The Campaign For Better Transport

With most business opportunities, it is possible to calculate the expected monetary benefits and costs, while considering other factors such as the opportunity cost of capital and project risk.A similar approach for transport infrastructure projects is also attractive. Just work out the benefits in today’s money, divide this by the cost and – presto! – you know exactly how much the economy will benefit from for every dollar spent.

Take the proposed Waterview motorway extension, for example. Treasury and Ministry of Transport officials have worked out that for every dollar spent on the $2.8bn motorway connection between Mt Roskill and Waterview, the economy will receive $1.15 worth of benefits.

In the business case document now being considered by Cabinet, officials point out that “full tunnel” option means that the benefits are only a little in excess of their costs. Some above ground options might save up to $200m from the construction cost, but these have higher social and environmental costs, and also involve the loss of park land and a significant number of houses.

Considering the billions of dollars at stake, one would hope that the economic benefits and costs of the various options are as accurate and as realistic as possible. So are they? Well, no, actually.

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Parliament yesterday had some interesting discussion about progress on deciding which option of the Waterview Connection is likely to be built, if any at all. It seems like Steven Joyce has got it into his head that the poor cost-benefit ratio of the Waterview Connection (only 1.15 and I have my suspicions that’s vastly over-estimated) can be fixed simply by finding a much cheaper option – never mind the environmental or social effects it will have.

Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I share the member’s concern about the cost-benefit ratio of the twin two-lane tunnels proposed by the previous Government. The cost estimates for that project were extraordinarily high, and that is why I have asked officials to consider ways to save costs. We are still working through the final decision on that.

The reason Mr Joyce is still working on this, is simply because there is no significantly cheaper and better value option. For a start, the cost difference between a full tunnel option and other potential options is not nearly as big as people make it out to be. The Ministry of Transport’s review of the Waterview Connection clearly pointed that out (see page 18 of that document).

To paraphrase (all costs in 2015 dollars)

1) Cost of full tunnel option: $2.005 billion for 4 lanes, $2.335 billion for 6 lanes
2) Cost of cut and partial cover options: $1.790 billion for 4 lanes, $1.813 for 6 lanes
3) Cut and extended cover: $1.988 billion for 4 lanes, $2.205 billion for 6 lanes
4) Open cut (no tunnel at all): $1.456 billion for 4 lanes, $1.585 billion for 6 lanes

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Conflicting stories from within ARTA have apparently now been sorted out, as Mathew Dearnaley writes in the Herald.  Sharon Hunter from ARTA has emailed me and confirmed:

• The introduction of Onehunga passenger services is planned for introduction in the first part of 2010 following on from the completion of Newmarket station.
• It is intended that services will run from Onehunga to Britomart.
• Proposed station locations will be available to view at Open Days held for the local community towards the end of June this year.

We are very disappointed that we are in the planning stages.  Funding was awarded two years ago for the re-laying of the track.  ARC has had possession of the ex-ITM site on the mall since October of 2007.  Consultation was supposed to be happening by now.Station planning and funding should be well advanced by now as services were supposed to start in December of this year.

March 2009 was a record breaking month for public transport usage in Auckland. The ARTA monthly business report confirms that there were 6,115,155 bus, ferry and rail boardings in March across Auckland’s network. This is up 19.7% on last March. It also means that the 12 month rolling total for Auckland at the end of March was 58,325,170 boardings – a 10.6% increase upon the 12 month rolling total for the previous year. The image below shows the huge leap that March 2009 represents, and how it compares with the last few years (the highest month of all):

Regarding railway patronage, the figures are even better in some respects: 802,623 boardings for the month, a 26.7% increase upon March 2008.  The image below shows how this compares with past months, and also how it compares with March from the last few years:

This is all excellent news – although the figures are slightly inflated because Easter fell in April this year but March last year. It is clear that Aucklanders are responding to improvements to our public transport system and also that the increases in public transport usage that we saw last winter due to high oil prices were not just a once-off, but that people who perhaps tried public transport for the first time then liked it, and are sticking with it. Later this year we will see a few more milestones, as the Onehunga Branch re-opens and the Newmarket Station is completed. Hopefully we will also have some sort of integrated ticketing system going, and a few more trains available to handle the increased demand.

March and August are generally the months with highest public transport usage (no school holidays, uni holdiays or uni exams). It will be interesting to see if August 2009 can top March2009.

The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) has announced that Bombardier Transportation Canada Inc has been awarded a contract worth a total of $1.22 billion (excluding taxes), for 204 new low-floor light rail vehicles (LRV), with a delivery date beginning in 2011.

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The Herald reports:

As the Transport Agency prepares to open a new motorway through Mt Roskill next week, uncertainty remains over how it will eventually reach the Northwestern Motorway at Waterview.

Although a review on using tunnels or a motorway was to have been ready last month, officials are collecting new information at the request of Transport Minister Steven Joyce.

“Officials are doing some more work with it, and we’ll have more to say shortly,” a spokeswoman for the minister told the Herald yesterday.

Serious doubt over whether tunnels would be built – as favoured by the previous Labour-led Government – has engulfed the Waterview link since January, when Mr Joyce reported a cost blowout to between $2.77 billion and $3.16 billion and ordered a review.

He set officials a target of last month for completing the review.

Although they are understood to have met that deadline for preparing a report, the minister has sought more information to add confidence to a decision on the link, which is set to become an issue among candidates for the Mt Albert byelection.

It is worth repeating that the difference between the full tunnel option and the next best partly above ground option is small in the context of the size of the project – $200m.  This has to be the tunnel or nothing.

Architect Andrew Patterson has been brought on board to redesign plans for the Orakei peninsula, incorporating the Orakei railway station.

An article on stuff.co.nz says the concept envisages 670 apartments of varying sizes in blocks up to eight storeys high, public plazas, a waterfront pier, circuit walkway, offices and retail space, cafes and restaurants, a creche and a gymnasium.

Orakei Residents Society president Warren Tuohey says it is the best proposal he’s seen so far.

“Frankly this is the first of all the drawings and proposals that have been put in front of us that we could get excited, or mildly excited with,” he says…

Kerry Knight of Equinox stressed it is just a concept, with a lot more work needed before they can apply for a private plan change.

“Density is a huge argument and it’s related to traffic,” he says.

It will be interesting to see if the vision survives through to the implementation.

Confusion reigns about the location of the Onehunga railway station, originally scheduled to open in December of this year.

According to officials from ARTA and the ARC, Ontrack are claiming there are insufficient funds to extend the railway line from Galway Street to the rail station site the ARC purchased on Onehunga Mall, a distance of about 300 metres.

Back in 2007, Ontrack (now KiwiRail) considered that there were enough funds to rehabilitate the line as far as the waterfront boundary with the port of Onehunga.  Since then, additional costs have apparently arisen due to the need to allow room for overhead electrical wires below the Neilson St overbridge.

Now other options are being considered, with KiwiRail recommending a “temporary” station on Prince Street, just short of Galway Street.

Other Onehunga line station locations are yet to be confirmed.

The Campaign for Better Transport is extremely disappointed with this outcome. Funding for the line was obtained just over two years ago, and while the track work is mostly complete, it seems that the ARC, ARTA and Ontrack are a long way away from the development of the stations and the implementation of actual passenger services.

For Onehunga rail to be a success, there needs to be very strong integration with bus services from Mangere and elsewhere around Onehunga. The ARC’s current site seems ideal for this with sufficient space for bus or “kiss and ride” transfers.

Additionally, ARTA have announced that services will not run direct to Britomart, for reasons that have not been specified.  Instead Britomart bound passengers will be forced to transfer at Newmarket.  I can’t see this working well.  This fails to capitilise on the primary benefit of Onehunga services interleaving with services on the main trunk line.

I’ll post again on this once I find out more.