Mind the Gaps in Auckland Transport Planning

It is tempting to attribute blame for the very public disagreement that has erupted between Central Government and Auckland Council about what the economic benefits of the proposed CBD rail loop project might be. However I think it more productive to examine Auckland’s crisis in transport and land use planning, and to consider how it might be fixed.

The most effective transport planning in Auckland has been for its motorway network which is still being built fifty years after being committed to paper. Auckland’s State Highway routes were protected by designations decades ago and ever since Transit New Zealand and its predecessors have employed buildings full of planners and consultants to transform these paper designations into motorways on the ground.

This dedication to planning and infrastructure delivery has never been applied to public transport systems in Auckland – with the possible exception of its much loved and lamented tram system. While there have been legislative initiatives and legacy projects aiming to improve Auckland’s public transport systems and their integration with land uses, these have been only partly successful.

Take the Northern Busway for example. The drive for this project came from Transit - Central Government’s State Highway provider – not from North Shore City Council. At the time Transit wanted consent to extend State Highway One north to Orewa. The Busway was proposed as a mitigation measure to compensate for the increase in congestion anticipated through North Shore City, over the bridge and into the city.

The Northern Busway is constructed within Transit’s State Highway corridor, entirely separate from North Shore City’s local road network. So it is no surprise that during the early years of planning North Shore City was a distant partner, only becoming committed when regional funder Infrastructure Auckland stepped up with $40 million toward the cost of stations which were to be North Shore City Council’s contribution.

North Shore City got a fantastic high capacity busway corridor plus stations at minimal cost to ratepayers. But - despite informal arrangements requiring North Shore City Council to work with Transit, Auckland City Council and Auckland Regional Council to deliver an integrated public transport system - NSCC failed to deliver its share of matching transport infrastructure at local level.

The pressure to build more park and ride facilities at busway stations is because local feeder bus services remain an unattractive option for commuters, while the absence of significant land development around busway stations is because their locations were designed to support the busway, rather than to stimulate investment. These are missed opportunities because of poor integrated planning.

My experience on this project led me – and others - to call for a regionally integrated approach to passenger transport planning and service delivery. In 2004 we got ARTA – Auckland Region Transport Authority – whose responsibilities were pretty much limited to bus and ferry services. ARTA’s involvement in rail and land use planning was only possible with the agreement of Ontrack and local councils respectively.

This poor institutional design did not prevent Waitakere City making a good fist of the New Lynn railway station which transformed New Lynn’s town centre into Auckland’s first public transport oriented development. The project was driven by a special purpose Development Agency set up by Waitakere Council after a research visit exploring success factors underlying similar rail and urban redevelopment projects in Perth.

Planners and managers there delivered a number of key messages: each project needs its own development agency with appropriate planning powers; land value uplift contributes to infrastructure funding; a high degree of community and private land owner engagement is essential; detailed and iterative planning takes time to get right and must be strongly led; it is critical to get rail freight off surburban railway networks to deliver three minute headway between trains.

We were advised that 40% of commuters using Perth’s rail services get to railway stations by bus, while 25% use park and ride facilities, and the rest either walked, biked or were dropped off. Perth’s CBD transformation involved redirecting CBD bus services to rail feeder stations – to maximise CBD commuter rail demand and to minimise the number of buses cluttering the CBD street network. A fleet of small buses are used to access destinations within the CBD.

Here in Auckland the institutions responsible for coming up with the preferred route for the CBD rail tunnel were ARTA and KiwiRail, and while Auckland City Council was consulted during this process, it did not drive it. It would be unfair to suggest that Auckland City Council went along for the ride – a bit like North Shore City Council did with the Northern Busway project – however it is my firm view that the planning for this very important project has really only just got started, if Perth’s experience and success is anything to go by..

For example, the rump of Auckland City Council now absorbed into the amalgamated Auckland Council, is preparing the Auckland CBD Master Plan. This is considering the look, feel and function of the CBD at a broad scale. (We need to think: “City Activity District” not: “Central Business District”. City planning is about much more than “Business”). Part of this City Master Plan work responds to the preferred tunnel route and will consider the economic development opportunities and potentials around proposed stations.

Like the proposed Spatial Plan, the Centre Plan is at an early stage, and both need to be integrated with the planning of the whole rail tunnel project. This task has not been made easy with transport being run out of a separate organisation whose funding is constrained by a Council struggling to cover the huge costs of becoming a Super City.

So far, I don’t think Auckland Council, or its predecessors, have done nearly enough at either the large-scale planning level or the building by building land use planning level, to have any right to demand that ratepayers or government funders should trust them to go ahead with the CBD Rail Tunnel project as it stands. A step change in rail requires a step change in integrated transport planning. Government funding support for this nationally significant planning effort is essential.

For good reason a Waterfront Development Agency was established with powers to get on with the development and planning of Auckland’s waterfront.

The CBD Rail Tunnel project is at least as important to Auckland as its waterfront, and needs integrated planning which considers land use and transport and economic development together, and an institutional framework to ensure coordinated implementation.

Smart Auckland Commuter Rail is about more than New Trains

I've already blogged about this a bit, but I need to share with you some Perth wisdom, because at ARC, especially at Chairman Lee level, there is a fixation that buying new electric trains will somehow, magically, be the silver bullet.

It's hard to find another apple to compare with Auckland. Perth comes close - because it has similar urban density (low), private car ownership (high), and a pre-existing railway system (both narrow gauge). A major difference though, is that Perth's old railway was already largely separated from the roading network. Perth's rail network partly arose from the need to drag tonnes of ore for refinement and shipment. These heavy, long trains needed to run so they did not affect road traffic. So they were built with underpassess, viaducts, bridges to run clear over road traffic. Not everywhere, but largely.

Auckland could not be more different. It's railway was always a bit hesitant and runs in a sort of co-habiting way with the roading network. You can see this most clearly at Onehunga and NewLynn where the at-grade road crossings cause more and more conflict between road traffic and train traffic.

Everybody is clear in Auckland about one thing when it comes to electrification and modernisation of Auckland's commuter rail network, and that is that it will carry between 30 and 60 million passenger trips annually. That is the sort of achievement of Perth Rail. So we might as well learn from what Perth did, what it cost, and where the money went.

A very useful power point summary of some of that experience can be seen at:
http://rtsa.com.au/assets/2008/12/the-expansion-of-the-urban-rail-system.pdf
Some useful thinking is in there about what needs to happen to get people to use modern rail in low density urban environments like Auckland. While it's not exactly apples and apples, this presentation also makes the point that the costs of the MetroRail expansion project were "19% for railcars and depots" and "70% for the Perth Mandurrah" section of railway. Then it itemises the elements of that project to include: underground stations & tunnels; freeway bridges and infrastructure; track, signalling and communications; suburban railway stations; train control system; other infrastructure.

A key idea that emerged was the need for integrated planning - where the transport planning of State highways and railways through Perth became integrated. These pics show some of that thinking on the ground.

Probably the most important point throughout that presentation - one which they really bang on about - is the need for comprehensive master-planning. The presentation ends with these concluding remarks about what is needed for success in applying rail to low density settlement:

• A proper understanding of the market
• Good preliminary planning
• The production of highly credible, persuasive Master
  Plans that define the demand and scope of work to
  sufficient detail to lock the scope in
• Followed by good project management and an
  understanding how that needs to be applied
  

In Auckland, with Chairman Lee fixated on buying trains, Ontrack rushing into rail, but land use authorities and state highway authorities prioritising cars and roads - we will certainly spend money, but risk missing the benefits from a modernised commuter rail network that more effective and long term planning can deliver. In particular we must get away from the present silo approach to rail planning. Integrated planning is about more than integrated land and transport planning - it's about integrating the planning functions and coordinating the relevant activities of all the main players.