Posts by Joshua Arbury
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Do you reckon Steven Joyce will be a bit concerned about his motorways-obsessed transport policy now that Len Brown has won such a massive election victory with his number one policy being to rapidly expand the rail system?
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Scenario:
Len Brown gets Christine Fletcher to be Deputy Mayor. Cross the left-right divide, gets a male-female mix and also seeks to link together Central and South Auckland.
Seems reasonably likely? I'd prefer he went for Christine than Penny "holiday highway cheerleader" Webster from Rodney.
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Apart from feeling sorry for tax-payers in general, imagine how those with investments in Blue Chip, Hanover Finance and so forth feel right about now.... They're basically in the same boat, but were unlucky enough for their investment company to tank a bit early.
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Cheers for the mention Sacha.
Linking this back to the main topic of conversation, I actually think what's most important is what the mayors say about little transport issues. It's easy to say "yeah I support rail to the airport, North Shore Rail and so forth..." but generally they're not offering up the money. I would be more interested in more direct questions actually:
1) Would you advocate strongly to government to change transport policies so that NZTA can spend money on new rail projects?
2) Would you actively oppose the Puhoi-Wellsford road on the basis that it's using up precious money on a poorly justified project, that could be put into paying for most of the CBD rail tunnel?
3) How much would your council contribute to building the CBD rail tunnel?
4) What's your opinion on bus lanes vs T2 lanes vs T3 lanes?
5) What would be your preferred solution to "the Dominion Road situation"?
6) What would you do to improve public transport to the people of Howick/Pakuranga/Botany/Flat Bush who have utterly horrific services at the moment?
In terms of actually trying to improve public transport in Auckland significantly in the next three years, the best bet is to actually focus on the bus system. Speeding up boarding times, extending bus lanes, introducing T2 lanes where appropriate (ie. on roads that currently don't have any priority lanes), undertaking a "forensic audit" of bus services to find out and eliminate delays... and so on. These would generate huge gains.
Of course this is actually the kind of detailed work that the Trasnport CCO is supposed to be focusing on, rather than the politicians. But I think a good mayor is one who knows transport inside out, and can get involved in the details.
If we think about which local politician has done the most for public transport in the last decade, the answer is clearly Mike Lee. And the reason for that is he knows the details.
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Angus, if we have a superb busway up the Hutt Valley that cost $400 million and opened two years ago then I would probably choose (A).
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You make a good point Andrea. Generally building transport capacity (be it more roads or more public transport) won't fix congestion, due to that interesting thing called "induced demand".
However, what public transport does particularly well (especially rail) is increase the number of people who can still get to work even though there is congestion.
Let's just think about Manhattan, where about 2 million people arrive every day to work, with about 95% of those people arriving by public transport. The roads are still congested, but it doesn't really matter that much as most people avoid the congestion by catching the train. If you tried to deal to Manhattan's transport situation by building lots of highways (and Robert Moses sure tried this) then you would just have more people experiencing the congestion - it wouldn't actually be any better. It would also be impossible for Manhattan to support so many jobs without its superb PT system.
This shows the pointlessness of Steven Joyce's transport policies: trying to solve congestion by building more motorways. Over time all that will happen as a result of the motorway widening projects he's championing is that more people will be able to be congested on those motorways.
The beauty of the CBD tunnel is that it enables a lot of people to get to the CBD at peak times in particular without having to experience congestion on the road network. From memory, the project brings over half a million people within a 30 minute rail trip of the CBD.
Angus, I think you miss my point in your post above. My point is that to increase the frequency of trains on the western line, eastern line and southern line (and to even make an airport line possible) you need to build the CBD tunnel. Building rail to the North Shore does absolutely zilch to increase our ability to run more trains on the existing system.
Furthermore, on the subject of North Shore Rail - what's wrong with the brand spanking new busway?
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Angus, looking at the CBD loop vs North Shore line situation.
One of the main reasons why we will need the CBD rail tunnel in the future is so that we can increase frequencies on the existing rail network, and also so that we can run an Airport Line.
From early next year there will be 20 trains per hour arriving at Britomart from the "eastern entrance" (the only entrance at the moment). This will be comprised of 6 trains from the western, southern and eastern lines and 2 trains from the Onehunga Line.
Let's say we build a North Shore Line. Then we can continue some of those trains through to the North Shore, but that doesn't help us get that many more trains to Britomart from the south, west and eastern lines. In fact, 20 trains in is about one every three minutes and it's not possible to run trains at frequencies too much higher than that. Would we want all 20 going to the North Shore? I doubt it, which means we'll still have to turn around a large number of trains.
What the CBD rail tunnel does so well is provide two ways in which trains from the west, south, east and Onehunga (read: Airport in the future) can access Britomart and the CBD. They can either access via the existing tracks from the east, or they can access from the new portal around Mt Eden. My preferred service pattern would link the west and south lines together, and link the east and airport lines together. How that would work is shown in this post.
In terms of the North Shore Line, I struggle to see that as a huge priority. The Northern Busway is barely two years old, and cost $400 million to build. It's not easily upgradable to rail because the grades are too steep - so we could be looking at the line costing around $3 billion all up: of course that would also include the tunnel under the harbour. With traffic volumes falling on the harbour bridge, I struggle to see the necessity for that.
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I always find it interesting that roading projects are justified by how they will save commuters "x minutes". While saving a few minutes off a trip means an economic gain for truckies and other business trips, for regular commuters it just means we get to sleep in a few minutes more or get home from work a ew minute earlier.
In short, the road improvements give us a bit more free time. Now that's all well and good, but is it the most effective and efficient way of spending money to give people more free time? For the price of the $1.4 billion Waterview Connection the government could buy every household in Auckland a $2000 dishwasher. That'd create a lot more spare time I reckon.
Come on Steven Joyce, I don't want your new motorways, I want a dishwasher!
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Generally trips that are suitable for rail, long distance trips to/from the CBD at peak times - are the very same trips that are least suitable for the road system to handle.
I think around 3000 people a day board a train at Papakura station. Let's say those people drive instead, and a decent chunk of them drive all the way into the CBD - quite a few at peak times. That's well over a lane's worth of traffic per hour (2000 vehicles) that would be added to the Southern Motorway - clogging the road for everyone else between Papakura and the CBD.
The same process works in vice-versa, take those people off the road and you create a huge benefit.
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It's good to have someone like Angus challenge the need for a CBD tunnel. A chance for us to hone our arguments.
Let's say the CBD tunnel allows eight-car trains going at 2 minute frequencies each way. That's 60 trains per hour that could access say Midtown station. I'm not sure of the capacity of each train but let's say 500 per train. That's 30,000 per hour. I hate to think how many buses it would take to shift that many people between Mt Eden or Grafton and Midtown.