We’ve discussed the merits of a “Mt Roskill Spur Line” on a number of occasions in the past, the western half of the Avondale-Southdown Line that forms an important part of the Congestion Free Network. However we’ve recently had a few people questioning if the project is actually worth it and if the money we allocated for it should perhaps be used elsewhere. This post is to hopefully try and clear up some of the confusion.
The route of the line, including the two possible stations (Owairaka & Mt Roskill) is shown in the map below:
There are a number of benefits arising from building this extension to the rail system. To briefly summarise:
- It’s a useful way of being able to operate “short-runners” on the inner part of the Western Line to provide greater capacity where demand will be much higher in the future.
- Post CRL it can balance out the long routes we have which can help in allowing trains to stick to schedule.
- By feeding buses into Owairaka and Mt Roskill stations from the south, fewer buses from the southern isthmus would need to run into the city centre which will take pressure off Sandringham & Dominion Road, as well as off city centre streets.
- It will provide those within walking distance of the two new stations with a rapid transit link to the city centre and the rest of the rapid transit network that is faster than the bus (once CRL is built).
- It could encourage intensification and transit oriented development around the two stations.
Also, it’s a pretty easy extension of the rapid transit network to build as the route is already designated and NZTA’s recent motorway projects provide for the rail extension in the form of longer or additional bridge spans at most locations. A good example can be seen below at Maioro Street, where an additional bridge for the future railway line has been provided:
Some of the potential around the two additional stations are quite exciting. I’ll discuss Owairaka Station in a future post, but for now I’ll look at Mt Roskill. An aerial photograph of the area where the station is most likely to go is included below:
Much of the surrounding land is already owned by the Council, after Auckland City Council bought it a long time ago as the southern terminus for their Dominion Road light-rail plans. It seems like a fairly simple island platform station could be built in this location with direct access from the Dominion Road end where the two tracks would terminate. The land to the north of the station could be the bus interchange facility, perhaps with some redeveloped higher density housing, retail and public square also tied into the development.
Looking further afield, the walk-up catchment to the station looks like it could be upzoned further in the Unitary Plan (from memory such a request was included in our Unitary Plan submission) to really make the most of the catalytic effect the new station could have.
A mixed use area connecting the station with the existing Mt Roskill town centre – effectively growing the town centre significantly and to the south with a range of apartments, retail, small-scale offices and other uses – could really make Mt Roskill a fantastically interesting centre in the future with superb access to all kinds of transport.
To the south of the motorway there’s the Mt Roskill cone itself, but beyond that there’s a major cluster of state housing that could be redeveloped in the future – once more adding significant population to the walking catchment of the station. Not too far to the east is a cluster of schools, including Mt Roskill Grammar.
Overall, there are a number of exciting opportunities that a future Mt Roskill train station could present – particularly in terms of acting as a catalyst for significant development around Mt Roskill town centre that could really maximise the potential of this part of Auckland.
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Any word on whether this spur line is getting traction within Auckland Transport as a good idea?
I highly doubt it, the only thing that’s getting traction at AT is lowering patronage targets for PT. It’s easier to do nothing and simply lower any goals that actually have to do something or build something to reach more aspirational goals. Meanwhile it’s full steam ahead on massively expensive and place destroying projects like the East-West motorway link.
Wasn’t the East West motorway link canned?
Not so much canned, as that AT & NZTA took a step back from pushing those versions which the community deemed worst. The project still exists, and still has very high priority among AT & NZTA…
It’s better to think of them as plotting. NZTA and AT will never give up on a road.
Like vampires, the only way to be sure is to cut off the head and put garlic in the mouth. (Radically restructure both organisations, in other words.)
A good way to understand the usefulness of this line is to consider it as a Western Line version of the Onehunga Line. A way of adding services to the busy inner line stations while extending the reach and catchment into a new area. Of course you could always just have ‘short runners’ services that terminate early on a line, but our track resource is so tight that there are only a few places where that’s possible. On the Western Line you’ve pretty much got to go all the way to Henderson. So it becomes cost effective to build more coverage for the whole network over either running more trains on parts of the network than required, or underserving high demand areas.
And the Onehunga Line has consistently performed above expectations, despite being limited to less than ideal frequencies because of its own limitations [single track, lots of level crossings] and those of the network capacity overall pre-CRL.
Usefully this available route runs at right angles to the line so quickly starts to cover areas currently not served by the Rapid Transit Network, as can be seen above.
As a rule branch lines can be limiting on network pattern and frequency because they spilt service volumes, but in Auckland’s case there is a need on the Western to balance the greater number of lines on the opposite side of the city once the CRL is built and we are running a through routing pattern instead of terminating at Britomart.
Buses from Mt Roskill are also horrendously poor and never on time, I know of several people who gave up on them and had to move closer to the city (car wasn’t an option).
One of the problems is that buses are full with longer riders by the time they hit Dom Rd so are unable to serve people along that route well. This line would be a much better choice for those longer travellers, especially at the peaks so would free up the buses. And not only for current bus users of course, but also for current drivers.And not just for the city stations but for all through the network. What’s not to like?
If that’s the case shouldn’t they run more buses? My wife takes the 258 every day, she says its almost always full by the time it gets to Mt Roskill.
On a side note, there are 3 fairly different routes that are called the 258 – the express down queen street, the flyer down New North Road, and the standard detour down View Road. Why don’t these have different numbers? I don’t think the rest of the 25X numbers are used at all, just the 258!
I think larger buses would be a better option than simply adding more.
There is a limit to how many buses you can operate on a road, particularly one like Dominion Rd where the intersections and stops are constrained. We’re not too far off that limit already.
Likewise with buses on city centre streets, we’re probably at 90% of what you could realistically operate at the busiest part of peak hour. That’s one major benefit of this, it would remove quite a few buses from city streets (or at least allow other routes to use those buses).
Have to agree that double decker would be preferable to adding more buses.
All a station needs to become a terminating point, is a turn-back siding where the terminating train can have the driver change ends without the train sitting on a mainline. Morningside and Mt Albert could probably be modified as turn-back stations fairly easily.
That said, the branch remains a good idea, but the Mt Roskill station would be more handy to users at Mays rd, next to the supermarket. Your proposed Mt Roskill surface station would need to be closed and demolished when it comes time to extend the line to Te Papapa, as the SAL passes beneath Dominion Rd through a lava cut.
Historically there was a connection planned from Avondale to Onehunga………..as far as I know NZ rail owns bit of land through there already. Seems like a better idea to pursue a loop than a stub.
That loop was part of the Auckland Plan and some planning work was done on it. If I remember correctly the geotechnical issues, grade separations and junctions/stations required to tie it in to the network drove the cost of the whole line up around a billion bucks. Furthermore the predicted patronage on the crosstown bit between Mt Roskill and Onehunga was about enough to fill one bus an hour.
In effect, the useful bits of that loop are the ends where they are good for radial type trips, i.e the branch from Onehunga to the city on one side, and from Mt Roskill to the city on the other. Luckily, those are the relatively cheap and easy bits to build. The bit in the middle is very hard and expensive to build, yet would be used by very few passengers.
It makes a lot of sense to start with the cheap and effective ends, then look into doing the middle at a later date, if at all. Obviously nobody is planning to remove the designation, but I can’t see any point in pursuing the whole loop instead of starting with the branch.
Yes it is an example of how hard it is to predict future transport. It was part of a route from Onehunga to Avondale to serve a new port of Auckland that was to be located at Pollen Island near the Rosebank Rd motorway interchange. The Harbour Bridge was built to allow ships to pass under to the new port. The port idea was then abandoned as was any realistic idea that this railway would ever be built but it is kept on the books as a designation. These days ships are much larger than 50 years ago and most would never pass under the harbour bridge so we have a humped bridge for little purpose, no new port and no railway from Avondale to Onehunga.
Indeed the lack of the port makes the corridor fairly redundant, although it could possibly be useful if northland rail freight ever took off.
Ships to pass under the bridge, particularly to the Chelsea sugar works and of course the naval armaments depot. There is also the marina at west harbour and two major boat builders in the upper harbour with yachts.
But no one would have built the harbour bridge high just for Chelsea and the a barge to the magazine.
Perhaps not, but it is good that they did so now our upper harbour isn’t sealed off and we can sail, barge and ship past Northcote Point.
Another exciting aspect of extending more frequent PT lines to the area (especially by rail) is integration with local area cycling, which could prove a more popular multi-modal alternative than riding the length of Dominion Rd, by appealing to rail users instead of only cyclists. Both of these stations could provide a 2+ km cycling catchment, with park-and-ride and bike boarding. Having said that, Mt Albert Station should be such a node already, but I guess local cycling development for this kind of use has been neglected.
I live in Mt Roskill and originally thought this route was a great idea, but after giving it more thought I can’t see how it could be any quicker than catching a tram up dominion road, so it would only be used by those living very near the stations. I also doubt people would change from bus to train (unless forced to) – unless the transfer was reliably quick it would probably be quicker to continue on the bus, especially if the bus route is changed to something more sensible when it is reviewed.
One negative of using the spur for short runners is the train frequency to New Lynn would be a lot less.
So why not use the money that would be spent on the spur to bring forward trams? Or maybe use it to continue the trams further on to Lynfield of even Blockhouse Bay?
The branch would be a lot cheaper than Dominion Rd trams. You’re looking at $400-500m to get trams from downtown out to Mt Roskill, and even then you’d still be requiring people to transfer from bus to tram. If you want trams to Lynfield or Blockhouse Bay you’d need to add another $100-200m, so over half a billion.
Not sure on the cost of this branch, but given that the corridor exists, most of the formation is there and most of the bridges are built already I’d expect it would be less than $100m.
The question is would trams be any faster or easier than buses? They might be less crowded and more comfortable, but can’t see how they would be faster.
There would be substantial time savings, from Mt Roskill station location the train would be about 20 minutes to Aotea, definitely faster than the 35 minutes it takes on the bus. The transfer could be very reliably quick, you could time the bus arrivals and departures to meet the trains making them almost delay free.
Why would the train frequency to New Lynn be less, surely you would add frequency to the Mt Roskill branch, not take it away from the western line?
Why does it cost half a billion to lay some tracks and buy rolling stock?
(Unless we’re buying up hundreds of houses so we can build more car parks…)
Because you have to close off the whole street, dig it up, lay the tracks, rebuild the street, rebuild every intersection along the way, etc etc.
Laying track is in the order of $20-30m per kilometre. Lynfield to Downtown is approximately 15 km. so you do the math. Stops are about half a million each, putting them every 750m requires about 20. Vehicles are about $5m each, you’d need 15 or 16 of them to get five minute headways at peak. The cost of managing construction through the inner city and major arterials could easily run into the tens of millions alone.
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…and moving under ground services
I know trams will cost more, but they are in the CFN – all I’m saying is do we need both trams and trains to Mt Roskill?
Trams would be much faster than buses. People would get on and off in a few seconds instead of the few minutes it currently takes at some stops (no cash allowed, no small entrance door). The route would be direct down queen street not detour through Mt Eden. There would be less stops. There would be dedicated 24/7 lines and special traffic light phasing. I think Mt Roskill ‘train station’ to city would be pretty close to 20 minutes on a decent tram service (or even a decent bus service).
The frequency to New Lynn would be greater without Mt Roskill station as the trains that are destined for Mt Roskill in the CFN would otherwise go via New Lynn (i.e. the southern line would go through New Lynn)
Sure, look to both. But do the cheap and easy one first. Trams would have a marginal improvement on various levels over the existing buses, but they wouldn’t do anything fundamentally new. The rail line would.
Trams in traffic are much more like buses than trains on their own right of way. Lovely but expensive buses. They travel at quite different speeds and serve quite different and complimentary markets. That’s why they are both on our CFN plan. They are not duplicative.
So we’ed like to see both. But given that we are now getting the trains that would be able to run on this line, that the ROW is already in part formed and reserved, this really looks like the one to do first. So this area gets trains and buses first, then trains, LTR, and buses later. Especially as doing so will mean that the rail network that we are investing in now will be able to both serve more people and be more efficient and cost effective, which will mean securing further investment in rail systems will be more possible and likely.
Transit investment in Auckland is indeed about pursuing the Art of the Possible.
It’s quite likely that a train from Mt Roskill would be faster than a tram or bus. The Onehunga train takes about 25mins I think, while the bus to town from Onehunga, although quite frequent can take 45mins or more. Although on a map it looks more indirect, it is still faster.
If you mean to the city? Absolutely the journey from Mt Roskill to the city in the new EMU will be quicker and a great deal more pleasant than the bus down Dominion Rd. Heading to Newmarket via a transfer at Newton is likely to be quicker too, as the frequency of trains post CRL will mean waiting will be minimal and transferring will become second nature. Pretty sure some people will actually ride the bus against the peak from further down Dom Rd in order to take this advantage, and of course the additional advantage of riding the contra-peak emptier buses. And the pressure this takes of those buses will help make them a better choice too, for others, especially those with intermediate destinations. Choice, it’s all about choice, and about different modes working together.
Now if we could just get certain people at MoT to understand that trains and buses are together the solution for Auckland and to stop thinking in obsessively binary ways about modes…. if only.
You also need to remember that this track serves a different route, can be used to get to locations along Great North Road very easily, or also further West on the Western line.
The big development area in Auckland is in the northwest. After there is genuine mass rapid transit from this part of Auckland towards the centre, there may be a case for a running pattern from Mt Roskill out west. At which point it would connect with northwest services.
That would be a rather simple adjustment, and would follow the direction of development (but shouldn’t precede it).
Why not do something different and precede actual development with quality PT corridors for a change?
I don’t think it should be either/or and both are needed. They are on different timeframes anyway, Mt Roskill can’t open till the CRL at the earliest. Northwest busway needed now
The NW busway should be built before or contemporaneously with the CRL. Development is accelerating in the north-west, and the NW motorway will be even worse than now once the south-western link is open
The NW busway should obviously be being built right now as they are rebuilding the whole route. Nothing to stop them either, this is a decision that could still be taken, and hopefully is.
The Puketapapa Local Board is also talking with AT about park and ride options in the area.
The area is too close to the city for P&R (unless you’re planning on it being priced)
Yep, sends the wrong message, even if priced – especially if its in the “Zone 1” area for the proposed integrated ticketing,
You’ll have every man and their dog driving to the P&R from that side of town just to save $1.60 each way on the train (and/or parking charges in town) – causing tens or hundreds of millions of congestion in the process,
Price it properly, ie at a decent amount more than a couple of fares but less than inner city parking and that shouldn’t be too much of an issue. But the real problems are the use of good land near transit stations for storing cars instead of development and the fact that driving is still being incentivised over other modes such as feeder buses, walking, or cycling. It’s better if money is put into making direct and safe routes to new stations than isolating them behind carparks.
Thanks for the feedback, that’s all very helpful. Shall pass that on!
Would obviously make sense to spend $20m on cycling in the area rather than a caprark.
Wouldn’t be a $20M spend on P&R. Puketapapa Local Board is slowly working on a Greenways project, initiated by previous board chair, Richard Barter, and construction starts soon (I hope) on two new sections, which include a route from War Memorial Park on May Road, across Dom Rd with a signalised crossing, continuing along Memorial, down Somerset, to meet up with the Roskill Campus and the Frost Rd bridge that links to the SH20 cycleway. Here http://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/EN/AboutCouncil/representativesbodies/LocalBoards/Puketapapalocalboard/Pages/puketapapaplans.aspx#greenwaysplan for Greenways Plan maps etc, and here for the next project, known as the “Mt Roskill Safe Routes project” which includes the route I mentioned above: https://at.govt.nz/projects-roadworks/cycleway-improvements/#roskill
So great to have a place to have these discussions, so many smart people commenting, I find it v useful. Thanks.
For it to be of any us it would be 20m.
You are probably talking about buying 8 houses at ~700k so that is already ~5.5m plus demolition ~6m total. Then carparks that would need to be multistory to be of use. Minimum 10m all to destroy the place qualities even further, and probably even more. The train station should only have kiss and ride, a few disabled spots and some ON STREET cycle connections as well as off road to obvious locations.
A direct pedestrian and cycle connection with signalised crossing to May Rd is critical if this project goes ahead.
Would it be possible to built this without the CRL? Say, Mt Roskill to Manukau via Newmarket?
It would be possible, but pointless. CRL not only delivers big capacity boost, but major speed boost to the western line. If built pre CRL would be quicker taking the bus into town. Domionion Road upgrades will also deliver speed and capacity increases in the short term, so not a big rush to get this done in the next couple of years, however opening immediately post CRL would work well.
You might be able to run two an hour before the CRL, with four an hour on the main western line. That could work if you timed all your connecting buses on a half hourly pulse.
Still not a very direct way to get to the city though, handy for Newmarket.
The Puketapapa Local Board has been advocating for the CRL to happen first. Both because we need that increase in capacity for the spur/line to work, but also because it is more important for the whole system to get that done 😉
The original tram ran down Dom Rd to the intersection with Richardson Rd. Would be nice if this could terminate there too. Saying this as the opposite of a NIMBY (a YIMBY?) as I live a few blocks away. The 277 bus service is good though, I hope it doesn’t get canned in the bus route re-jig.
Some minor changes were made to the 277 and 299 about 2 years ago iirc. Both b-lines appear to be working really well (I use them a lot!)
There was once a plan to widen Dominion Road by two lanes (any new buildings being built was once forced to be at least 2 Metres or more further from the road) Whatever became of that scheme ?? Has it been shelved ?? Certainly one advantage of doing this as well would be the demolition of “Earthquake Prone” buildings during this widening process
Oh yeah great plan. Demolish the character-filled town centres and turn the road into a highway. Exactly what we need.
Where is downtown