On Monday the NZ Herald ran an article about the cost comparisons between operating Auckland and Wellington’s rail services. Based on the numbers in the article, it doesn’t tell a particularly pretty story:
Aucklanders facing a new transport rate are paying far too much to subsidise the city’s trains, says councillor Mike Lee, a long-time champion of rail.
Mr Lee, the council’s infrastructure chairman, has calculated that Auckland trains are costing ratepayers and the Government four times more to run than those in Wellington for each kilometre travelled by passengers.
He has worked out from figures published for each rail operation that the subsidy paid for every “passenger kilometre” travelled on Auckland trains last financial year was 65c, compared with just 16c in the capital…
…He said subsidies covered $107.2 million of Auckland’s total rail operating costs of $139.3 million last year, when 11.4 million passenger trips were made on trains.
That compared with just $42.7 million of subsidies towards the $85.09 million cost of providing 11.6 million passenger trips in Wellington.
Although the Government covered $63.92 million of Auckland’s bill, ratepayers forked out $43.3 million.
Auckland rail passengers also paid more for each kilometre they travelled, 18.5c against 16c in Wellington.
An Auckland Transport spokesman queried Mr Lee’s finding that fares covered only 22 per cent of rail operating costs, and sent the Herald a report prepared for the council by the organisation’s chief financial officer, Richard Morris.
But the report, despite pointing to difficulties in comparing the Auckland and Wellington rail operations, did not directly challenge Mr Lee’s figures.
A year ago Auckland Transport staff wrote a report breaking down the costs for each system which is the one referenced above. It split out the costs for the 2011/12 and 2012/13 years for each system. I haven’t seen 2013/14 figures and we are still in the 2014/15 year.
Overall it can be difficult to pinpoint the exact differences and while not definitive AT have identified some of reasons why they think Auckland’s system is more expensive to operate. This includes:
- Auckland is running a mixed fleet with expensive to fuel and maintain diesel trains. The locomotives that haul the SA sets are also leased from Kiwirail. I’ve been told in the past that fuel and maintenance costs will roughly halve once all services are electric.
- The mixed fleet reduces driver roster flexibility (more overtime to cover issues) and increases training costs. This should improve once all fleet electric
- Auckland’s trains are slower for a variety of reasons. This increases the time it takes for each trip and therefore staffing costs for similar length journeys. We’re yet to see if electrification will improve this.
- Auckland costs include all of Transdev’s wages and salary’s while in Wellington it’s believed some of Kiwirail’s overheads are likely shared or covered by the fact those roles exist for the rest of the business – both Auckland and Wellington are currently tendering for rail services as they moving to the same contract model this should hopefully see costs move closer together.
- Auckland has a number of stations which are more expensive to run – e.g. it appears that Britomart alone costs more to operate than all the Wellington stations combined. Auckland also supposedly has more security monitoring. Auckland’s costs will remain higher in this area.
- I believe that overall Auckland now runs more services than Wellington does – and this will have increased even further since December.
Since the data that report patronage has gone crazy and is up about 3.5 million trips. We’ve also started to see electric trains on parts of the network and the remaining lines are due to go electric soon. We’ll have to wait to find the final costs for this year however this chart from AT’s monthly indicators in March shows the subsidy per passenger km and it does appear that things are starting to head in the right direction.
The minutes for last week’s Budget Committee meeting aren’t yet online, but it seems like the Committee passed a resolution to request an investigation into the issue and report back on options for cost savings in the next round of annual planning. This seems like a pretty sensible approach as we wouldn’t want savings to be achieved by cutting (or not increasing) service levels, but rather through a better rail contract and continued patronage (and therefore revenue) growth.
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Comparing apples with oranges, maybe once Auckland goes all electric, a reasonable comparison can be made. Till then, it’s too early to say.
Funny how in the 2013-2014 financial year Transdev’s profit on its Auckland operation alone rose by 103% to $4million: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11277984
I guess that’s what 3.5m extra trips does for Transdev when they’re in an overly favourable contract position. AT must negotiate a better share of income growth sharing this time round.
Wellingtons commuter rail network of relatively nature with long-established commuter behaviors and numbers.
Auckland is the midst of an investment phase. It’s being built…. And they are coming. The cost per passenger km should improve.
Of course Britomart is expensive to run, its an underground train station, which requires extensive heating and cooling and escalators & lifts to get to/from station level to street level.
Wellington Station is an open air at ground level platform arrangement that relies on natural ventilation for the most part.
Britomart has to have extra air conditioning/filtering to get rid of smelly diesel fumes thanks to those diesels cluttering up the place – Wellington doesn’t have that issue as they’re all outside.
A large chunk of the cost of running Britomart will be found right there.
Unfortunately as KR will still put diesels down there for the long distance service, we can’t get away from that problem in the short term.
Thank goodness we never got smelly diesel buses down there as well.
Secondly Britomart is fully gated at two ends, this requires extensive “manning” of those gates at all times it is open (and no doubt frequent maintenance of those gates),
Wellington still has ticket clippers on the trains and no gates.
Im amazed with the number of commuters that britomart doesnt turn a profit. We need to make better use of the retail opportunities these big stations present. I hope this is being planned for the CRL stations.
Really simple. In Auckland there is a guy opening and closing the doors. His work is basically useless plus adds a delay at every stop! No country in the world has that system nor is that person improving safety. BUT if a train is late others can’t depart if door-opening person is on it. Smells domino to me.
” In Auckland there is a guy opening and closing the doors”
Not on the EMUs there’s not.
I think you’ll find that the doors on the EMUs are still activated by the train manager. Passengers do have to press a button to open the door but they can’t do so until the TM has turned her/his little key.
Not to mention that trusting people to push the button adds some more delay in opening of the doors. It only helps with saving power through less air conditioning.
@Doloras Interesting, I’ve last sit on an EMU in November, the guy was opening and closing doors every station, plus whistling before. Have they improved it since?
Only once the TM has done his thing. An unnecessary job really. Would be better (and cheaper) to pay to have a security guard on each train if they really want 2 for safety. Even better would be them subsidising having police on trains (transit police) as this kills 3 birds with 1 stone (cuts fare evasion, makes trains safer, reduces expenditure on damage cause by vandals).
@Peter, This Anaylsis compared Auckland to Wellington,
Wellington still has on board train guards that open/ close doors, sell/clip tickets, … if anything Auckland with HOP and gated stations will have fewer on board staff…
@greenwelly Good to know, I’ve never tried trains in Wellington.
I think the main point here is that they compare Auckland to Wellington because the former is expensive. The fact that Wellington has inefficiencies, doesn’t mean that Auckland has to follow and ignoring obvious optimizations is justifiable 🙂
As someone who once worked on the trains I have had plenty of passengers tell me how safe they feel on trains in New Zealand with the visible staff onboard compared to some overseas networks.
Yep I’ve had a group of aggressive teens get on the train sit near me. And the train manager came and sat down across from the situation. They are great. You need some staff on the trains. And yes active design around the stations would be good. Why not have retail overlooking the stations. It’s a bit scary at night. And the wardens seem to have gone?
Security guard on train is no problem, train manager, no problem. Train manager opening, closing doors that’s a problem.
Peter, your comment that “In Auckland there is a guy opening and closing the doors. His work is basically useless plus adds a delay at every stop! No country in the world has that system nor is that person improving safety.” – Your comment is wrong. It’s very common, in many places around the world. Even on automatic trains without a driver, there is still normally a “train captain” who is on board, who could take over the controls and drive it, if need be. Union rules forbid completely automatic driving in many places.
That AT report isn’t as accurate as I would expect. For instance:
“Wellington has a relatively new electric train fleet”, “Wellington has new trains”, “the relative differences inherent in running an aging diesel fleet compared to a new electric fleet”, “The significantly higher costs needed to maintain an aging diesel fleet compared to a new electric fleet” – Wellington’s Ganz Mavags are 30 years old, the DC diesel locos and SE/SW carriages even older;
“Tranzdev” – you’d think AT would know how to spell the name of its supplier;
“On all three Wellington lines, the first outbound / last inbound stop is a considerable distance from Wellington station…In Auckland, fares could not be collected in the time between Newmarket and Britomart…Crofton Downs, Takapu Rd and Petone are each at least ten minutes from Wellington” – Crofton Downs is seven minutes from Wellington, as is Ngauranga, the closest-in station on the Hutt Valley line: the journey time between Britomart and its closest stations (Orakei and Newmarket) is eight minutes;
“Wellington Railway Station is a shared use facility between Victoria University (West Wing), New World Supermarket (ground floor) and KiwiRail Group activities which includes the national Train Control centre” – so what?;
“Auckland “rolling stock maintenance” costs also include other costs namely KiwiRail management overheads, facilities costs and management fees related to the “maintenance programme” and also the hire of the diesel locomotives” – as does Wellington.
Not good!
Some facts for your facts.
Wellington runs Hyundai Rotem EMUs that replaced almost all the old Ganz Mavags over the last couple of years, they have some old Ganz units left, not many.
The only non electric services are the Capital connection and the Waiarapa services – both diesel hauled by KR.
The new Hyundais were entering service/in service when that report was written, hence the comment about “new electrics”.
As Auckland has a fraction of its new fleet of EMUs in service, the costs in Wellington will be less than Auckland which has been Diesel only for the above periods of time and mostly still is even now. Our EMUs have only just been in operation for 1 year as the electrification ran years late (thanks KR).
Until recently before HOP replaced onboard ticket sales and checking the old diesel trains were so full of passengers, that the clippies couldn’t get down a single carriage at peak times so couldn’t check/ collect fares – even if the first stop was 40 minutes away they’d struggle to get fares from the older diesels that were way too full. So thats why farebox recovery was poor.
Wellington Railway station being a shared facility means the operating costs of the station are lowered quite a bit as other “tenants” like the Supermarket and KR are paying rent which offsets/shares these costs. Britomart has almost none of these (except for a coffee shop and a Subway outlet) to offset its costs.
I think Auckland is double paying for some things Wellington – i.e. paying Transdev for some things, and then paying KR for similar services.
Sorry, Greg, but most of the Ganzes are still in service (43% of Wellington’s current total fleet, excluding the even-older DCs, is over 30 years old); Wellington station is not owned by KR, which has no interest in the non-railway occupations, and the KR non-Metro usage is not paid for by GWRC; the Capital Connection is irrelevant, being entirely a KR operation.
And I’m not arguing about how long it takes to collect fares, just AT’s distortion of the facts.
So my comments about the inaccuracies in this sloppy piece of work stand.
As a wellingtonian who is often in Auckland I think the comparison is fairly valid, both cities are half way through the roll out of new electric fleets. The major differences are that one is a mature network that is already largely electric ( the wairarapa is diesel hauled- though this only 6 trains each way a day) the other is developing and wasn’t electric before. The other observable difference is that one has a hop card and the other doesn’t. I would have expected that Auckland would have cheaper staff cost structures given the hop card vs the guard system in use in Wellington. I do notice that there are a lot more security types on the trains and around the barriers in Auckland so maybe that is acreting costs. Personally I prefer the train guards, they are pleasant and help people with push chairs and impairments on the odd occasion when there isn’t another passenger to do it.
As for the station costs – remember most (not all) of the Wellington stations have had more sustained maintainence than Aucklands, which have required big makeovers to bring them upto spec, so that might be skewing those costs. The Auckland stations are consequently more modern, so something like Newmarket is going to cost more than Waterloo to run simply because one has escalators and the other ramps let alone all the other stuff. Also – whilst the the leases in Wellington station don’t maintain the platforms, they have defrayed the costs of earthquake strengthening the station building and kept it in very active use which helps (as well as proving inner city supermarkets could work in NZ and making their introduction in Auckland that much easier).
Who does own Wellington Station? My understanding was that KR did own it, but handed all the others stations to GWRC in the last couple of years. This is why they are spending money on the refurbishment, a tenant wouldn’t be doing that.
Wellington Railway Station was owned directly by the Government, and is now owned by the New Zealand Railways Corporation, which was separated from KiwiRail on 31 December 2012. It’s treated differently from other buildings used by the railway because its future ownership is being negotiated as part of an ongoing Treaty claim.
Ownership of the KR-owned station buildings was transferred to GWRC, but the platforms (except Wellington) remain with KR, the same arrangement as applies in Auckland. The land on which they all stand is owned by NZRC.
Simple, eh?
KiwiRail is not to blame for the late electrification. If you want to be accurate, it was planned by the ARC and costed using fuel excise taxes to roll out in a timely manner until National pulled the rug out from under the whole plan 2009. We would have had some EMU’s by the 2011 Rugby World Cup had it not been for them. Instead more SA’s had to be ordered with such a limited life span and the old rolling stock of ADK’s etc had to be refurbished and kept beyond their used by dates.
Then when we Aucklanders had a totally new council thrust upon us by National, and to fix the mess they created Aucklanders were loaned the money at a costly rate to electrify the whole thing and it became a rush job, tenders, skills imported, components manufactured, platforms modified etc etc etc. KiwiRail still have to run freight trains at night when the subbies aren’t going and this is what became a hindrance to setting up the network, hence the western line was half completed before anything else and that was supposed to be the last to get EMU’s.
If the original plan had been followed we wouldn’t be where we are today!
Late/delayed purchase of the EMUs wasn’t KR’s decision/fault but the drawn out overhead wiring contract was, KR signed contracts with subcontractors (the so-called HILOR consortium) back in early 2010 (see http://www.nzherald.co.nz/transport/news/article.cfm?c_id=97&objectid=10620343), they’d already signed a signalling replacement contract in 2009 required for the new trains as well.
Minister Joyce & KR stated they’d have the overhead completed in about 3 years to have trains on the ground in 2013 – as quoted above.
Confirmed by RadioNz report http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/26245/kiwirail-awards-auckland-rail-electrification-contract which said “Masts will begin appearing towards the end of this year, beginning with Otahuhu working towards Britomart and will be completed by 2013.” (as in completed before 2013, not during 2013).
Irrespective of delays in purchasing EMUs the specifications for the overhead voltage and equipment were under KR’s control and had been well specified before that point – the EMUs would be specified to meet KR specifications in this area.
Fast (or more like, slow) forward to 2014 and the electrification was only just being completed on Eastern and Southern lines about this time a year ago. Final livening up of the western lines happened towards the end of 2014 little of 8 months ago if that.
You couldn’t physically run EMUs on other than to/from Onehunga line most of 2014 because thats all the track there was with live overhead wiring.
By my books thats easily 2 years later than planned. Yes thats all KR’s fault. They faffed around managing and actually getting the overhead wiring done and we’re all suffering for it.
Yeah maybe they didn’t want to interrupt their precious freight trains. But they knew all that when they took on the overhead contract.
And we suffered every other weekend with no rail service for years while they completed the overhead wiring.
And you can’t train drivers in new locos if they can’t be driven anywhere!
Hence the resultant compressed cross-training schedule for drivers and resultant issues such as insufficient training or insufficient drivers to cover all the requirements as the old diesels are retired and the EMUs brought in.
At no stage was there ever any schedule to have electrics running by the RWC. 2013 was always the earliest given start date.
Just comparing the fleets, Auckland and Wellington both have DC diesels (1950s-build), but Auckland has more of them, pulling ex-British Railways carriages (1970s). Beyond that:
Auckland: DF diesels (1970s), ADL DMUs (1982) and the AM EMUs (arriving, brand new). Recently retired are the SX carriages (1960) and ADK DMUs (1960s)
Wellington: Ganz-Mavag EM EMUs (1982), Matangi FP EUMs (2008 onwards). Recently retired DM EMUs (1938….)
On average, Auckland currently depends more on the older fleets, and has a more diverse fleet, with the inevitable expenses. The extensive DC/DF leases also bring in more costs relating to Kiwirail. The Ganz-Mavags and ADLs are of comparable vintage, but while there are more Ganz-Mavags, there are a similar number of DCs in Auckland. The other advantage to the Wellington network is the electric infrastructure is long-established, while Auckland still has bugs which need to be worked out (which hopefully are fixed before all the diesels go…). Both, however, are getting a well-needed overhaul
A couple of things:
1) Strange that Auckland’s labour cost was almost double Wellington’s, from the comparisons above.
2) Big jump from the 2012/13 figures to the ones Mike Lee is using. According to the Herald article, a big part of the difference is that the govt forced Auckland to take a loan for the EMUs and electrification works, (interest cost $13.6m, or is it an increase of $13.6m over the previous year?)
3) As Matt points out, patronage now growing like crazy which is sending operating costs down. EMUs should also help with this doubly, via lower running costs and enabling higher patronage.
Slightly relevant fact. Tranzmetro Wellington has been returning to Greater Wellington Council, money set aside for the maintenance of the metro fleet because quite simply, the fleet is pretty reliable and the expected maintenance spends were never required.
Speaking of expensive to operate, anyone else noticed that the price of petrol has shot up around 20% over the last 2-3weeks?
$2.04 when I passed Z in New Lynn tonight, after filling up nearby for around $1.68 not long ago.
Not a mention in the mainstream press yet….
Actually, there was a big article in the Dom Post today, on exactly that. Perhaps you missed it. But yes, apparently there was a price war, in some regions, and now it’s over. Prices up 20c overnight.
Must just be the Herald seeing no evil again…
Campbell Live had a big segment on petrol cost rises this week too.
The average Wellington station has a few lights and a simple shelter. The average Auckland station has extensive lighting, CCTV cameras and ticket machines etc, and often is attended by one or two security guards. The cost of maintaining and operating a station in Auckland must be massively higher than in Wellington.
The graph of “PT subsidy per Passenger Kilometer” could usefully include a comparison figure of the subsidy provided to car drivers by building roads for free and allowing their use for free.