David Chaston crunches the numbers on the Auckland transport system and finds rail will be a net burden - forever

David

I see the only reason you love buses is that you use them but they suffer from the same delusion, They are marketed as a green solution but are actually a eighteenth century social service. Why should they be subsidised? because they are cost effective transport..clearly not..because they are energy efficient..no, they are simply a stopgap which extends BAU for a little longer, whilst auckland has a density less than LA they will never be effective and in a modern city there would be better solutions.

Its nice to see someone call trains for what they are though a 17th century invention embedded in the psyche of many a boy

Neven

I agree on new trains, i simply cant see them adding up....and as for light rail at $4500 a metre installed, uh no....madness, not when we can do trolley buses for a fraction of the cost.

Though bare in mind the scenario I often quote, fossil fuel price and even scarcity...I honestly think we'll see rationing....

regards

Problem with rail is that if you are living away from the nearest station you still have to get there by bus, drive, walk.. For Auckland rail loop in particular, it would be better to limit the traffic flows into the CBD and then run bus (or trams) shuttle system, like many Europeans city and Melbourne.  

Also, hardly any rail systems that make a good profit! most are relying on govt subsidies.

We have to ask David the question:

There has been a lot of discussion, here, for a long time, about energy-availabiity, and the impact which depletion would have on (a) finance, (b) doing stuff like travel (c) infrastructure-material availability (d) future work habits.

None of which were mentioned, apart from a glancing "assuming this system has a practical life of 50 years"

Yet "productivity improvement to the Auckland economy" is the presumed - and ultimately impossible - goal.

Actually, the bitumen-replacement question raises it's ugly head in a 50-year scenario, as does the fuel used, as does the carbon-sequestration of concrete. Steel-on-steel will always be the most efficient land transport, diesel-electric ditto, but even it needs ballast, sleepers, track, culverts, tunnels and bridges. What it 'costs' will get lost in the coming melee - it's what you have, whether you can run/maintain it, and if it's still going to be relevant, are the questions.

David Chaston

I got 5 questions for you

When was the last time you took the following commute trips exitting the city at 5:00 pm

• - Train travel City to Ranui
• - Train travel City to Pukekohe
• - Road trip via Southern Motorway
• - Road trip via North Western Motorway
• - Road trip via Harbour Bridge to Devonport

Be honest now

The nail just got hammered!...the real question David could have asked..."why are we still insisting on bringing all the little peasants together to indoctrinate with the lastest mush...why in the 21st century, are they not learning from home?"

That would take how many heaps off the Auckland roads..and free up how much land currently built over with 19th century skool piles...freed up for housing and parkland...

Thems what fails to get passed the 'can you read this?' stage, would be dragged off to high rise skools.

If you treat buses like you do trains, buses can become a solution almost as good as trains.  If Auckland Transport made the following changes to the major bus routes (there are probably say 20 of them) then I think they would at least postpone the requirement for the city loop:

1) Have proper dedicated bus lanes operating a minimum of 6AM to 8PM 7 days

2) Use bendy buses which can carry almost twice as many people per bus

3) Remove 2/3 of bus stops - trains don't have stops every few metres which is why they get from A-B so much quicker

4) Get rid of cash fares, you must either use a HOP card or pre purchase a cash fare at a machine at bus stop or at the local dairy

5) Use an honesty system (with regular inspections) so you don't need to have everyone queue up to tag on beside the driver. Big double doors open up on side of bus so many people can get in or out at once,

6) Change the routes to make them more direct

7) Change the payment system so the bus users get the same subsidy as train users, making buses much cheaper than trains

8) Look at over passes or under passes at very busy intersections

9) Look at electrifying the main bus routes - either through overhead wires or at least hybrid buses

Changes 1-7 really shouldn't cost much at all. Change 1 is the main change; it hasn't been done because business owners have complained about the car parks in front of their shops being changed into bus lanes (even though the council has offered to replace them with parks in side streets). Spending billions of dollars on trains just to keep a handful of car parks seems absurd.

In terms of the business case for rail, think of it this way - how many cities that have good rail would give it up for a few billion dollars? Not many I would think!! 

Buses and trains are so out of date...the in way is the electric powered sidewalk...just step on and enjoy the breeze.

Careful, DC, you're talking sense.  Folks will Take Notice.

The issue with rail is also very basic (despite the esteemed PDK's notes re steel on steel efficiency from an energy POV).

It is simply that it cannot deviate from the tracks.  (Unless it has a wish to feature on 'NZ's Worst Drivers')

Whereas busses, cars, tradesperson's vehicles etc frequently need to go where the Tracks are Not.  Or so I'm reliably informed. 

Rail started out from the plateways laid between e.g. quarries and canals - a production point or a factory point, and transport.  They are still stuck in that mode.

The purest current example of that in NZ is the long haul from West Coast mines above Westport, all the way to Lyttelton for export of coking coal for steelmaking.

Do railways work for a multi-villaged city, with a casualised/part-time workforce, with Saturday sport for kids, surfing at beaches (where there is a noticeable absence of railways), etc etc?  Not well, except as part of park-and-ride or hub-and-spoke.  But that implies a degree of joined-up thinking that tends to elude the Transport elite.

A good article....

Heres a simple analogy from a fairy tale

"The Emperor's ministers(read councillors) cannot see the clothing themselves, but pretend that they can for fear of appearing unfit for their positions and the Emperor (read : Len Brown)  does the same."

A child then says " the Emperor has no clothes "

Thats an extract from a synopsis of the 1837 fairytale by Hans Christian Anderson the EMPERORS NEW CLOTHES

Its analogous  that David Chaston has just pointed to out  the Auckland Council and Len Brown   that the " The Emperor has no clothes "

Its time to move on from this nonsense about a rail loop , and sort out Aucklands road chaos before it starts to negatively affect our economy and productivity

Its time to recognise that trains are archaic monsters , neither efficient , nor at todays cost structures , viable.

And Len Brown must go!

I've said it before and I'll say it again.  In my travels around the world there were two kinds of large city: those that had proper rail and those that didn't.  We had another term for it: cities without good rail 'sucked' and those that had it didn't.

David's missing one big cost - that of peoples' time.  In a city with good rail, there is no faster way to get around.  You CAN'T sort out roads - they will never be good enough - just ask anyone in L.A.

As the city grows, something must be done.  It's expensive, but unless some new technology turns up it's the best option there is.  Perhaps people should have a good think about why rail is so expensive and innovate to reduce the cost.

I live in Tititrangi and the buses here are a real problem for the following reasons:

1) If you want to get to the CBD you have to catch a bus to New Lynn first, then stand around waiting for another bus or train.

2) I have never seen any more than 2 people on any one of these buses, they are normally empty.  They are painted all green and contain text stating what a green option they are.  Well they're not very bloody green if they are chugging around the hills here with virtually no one using them.

3) The roads around here just can't accommodate them.  They can't get around the corners without taking up both lanes, forcing cars to the side of the road!  If buses must be used in this area, they need to be half the size.  In fact given no one uses them, a 4 door car would do.

4) They are easily the noisiest thing in this area.  They start at around 6am and you can hear them straining up the hills, engine and full revs.

5) They put out heaps of diesel fumes.  This is again because of the hills and again is not at all green.  Makes it really unpleasant if you are walking or riding in the area.

David I am not sure if rail is economic or not but your article doesn't tell us. You are just comparing average costs of buses versus trains and that doesn't give the complete picture.

Roads are public goods in the economic sense (look it up). More than one user can use it at time. The more users you have the easier it is to repay the initial investment of building the road. The problem is that if demand grows too much then you reach a congestion point where each additional user lowers the value to all other users by causing delays etc. At this point you need to invest in a bigger road, or vehicles that carry more passengers i.e. buses or an alternative system like railways.

Obviously you will choose the most cost effective transport system first and as that reaches capacity then the next and so on. So comparing the average costs of the first generation public investment, -roads for private car transport with 2nd and 3rd generation investments in buses and train is not really valid.

What you need to look at is what is the next transport system we should add to our transport system now that we have reached capacity with our existing system.

Please add the huge costs of the free Park & Ride facilites at multiple stations to the costs of the train and buses plus the very expensive busways.

Motor vehicles win every time !

Trains !   Dont forget the new trains drama in Wgtn -  costing an absolute fortune,when they arrived, the geniuses  that puchased them didnt allow for the fact that they used heaps more voltage then old ones so a whole lot of extra power substations had to be built.The Johnsonville tracks are so steep and tight curved that the new trains emit a horrible wail from their wheels which has got the local residents so uptight they have regular Train Meetings to plead with the experts for a decent nights sleep.

Using cost benefit analysis to determine what services should exist within a city can be very limiting.

Imagine if cost benefit analysis was done before installing water and sewer systems in a city - they would probably find it cheaper to drink bottled water and user port-a-loo's. 

Society would not exist as it does today if everything was costed and user pays. Luckily the generations before us had more sense!

The simple fact is that when a million more people move to Auckland and there is no other option but to use the already at capacity roads, it just isn't going to work, and no amount of cost benefit analysis will change that.

You forgot to require the capital cost for the land needed for cars (roads plus parking). Cars must use around 90% of the roads. The capital cost of this must be at least $10bn a year.

Lets face it , we would sooner give up Rugby , than our cars . We are never going to get everyone in Auckland  into trains and busses , and the Unitary Plan fails to recognise these hard realities

Simply , the whole of Len Browns Unitary plan is a joke . Its got more holes than a kitchen sieve .

I have read the Unitary plan document  cursorly , its Glossy , its vague , full of flowery language,   has plenty of nice pictures of families on the beach and farmers on quad bikes , and  sprinkled with nice- to have stuff , but most  importantly  thin on hard  details

The rail loop is for a tiny % of the city's residents , leaving out massive areas such as the North Shore and the outer West. Its not economically viable and wont pay for itself .... ever.  

No cognisance is taken of the fact that most Kiwi's( me included )   are in favour of more busses ,thats because  we want fewer cars on the road. I wont use the bus however , I want everyone else to use the busses so there is less congestion .   

The Unitary Plan is all  for densification, doubling the population in some suburbs  , but makes no mention of the need to enlarge the existing schools .

It also makes no mention of the fact that the drainagle and sewer systems in the older suburbs wont cope and will need to be re-built .

And the roads in those suburbs to be densified already cannot cope

It is certainly dense enough, and the population is getting denser every single day from what I observe

I'm going to guess that the subsidy figures given to DC for Rail included amortization costs based on revaluations of land and tracking that has been in place and paid for, for over 100 years. And I'll guess further, the Bus costs do not include any share of the roading costs the buses use and run on.

Road congestion pricing should be the next incremental investment.

Until we are using the existing infrastructure at near capacity there is no need for massive investment in rail of a highy debatable value.

Incremental bus services with their point to point operations and flexible routing should be next. We have a long way to go in exploiting incremental capacity in busses long before new train investment is undertaken.

The key is too make the bus trip as comfortable as a car, AND more relaxing, experientially richer and much much cheaper than driving. Who wouldn't want to get driven to work as they drink coffee, munch on a pastry and watch youtube on their tablet? What a life! And it costs bugger all.

(We should also remember that subsidised public transport is regularly - although infrequently - held hostage by unions and politicians. When we are hooked into them, the more frequent the hostage-taking. Sydney and Melbourne are the local poster-examples.)

Who captured Richard Branson's Virgin Rail?  - was it not him capturing the taxpayers?

Read these three Guardian articles in succession - a great effort by the jounalist.

The First - I once called Richard Branson a carpetbagger. A new report reveals that I was correct to say he built his business empire with millions from the taxpayers – only it's worse than I thought

The Second  - Chakrabortty claims "the only way Branson and the vast majority of train barons make their profits is through handouts from the taxpayer". This misrepresents why subsidies were paid in the early years of the west coast franchise, when it was heavily loss-making and costing the taxpayer a fortune. The subsidies were calculated by government to cover losses in those early years and ensure a regular service could be maintained while the track was repaired and before we could start turning around the franchise.

The Third - Richard Branson didn't like my column about his rail company – but he can't deny that taxpayers are piling up debts to subsidise his profits - The rich are different from you and me: they hire PR advisers. As night follows day, any criticism of Richard Branson will be met with a fierce counterblast from his troops.

David,

Very good article, thanks,

Have personally liked the idea of a good train system in Auckland, primarily on the basis that the status quo transport system is often clogged, and the thought of adding a million people to it is not a nice thought, without something relatively radical in transport arrangements. And then we are all informed to some extent by our experiences in other cities, a number of the more successful of which do have train systems. Is this cultural cringe, or just looking for a solution; it doesn't really matter, but I don't think its cringe. Separately I don't think Southern Motorway snarl ups are all school children transport.

Neverthelss the operating costs you've uncovered are considerably higher than I would have thought- I always imagined rail as a high capital cost, low operating cost model. And while I doubt you are advocating getting rid of the rail we do have, any significant new developments would really need to show how they could be run with significantly lower operating costs, or we will need to manage with buses and cars.

There are so many errors and misunderstandings in this article it isn't funny. I won't address all of them but here are some.

1. There are a number of different bus companies in Auckland and the routes that they each run have different financial results. Some routes are actually profitable while others aren't so the mix of these that each company has will determine how much subsidy they need. Overall farebox recovery (the amount collected from passengers vs the amount it costs to run the system) for buses is around the 50% mark.

2. Yes rail farebox recovery is currently very low at around 27% however there are a couple of things that are important to understand. Rail trips are on average something like three times longer than bus trips so the subsidy per passenger kilometre is actually not that different from buses. Our current trains are clapped out pieces of crap that cost a huge amount of money to run. This is one of the key reasons for electrification. Among other benefits, electric trains are considerably cheaper to run (both in service and with maintenance), so much that with the same amount of funding we will be able to run a lot more services and with more capacity. Along with other benefits like improved reliability it will drive a lot of patronage growth which will bring up the farebox recovery to around bus levels.

It’s worth noting that forecasts on the impact of rail projects has tended to underestimate what actually happens, in some cases dramatically. As an example, when the business case for Britomart was done in 2001 they estimated that by 2011 there would be 18,000 people a day using the station and that by 2021 there would be almost 22,000 per day using it. In 2011 the actual number was over 25,000

3. Rail may be a 19^th century but so are cars. The first steam train was made in 1811 while the first car was considered to have been built in 1886. Not that it really means anything anyway. Modern trains, cars and buses are nothing like even what existed a century or more ago and many are high tech pieces of kit.

4. Your capital costs for the rail network incorrect by quite a wide margin (lower than what they actually are). Electrification which includes the signalling, level crossing upgrades and a heap of other things is costing about $500m while new trains and the wiri depot are costing roughly another $600m but importantly the cost of these are included in the operational costs (like what happens with buses)

5. Your costs for the roading network are vastly wrong and you have cherry picked just a couple of major ones (and missed out a couple e.g. the CMJ upgrades).Further the NZTA only pay in full for state highway projects, for local roads at least half of the funding is also from ratepayers. Figures I have from the NZTA show that over the last decade, $6.9 billion has been spent on building and maintaining roads in Auckland which is made up of $4.5b on new/upgraded roads and $2.4b on maintenance, operations and renewals.

6. Your figures for how much Aucklanders pay in road taxes is wrong. Road taxes including petrol, RUC and registrations go in to the National Land Transport Fund (NLTF). Annual NLTF revenues are around $3b and Auckland contributes ~1/3^rd of that so about $1b.

7. While rail is expensive, the projects that are happening are working to make it more efficient and therefore cost less in the long run (which is why it ended up cheaper to electrify than buy new diesel trains). At the same time the improvements will drive more patronage and so farebox recovery will be being improved from both angles. We also have a bus system that in many ways competes with the rail network by unnecessarily duplicating it resulting in an inefficient use of resources. This is currently in the process of being address as Auckland Transport have recently launched a plan to overall the bus network across the entire region.

Lastly it is worth considering the impact rail currently (and in future) makes on the regions transport system. At the height of the morning peak, around 4000 people arrive at Britomart (and more at other stations). That is the equivalent of around 80 buses. That number is only expected to increase and those extra buses on the road would cause even more congestion. It is also more people than enter the CBD from the motorways at Nelson St.

Can anyone actually come up with anything that can transport an extra million aucklanders other than rail? Can we realistically put an extra million people on the roads? Where are these new roads going to go? Underground? How many more lanes can we add to the motorway? Can we put a million more people in buses? Where will cars go when the roads are full of buses?

JJones - wrong question, I respectfully suggest. A lot of the green camp ask the same kind of stuff. The real question is: What will still be being done in a CBD, given fossil fuel constraints and given where communication is going? If you can 3d/hologram committee skype, why not live and work somewhere else? The only historical reason was proximity for paper-sending and verbal interfacing - both reasons are history.

That leaves a few cafes, a brothel or two and a sticky-uppy thing making holes in the sky.

We are at 'Peak Infrastructure' now, and the older stuff is falling apart:

http://www.npr.org/2012/08/31/160391678/time-to-overhaul-americas-aging-bridges

Good luck with that extra 'million' - just remember that it's number-crunchers projecting from their reariview mirrors. My guess is that by 2030, a lot will be being re-absorbed in agriculture. They just won't be there.

I think everyone can agree that busy trains, buses and cars all work and are efficient.  If the crowding is enough, even trains are cost-effective.

Since we can't control the costs of rail, the thing to control is density.  That can be done with carrot or stick.  

Right now the current NZ model is stick, with local councils making new construction expensive, driving up the price of real estate to about 3 times the price of the US for inferior housing stock. Its a travesty.

If we use a carrot instead, we could lower the price of housing *and* add those neat-o trains we love so much.  If the council invests say 300 million in building a row of 30 story luxury apartment buildings, and offers a %50 subsidy on their price, they will get filled overnight.  Then build a rail network connecting the buiildings to the CBD.

Presto, instant density and instantly profitable rail network.  It would also greatly improve the city with high density services and cosmopolitan living, instead of the car culture big box wasteland that most of Auckland is becoming.

"A U-turn? No, it's a loop";

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/8843727/Govt-Auckland-rail-loop-u-turn

Very cute.

Here is a success story - The Britomart Transport Centre

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britomart_Transport_Centre

By spending $440 million on the existing rail system and bringing the rail terminus into the CBD from its previous location three kms away, the metro rail system realised the real potential of the rail network

An important consideration for expenditure on transport infrastructure is to enable commuters to exit the city easily.

The planned city tunnel-loop-extension at a cost of $2 billion will achieve two things. It is an increment to the existing system, and more importantly it will complete the project and allow it to realise its full potential to move people in and around and out of the city quickly.

By way of comparison, the Waterview Tunnel project, a "road of national significance" with a projected cost of $2 billion will not deliver any benefits to the city. The bottlenecks at the city boundary will remain

In re-opening the Onehunga Line, the next project should be to extend the line out to Mangere Airport. Why stop at Onehunga? It's just a stones throw to the Airport. Auckland has a predisposition to plan for yesterday. The Waterview Tunnel project is designed to speed up CBD-Airport commute times via the western link.

Govt confirms plan to back Auckland's city rail link - have fun paying that off for the next decade