The Campaign For Better Transport

The Central Connector is a critical public transport project providing continuous bus lanes between Britomart and Newmarket. According to Auckland City Council, the project has the following benefits:

The Central Connector forms a crucial part of Auckland’s expanding transport network, linking into the Northern Busway at Britomart and connecting future bus improvement projects on Great South, Manukau and Remuera roads. It will also complement the rail network by providing a travel option to Britomart and Newmarket stations.Work to strengthen and future-proof Grafton Bridge is also nearing completion. The bridge will be able to accommodate heavier low-emission buses and other forms of passenger transport such as light rail in the future.

One crucial aspect of the project has been the strengthening of Grafton Bridge, with the plan to eventually make the bridge bus only from 7am to 7pm on weekdays. The bridge is only two lanes wide, and can only ever be two lanes wide. Therefore, before it was closed for maintenance last year it got very congested at peak hour. Redirecting a lot of buses over Grafton Bridge – as proposed by the Central Connector – would only add to this congestion if other vehicles continued to be allowed to cross the bridge, and undo many of the benefits that the rest of the Central Connector. So, to ensure that the money spent on the Central Connector actually achieves its stated purpose. Council spell this out quite clearly:

Upon completion, the bridge will be able to withstand a one in one-thousand year earthquake and accommodate up to 1200 buses every weekday. Accommodating more buses on the bridge is integral to maximising the benefits of the Central Connector busway and making inner city bus travel faster and more reliable. The bridge will be able to act as an important transport link between Grafton and the CBD, while retaining its heritage glory.

So far, so good. However, it seems as though the road loving politicians that actually make up the Auckland City Council don’t like the idea of not being able to drive across Grafton Bridge whenever they please, and have decided to waste ratepayers’ money and put the whole purpose of the Central Connector at risk, by undertaking further stakeholder and community consultation into whether cars should be banned from the bridge during these hours or not.

My feedback: don’t be idiots. Obviously the bridge has to be buses only from 7am-7pm. Use Wellesley Street bridge like you’ve been doing for the past few months and let’s get on with it. Somewhat fortunately, ARTA’s funding contribution to the project is based on the original proposal – so I hope their feedback goes something along the lines of “it’s buses only from 7am-7pm or you can find somewhere else to get the $14 million we’re contributing!”

Brian Rudman at the Herald:

Each time I write in praise of public transport, I end up having to eat my words. On Monday I was lauding the increased patronage figures in Auckland but by 8.15 on Wednesday night, I didn’t care whether I ever saw another commuter bus in my life. Mainly because, for the past hour, I hadn’t…

The electronic helper kept reassuring me 005 was DLY until just before 7.30 when it just disappeared. The next Link was now 28 minutes away – so much for the 15-minute gap – and the rain had taken a break, so I started walking, muttering like a crazy man about lying real-time indicator boards.

This has been my experience of late with this service as well.  I actually went as far as phoning the Maxx complaint number – 3666 400, but the operator convinced me that I had merely just missed my bus. There is nothing, I repeat nothing, more frustrating than waiting at a bus stop for a bus that never turns up.

It will be great if ARTA could respond to 1) why there was a delay and 2) what the plan is for the dodgy indicator boards.

Let’s just say Auckland had $2.2 billion to spend on transportation. This money is from a crown grant rather than from petrol taxes, so there’s no real bias from the school of thought that petrol tax money should be spent on roads. Therefore, all different types of transport projects could be considered equal – ie. rail versus roads.

Now let’s look at two ways in which that money could be spent:

The first option is on a cheap and nasty Waterview Connection. This open cut, fully surface level option is projected to cost almost exactly $2.2 billion. This is a total of $1.456 billion for construction costs, $290 million for SH16 upgrades and $450 million for financing costs. This option will involve the demolition of around 500 houses, the loss of a huge amount of open space in a part of Auckland that is considered to already be short of open space. Because of its high social and environmental costs, its cost-benefit ratio may be below 1. Furthermore, 73% of the benefits it will supposedly bring are  internationally criticised ‘time-savings benefits’, which don’t actually seem to exist in the longer-term. So, to conclude, for this option we get a 4.5 km motorway driven through a suburb, a huge loss of open space and all justified on fairly dodgy time savings benefits that may not even exist.

The second option, which also costs $2.2 billion, would involve a two track railway line being built from Avondale to Manukau City via Onehunga and the airport. This option would firstly involve completing the Avondale-Southdown railway line – that has been designated since the 1940s. Because of its long-running designation no houses would have to be demolished to make way for the line. Completing the Avondale-Southdown railway line would open up rail access from West Auckland to the airport and south, it would offer freight trains an alternative route through Auckland to the congested Newmarket junction, thereby over time allowing higher frequencies of passenger trains to be operated. This part of the project would cost $729 million and include four train stations – for interchanges with high frequency bus services to the city along Manukau, Dominion and Sandringham Roads.

The rail option would also involve linking the airport to the city by rail – with trains able to travel from Britomart to Onehunga, then over the Mangere Bridge to the airport. Furthermore, it would also link with the existing main trunk railway line near Manukau City. This finally creates a high quality public transport link from the city to the airport, creates an alternative  rail link between Manukau and Britomart, increasing the capacity of the Otahuhu-Wiri section of the Southern Line. It makes running inter-city trains to Britomart a possibility, and they could even go via the airport for extra connectivity.

They both cost $2.2 billion.  They both compete for the same money, a crown grant. I wonder which has the most long-term benefit for Auckland? I wonder which will be built?

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.

Our submission on ARTA’s Regional Land Transport Programme and the Auckland Transport Plan.

Introduction

The Campaign for Better Transport (CBT) welcomes the opportunity to submit on the Draft 2009/10 RLTP and 11/12 Auckland Regional Land Transport Programme and the Auckland Transport Plan.  Consultation with groups such as ours and wider transport stakeholders is vital to achieving better transport outcomes for Auckland.

The Campaign for Better Transport is an incorporated society with the declared objective of being advocates of public transport, cycling, walking and other alternatives to the private car. Membership consists of 50 paid up members, with a mailing list of over 3,000 at present.

The Campaign for Better Transport is a voluntary group and is politically independent.

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