Few Auckland commuters will benefit from an "all or nothing" approach to the Central City Rail Link project....
Other large transport infrastructure projects have had to be delivered stage by stage in the Auckland Region. For example the Northern Busway project (later stages include links to West Auckland and to Silverdale), the State Highway Project (this has been in progress for forty years with latest stages being Waterview Connection and SH20), Rail electrification (later stages will include extensions to Southern and Western lines), the Harbour Bridge (Clip-ons and extended approach road access added over the years).
While it is always cheaper to build a large piece of infrastructure in one go, the fact is that budgets usually don't permit that. It is useful to note also that communities learn as infrastructure projects are incorporated into existing urban fabric. Stage by stage incorporation - incrementalism - has its benefits. Very few projects - when all the stages are built - look the same as their initial design plans.
Infrastructure is improved if feedback and experience can inform designs of later stages. In other words there are substantial benefits to be had if infrastructure can be built in a staged manner.
The whole Central City Link project - tunnels, lines, connections and stations - comes at a significant cost. Estimates vary around $3 billion for everything - including additional trains and some rail interchanges. Many other projects and capital requirements have been incorporated into Auckland Council's new Ten Year Plan. Holding rates down has pushed significant and increasing debt out to the future. (The Draft plan has almost doubled the Treasury Management debt limit from 175% of revenue, to 275% of revenue. This has enabled the Council to adopt a ten year plan which allows council to take out substantial loans, allowing debt to treble from the present level of $4.5 billion.)
This might be called intergenerational equity, but it could also be irresponsible. Council needs to cut the coat to suit the cloth. We should not be spending more than we are earning - as a city.
The Draft Long Term Plan 2012-2022 currently calls for a massive increase in Council debt - out to almost $13 billion - which will require interest payments of $800 million/annum - over 25% of Auckland Council's rates income. Thus a quarter of rates revenue will be to service bank loans.
Consider these points in debating the merits, or not, of staging the Central City Rail Link:
1) The most important part of the project is the network capacity that will be gained through connecting Britomart through to the Railway in the vicinity of Mt Eden. This capacity increase will be significantly greater if the connection at Mt Eden is in both directions. Not just West Bound. This stage - call it stage 1 of the Central City Rail Link - is the tunnel. The existence of the tunnel alone will free up Britomart (currently an end of line constraint) and significantly increase the carrying capacity of the rail services through Auckland Central Activity District. This will lead to much higher frequencies and greater carrying capacity per hour. Even if there are no stations along the tunnel. This improvement alone will allow Auckland Transport to apply necessary improvements to other feeder parts of the network whose capacity constraints will become the new bottleneck to rail service increases.
2) Once the tunnel is built and operating, the case for stations built at strategic points along that new corridor will be huge. Land owners and public alike will call for stations, and the argument for private contributions to the cost and amenity of those stations will be huge. This is the experience of station development along Hong Kong commuter rail systems. Build the tunnel infrastructure, and development will follow. That is the appropriate sequencing. The same thing happens when a State Highway is built. There are calls for interchanges and access to the new network. Auckland Council must build the network, and that will be the trigger for next stages of development. Of course future proof planning is required for the route of the tunnel, and future proofing can be built into the tunnel itself to enable/ease the subsequent construction of stations - so that normal service is maintained.
3) The Manukau Rail spur stands as a bleak reminder of what happens when what is built is a politically motivated whole project. There it was all or nothing. And it was all built - and it is still nothing in regional terms because the fundamental need to build a network was not respected. I was part of the Auckland Study visit to Perth a few years back which was organised by Waitakere City Council as part of the due diligence for the New Lynn Station. We were exposed to the advice and wisdom of a bunch of planners and urban designers. A key take home piece of advice from integrated rail and land use planners was: "Don't build spur lines. Build continuous lines and loops." Continuity is the thing to aim for. Building Auckland's Central City Link alone delivers that enormous benefit. Stations can follow.
Council is right to pursue the City Rail Link project. Auckland has been calling for it for decades. Closing the loop will bring huge efficiencies to the rail network and further justify electrification investment. But it can reduce risk to build it in stages - the tunnel being the first stage - and may be just the step the Government needs to financially support the project.
5 comments:
Sounds good Joel. Originally I was sceptical as the Harbour bridge "clip-ons later" experience was a very expensive miscalculation.
But your explanation in "1)" makes very good sense and indeed the tunnel itself is the critical part of the project.
I don't understand the short-sighted nay-sayers on the Shore who oppose CRL because "it doesn't do us Shore residents any good".
Chris Marshall
Kaipatiki Local Board
A couple of points Joel,
First it isn't a loop, trains will not go around it in circles which seems to be a common misconception with it and why it is now called the City Rail Link. They will travel around part of it then connect to another line.
We have also said that staging the tunnels should be considered providing that it doesn't add hugely to the cost. The Aotea Station is likely to have to be built anyway due to how the project will be built as that section would actually be in a cut and cover tunnel. The other two stations may be able to be built later but some money would have to be spent upfront to allow that to happen as we won't be able to afford to disrupt trains while we dig these station out. There is also another potential benefit of staging the last two stations and that is it allows for a master plan for the immediate area to be done.
http://transportblog.co.nz/2012/04/11/burning-down-the-crl/
The cost isn't $3b, the latest costs in 2012 dollars is $1.9b for the whole thing. The higher costs quoted in other places include extra trains and things like grade separation of roads. Staging the two stations other than Aotea would probably bring the cost down below $1.5b.
http://transportblog.co.nz/2012/05/22/d-day-for-the-city-rail-link/
Don't forget that the cost of the CRL pales in comparison to the Western Ring Route, When you add up all of the money spent in the last 5 or so years plus what is going to be spent in the next 5 years it will total over $3b and when you add in other works to SH1 that the NZTA now say are required the total climbs to about $4b
http://transportblog.co.nz/2012/05/07/comparing-big-transport-projects/
http://transportblog.co.nz/2012/05/25/wrr-up-to-4b-and-counting/
It is likely that any future line from the North Shore would actually go the Aotea station rather than to Britomart, here is a possible future network option.
http://transportblog.co.nz/2012/04/22/developing-the-rail-and-busway-network/
And this post shows you just what kind of capacity the CRL allows for
http://transportblog.co.nz/2012/05/04/visualising-the-crls-benefits/
ICRL is not needed. Britomart is the bottleneck as it only has two sets of tracks. Britomart needs to be upgraded to four sets of tracks and six platforms to allow efficient movement of trains in/out during the peak.
Another alternatove is to use the Britomart B platform at the junction of the East and Southern lines at peak.
Responses to Matt and Toa. Thank you Matt for those reminders. I understand your points re "loop" and "link", and have accordingly altered the post. Don't want to mislead.
Joel
It seems impossible to find the true capacity constraints pre/post CRL. In principle it would seem to make sense. But figures only seem to allow an extra 6000 people to cbd (from 27k now)?
My concern has become things like the constraints on the western line, which seems to show trains full post CRL at morningside. So the 40% who get off at Grafton/Newmarket have to go around the CRL? or we lose a std frequency.
On the CBD stations, I think there will be a few issues. Firstly the very strong trend is offices down to waterfront, and old buildings converted to apartments 80% + students who won't need to travel out of cbd.
Their growth of jobs figues are way over teh top for a NZ CBD.
So it's hard to see any real growth around the proposed stations. Aotea may have Council moving into old ASB, as they move to waterfront. And will have some Aotea centre use. But some sites are limited by heritage around there, and anything new will be apartments.
K'rd also has limited building potential - due to heritage and a poor office location - apart from Becca's hard to see any other major corporates filling a new building up there. the Telecom building needs to be filled, so would take any capacity for many years.
And on Symonds, again heritage constrained, and also Eden tce side has a good number of new apartments anyway. there could be some fringe type offices/apartments, but I wouldn't think it would pay for a station.
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