The Campaign For Better Transport

There was a good turn out at the ARTA Onehunga Line Open Evening last week from both the public and CBT members.  Whilst ARTA did not make a presentation as such, information was displayed regarding railway station and level crossing locations, and ARTA spokespeople were available for questioning.  CBT was also able to pass on our feedback to ARTA regarding the points we felt were necessary to ensure success of the Onehunga line. 

Amongst the information given below in this article in the Herald, Sharon Hunter also had the following to say (although she did also say nothing is set in concrete):

• Onehunga line services will almost certainly terminate at Britomart (as opposed to Newmarket, as has been feared).
• ARTA will be working with Dress-Smart to display train times and information in the shopping mall, much like what has been done at Sylvia Park.
• Feeder buses from Mangere are being considered
• The main bus station in Onehunga will stay were it is.  ARTA will be looking at re-routing buses past the Onehunga railway station.
• ARTA acknowledged that the suggestion of one month’s free travel trial period at the commencement of the service is a nice one, but that it is perhaps unlikely to happen.
• There may be a Park and Ride service offered at the old ITM site.
• Completion of the project is timed for the end of the first quarter of 2010.

As the Herald reports, unfortunately at the moment only hourly services are being considered for off-peak and weekend travel.

Diggers will start earthworks in the next two weeks for a second Penrose railway station, needed to re-open the Onehunga branch line to passenger trains.

That follows Auckland Regional Transport Authority and KiwiRail confirmation of sites for the three main stations for the line, which is to re-open in the first half of next year.

Read the rest of this entry »

Onehunga Line – Campaign for Better Transport feedback

In 2006 the Campaign for Better Transport (CBT) campaigned hard to reopen the dormant branch railway line between Onehunga and Penrose once again to passenger services. Our 8,000 strong petition and support from the Auckland Regional Council saw the Government finally give the green light for funding on the 13 March 2007.

The CBT considers that there are a number of important steps that need to be taken to ensure that the Onehunga Line is a success. These are outlined below, and detailed individually throughout this feedback:1. Services must terminate at Britomart, not Newmarket.
2. Half-hourly frequencies off-peak and at weekends are essential.
3. ARTA to work with Dress-Smart Onehunga and the Onehunga Business Association to encourage shoppers to use the train.
4. One month free travel trial period.
5. Re-routing buses to feed into the train station for people travelling from Mangere area into the city. Read the rest of this entry »

“Very happily”, ARTA have announced an Open Evening to discuss the rapidly approaching reopening of the Onehunga branch line. Anyone interested is invited to come along:

• Tuesday 18^th August 6:30 – 8.00pm
• Onehunga Community Centre
• Beeson / Henderson Room
• 83 Church Street, Onehunga

This is your chance to find out where the stations will be and exactly when they are due to open! Download the flyer here and stick one up at work!

It has been an interesting year so far for Auckland’s public transport. Probably the biggest story of the year so far was the cancellation of the Regional Petrol Tax back in March, which put most of the public transport improvements that we can expect in the next few years, into doubt.

In the months since then it seems like everything has been about “cleaning up the mess” that Steven Joyce created in March through his transport announcements. Fortunately, most of the mess has now been cleaned up: with a decision on integrated ticketing being made last week, NZTA coming to the party and funding upgrades to Onehunga and New Lynn, the Manukau rail link going ahead, and funding for the below track part of electrification being outlined in the May budget. All we are really waiting for now is NZTA to confirm that they will provide the necessary funding subsidy for integrated ticketing (to be finalised in September I think) and for the funding of Auckland’s electric trains to be announced. Goodness knows when that will happen, although rumours suggest it might be this week.

So, we’re almost back to where we were a few months ago then. The question I wish to ask is “where to next?” It seems like the government is convinced that the money they’re going to spend on finishing ProjectDART (upgrades to the rail system  that have been ongoing for the last few years) and electrification, that’s it. Auckland’s transport planning documents suggest that this is the case as well, with funding for public transport infrastructure after electrification is complete almost disappearing. As a public transport advocate I think it’s important for me to state that I believe we’re only at the beginning of this process to truly create a top-class public transport system for Auckland. Electrification and ProjectDART cannot be seen as endpoints, but rather the first step of a process. We must develop a vision for how we want Auckland’s public transport system to look like in 30-40 years time, and work out how we’re going to get there. With higher fuel prices a certainty in the future, combined with the need to reduce CO2 emissions from our transport sector, I think that it’s critical that we back up the “talk” of quantum shifts with a real plan. And we fix our broken funding system to ensure that the money’s available to do it.

Unfortunately, I doubt the current government has the vision or desire to do anything more than the bare minimum when it comes to public transport. Maybe a future Super-City Council will be just what we need to push the need for better public transport?

It seems as though the funding issues for the Onehunga Line, that resulted from the removal of the regional petrol tax, have been resolved. This follows on from a post I made a couple of weeks ago that related to progress being made between the ARC and NZTA to provide the necessary extra funding. It also appears as though there will be three stations along the Onehunga Branch: one at Onehunga, one at Te Papapa (quite near Mays Road) and one near Mt Smart stadium.

I have included a map of where I think the stations will be located. I’m not 100% sure of the location of the Te Papapa station and the Mt Smart station, but they would certainly not be too far from where I’ve shown them:

The main benefit of the Mt Smart station seems likely to be for events, and it may well turn out that this is and events only station. There isn’t much residential development within easy walking distance of the Mt Smart station – although I guess there is potential for people who live elsewhere on the rail network but work near the station to catch the train. I suspect that wouldn’t be particularly many people though.

I have a couple of hopes for this line, apart from the obvious one that it’s reasonably popular. My first hope is that it gets decent service frequencies. There aren’t that many available peak hour slots into Britomart left (due to the lack of a CBD rail loop) so I am not sure whether, at peak hour, a huge number of trains will be able to be run from Onehunga into Britomart. I think that it’s most likely that trains which currently terminate at Otahuhu will be re-routed to instead terminate at Onehunga. Off-peak I hope that the service frequencies aren’t cut back too much either – perhaps a train every 30 minutes during weekdays and at weekends would be great. And that links in with my second hope: that the service runs on Saturdays AND Sundays, and at reasonable frequencies on both those days. The reason I hope this is because I actually think it could be damn popular. The big white blob just above the Onehunga station is DessSmart Onehunga: an extremely popular shopping centre with very limited carparking. As Sylvia Park has shown, people are very eager and willing to catch trains to shopping malls at the weekend, and I imagine that Onehunga will continue that trend – if a decent weekend service is provided. And finally, clearly the Onehunga services must start and end at Britomart. That’s a bit of a no-brainer.

So the obvious question is “when will it open?” Well, according to ARTA: “services are expected to begin on the Onehunga line early next year.” So not too far away.

There’s an interesting article in yesterday’s Herald about the progress of sorting out the mess Steven Joyce left Auckland’s public transport in when he cancelled the Regional Fuel Tax a couple of months back. There’s some good news, some frustrating news and some potentially good news.

On the positive side, “Money has been assured for new Auckland railway stations.” These include Newmarket, New Lynn, Manukau, Onehunga, Grafton and Avondale – some of which are already under construction (thereby making the need to sort out funding for their completion rather urgent.) The money looks like it will come from a variety of places, including higher ARC rates, an increased subsidy from NZTA and – here’s the killer – cutting back on the costs of Auckland’s integrated ticketing project.

I really don’t know why the government is so against integrated ticketing for Auckland’s public transport. Maybe they realise that simplifying the ticketing in Auckland, and creating something as up-to-date as the smart-card systems we see in London (Oyster Card) and Hong Kong (Octopus Card) will lead to a surge in patronage on Auckland’s public transport system, thereby undermining their view of public transport as something only for the poor and carless. Or maybe they’re being pressurised by Infratil (the owners of most of Auckland’s bus service providers) into delaying a project that Infratil doesn’t like. Either way, it’s pretty depressing to hear that funding has been cut to Auckland’s public transport to the extent that the ARC has had: “to try to scale back the integrated ticketing project, which previously carried a capital cost of about $80 million, including a 60 per cent Government subsidy. Mr Lee said the council would try to find ways of halving that cost.”

These most recent developments mean that the best Auckland can really hope for is to get our version of Wellington’s Snapper Card. Now this is a great outcome for Infratil – as they own Snapper Card – but is no guarantee that this smart-card system will be equally available for all public transport operators in the Auckland Region. Therefore, there seems to be no guarantee that the ticketing system will, in fact, be integrated. When this lack of money for integrated ticketing is coupled with the Ministry of Transport’s decision to review the Public Transport Management Act (the very piece of legislation that gives ARTA the power to impose integrated ticketing), it’s hard not to be suspicious that this critical step in the future of Auckland’s public transport is going to be delayed at best, or possibly even cancelled.

There is a light on the horizon about Auckland’s electric trains though – with Steven Joyce saying “he would report to the cabinet next month on options for buying an electric fleet and that, despite Mr Lee’s nervousness, “we remain committed to electrification”. I can understand Mike Lee (head of the ARC) being nervous though, and I’ll believe that we’re getting electric trains when I see the contract signed.

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.