern bus network has been designed to bring people from a wide catchment area, to the Northern Busway stations.
https://at.govt.nz/media/1977845/north-shore-brochure-english.pdf
Takapuna is better served by buses on bus lanes (at either end) and the busway in between. Quicker and more way more frequency.
KLK
You are absolutely right. Takapuna is well served by buses running at each end, Anzac St and Esmonde Road. How a tram line running up the middle would achieve a better walk up is beyond me.
AT could achieve even better frequency by terminating the 82 bus at Akoranga, with a cost saving. They might apply some of that money to resolve the poorly serviced Devonport route.
It is still completely absurd that even a single person could have seriously thought that any project costing 15-20bn was ever going to be built
Well, we’re supposedly getting a 10bn highway so maybe they were onto something.
Why the idea that “it must be in a tunnel, otherwise we can’t build another tunnel in a different place, later on”?
Sure, if you want to preserve a single seat ride from Shore to airport, but that’s not a deal breaker and shouldn’t define the entire thing. It would allow a single depot, but you’d still likely want stabling yards on the Shore line anyway, and again, why hamstring this project with something else decades away? Just build two depots.
It would be a bit crazy to have a dedicated corridor from Mt Roskill to Airport, a dedicated corridor under the city, and a section of above ground in between that dictates an LR train instead of metro etc. Especially if you also have a dedicated corridor to the North West and North Shore, and they all have to use LR trains solely because of Dominion Road.
To me the only two options were tunnelled metro or LR above ground. If you start thinking about doing the NW and NS too, I can see how tunnelled metro starts looking like the best option.
question is would the $15 billion dollar plan have gone ahead if it were branded/pitched as a metro from the start; or would NACT’s anti-rail “fiscal responsibility unless it’s a motorway” ideology have killed it as well?
I think they branded and phased it wrong. I would have said phase 1 was a metro tunnel from Mt Roskill to the North Shore (surely you want to get all the tunnel done at once). Then subsequent phases to add the surface rail to airport, Albany and Westgate would be done later depending on which was the highest priority at the time. The initial tunnel was the thing that enabled all those future projects.
The phases would have to be much smaller for it to succeed, a tunnel from the North Shore to Mt Roskill would be an enormous undertaking for one project, especially when a decent chunk of it would duplicate the CRL.
If by ‘crazy’ you mean $10 to $20 billion cheaper for fundamentally the same route and service then yes.
Don’t forget they were scrambling to make the tunneled route look good and the surface look bad, so we’re leaning on the scales both ways.
CRL is a $6b project, they were talking about the same sort of tunnel again in the CBD then four times longer to the south and again to the north.
Westgate should have been done first. It was only through a largely gormless media that the North West element was allowed to be discarded with no credible alternative in place. It should have been an outright political scandal that an area with that much future development and existant transport poverty found itself in the ‘maybe later’ pile while costs quadrupled from the initial proposal.
A NW surface light rail line could have been the perfect opportunity to prove to the fuddy-duddy naysayers in NZF and the PTUA that surface light rail isn’t a “slow trolley” but easily capable of matching the heavy rail network for speed. Then CC2M as surface LRT could have been an easier sell.
I agree with the desperate need for it to/from the NW.
But I always thought (and am probably the only one) that we should have started with a proof of concept much easier to implement: The Airport-Botany corridor, or some part of it.
Given the wide corridor (relative ease of implementation) and the dearth of PT options out that way, I think it would have been a raving success. Then every part of Auckland would have wanted one and may have taken the trade-offs (car lanes, on-road parking spaces) more seriously.
Very good point. Te Irirangi would’ve been well suited for green tracking too; i really do not know why that wasn’t capitalised on for any of the CC2M/ALR stuff. could have appeased some of the NIMBYs upset about losing lawns and grassy verges.
Overhead Metro should be an option too (for most of the route). Probably half the cost of tunneled.
Plenty of other cities (including ones that people visit cause they look nice) have overhead.
The problem with overhead is the cost of strengthening to support each station, lifts and escalators (at least two of each) at every station, and you still (usually) end up taking at least a car lane to accommodate the structure to support the elevated rail line.
All still cost a lot less than the same underground. Something like half. Even less if you compare to deep underground (ie tunnels rather than cut-and-cover).
As for losing a traffic lane the Metro can handle at least 10x the people that the traffic lane was.
Underground was never an option tho, it was doomed the second someone told the PM they could magically avoid the need to do any planning by quadrupling the cost of the project.
“All still cost a lot less than the same underground.”
But a lot more than surface LRT.
There’s zero chance of above ground metro on Dominion Rd so it’s not even worth worrying about the details.
Why the idea that “it must be in a tunnel, otherwise we can’t build another tunnel in a different place, later on”?
In my opinion this is the primary reason why they landed on tunnelled light rail. My hot take is:
– People at NZTA / MOT / road lobby who want another Harbour road crossing know it does not stack up (all that is needed is an active modes and PT connection).
– Progressing a (relatively) cheap surface light rail option would completely undermine the business case for new Harbour road crossing as it would demonstrate that mode shift is possible with road space reallocation.
– So they bundled PT and Road modes for the new Harbour Crossing options (rather than assessing the merits of each stand-alone mode individually)
– Then they lobbied to say unless light rail option is a tunnel the Harbour PT crossing will not work as it has to be a tunnel, knowing full well a tunelled light rail option would eventually fail
– Then when it did fail, they decoupled the PT and Road options from the Harbour crossing knowing that Simeon does not care whether options stack up, he’s quite willing to progress stupid projects based on his ideological crusade against anything other than MOAR ROADS.
Connor if you want to understand the Light Rail decision you need to understand the Harbour Crossing decisions too.
This, just a case of NZTA bods making it about their big motorway tunnel, and MoT not having any capacity to think for themselves.
The idea that having a rail tunnel 25m below sea level under the middle of the harbour requires the tunnel to continue to Sandringham 10km away is clearly not based on any real engineering.
A light rail tunnel under the harbour channel could have a portal to ground level around Jellicoe Street in Wynyard and still not come close to the maximum gradient.
I have written a piece about the need for Christchurch to build an additional congestion free transport network (MRT) because its road network is congested and slowing down. Yet Christchurch is looking at waiting 20-30 years before a remedy will be delivered – which will be too late. Like light rail in Auckland the flawed way NZ funds transit projects mean these projects end up being arbitrary ad hoc central government Cabinet decisions. I don’t think this process is working for NZ. It hasn’t worked for Auckland, and it is certainly not working for Christchurch.
You can read the paper here.
https://brendon-harre.medium.com/christchurchs-roads-are-as-fast-as-they-will-ever-get-7cbe7d66d757
The paper was re-published on Interest.co.nz but some important images were messed up, so the medium link is the better option.
Its crazy how ChCh has no rapid transit.
So many articles last week on the pace of growth there and the influx of people from the North island. We are just repeating the mistakes of Auckland. And Tauranga.
Its planning for a town, not a growing city of half a million people.
The fact that transit infrastructure projects in New Zealand are Cabinet level decisions determined by the tea leaves of who’s who in the personality politics of the time shows what sort of unserious country we are. Other countries do not do this.
In France, for instance, transit projects are built by city Majors, because in the 1970s France instituted its Versement Mobilite system whereby public and private firms in urban areas larger than 10,000 people that have more than 11 employees pay a 0.55% pay roll tax to fund transport projects. This means as cities get more productive and grow then automatically there is a mechanism to fund the transport needed to sustain that growth. This allowed France to roll out modern trams at an increasing rate, in dozens of cities. I further describe this system in my paper.
In Japan they have a different system but, in a way, it has a similar funding mechanism – growth sustains growth. In Japan communities themselves decide whether to contribute to local transit projects by a system called land readjustment. This is a combined urban redevelopment and land value capture system – 30% of urban development occurs using this mechanism. In Japan as an urban area grows, and land becomes more valuable, then there is a funding system to provide the transport that sustains the growth.
More about land adjustment here.
https://worksinprogress.co/issue/how-to-redraw-a-city/
NZ for a hundred years, ever since The Main Highways Act was passed it has had a state highway funding mechanism. We have never had an infrastructure funding mechanism for other transport options. So, a century later it shouldn’t be a surprise what sort of transport system we have.
If Labour in 2016 or 2019 had done some research on how France had successfully rebuilt its mothballed tram systems in dozens of its cities, then it could have offered a NZ version of France’s mobility scheme. AT could have been short for Auckland Transit and it’s job would be to deliver for Auckland’s workers who would a 0.5% payroll tax. Auckland local government elections would have been about implementing CRL and taking the ALR next step. Wellington and Christchurch could then have learnt from what works in Auckland.
ChCh needs to do what Auckland did;
Get some diesel locomotives that are surplus to requirements somewhere (AKL?), at the cheapest price. Use the existing lines and negotiating some seed money to come up with a minimum viable product. Start running trains, albeit on a sub-optimal timetable, to prove demand.
And then run from there. It’s the reason there is even a network at all in Auckland right now.
KLK – completely agree. An opportunity was lost between after 2015 with the leftover carriages from Auckland.
Maybe there’s another opportunity when the Wairarapa carriages are retired in 2029?
all this is making it seem more and more like the onehunga branch line should have been extended to the airport while it was still practically possible to do so.
i wonder how the long-list heavy rail options ALR considered would have stacked up with their bizarre costings. based on Waka Kotahi costings from the 2021 rapid transit report i’m guesstimating around $7-10 billion for the Onehunga-Airport option (with BRT/LRT on dominion rd) and $10-13 billion for the Avondale-Onehunga-Airport option
I remember when that job was around $1.8 billion, a bargain now. But it didn’t address the BusSnake claim made by AT staff. ie. There isn’t enough kerb space in the CBD to park buses all day so the cure was to spend billions on Dominion Rd. (BusSnake is a distant relation of ManBearPig- 1/2 man, 1/2 bear and 1/2 pig).
…you do realise there are numerous photos of the Wellesley/Symonds bus sausage, right?
be a miser all you want, but you have to acknowledge that there is a problem there.
Yes that big queue you get when you block a lane off with cones at the intersection. https://www.greaterauckland.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Bus-Sausage-Wellesley-.jpg
We can solve that with $10billion for tunnels under Sandringham Road or we could take the cones away.
You could fix that bus snake by putting LR down Queen Street. Or you could fix it by putting the buses down Queen Street instead of Symonds Street, considering Dominion Road buses already terminate before Wellesley Street. I agree with Miffy, the reason for LR was never to remove buses, Dominion Road alone would barely make a dent.
One of the problems is the absolutely diabolically bad traffic light phasing (and perhaps the lack of traffic circulation plan around Albert Park). It is basically impossible to cross those blocks by car (and presumably also by bus).
The issue is not so much the bus congestion we may have now, but into the future with more patronage.
I wonder if this would be an option (“Very” Light Rail):
https://youtu.be/jHd_e62FIf8?si=qEEw2nzo6EbbqNgi
A lot less disruption in building it on the surface, but not the full benefit of full sized light rail.
You could run them super high frequency to make up for their size, issue is more driver wages, but if the cars are full it shouldn’t be a problem funding.
Jimbo, the ‘bus snake’ was indeed a major driver for AT, and it would have made a huge dent. Look at the route list for light rail in the RPTP at the time, it spells it all out.
The LRT would have directly replaced all of the 25B, 25L, 252 and 253 on Dominion Road, plus the 309 and 309x from Mangere, plus the city link on Queen Street, plus the 27T extra services on Mount Eden Road. All up 57 buses an hour at peak, or over a third on the Symonds Street corridor.
However it wasn’t about getting rid of buses so much as making space for more buses on other routes, without going way over what the city can handle. Take 57 an hour off the LRT routes means you can add 40 more to eastern and western bus lines while still easing congestion.
The thing that changed was Covid and people not commuting as much in the peak, so peak bus numbers are now considerably lower than they were ten years ago. What we have today is about what they were trying to maintain in the face of growth with LRT.
So if I’m calling a spade a spade, it was Jacinda Ardern herself that had dropped the ball over the light rail plan? Sigh.
Along with ruling out regional fuel taxes in any city other than Auckland and a capital gains tax, anything else,?
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/fran-osullivan-will-arderns-fondness-for-captains-calls-come-back-to-bite-her/G4RTE2A5WOTZMO4WL33ROV2S5U/
Infrastructure funding and financing was an issue that Ardern’s Labour government never got its head around. They simply had not.done it’s homework so inevitably that led to arbitrary ad hoc decision making that history will judge them poorly on.
It sounded like the finance minister to me. If I was the finance minister presented with LR at $7 billion or metro at $13 billion (something like that wasn’t it?), with the metro option being future proofed for the North Shore and North West, I would consider the latter as better value for money.
I like LR and I think it has its place, and if you only look at Dominion Road then LR is the best option by a mile, but once you consider Mangere/Airport and eventually the NW and NS, why would you want to limit yourself to LR when 80% of that network will be dedicated corridor and could easily be metro, perhaps even driverless. That could be a decision that haunts Auckland forever!
The North West should not have been relegated to ‘future option’. It needed it the day it was announced, possibly before. This idea that we can just hang a ‘future NW’ project off another one so never actually build anything in the North West has resulted in the development in NW happening decades ahead of the transport network to support it.
The real scandal in the LRT story is that close to SFA happened on the NW route and everyone looked the other while the Shore managed to make itself the centre of attention yet again. We are repeating the mistakes we made with East Auckland / Botany Downs and the press just looked the other way while NW got dropped from Central Policy to ‘maybe some day in the future IDK perhaps?’ The media have a lot to answer in terms of the extreme efforts to avoid scrutiny or accountability over this.
I’ll look forward to purchasing the planned book. It would be a real scoop if the rumour about the PM’s cack-handed interference could be demonstrated.
I don’t think it’s fair to kind of blame Ardern based on rumour given all the anti Ardern stuff that was going on. Could equally be the influence of NZ First or the Ministry of transport not wanting disruption or road traffic to be affected.
There is a big difference between tunnelling via a boring machine or cut & cover which the reports don’t seem to make a distinction between?
Agree
Can’t have been NZ First putting the handbrake on it. Following the 2020 election they weren’t in the tent anymore?
NZ First put a handbrake on the whole thing during the first term, but after 2020 all Labour’s own doing
I do understand what you are saying, lots of anti Ardern Covid nutters etc and I get that, but that had nothing to do with light rail nor this particular decision Cabinet made
Labour was governing alone when ‘Cabinet’ made that decision.
Yeah I thought so from memory but they still could of had sway from before hand in what they would of been suggesting.
At any rate, the author has only given a tentative conclusion.
If we are putting the timeline back together, the draft and final cabinet papers coincided with:
– the time the Omicron variant of Covid first entered New Zealand and we started allowing the virus to spread in the community
– the Russian invasion of Ukraine
– the cost of living crisis
– greater dissatisfactions with the Covid lockdowns
This may be sounding like the government at the time was being distracted by some other big and difficult issues. But still I think a reasonably competent political leader should be able to juggle these things together well after all.
It seems we have a political problem. A Labour Coalition appears necessary for approving investment in serious urban/inter-urban transport (i.e. rail/separate ROW rather than low-volume/ low BCR superhighways). A National coalition is needed to legislate on urban development, to deal with property owners/investors/lenders to enable Transit Oriented Development (rather than Development Oriented Transit, like the Drury stations).
Cabinet may have been too optimistic on progress to a coordinated redevelopment around the Sandringham corridor with value-capture supporting the transit project. This is the reason for the white space zone in PC78.
Another factor might have been late engagement of Treasury and Housing, after a transport-focused Establishment Unit was given its sandbox to play in, without economy and development being in co-design.
Surface light rail was popular with those who lived in the area to be served by light rail. It was less popular with those on the North Shore who wanted a rapid route to the airport, and with shopkeepers who wanted to keep on-street parking. If on-street carparking was kept the cost difference between the surface option and tunneled rail became much smaller. Perhaps one lesson was that reallocation of road space to buses and allowing urban intensification needed to take place first, with light rail rapidly following as passenger numbers increased. The shopkeepers and Herald letter writers from the North Shore were never going to vote Labour, so Ardern should have ignored them.
As a South Islander I don’t understand the outsized influence of Auckland’s North Shore. West, Central and South Auckland surely are way more significant?
The North Shore has no influence. Very few people from the Shore would have ridden light rail, light metro or light heavy rail and any other idiotic combination of qualifiers. We go to the airport in our cars or we hire a van.
miffy must be that John McBoomer, Milford, I see in the letters to editor to The Herald 😛
Miffy – forever wondering if public transport is the chicken or the egg …
Jesus, I bet you’re one of the dinosaurs that votes for people like George Wood.
The North Shore has no influence – Incorrect
Very few people from the Shore would have ridden light rail, light metro or light heavy rail and any other idiotic combination of qualifiers – Incorrect
We go to the airport in our cars or we hire a van. – Incorrect
“Very few people from the Shore would have ridden light rail, light metro or light heavy rail and any other idiotic combination of qualifiers. We go to the airport in our cars or we hire a van”
Because they don’t use PT to cross the harbour. And they only cross the harbour to go to the airport
Oh wait.
The Shore should have no influence. But every now and then the Greens pop up with a specific ‘rail to the Shore’ policy as if multiplying transport options in one part of the city makes up for transport poverty in most of the others. For whatever reason the edge-case of people catching the train to the Airport from the North Shore becomes the dominant use case when it comes to transport serving other parts of the region.
Buttwizard – North Shore(electorate) gets a high party vote for The Greens
North Shore people think they are half of the region, with the other half being south of the harbour. They think the Shore should have one of everything that ‘Auckland’ has, even though they are 17% of the city.
How often do most Aucklanders go to the airport? Red herring.
KLK how on earth would a light rail on Dominion Road or a tunnel under Sandringham Road have made any difference to PT over the bridge? People using the busway are practically all going to the CBD or CBD fringe. A few idiots might want to mill around the central city with a case wondering if they would make their connection. But only a few. Light rail was never about the North Shore and our views on it would have made no difference to it going ahead or not.
The LRT was the first phase in an RT line that would have gone right through the heart of Auckland (South of the Harbour), linking all sorts of destinations for work, education, play. Eventually that would have been extended over the harbour.
But because you wouldn’t use it, apparently no one else on the north shore would have either. Got it.
Connor – put me down for a copy ! Would love to read your book. One question – does it / do you plan to look at Light Rail in Wellington as well? Or just in Auckland?
Just Auckland hahaha already a lot to fit in, although I’m sure some of the lessons from the story will be relevant
Connor – Auckland Light Rail did not begin with Labour adopting it as a key election pledge in 2017. The first mention of light rail goes back to 1982 when Canadian Professor Bruce Gamble was invited to Auckland by the Light Rail Association. Since that time there have been waves of enthusiasm and cynicism about Light Rail for Auckland. For example, the Britomart was designed 25 years ago to serve as a key node on an Auckland Light Rail network as that was the then regionally preferred system – with space along the outer walls (North and South) for Light Rail lines to ramp up to street level at the foot of Queen Street, then progress South to Wellesley Street where they would turn East to run between the two Universities and past the main Auckland Hospital before connecting with the existing rail lines near what is now Grafton Station. Then in 2001 Banksy was elected Mayor on a policy of squashing that idea while promoting the Eastern Highway and “completing the motorway network”. A decade later AT was alarmed at the number of buses that would soon clog the central city and devised a plan to replace the buses in the triangle between Great South Road and New North Road with several Light Rail lines, starting with Dominion Road.
At the time Michael Wood was a member of the Puketapapa Local Board and could see the enormous potential of the proposed Light Rail serving his patch, both in itself and as an electoral vehicle to advance his political career. He sought the support of his City Vision colleagues (including myself) in neighbouring areas, which we were happy to do as support for public transport improvements was already part of our policy agenda. But then the Light Rail plan morphed into something much bigger, extending South through Mangere to connect with the airport. I recall expressing alarm that this might undermine the promised benefits to residents of the suburbs being served because in order to fit light rail down (for example) Dominion Road, there would be no room for buses and bus stops. This is fine if the existing bus stops every few hundred metres are replaced with train stops at similar intervals – but if the rail line extends all the way from the inner city all the way out to the airport the number of stops would have to be limited otherwise the journey time would be unacceptably long. So residents in say Balmoral with a short walk (say 5 minutes or less) to their nearest bus stop would instead be faced with a much longer walk (say 15 minutes) to their nearest train station. The whole emphasis seemed to be on providing a convenient and rapid journey from the airport to the city (for tourists?) at the expense of residents of suburbs along the route who were loyal public transport patrons who now faced quite a hike each day, a bit daunting when the weather turned damp. I never got a satisfactory answer as to how this would work in practice. Michael was shortly to be in a position to do a lot more than promote Light Rail.
In October 2016 Phil Goff became Mayor of Auckland Council and resigned as MP for Mount Roskill, triggering a bye-election soon after, which Michael Wood won. A year later, Labour won the 2017 election, and Michael became the Minister of Transport, allowing him to progress his Light Rail ambitions, though he still had to persuade his colleagues that its huge cost could be managed.
You know the story that followed, though I think that you have not quite got it right. More or less co-incident with Light Rail becoming a matter of Government policy, the Albert Street business folk were becoming more and more vocal about disruption arising from construction of the CRL, particularly in their patch. Although most of the CRL tunnels were built deep underground using Tunnel Boring Machines – the stretch along most of Albert Street has been by cut-and-cover which has been doubly disruptive: both in terms of width (15 metres excavated out of a 20 metre road reserve) and duration (much of the road was dug up for three years or more). Unfortunately the cause of justifiably aggrieved business-people from Albert Street was picked up by the Dominion Road Business Association who argued that they could be exposed to the same level of disruption if surface level light rail was to happen in Dominion Road. From what I hear, this noisy protestation is what spooked Jacinda and lead her to strongly oppose the surface option in her patch. As a Local Board member, I became aware of this and tried to point out that there was a world of difference between the two situations. In Albert Street a 15 metre wide and 15 metre deep excavation was required (225 square metre cross-section), and it took several years to complete construction and re-instate the road. In Dominion Road the excavation for the concrete track slab to support the rails would be only a metre or two deep (though in many places they would have to go a couple of metres deeper to relocate underground services). So lets say up to 5 metres deep). Between stations, the track slab would be about 5 metres wide, possibly less. So the average excavation cross-section would be 10% of that in Albert Street. By staging the process in sections of about 200 metres at a time, the disruption outside any particular business could be reduced to a matter of weeks – a few months at most – before the surface of that section is reinstated. But the damage was done – and attention moved to deep underground works which undermined the cost-effectiveness of light rail done right.
Graeme
I also suspect that shop owners were terrified about the loss of car parks outside their shops. While people seem to be able to shop in cities all over the world without driving to their destination, most shop owners don’t believe that this is possible here.
We are currently visiting a few European cities, and the difference is staggering. Zurich has a main street of 1.4km served only by surface light rail. At the lake end are shops selling most of the world’s top brands. How possibly can the very wealthy shop on foot? It appears to work.
In Auckland we seem reluctant to change and we continue to invest billions in the most inefficient transport system that there is: cars, roads, car parks and car storage. No wonder the country has a productivity problem.
Connor, do you have any added context to the draft? Was this captured because it was circulated, or does it just represent a significant step in the development of the paper? No doubt there were a great many autosaved drafts along the way.
Despite the pronouns, both drafts will almost certainly have been drafted by someone in Ministry of Transport. It would not be unusual for that draft to include a preferred option and the Cabinet committee it could go to (eg DEV), only to have the Minister(‘s office) suggest a change in narrative / committee / nominal author upon reviewing the draft.
My understanding is that it was circulated.
I’m sure there’s more I could go into but got to save it for the actual book 🙂
IMO it’s the Left that should be more enraged at Ardern’s wasteful and ineffective government.
A generational opportunity wasted (in terms of political capital and money) in so many areas.
Remember she also sunk the cannabis referendum.
+1. aside from the initial covid response that kept the virus from transmitting in the country for nearly a whole year, she was neoliberal as hell and when her had the mandate, they just kept kowtowing and trying to compromise with the right.
Michael Joseph Savage would be ashamed at what the labour party has become; a neolib shell that still gets accused of being communist by the brain-dead on the far right.
the only way that a next Labour government will actually win votes is to deliver on leftist policies, not pandering to the noisy donors and status-quovians that media likes to pretend are the majority.
“Steps like the Gateway review, a process undertaken by Treasury, were not able to be built into the Establishment Unit’s decision-making – along with, seemingly, international advice.” The Australians are currently digging a tunnel under Melbourne to Tullamarine. Obviously underground was the way to go. Like the Ferry Toyota debacle the cancellation puts Auckland back 10 years. Looking forward to the book.
Tunneling is using a very expensive sledgehammer to crack a walnut.
Put it on the surface through reallocation of road space, reduction of roadspace, etc.
The original plan was fine and affordable until we tried keeping everyone happy, disregarded the financial implications and ended up with nothing.
That should have read “reduction of on road parking”.
this really is one of the problems within the transit advocacy community; sometimes people refuse to compromise when needed to get any transit of all, and this is very notable in attitudes towards surface light rail from the likes of Reece Martin and those who espouse driverless light metro.