Leah Robinson’s young sons leaped out of bed yesterday morning when offered a choice between travelling by car on congested roads or by train along Onehunga’s resurrected branch railway line.

“I told them if there’s any mucking around, we’ll go by car,” said Ms Robinson.

But that was no more than a parental ruse as Ms Robinson said she was sick of spending an hour and a half in morning traffic driving her four children in a circuit from home in Te Papapa to schools and a kindergarten in Ellerslie and Remuera.

“It’s just horrible,” she said of congestion normally at its worst around Greenlane, which has become just a nine-minute train ride from Te Papapa after the introduction of the new rail service at the weekend…

The 3km branch line between Onehunga and Penrose has cost KiwiRail $10 million and the Auckland Regional Transport Authority $3.6 million to resurrect with three stations. Auckland Regional Council also spent about $8 million to buy the site for the Onehunga station near the bottom of Onehunga Mall.

Although Saturday saw the formal re-opening of the line, the new service settled into a workaday routine yesterday. The Herald counted 19 passengers boarding the 7.45am Britomart-bound train at Onehunga, including three high-school students looking forward to halving the 45 minutes or so it used to take them to catch a bus to Newmarket.

St Peter’s College students Griegen Schwenke, Lenny Hayne and Leitham Motio’o – all aged 15 – were also pleased that their two-stage train fare of $1.70 would be less than the $1.90 on the bus.

A smaller group of 10 passengers caught the next train from Onehunga, at 8.15am, although they were joined by 10 others at Te Papapa station.

Events manager Marion Stables was disappointed more commuters had yet to change their travel habits to take advantage of the service, but was confident it would do wonders for Onehunga as its popularity grew.

Campaign for Better Transport spokesman Jon Reeves, whose organisation has worked since 2002 with Auckland Regional Council chairman Mike Lee to reintroduce trains to Onehunga, said he believed numbers would pick up and build momentum to extend the line to the airport.

Mr Lee said the airport was just nine kilometres from Onehunga compared with a distance of 14km from there to Britomart.

“I can’t see any good reason why we shouldn’t push on and extend rail across the new rail-capable [duplicated] Manukau Harbour crossing.”

Onehunga Business Association general manager Amanda Kinzett predicted an increase in patronage once a park and ride zone opens at Onehunga station on Monday with 60 vehicle spaces and CCTV security.

Geoff Blackmore captures the moment the first official train arrives at Onehunga

 While the speeches were in progress, steam loco JA 1275 from Mainline steam pulled into the station. I suspect that’s what the crowds were really waiting for!  At the tail end of the train was a diesel locomotive, which as pointed out on the forum is only 14 years younger than the steam train. (JA 1275 entered service in July 1952, DC 4536 entered service as DA 1505 in September 1966!)

JA 1275 pulls in to the station

ARC Chair Mike Lee gave a speech that summarised the long slog to get Onehunga reopened. In it he thanked the efforts of the Campaign for Better Transport, and singled out Garth Houltham as the campaign manager for our petition that achieved 8,000 signatures in the summer of 2005 / 2006.  Mike hammered home the popularity of rail and drew applause every time he mentioned rail to the airport.

Minister of Transport Steven Joyce addresses the crowd

Hon. Steven Joyce also addressed the crowd with the somewhat predictable “need to invest in all modes” speech. Didn’t explain why there is such a disproportionate crown investment in roading over public transport, though this was not a day for such nit-pickery.  I think he had to be secretly impressed by the turn out and the sheer cost effectiveness of reopening the branch line.

L to R: Cameron Pitches, ARC Chair Mike Lee, Garth Houltham, Jennifer Northover, Jon Reeves

We’ll see how the patronage goes this week!

ARC chairman Mike Lee and the Campaign for Better Transport, which raised an 8000-signature petition in 2006 to reopen the Onehunga branch railway line to passenger trains, were last week becoming increasingly nervous about a lack of progress on the site.

It’s a shame there won’t be integration with buses, but at least they’ll be handy to the station, with Onehunga’s main bus station being by the public library.

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.

The other two stations will be between Mays Rd and Captain Springs Rd in Te Papapa, and at a site off the lower end of Onehunga Mall, which the Auckland Regional Council has bought for about $8 million.

KiwiRail will build a short spur to platforms on the site, to keep the main line clear for freight trains to and from the Onehunga waterfront and airport passenger rail services.

A fourth station near Mt Smart Stadium for special-event trains remains a possibility.

The regional transport authority is considering running trains every half an hour at peak times and every hour between peaks and at weekends, although it has yet to make definite decisions on the frequency of services.

Spokeswoman Sharon Hunter said the authority would keep in mind a request from the Campaign for Better Transport for half-hour services at all times.

The campaign, which collected 8000 signatures for a petition to reopen the line, says half-hour services are needed to draw shoppers to Onehunga Mall and the nearby Dress-Smart centre and to cater for SuperGold card holders entitled to free public transport after 9am each day.

Maungakiekie Community Board chairwoman Bridget Graham said of the transport authority’s proposal for hourly off-peak services that “we have got to start somewhere”.

But she believed the resurrection of passenger trains, which stopped running to and from Onehunga in 1973 after a century of operations, would prove more popular than the transport planners envisaged.

Community interest was such that more than 100 people crammed into an Onehunga hall last week to study station location plans, and Ms Graham said she had received calls from people asking when the trains would start running as they were interested in buying homes in the area.

“It’s very good news for Onehunga,” she said of the project.

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.

Services must terminate at Britomart:

When the reopening of the Onehunga Branch Line was being planned and investigated, it was always assumed that the service would operate between Onehunga and Britomart. However, earlier this year a New Zealand Herald article suggested that it was being considered to only run the service as far as Newmarket, and for Britomart-bound passengers to have to change trains at Newmarket.

The CBT considers that this would be a very unwise move. When Britomart station first opened some train continued to terminate at what became “The Strand” station. These services were not popular at all and soon ceased to exist. There is an expectation in Auckland that all services should operate to and from Britomart. Due to the lack of integrated ticketing and poor frequencies, there is a strong negative perception of having to transfer.

If the Onehunga Branch Line is to be a success, it is considered essential that it operates between Britomart and Onehunga, not between Newmarket and Onehunga. If there are issues relating to the capacity of Britomart station, then all the more reason to push for the completion of the CBD Rail Tunnel – not undermine the effectiveness of a rail service and consign it to being a failure before it has even started.

Half-hourly frequencies off-peak and at weekends

While one of the main benefits of the Onehunga Line will be for those commuting to the city at peak hour, the CBT also considers that off-peak travel during the week, and on weekends, could also drive a lot of patronage on the line. Off-peak patronage of public transport has increased considerably in recent months, with the introduction of the “Super-Gold Card” and higher petrol prices making people consider public transport for trips like shopping. The line links together a very popular shopping mall (Dress-Smart Onehunga) with the regionally significant shopping areas of Newmarket and the city centre.

To encourage people to use the service during off-peak hours, the CBT considers that a minimum service frequency of one train every 30 minutes is essential. The Eastern Line now operates at half-hour frequencies on the weekend, and is very popular with shoppers visiting Sylvia Park. This same success story could be repeated on the Onehunga Line – but only if sufficient frequencies are provided. Hourly frequencies are just too risky for people (if they miss a train it’s a huge wait for the next one) taking journeys other than commuting to and from work.

It should be possible to operate half-hourly frequencies with only two single ADL trains – as the time from Onehunga to Britomart is less than half an hour.

ARTA to work with Dress-Smart Onehunga:

The success of Sylvia Park station has shown that people are very willing to use the train when going shopping. The Onehunga train station will be conveniently located to Dress-Smart Onehunga, a very busy shopping centre. Dress-Smart suffers from a lack of parking, which discourages shoppers and also has meant Dress-Smart needed to lease some space from the nearby church for additional parking. The provision of extra parking for Dress-Smart is likely to be difficult, if not impossible, due to the constrained site it operates on. Dress-Smart currently operates a shuttle-bus between the CBD and the mall during weekdays, partly in response to this shortage of parking spaces.

The CBT encourages ARTA to work with Dress-Smart Onehunga to look at ways in which the proximity of the Onehunga train station to the shopping centre could benefit both ARTA (through increased patronage) and Dress-Smart (through increased shoppers). Possible ways to encourage shoppers to catch the train could include excellent signage between the shopping centre and the train station (they are about a block’s walk from each other), real-time information signs inside the shopping mall letting people know when the next train is coming (which would also advertise the frequency and simplicity of catching the train to those at the mall who had driven there), special offers like free train tickets for those who spend $50 or $100 at the shopping centre (or discounts on their shopping for those who caught the train there) and joint advertising of the train link by both Dress-Smart and ARTA.

One month free travel trial period:

Public transport patronage trends in Auckland over the past year have clearly shown that while high petrol prices in winter last year got people out of their cars and onto public transport, as petrol prices have lowered again those increases in patronage levels have not disappeared. In other words, once people tried out public transport they seemed to like it and have stuck with it.

This lesson could be applied to Onehunga by strongly encouraging people to catch the new train service when it first starts – to change the behaviour of those who currently drive to work in their cars. One effective way of doing this could be to offer one month’s free travel on Onehunga Line trains. This trial month would encourage people to give the line a go and change their current travel habits. It would also be a way of ensuring high patronage from day one, and a general feeling of success about the line. Even once fares were brought in after the first month, the trends of the last year show that people who have given public transport a trial are likely to stick with it – even if the cost advantages of public transport over driving are not as significant as they were.

The CBT accepts that such a move would attract a lot of people who currently catch a bus along Manukau Road. However, the train service is going to probably reduce the patronage of that bus route in any case and is based on offering a better public transport service. If patronage on Manukau Road buses permanently declines then there will be the opportunity to redirect those resources to where they are more needed.

Re-routing buses to feed into the train station

It is likely that many people who currently live in the Mangere area are likely to want to use the train service. Unless effective feeder buses are provided, it is likely that these people will drive across the Mangere Bridge and park around the Onehunga station for the day. While some level of park and ride is acceptable, and could actually be encouraged, ensuring that people have the choice of catching a feeder bus is considered very necessary. ARTA are strongly encouraged to work with NZ Bus to provide an integrated ticket that could serve the area – similar to the “Northern Pass” integrated ticket that operates on the North Shore.

Currently, all the buses that pass through Onehunga, do so on the western side of the town centre, while the train station is on the eastern side. To encourage connections between bus and train the CBT considers that it is essential for these buses to be re-routed so they pass next to the train station.

Other measures like the provision of bike-storage lockers should also be considered.

Conclusion:

The CBT is excited to see the reopening of the Onehunga Branch Line finally happening. However, there is a concern that unless the steps outlined above are taken, the line may not prove to be as popular as is hoped for – and could be pointed to as “another public transport failure”. At a time when the promotion of public transport is coming under intense political opposition, it is considered essential for there to be strong success stories. Onehunga could be one of those, or it could be a failure. That fate largely rests on the measures outlined above.

• 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!

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?

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.

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.

• 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.