Partially because I've done my best to avoid the mess that is Symonds Street at the moment (due to roadworks for the Central Connector busway project), and partially because I just like catching trains. I do travel between home and the city, or between Avondale and the city, reasonably often as my work is split between Avondale and the stuff I do for the Historic Places Trust in the city. Switching from the bus-to-train or vice-versa has possibly saved me a bit of time, and has given me a chance to actually experience Auckland's train system. Something I haven't really done consistently until now.

In general my experiences have been pretty good. The trains have generally shown up one time, the trips have been without incident and are usually much more comfortable and relaxing than being on the bus. On one occasion in the morning the train previous to the one I had been expecting to catch was about 20 minutes late, so by the time it reached Kingsland (which was only a few minutes after I arrived) it was totally packed. As Auckland's Western Line trains are usually not nearly as crowded as those of overseas systems (or indeed, those on the Southern and Eastern Lines) it was an interesting experience. I suppose that I would have been grumpy about the train being late if I had been sitting there for 20 minutes, but I had enough time before having to be at work that it wasn't much of a problem. In the afternoon/evenings it has actually been even more useful, as Symonds Street is particularly notorious in the evening peak (even without the current roadworks). The trip from Britomart to Kingsland takes just under 20 minutes, which is longer than it really should take (due to a lot of sharp bends, steep hills and the round-about route via Newmarket) but it's still much faster than would be possible by bus. The transfer from train to bus at Kingsland is easy-peasy too, with the bus stop being just over the road - and peak hour buses coming along every couple of minutes or so. Wow, Auckland's public transport actually impressing me for once.

It will be interesting to see what happens from next week onwards, with university back. Auckland City Council seem to be all over the place about their Symonds Street upgrade, first planning a major closure of parts of Symonds Street throughout the whole weekend, and (stupidly) also Monday. Now, due to a bad weather forecast (an accurate one too I must say, listening to the rain pour down outside) this work is now delayed until later in March. As I mentioned at the start of this post, Symonds Street has been a mess for the past few months - with the construction of the Central Connector Project. With the completion of the university section now delayed until a few weeks after university starts, it is really going to be insanity trying to get through there (as I assume the lanes will still be narrowed and reduced in number). So more people catching the train from Monday onwards I assume!

Mood:  irritated

This is the email to ARTA/NZ bus that I sent off this evening: 

To Whom It May Concern:

I've been having major problems catching the 010 bus to Ponsonby in the mornings (the one scheduled to go through Mt Roskill at 8.05am). I usually catch it from either 233 or 203 Mt Albert Road. Both this morning and on Tuesday morning, this bus went straight past me and the other people waiting because it was overly full. As this bus only comes half-hourly, this was extremely inconvenient. I start work in Ponsonby at 9am most mornings, and missing this bus meant that I was about 15 minutes late. There were also other people catching this bus from Mt Albert Rd to work, and Western Springs College students who would have been catching the bus to get to school who would have ended up missing the beginning of their school day. For me, catching an earlier bus simply isn't feasible, as in order to do that, I would have to catch a bus around 7.30 and then be stranded in Ponsonby for about an hour before work starts, which is definitely not ideal. I am sure that for a lot of the other people who rely on being able to catch the bus from Mt Albert Rd at this time the situation would be similar.

From previous experience catching the 010 bus, I knew that the bus would be a great deal emptier in a couple of stops' time, after the Mount Albert Grammar students got off. It was immensely frustrating knowing that the bus would have easily had room for everyone waiting within a few minutes time. I understand that completely cramming the bus would potentially raise some safety issues, but it would only have been for a few minutes and it would have saved everyone a lot of trouble. Other possible solutions would be to use a higher capacity bus for this particular run in order to accomodate more passengers, to add an extra bus sometime between the 8.05 and the 8.25 and ensure that the information at the bus stops is updated immediately so that all potential passengers are aware of it, and to increase specialised services serving Mt Albert Grammar and Unitec along Mt Albert Rd so that students are less reliant on the 010.

For me, driving to work is not an option, so I am completely on the 8.05 010 in order to get to work. If you are not planning on implementing any solution to the problem that is leaving me stranded on Mt Albert work and costing me money for the quarter of an hours' work that I cannot do when the bus causes me to be late, then I URGENTLY need to know, so that I can find another way to get to work and not jeopardise my job by being constantly late because of your substandard services.

Incidentally, if I do need to find another way to get to work, it will probably mean swapping one bus for two and catching a bus along Sandringham Road and then transferring in the city to a Link bus in order to get to Ponsonby. Having to change to catching two buses where I should supposedly be able to get to my destination on one is a ridiculous situation and I don't think I am unreasonable in saying that I expect a lot better from Auckland's bus services.

Sincerely,
Leila Austin

 

A couple of posts ago I talked about the transport issues facing East Auckland. In particular, the lack of rail transport out there has created a part of the city that is incredibly car dependent. It also suffers from very slow bus services, and a lot of traffic congestion.

So what is the solution? ARTA have indicated the potential for a "Rapid Transit Network" line that would run on a Manukau-Flat Bush-Botany-Pakuranga-Panmure route. I think the current proposal is for this route to operate as a busway, utilising the wide median of Te Irirangi Drive for its southern portion, and then I assume a lot of property acquisition/tunnelling will be needed for the part between Botany and Panmure (ie. when the line swings to the left). I would be disappointed if this was built as a busway, unless it was obvious that the busway could be easily upgraded to a train line. There are a number of reasons for this:

1. Buses are generally less of a quality ride than trains. The Northern Busway would have been built as a train line if there had been a way of getting the trains over/under the Waitemata Harbour.
2. Buses would either have to terminate at Panmure and throw a lot of people onto potentially already overcrowded Eastern Line trains, or continue to the city via existing roads - which would pretty much negate most of the time gains that would have been achieved from spending many hundreds of millions (at least) on the busway itself.
3. Buses on a busway will inevitably travel slower than trains (80 kph v potentially 130 kph). Therefore a potential 35 minute train trip from Botany to Britomart may be 45-50 minutes as a busway, negating much of the gain over people driving.

So I would definitely recommend building it as a train line. Obviously the cost would be greater, and you would have tricky bits like how to get the train line from Manukau City to Te Irirangi Drive (probably would need a very expensive tunnel underneath the Southern Motorway). The map below shows a couple of options for the line's route.

The southern part of the Red Line is probably fairly set in concrete, except for a variety of options that would link Manukau City with Te Irirangi Drive. After Botany, the red option shows a possible option that would follow ARTA's identified RTN route "roughly". The advantage of this route would be that it's a fairly direct link between Botany an Panmure, that the Ti Rakau Drive area is proposed for widening anyway so it's possible that a rail reserve could be created as part of this process. Its disadvantages include that it runs through a largely industrial area for much of its route (the eastern half of Ti Rakau Drive) and also that much of the Howick/Highland Park area would be very poorly served by rail still. Ultimately its coverage isn't great, so therefore I don't think that's the best option.

The Blue Line option pushes the railway line further north, and therefore improves its residential catchment. A station at Cascades Road would allow for feeder buses and a park n ride to serve Howick and Highland Park much more realistically. On the down side it's probably likely to be more expensive, as the terrain through Pakuranga Heights is quite steep and would require some tunnelling. I don't necessarily think that it's the ultimate solution either.

After much discussion on the bettertransport forums a few other ideas got thrown about. The idea of linking into the existing rail system nearer to Glen Innes than Panmure was an interesting one, with the big advantage that it would reduce travel times even more (a more direct route from Botany to Britomart) and would serve a greater part of the existing suburban area (Farm Cove, Highland Park & Half Moon Bay) than the other proposals. However, it would also possibly have the greatest cost, due to the need for a big bridge from Farm Cove across to Glen Innes, and would not serve Pakuranga. The bridge across Tamaki River might also be a difficult one to get consent for, as it would have a pretty major negative effect on residents located at either end of it. The environmental effects might be fairly significant too. Saljen off the forums suggested a variation of this route that manages to avoid most houses, sticking to a couple of streams that cross the Pakuranga area. That route is shown in green below, with potential feeder bus routes shown in other colours.

This route I think could offer a journey time from Botany to Britomart of about 26 minutes. Compared with the 90 minute bus trip or well over an hour in a car (at peak hour) this would be an amazing improvement. I think that a lot of people would use such a line due to the amazing time advantages. Obviously some pretty big obstacles would need to be sorted out though. Would it be OK environmentally to run the line along a number of the area's streams? Would it be feasible to build that kind of bridge across the Tamaki River? Would the effects on residents in the vicinity of the bridge be acceptable? What would the whole thing cost?

I know that a line such as this is many years away from even being planned in a concrete way, but I do think that a line serving this part of Auckland is well overdue. I also think that the Ti Rakau Drive route shouldn't be thought of as the only option. There are at least two other routes that I think could offer even greater benefits.

Leila and I hadn't really planned on moving quite yet, although it has been on the cars for the last little while. Her commute to work is pretty nastily long, resulting in her being out of the house from about 8am to 6.30pm each work day. Furthermore, having Amalia living so far away is a real pain in the ass and has limited the number of times that I'm able to see her each week due to the rather long travel times between Sandringham and Beachhaven. Amber has also been planning on moving out for a while, to link into the arts scene a bit more through an inner-city apartment. However, we had thought that most of this moving stuff was a month or so away at least.

Until the perfect place came along. Wanganui Avenue is one of the nicest streets in Auckland in my opinion, with each and every one of its houses being a gorgeous Edwardian villa. It's in Herne Bay, which is a very central suburb, though also generally Auckland's most expensive suburb. So it was rather a surprise that we found an affordable two bedroom half-villa on Trademe. The weekend before last Leila and I went to check the place out and found, to our dismay, that even though we were 10 minutes early to the property open-home, it had already been let to someone who had turned up even earlier. It felt so unfair, but we checked the place out and left our details just in case something fell through. Amazingly, a few days later indeed something must have fallen through as I got a call from the owner asking if we were still interested. As I desperately tried to recall whether it would have been suitable after all, I confirmed that we were interested. The next day everything was confirmed and we will be moving in from March 5.

Yesterday we headed back to the 'new place' to sign the papers and check things out. The concerns that I had had were largely alleviated (the lounge/dining area should be big enough, we will have enough wardrobes and the bedrooms are bigger than I had thought) and Amalia was extremely happy to discover that her bedroom has a pink door. When I first found out that we had another chance I almost felt like it was a mixed-blessing - as the need for us to start on the house-packing dawned on me - but now I feel much more positive about it. I look forward to a much shorter drive to the North Shore, I look forward to living on one of the nicest streets in the city and I really look forward to living in such a central part of Auckland.

The only pain is that I'll probably have to drive to work most days. Gah!

East Auckland is most definitely the most neglected part of the city when it comes to having good transport links. By East Auckland I mean everything east of the Tamaki River - ie. Pakuranga, Highland Park, Howick, Botany and Flat Bush. Up until the 1960s this area was barely developed at all, with Howick being the only town. 1959 aerial photography shows the part of Pakuranga closest to the city was only just starting to develop. Since that time there has been a huge amount of growth, first in the northern part of the area with Pakuranga, Howick, Highland Park, Bucklands Beach and so forth developing in the 1960s-1980s. My Nana lives in Highland Park, in a house that was probably built in the late 1970s. Later in, in the 1990s and early 2000s we have seen Botany, Dannemora and Flat Bush develop.

However, throughout all of this staged development nobody has ever put the slightest amount of thought into answering the question "how are we effectively going to link these people with the rest of the city?" Up until 1996 that question was particularly poorly addressed, as all the roads ended up feeding into a 4 lane arterial route through Mt Wellington and eventually feeding onto the Southern Motorway from Mt Wellington Highway. I never really saw this at peak hour, because we'd only go out that way on weekends, but I imagine it was pretty horrific. Since 1996 things have been slightly improved with the addition of the Southeastern Highway, but that road was built to a rather sub-optimal standard - with at-grade intersections where there should have been fully separated ones - and it still had the same problem of feeding into an already congested Southern Motorway.

Whilst buses out east have operated for an extremely long time, I think the Howick and Eastern Buses are the longest-standing bus operators in Auckland, it is probably the part of Auckland that is most poorly serviced by public transport. A bus from Howick or Botany can take significantly more than an hour to get to the city, due to terrible (ie. non-existent) bus priority measures throughout the Manukau City part of the trip, and then a long and fairly convoluted route that is taken throughout the Auckland City part of the route. Amazingly, a bus trip from Howick to the city takes about as long as one from Pukekohe or Orewa, even though these other places are far far further from downtown than Howick is. Therefore, it is absolutely no surprise that this corner of the city is the most car dependent part of Auckland. This isn't helped by the area being characterised by incredibly stereotypical sprawl, but I think that the incredibly slow travel times for public transport are the main contributor to East Auckland's automobile depedency.

At a risk of sounding harsh on past planners of Auckland, this situation is really utterly unacceptable. Back in the 1960s the whole area was undeveloped, and it would have been a piece of cake to set aside a corridor for a future rail alignment. The Eastern Line actually runs pretty close to where road bridges have been built linking East Auckland with the isthmus, so it surely wasn't completely beyond the realms of possibility to think that rail could have served this area quite effectively. Even from the roads-centric point of view it's obvious that there are going to be significant problems in feeding the traffic from the main roads of Pakuranga Road and Ti Rakau Drive (which are congested enough by themselves) over the Tamaki River bridges (which for some silly reason were basically built next to each other) and further on to link up with the Southern Motorway. A map below shows this mess quite clearly:

Oh, and just to make things worse, on that corner of Pakuranga Road and Ti Rakau Drive (which by the way is the busiest intersection in all of Auckland) we're going to build a shopping mall, just to ruin the traffic even more. The lack of foresight that went into the planning of this part of Auckland is utterly reprehensible and the people who live out there today are still suffering because of it.

In the past few years there have been some vague attempts at trying to improve this situation. The Highbrook interchange was completed a few years ago, although I'm still utterly convinced that this was entirely built to serve the commercial area of East Tamaki and Highbrook - basically crapping on the poor people of Wymondley and Otahuhu to provide faster motorway access to a billion dollar commercial development. Nice. The Highbrook interchange still fails in relieving pressure from the pinch point - in that it's terribly signposted from the Flat Bush side and also doesn't have a logical link through to Te Irirangi Drive. Furthermore, it does nothing for public transport, so the area has remained a public transport wasteland. Not a particularly smart idea when you're proposing a "new town" of 40,000 people out at Flat Bush.

The next step proposed to alleviate the mess is AMETI, the Auckland-Manukau-Eastern-Transport-Initiative... I think. What it should really read is the "roads, roads, more roads, maybe an odd bus lane to shut you dumb greenies up and we'll think about a train line perhaps after 2020 initiative".  The image below shows the AMETI plan.... lots of new roads and just a few bus lanes to keep the greenies happy.

So absolutely no mention of any additional rail capacity out this way. Perhaps the bus lanes might save a few minutes off the trip times between Pakuranga and Panmure but why are there no bus lanes planned for Pakuranga Road, or Ti Rakau Drive beyond its immediate proximity to Pakuranga? There's no mention of what might be done to speed bus trips up once they have crossed the Tamaki River, or anything of that sort. So basically we get tonnes more roads with a few tiny concessions regarding bus lanes.

It takes a look forward to the post 2016 (read: bloody ages away) concepts before we even get mention of something that might possibly be a future rail line to serve this part of the city. No real plans though, at least not in the detail that has been done for the roading parts of AMETI, just a few squiggly lines:

On the up-side, if the green lines were all built as railway lines then there's the potential for Auckland to have a fantastic rail network. On the down side, it seems like the planners of AMETI are giving themselves every opt out clause possible. Indicative alignments only, some time post 2016 plans and so forth. Of course this is translation for "once we sort out the roads we'll see what's left in the budget for public transport". The other problem with the proposed additional "rapid transit networks" (which could be a busway, train line or seemingly even bus lanes according to the planners of the Central Connector) is that a huge part of East Auckland remains unserved. Howick, Highland Park, Bucklands Beach and so forth remains a heck of a long bus trip away from a railway station. Instead, we have the railway line serving a light-industry area along Ti Rakau Drive between Pakuranga and Botany. Once again, hardly ideal.

I shall attempt to offer some real solutions to the "East Auckland Problem" in my next post. The solutions are unlikely to be easy - the lack of foresight shown by planners in the past 50 years have put paid to that being a possiblity - or cheap, but they are there. One just needs to think about it a bit and consider East Auckland as actually being a part of the city that could be a real success story for public transport in the future.

I really do want to enable comments on this blog. However, Angelfire's built-in comments tool really really doesn't work. I have tried haloscan.com but it messes up everything...

 Send suggestions to jarburyATyahooDOTcom please.

Although most of the world seems to be coming to their senses that urban sprawl is an unsustainable remnant of the late 20th century, it appears as though that battle is far from won in New Zealand. The Auckland Regional Council had put in place a Metropolitan Urban Limit since 1999 that has curbed the previously crazy greenfield expansion of the city (or at least made it happen in just a few places), yet it seems that day after day the ARC takes flak for doing this. In recent consultation with councils over what the future shape of the Auckland Regional Policy Statement (which enshrines the MUL) should be their policies of limiting urban expansion came under some pretty surprising attack by a number of Auckland's smaller councils. Of note, on page 19 we have this little gem:

Pages 29-43 of my thesis looks at sustainability and sprawl, with the conclusion that while urban environments are, almost by definition, unsustainable there are certainly different types of urban environments that are more or less sustainable. Urban sprawl is clearly the least sustainable form of urban development environmentally, economically, socially and culturally.

Environmental Issues

There are two main ways in which urban sprawl is environmentally unsustainable: the land that is consumed by the city and the air pollution (including CO2) emissions that are caused by sprawled cities being so automobile dependent. Around 400,000 acres (160,000 hectares) of prime farmland is lost to sprawl each and every year in the USA according to the American Farmland Trust (reference on page 32 of my thesis). This is largely due to sprawl, not population growth, as many cities in the USA continue to grow even though their population is declining. Those cities which are growing consume farmland at an even more insatiable rate. About three times as many people live in America's urban areas today than did in 1950, however the amount of land taken up by those people is 50 times greater.

Sure, it's not like New Zealand or even the USA is going to run out of land to build cities upon. However, the land that surrounds our urban areas is often of particularly high productive potential (given that cities are generally located in advantageous positions for historical reasons), which means that the land lost is precious. Much of the greenfield land surrounding Auckland that isn't used for "countryside living" (which is effectively just a really low density version of sprawl) plays a really important role in providing the city with food products. Food that needs to be shipped in from further afield obviously generates further traffic and emissions from its transportation.

Air pollution is another significant environment effect that is generated by sprawl. Sure, the densely populated cities of Asia may appear to have more air pollution that somewhere like Auckland, but on a per capita basis what we generate in our car dependent city is immensely polluting. I remember reading a year or so back that more people died prematurely from the effects of air pollution in Auckland each year than died due to the country's road toll. Pretty amazing considering all the effort that goes into reducing car crashes. Urban sprawl, by definition, enforces automobile dependency by creating large areas of low-density, single-use development where public transport is not viable (due to low residential and commercial densities and circutous routes), walking or cycling is particularly unviable, and car trips for even the most basic of tasks (like getting milk from the diary) get longer and longer. Much has already been made of the effects of CO2 emissions on global warming, so I won't dwell on those, but obviously they are a significant issue that may fundamentally alter the way we create cities in the future.

Economic Issues

I really like spouting how unsustainable urban sprawl is economically, as generally those who support it are the types who disregard social, cultural and environmental concerns to focus on their beloved economic efficiency and bottom line. The economic inefficiency of sprawl therefore becomes, in many cases, the strongest argument against it - not because they are necessarily the most damning, but rather because of the reason I just mentioned: proponents of sprawl are generally obsessed with economic effects and to hell with everything else.

So, what makes sprawl economically inefficient? For a start, the provision of services and infrastructure by local governments can be much more efficient in a higher-density city. The roads are used more often and by more than just cars, the waterpipes, wastewater pipes, electricity lines and so forth don't need to be as long. A Burchel & Mukherji study in 2003 found that 150 million gallons of water and sewer demand PER DAY in the USA could be saved simply through more compact development. The same study indicated that over $100 billion of roading investment could be avoided between 2000 and 2025 if a more 'managed growth' form of urban development was undertaken. These are significant numbers. Furthermore, generally the cost of providing the inefficient services that sprawl demands are generally met by existing ratepayers within the bounds of the city. As (particularly in the USA) residents of the inner city tend to be poorer than those occupying recent sprawl developments, you get a situation where the poor are subsidising the rich. Maybe that's why right-wingers are generally so fond of sprawl?

Social Issues

While the societal effects of urban sprawl are very difficult to measure accurately,they are also perhaps the most damning evidence of its unsustainability. Reduced social equity, negative health impact, a loss of community, segregation, polarisation and an inability to adapt to changing lifestyles and family structures are just some of the ways in which urban sprawl is said to adversely affect social sustainability.

Added to that we just have the way in which sprawl suburbs just appear to be so "dead" in terms of their vibrancy. Without a mix of uses areas are either abandoned during the day (when everyone's at work) or abandoned in the evening (when everyone's gone home). As people drive everywhere they do not have the opportunity to mingle with other people, further creating a feeling of social isolation. I noticed this a lot when returning from my holiday to Europe last year, and it took a couple of months to realise that I needed to make a real effort to escape the socially depressing clutches of urban sprawl by catching buses to work and regularly visiting the Auckland CBD to experience at least a tiny amount of the vibrancy so obvious in European cities.

So I think it's pretty obvious that sprawl sucks - economically, environmentally and socially. While it may appear to have its private benefits in a large house, a lot of roads upon which to drive one's car and so forth, in the end there is a big price to pay for these "luxuries" in the form of the highly unsustainable cities that we live in. And this doesn't even consider the concept of peak oil (which I, admittedly, hadn't heard of in 2005 when I wrote my thesis). I believe that the onset of peak oil will very quickly make it obvious how unsustainable sprawl is. And perhaps that won't be a bad thing at all.

How could I go through this entire week and NOT mention the weather that has been going on in Auckland? It has seemed to be the 'talk of the town' even more than usual, which is potentially quite difficult as Aucklanders love to talk about the weather as much as your stereotypical Brit. But anyway, this week's weather has been noteworthy enough to talk about.

For a start, it was HOT. I mean really really hot from Monday through until Thursday afternoon. Not the kind of "sunny hot" that we've had pretty much since the New Year with a few gaps, but what I like to call "Singapore hot", where the air is so humid and warm that it feels like the oxygen has been sucked out of it completely. Needless to say, I do prefer sunny hot to Singapore hot - as at least you can escape it by zipping away into the shade. For example, last Sunday Leila, Amber and I spent a few nice hours at the beach on the North Shore and it was great. The sun was very very hot - up to 31C according to my car's air-conditioning (which admittedly probably isn't that reliable) - but because it was just the heat of the sun creating the warmth I had no problems escaping it by simply sitting underneath a nice Pohutukawa tree. However, from Monday onwards the cloud rolled in, the humidity skyrocketed and "Singapore hot" arrived. The way in which rooms seemed to become breathless was quite unusual, and pretty extreme as I actually noticed a quick rush of fresh air when opening my wardrobe one morning! On Thursday afternoon Auckland hit what was apparently its highest temperature in about 120 years, although oddly enough after that it became cold again with a fair bit of rain over the past few days.

While it has actually felt quite cleansing and refreshing to get a bit of rain here, it was a right pain in the arse in Brisbane as a fantastically exciting cricket match was ruined by a fairly typical tropical downpour. Maybe cricket should be played in Brisbane's winters? The irony of the downpour - when happened at a point where New Zealand was probably favourites to take out the match over Australia and therefore the series - was that I had been just about begging for such a downpour to happen only a few minutes earlier (obviously when we weren't doing quite so well). I suppose that my earlier frustration was due to a great series, locked at two games apiece, seemingly being decided by a half-arsed 20 over lottery-game. While I do see some merit in the Twenty20 format of cricket, there is a significant amount of luck that is involved, much more luck than is the case for longer versions of the game. Therefore, it seemed sad that the series would be decided in such a way. I eventually got my wish - in a way - and the game was abandoned, with the series tied. Unfortunately this means Australia keep the Chappell-Hadlee trophy, but a 2-2 result is almost a moral victory to New Zealand in some ways.

I have quite a few ideas for posts next week, somewhat inspired by an interesting comments thread at the Green Party blog. Hopefully I'll feel inspired enough to explore a few ideas behind why I think urban sprawl sucks, why Auckland has become an automobile dependent city and what I think should be done about it. I'll also hopefully update the rail diagram I put together yesterday.

Perhaps this post is aimed at laying down a challenge to our future transport planners. It's clear that rail needs to play a significant part in Auckland's transportation future, with peak oil either just around the corner or having already happened, ongoing population growth that will lead to further traffic congestiong and (hopefully) growing concern about the effects of an automobile dependent city on climate change. Last year saw an 8% increase in the number of people using public transport - with more than a million additional rail trips being made in 2008 compared with 2007.

Some good steps have been made to bring Auckland's rail system into the 20th century in the last few years, and in the next few years we should see some further steps that might at least partially bring it into the 21st century - with electrification being a critical step in the future of our rail network. However, it's crucial that we do not rest on what improvements have been made, but rather strive to do better. Auckland's rail system remains incredibly poor by international standards, the city in general remains incredibly car dependent while those who do catch trains (or buses for that matter) generally have to put up with poor conditions, frequently cancelled services and (believe it or not) over-crowding due to poor frequencies.

I have put together a map of what the rail network should look like in about 2030. That gives us 20 years to do these projects. Beyond 2030 there are probably further lines that could be built (such as an Albany to Henderson line or an extension of the North Shore Line to Wellsford). However, if we can have this system by 2030 (with enough tracks and trains to operate it effectively, I do think Auckland will be well on the way to having at least a half-decent rail system - if not something truly world class.

For a start, let's look at a diagram of the current system:

OK, pretty pathetic. Right moving on here's what I suggest for our system in 2030:

There are still three lines, although effectively there are actually six different lines, I've just coupled them all together to make it possible for routes to travel across the city rather than just into Britomart and out of it again. Obviously, a number of projects are necessary to make this a reality - beyond ones already underway such as the Onehunga Branch and the Manukau Link. By my reckoning there are four really big rail projects that would be necessary to undertake in order for this to be a reality.

1. The CBD loop. Clearly nothing can happen in terms of adding new lines until we fix up the capacity issues faced by Britomart. As I have three lines approaching Britomart from the east it would probably be necessary to duplicate the existing access tunnel as well as building the CBD loop. Midtown and K Road are two new underground stations that would be built.
2. Airport link. I would do this project second as it's pretty embarrassing Auckland doesn't have a rail link to the airport. The air bus is pretty popular, but can get stuck in traffic and in any case is not the same as having a proper rail link. New stations at Mangere and Mangere Bridge would significantly improve the access to the city from these two suburbs.
3. North Shore Line. This would require a rail tunnel under the harbour, and conversion of the existing busway into a railway line. Initially I would have the rail line terminate at Albany, but there is potential for it to eventually continue to Orewa. This would provide a much better public transport link to those in Silverdale, Orewa and on the Whangaparaoa Peninsula.
4. East Tamaki Line. This would potentially be the most difficult, as it's a very long line that has never really been planned for. Supposedly Te Irirangi Drive was built so that future light-rail could go down the middle of it, but I think heavy rail is the ultimate answer. Perhaps some serious tunnelling would be required, but I think in the long run this line is worth it. The communities it would serve are among Auckland's most car dependent and have to put up with probably the worst public transport provision in the city.

Now I just have to find $10 billion to fund this all.

After much umming and arring, and pretending that tax cuts are sufficient for economic stimulus, it appears as though the government has finally got around to putting together a proper economic stimulus package to help get us through the rather dire recession that's going on here and around the world. At first glance the numbers seem reasonable, although it's obvious that most of the emphasis (and therefore money) has been spent on the tax cuts we'll be getting on April 1st. While of course it'll be nice to get a tax cut, for many people it won't be much help if they've already lost their jobs.

Firstly, there's nothing for public transport. While disappointing, it's not unexpected. An economic stimulus project really does need to be 'ready to go', and unfortunately - due to the general disdain government has viewed public transport with - there are hardly any projects that are 'ready to go' but not actually already underway (electrification of Auckland's rail network being an example of a project already underway). So what is in the stimulus package for transport? Well, according to the Transport Minister there are five major projects accelerated by the package: the Kopu Bridge, Matahorua Gorge realignment (somewhere in the Hawke's Bay), the Hawke's Bay expressway extension, Rimutaka Corner Easing and the Christchurch Southern Motorway. So, clearly nothing for Auckland then. That's not to say Auckland doesn't have its fair share of transportation projects going on at the moment - in fact it's such a struggle trying to list them all I can't be bothered at the moment, particularly motorway building projects. However, there are a couple of ones that could have very easily been included: namely the Victoria Park Tunnel (which perhaps wasn't included as it's meant to start this year anyway) and the Manukau Rail Link, which - quoted from the ProjectDART website - "at this stage has no timetable for construction". I suppose that a lot of pressure was put on to have projects that would create jobs in the regions, where unemployment is most likely to rise, but it still seems like a bit of an opportunity has been missed for Auckland.

Regarding public transport projects, I do hope that in the next couple of years the planning and design work for major improvements such as the CBD tunnel loop and the railway to the airport can be completed, so that if further stimulus packages are required, next time we might have some 'ready to go' public transport projects.

I'm a reasonable fan of the other projects announced, such as the insulation of all state houses, the building of extra schools and the addition of many buildings on existing schools. However, it just seems like we're being given a pretty small package compared with other countries around the world (even on a per capita basis) by a government that is fixated by tax cuts for the rich. A lot of analysis in the USA showed that giving tax cuts to businesses and richer individuals was the least effective way of spending stimulus money (as they tended to save the extra money rather than spend it, quite a prudent move at the moment from an individual's perspective). I guess it's hard for the National government to forego their ideological beliefs in tax cuts.

In 2011 New Zealand will be hosting the Rugby World Cup, which ever since the announcement was made in late 2005 has been shoved down our throat ad nauseum. Not to say that it isn't an exciting event to happen, as it will be pretty awesome for New Zealand and Auckland in particular during the later parts of the tournament. I'm not going to talk about the Eden Park upgrade itself at the moment, although I'm sure eventually there will be a good reason for me to post a few photo of the redevelopment of the ground. Instead, I'm going to briefly discuss the transportation upgrades that are going to happen around Eden Park so that it isn't a giant disaster.

At the Bledisloe Cup rugby match between New Zealand and Australia last year apparently the Kingsland Railway Station (which is the main station which serves Eden Park) got rather overcrowded at the end of the match. As the capacity of Eden Park is being increased to 60,000 - and probably a greater proportion of crowds at the World Cup wouldn't be locals - there will be significantly more pressure put on that station when the World Cup rolls around. So there has been a proposal to widen the platforms for the train station, which then means that it is necessary to realign a part of Sandringham Road. The latest report by council on the job was approved last week, so the project will be going ahead, which is a good thing. A plan of the proposed station and realignment of Sandringham Road is shown below:

That plan is a little technical I suppose, but effectively Sandringham Road is shifted slightly southwards, which will mean a bit of property taken from the houses at the bottom of the plan above. Bus lanes will also be added to the southbound part of Sandringham Road too. This is a good improvement as that area is a bit of an inexplicable gap in what is otherwise a good provision of bus lanes along this road.

Another interesting part of the proposal is the planned link road between Sandringham Road and Walters Road. I'd never quite realised before, but this link road would provide a much more direct route from Kingsland to Eden Park and would allow people to avoid the potentially congested pedestrian bridge over the railway line. A plan of the link road is included below, which has been designed in a nice "shared space" way that I mentioned a few posts ago when I wrote about Liveable Street.

There was some opposition to the link road in particular, as it will involve the removal of a couple of nice old houses, and will probably increase traffic using Walters Road as a link between Sandringham and Dominion Roads. However, I still think that its positives far outweigh the negatives, as getting people away from Eden Park after big games is a major priority - in particular separating people who want to use the train station from those who don't. I also think that adding in the bus lanes on Sandringham Road will also have an important benefit for public transport users along this road (which does just happen to be me at the moment).

While it's not necessarily directly related to Auckland's transport, as my day job is being a planner I do live and breathe the Resource Management Act on a daily basis, so therefore the reforms proposed by National last week are definitely worthy of some sort of comment. There may also be ways in which the reforms eventually do affect the development of Auckland's transportation.

I guess for a start they could definitely be worse. Original proposals had the definition of "environment" stripped down to simply natural and physical resources, which would have completely gutted the RMA and the whole idea of planning. Thankfully that wasn't included, so things like amenity effects and effects on Maori values remain important aspects of the enviornment. Furthermore, a reasonable number of the proposals are justifiable: like searching for ways to reduce trade competitors from using the RMA to wage their trade wars, increasing the fines for non-compliance with resource consents and also a few of the proposals that will hopefully speed up the processing of consents and council plan changes.

However, at the same time there are also a number of worries that emerge from these procedural changes. Submitters appear to be more limited in what they can appeal to the environment court, applicants appear able to choose the commissioners they want at their hearings, those appealing to the environment courts may have to stump up thousands and thousands of dollars as security against costs if they lose their case and so forth. These are worrying steps that are being dressed up as "removing the handbrake from development", but in effect actually involve taking away the rights of those to have a decent say in developments that happen. I don't deny that the current situation has its problems, but I do think that in general the existing RMA is quite robust and flexible with problems often resulting from poor council rules and regulations, or from the Ministry for the Environment not having the guts to create enough National Policy Statements (until the last couple of years) and not 'calling in' enough major projects (once again, until the last couple of years). It is a worry if taking a case to the environment court becomes something that clearly the rich can only afford, and that is a possibility under these changes.

My main issue with the proposed changes relate to a bit that everyone else seems to have ignored. It sits on page six of the proposals and reads:

Now this is a pretty freaky legislation change to make. Actually banning councils from creating a particular rule seems to be a huge trampling of local government by central government, not to mention the enormous risk to trees around the country. There is a reason that local councils impose blanket tree protection rules - generally to trees over 6m in height, although sometimes there's a lower limit when it comes to native trees. Alternative ways of protecting trees would involve the identification of potentially thousands of trees within a District that were considered worthy of protection. Without blanket protection I would imagine that a huge number of trees would be cut down in urban areas, as already there are not only the large number of consent applicatons but also a significant number of situations where people illegally remove trees. It would be very sad to see a city like Auckland lose a huge number of mature trees, which is very much a possibility if this change goes ahead.

That's not to say there are problems with the current tree rules. Obviously, one unintended consequence of having a blanket protection is that people are put off planting trees or have them taken out at 5.5m, to ensure they won't become problematic later on. Furthermore, many councils (like Auckland City) have written stupid rules that only allow applications to be assessed on the basis of a tree's health, rather than wider environmental concerns. However, this isn't reason to completely abandon such rules - it feels like using a sledgehammer on a problem that could easily be sorted out through smarter and more flexible council rules.

I suppose that's the kind of feeling I get about all the changes, where it feels like the RMA is getting blamed for problems that probably only occur in situations where it's poorly implemented. It seems that the government couldn't really moan about the RMA forever without at least looking like it was making dramatic changes to it. I guess we'll see what survives the select committee process, hopefully not the tree rules that's for sure!

At first glance of the New Zealand Herald's leading article today I was pretty worried, with rail electrification and integrated ticketing supposedly threatened by some fairly significant investment losses that the Regional Council (along with the rest of the world) has suffered in the past few months. Yet, as I read further, I discovered that this was actually utter rubbish. I don't know whether it was the article's author who chose the utterly stupid headline and completely misleading photograph, but with a bit of thought it all turns to utter nonsense.

According to the artcile, "serious doubts have also been raised over how it will pay $548 million over the next decade to help fund rail electrification, integrated ticketing and development of the Tank Farm." Firstly, I can see how the development of Tank Farm would be affected, as it's pretty much a development by the Ports of Auckland, whose declining fortunes and asset base (through the ARH) is the very reason the ARC is supposedly struggling to find funds. That's not really a problem, as there's still many years to run on many of the leases for the industrial uses that currently predominate this area. There's also still quite a lot of planning issues to be sorted out, although that has been advanced fairly well in the past few months with District Plan changes being generally approved by the City Council and the Regional Council. It's the other two issues that don't make any sense: rail electrification and integrated ticketing. As Mike Lee points out in the utterly hilarious interview that seems to have occurred between him and Mr Orsman (where Mr Lee basically says there's no reason to panic about a million times and for a million different reasons), integrated ticketing is well advanced and the ARC are totally committed to it. So no pointless scaremongering about that issue. But that's not even my main gripe with the article.

My main gripe with the article is how it talks about electrification. The capital costs of electrification are to be half-funded by the government (the track-work) and half funded by the regional petrol tax (the new trains). So no need for ARH funds there. The article eventually realises that, but goes on to say: "money from its holding company and rates will go towards the operational costs for electrified rail." Now why this might still be absolutely true, the hilarious thing is that electric trains have LOWER operational costs than diesel trains, due to the fact that electricity is cheaper than diesel and that there's less wear-and-tear on the engines of electric trains than diesel trains. So, therefore the logical argument is that if we're worried about operational costs in the longer-term (and keep in mind electric trains aren't likely to be running before 2011 at the earliest, and possibly not until 2013 - surely long after the current recession has ended) then that makes the case for electrification even stronger than before.

So, it really does make one wonder why the Herald is scaremongering about whether electrification will still be possible. Perhaps they don't want it to go ahead? Perhaps they are just so stupid as to not understand the benefits of electric trains? I really don't know. But it is a pretty pathetic piece of journalism I have to say.

I have been doing a fair bit of observation around Central Auckland (in particular) over the last few weeks, trying to work out what particularly works and what particularly doesn't work. The first outcome of this observation was my cry for Queen Street bus lanes in a post a week and a half ago. Experiences since that time, including a near 10 minute crawl on a bus to get about 50m up Queen Street and through the intersection with Victoria Street has only strengthened my belief that bus lanes are an utter necessity for Queen Street to truly become a "heart of the city".

My other observations, backed up with a fair amount of reading in recent days, has been a general look a the liveability of Auckland's roads and streets - not just within the CBD (although obviously probably most applicable there), but also throughout the rest of the city. Obviously, roads and streets aren't just networks for traffic to pass through, they are also the public realm setting within which buildings are located. Yet, particularly in Auckland there's absolutely no guessing who's boss out there: the private car without a doubt. A trip out to Pakuranga today (admittedly by car, public transport in that part of the city is near non-existent) confirmed the obvious "priority" given to private automobiles wherever possible in Auckland - so clearly exemplified by Pakuranga Road's 6 or so lanes of general traffic and its token 20m long bus lane (to help with merging after an intersection I assume).

But anyway, I kind of digress. As much as I hate the super-highways of Manukau City, they're not really the point of this blog post. I can't really hope for them to every be truly "liveable streets", unless something radical like a tram-line was constructed down the middle of them. No, if we're ever going to find liveable streets in Auckland, they'll probably pop up in the older and more central parts of the city: the CBD and its surrounding inner-suburbs.

So what is a "liveable street"? Livablestreets.com provides some sort of a definition:

A livable street is difficult to define; they serve as the fabric that holds together extraordinary urban spaces and ultimately build desirable communities. They strike a balance between the vehicles that travel through them and the community that lives there, works there, and plays there. They are functional corridors of public realm where people live, shop, interact, travel, and resolve their daily needs. Livable streets establish great neighborhoods and the possibility for true community building. Goods and services are readily accessible while adequate open space is provided for the local community. Unlike other streets that primarily serve the needs of traffic, they cater to the needs of everyone using them.

I think in some ways it's simpler than that. A liveable street is simply one where the car is no longer king. It doesn't necessarily mean that the car doesn't exist (although personally I always think the best street is a pedestrianised one, I guess that's a hangover from loving Venice so much), but rather that the car really does share the street-space with the pedestrian, the cyclist and the public transport user on a level-pegging, or possibly even with the pedestrian having ascendency.

If I think around Auckland there are extraordinarily few examples where this happens. Perhaps on High Street, where the road has been narrowed enough and has enough humps and other impediments for cars to slow them down to almost walking pace. Yet once again High Street feels like a bit of a half-arsed job in that it could have been fully pedestrianised, or it could have become more of a true shared space or woonerf, where pedestrians and cars are mixed together in ways that cleverly define the roadspace as clearly pedestrian. Kerbs distinguishing the footpath from the road could have been removed on High Street, along with the on-street parking that is surely completely unnecessary from a shoppers' perspective (once again, how many people drive to the city and park on the street to shop, surely a fairly insignificant number compared with other users). If this had been done, then High Street could quite clearly become a shining example of a liveable street within Auckland. It's still possibly our best attempt, which is a particularly sad indictment on the rest of us - especially compared to the direction that Paris seems to be heading.

Woonerfs (called Home Zones in the UK) are a Dutch concept that seems to run contrary to every possible thing a traffic engineer has ever been taught about road safety and efficiency. Yet, they have been shown to work enormously effectively. As "Liveable Streets" notes: "Because home zones provide no clear division between pedestrian space and auto space, vehicles must travel with great caution." This great caution leads to slower speeds, more courteous driving and a far superior urban experience. In other cases, they have been called "Naked Streets", generally because there are little or no road signs, little or no road markings and little or no distinction between the pedestrian zone and the road zone. A particularly cool "Naked Street" is being constructed at the moment on Exhibition Road in South Kensington London: one of the most famous roads in London for its many museums (Natural History, Science and Victoria & Albert). A fascinating image of how it will look is included below:

The cars are clearly mingling with pedestrians, there is no distinction between what is a footpath and what is the road - which combined with cobblestone paving makes it appear as though the whole place is a kind of footpath. I hope that Auckland's city planners take note of this project as it unfolds, and see how it could be applied to Auckland in the future.

So, bringing this all back to Auckland, what could be done here to make our streets significantly more liveable? If I am to focus on Auckland's CBD for now, it's clear that significant and fairly straightforward steps could be taken to improve the pedestrian experience for those walking around the central city. Clearly, for a start it is unrealistic to expect Queen Street to become a woonerf/home-zone/naked street any time particularly soon. In my opinion this is largely because I think it has a significant public transportation role to fulfil in the next decade or so. As I've mentioned previously, the construction of bus lanes is essential for this purpose to be achieved. For other main streets in the city, like Wellesley, Victoria, Customs, Nelson, Hobson and Fanshawe streets I think improvements will need to be made in a way that is mindful of their important roles in shifting traffic in, out and around the city. Bus lanes along the part of Victoria Street serviced by the Link bus would also be a good idea, but once again that's a fairly separate issue. However, in the longer-term I think there must be an ultimate aspiration for pedestrianising Queen Street. When the various responsible agencies for Auckland's CBD rail loop eventually get their act together and build it (maybe by 2025 if we're lucky) there is hope that most people using public transport to get around the city will use the train, or perhaps a tram-line that could be laid along an otherwise pedestrianised Queen Street.

In any case, leaving aside Queen Street and the other main streets of Auckland's CBD for now, there are actually a huge number of small, narrow little streets that would be perfect for becoming more liveable, shared spaces. At a glance Elliott, High, Lorne, O'Connell, Wyndham, Durham, Federal, Fort, Shortland and many other streets could easily be classified as "shared spaces". These streets could then have a particularly low (20 kph perhaps) speed limit imposed upon them, progressively have their kerbing removed and be paved rather than asphalted to make it totally obvious to drivers that they are clearly within a pedestrian zone now. Considering that council plans to revamp a decent number of inner-city streets over the next decade or so (assuming that the current council doesn't can the lot, as it seems to want to), taking those upgrades one step further to actually create high-quality liveable streets where clearly the car is no longer king, would surely help lift Auckland beyond the kind of 'overgrown town' feeling one gets of it at the moment. But I fear the short-sightedness and narrow-mindedness of council is difficult to over-estimate these days and I can't really expect anything half-decent from them. A pity.

Well there has been a very interesting/horrifying (depending on your point of view) report that has come out today on the Waterview Connection, which points towards the cost of the tunnels being $2.77 billion rather than the $1.89 billion estimated a year or so back when the tunnel was first decided upon as the best option. As the reports says:

Funding the project through the Crown account would create a liability on the Crown balance sheet. The cost of the Waterview Connection would increase the Crown’s gross debt by a little less than one percent of GDP. Given that gross debt is already forecast to exceed the Government’s target of 20 percent of GDP, Ministers need to consider whether this project is affordable, given its relatively modest net economic benefits if built now

Now I'm feeling quite mixed about this. For a start, I'm fairly mixed on the Waterview Connection project altogether as I'm against building more motorways in Auckland, I'm against a roading project eating up THAT much transport funding; yet at the same time if the project is to be built I absolutely want it to be a tunnel and not a surface motorway. Also the idea of a 5km long tunnel in Auckland is pretty cool from a pure engineering feat kind of perspective. It's definitely something I would have found hugely exciting a few years ago.

The Waterview Connection is considered by a lot of people to be a pretty critical link in Auckland's motorway network. Yes, it is the last unbuilt part of the "Western Ring Route", which is supposed to be a viable alternative to State Highway 1 and therefore ease congestion through the central part of the motorway system significantly once it's complete. I'm a little dubious about the expected traffic benefits, as traffic engineers have a really nasty habit of ignoring "induced demand" and just expect that if 100,000 cars a day are removed from the Central Motorway Junction by the Waterview Connection, that roadspace will remain free and clear and congestion on Auckland's motorways will be a thing of the past. In my view that's total rubbish. For a start, a four-lane tunnel would struggle to cope with 100,000 cars a day: Victoria Park's viaduct has about 90,000 a day and is one of Auckland's worst motorway bottlenecks. Furthermore, the Waterview Connection is actually a heck of a long way away from State Highway 1 and I imagine that a lot of the trips it would attract are made by people who currently use parts of the Northwest motorway or local roads to join in with Hillsborough Road and State Highway 20. In summary, I reckon the motorway's time-saving and congestion-easing benefits have probably been hugely over-stated. And when one considers that a cost-benefit ratio of 1.15 is totally dependent on time-saving and congestion-easing it's pretty easy to see how it could turn into a pointless project.

It is true that I am not a traffic engineer and I might be wrong in the above analysis. That's why I have been looking forward to reading the traffic report for this project for a very long time. I'll get hold of it.... one day.

So, if a $2.77 billion price-tag does make the project a non-starter, which seems very likely from what the transport minister is saying, where to from here? Obviously there are two options: either forget about the project altogther or find a way to build it cheaper. The first I'm OK with, as even a small proportion of those funds (whether it's $1.89 billion or $2.77 billion) invested in Auckland's public transport system could have a much greater benefit than building a 5km stretch of road, in my opinion.  The CBD rail loop has been (perhaps conservatively) costed at around $1 billion. The long-term benefits of this project, in nudging our rail system significantly along the path to being world-class, would surely be greater than a shortish stretch of new motorway. You could also have enough spare change left over to build a railway line to the airport. So I'm fine with the project being indefinitely delayed or cancelled. With the effects of peak oil just around the corner if the project is pushed back ten years or so it'll be a complete non-starter.

What I am truly worried about is if the government starts looking at options for a surface route, which I am sure they will be doing. This is despite the fact that surface-route options have been analysed over and over again throughout the past 5-10 years and always found to have unacceptable effects on the environment and the local community. One of the main justifications for the tunnel proposed was that compared to a surface level road the cost difference wasn't actually that great, largely because a significant amount of property acquisition could be avoided. Furthermore, along a potential surface route there are some enormous questions to be answered: how to get around the Auckland urban area's largest waterfall? How to not completely destroy Waterview? How to not destroy Oakley Creek? How to compensate for an enormous loss of public open space? How to work within the rail designation where it exists to make sure a future Avondale-Southdown rail route is not compromised? And how to actually successfully designate the area northwest of New North Road that has never been 'set aside' for a motorway project.  The last time NZTA tried to designate land in Auckland City, for the Manukau Harbour Crossing Project, they got criticised hugely by the Onehunga community and eventually withdrew their notice of requirement and agreed to abandon upgrading the Onehunga interchange.

I was already thinking about making a submission against the Waterview Connection - on the grounds of it not being justified and also because of worries about air pollution from the ventilation towers. If a surface route is proposed I'll be rather widening my opposition I think.

No matter what happens, we've just added at least another couple of years to the timeline of the Waterview Connection being completed. All the consenting documentation for the tunnel had been completed just before Christmas (after close to two years of work on the design of the tunnels) so if all that work is now pointless it's going to lead to a huge delay in this project happening. Which, as I said before, is not necessarily a bad thing. 

It's now a couple of weeks since the trains started going again on the Western Line, and about three weeks since I posted some photos of the works that went on in the Avondale area during the Christmas and New Year break. So I thought it was about time I headed out again for a quick wander around to see how things have sorted themselves out.

As shown in the photo above, the new Avondale train station is open and operational at the moment. The platforms certainly have quite a "permanent" look about them, although this is apparently because there are pretty high standards that rail platforms have to be built to. So one can't really cut too many corners when building a temporary station in this regards. The rest of the station is pretty basic, what you'd expect for something that's only going to be there for a year at the longest. I suppose that the location of the station is not really worse than where it used to be - although it certainly isn't better. We'll have to wait for the permanent station to be built at Crayford Street before Avondale really starts to benefit from actually having a train station that is accessible from the town centre.

This photo looks west from the station to underneath the Blockhouse Bay Road bridge. The line has been dropped down quite significantly from its previous height, although sadly I don't have any old photos to compare it to. One of the main reasons for this lowering of the track is so electric wires are able to fit under the bridge. So in some ways this project was a first step towards electrification of Auckland's network - an exciting project that hopefully we'll see much more of as the year passes.

This photo shows the Blockhouse Bay Road bridge. The traffic lights are new, and designed to assist with pedestrian safety for people crossing the bridge and wandering down to the train station. Blockhouse Bay Road is dangerous as hell around here so I'm hoping the lights stick around for a while.

This photo looks west from the Blockhouse Bay Road bridge, and gives a good indication of the new rail alignment. Some very serious earthworks went on here over a pretty short period of time. It's interesting that concrete rail sleepers seem to be preferred these days.

This photo looks in a southwest direction from Rosebank Road. The new station is to be located just around the corner. Hopefully the area in the foreground becomes a park and ride facility once construction is complete. Or a bus/train transport interchange as a decent number of buses drive past this spot. Certainly plenty of potential for a good transport integrated development, no matter what form it takes.

So overall I'm pretty impressed by what's been achieved at Avondale over the past month. It will be interesting to see how construction of the actual permanent Avondale station goes, and whether we end up with something a little more interesting than the typical basic shelter. I suppose that I take a somewhat particular interest in Avondale, as I have worked around there for the past three years and I also used the area as the focus case study for my thesis back in 2005. It is an area with plenty of potential to become a great rail-based high-density growth node, and although significant redevelopment is unlikely in the near future, longer-term Avondale has huge potential to be a very interesting place. The new train station will be in the heart of that change, and finally be located in a spot that's connected to the local community and of some use to them.

I had a great weekend up north at Mangawhai Heads. There was of course the huge advantage that the weather was utterly fantastic, so we were able to spend a fairly decent chunk of the time on the beach. I hadn't been to Mangawhai Heads for quite a few months - fairly typical for me in many ways actually - but it was good to get there and have a fun weekend.

On the way back we got to check out the new Orewa to Puhoi motorway, officially known as ALPURT B2 or the Northern Gateway. It's a fairly spectacular piece of motorway that has been under construction for the past few years and is actually New Zealand's most expensive ever roading project, largely due to the extremely hilly terrain that it had to go through and also the high environmental standards that were used - a nice change from many motorway projects in the past.

Leila managed to take some good photos, and a video too:

Please ignore the chatter!

This photo is taken out looking back towards the southern portals of the Johnston's Hill tunnel. The northbound carriageway cuts down to one lane here for safety reasons, although importantly the tunnel is wide enough for two lanes of traffic eventually, once the motorway is extended further north (assuming that happens).

This photo is of the "Chin Hill" cut. The amount of earthworks to create this cut was apparently enormous.

This photo shows one of the eco-viaducts that were a big part of the project. I was a little disappointed not to be able to get more of a sense of the viaducts' scale, but I guess that's only really possible if you're not on them.

This photo looks towards "Pukeko Bridge", which is amazingly high above the motorway. You can't quite get a sense of it's great colour as the light was starting to fade by the time we took the photos.

These are the electronic toll 'gates'. No stopping here - just cameras taking photos of your number plate, which you then have three days to pay the $2 toll.

This is the new Orewa interchange. Before last Sunday someone heading north had to exit here and trawl their way through the back-streets of Orewa. I certainly won't miss the horrible orange-roofed houses at Orewa!!!

It took me a little while to notice, but there has been a significant if subtle change to the way Queen Street - Auckland's main street - functions for the last few weeks. It all comes down to traffic light phasing actually, with the phasing of the lights at the corner of Queen Street and Victoria Street (and also on the corner of Queen Street and Wellesley Street I think) being adjusted to favour the pedestrians more and the cars less. Previously, there was the typical cycle - in the case of the Queen Street/Victoria Street intersection it would go as follows:

1.  Turning traffic from Victoria Street into Queen Street (both ways)
2. Straight through traffic from Victoria Street passing across Queen Street (both ways)
3. Northbound (downhill) traffic from Queen Street, also including a right-turn arrow
4. Southbound (uphill) traffic from Queen Street, also including a right-turn arrow
5. Pedestrians

In itself, this phasing was a change from how things used to be before the Queen Street upgrade took place in the last few years. The pedestrian phase included a funky looking walking green man, and a count down timer once a person should only be finishing their crossing of the intersection. The last aspect I think was particularly directed towards young Asian women who for some reason have a particular tendency to wander across that particular intersection at the last possible minute.

This phasing was pretty typical of traffic lights around Auckland, although the "Barnes Dance" situation where pedestrian cross all together (and can therefore cross diagonally) is fairly unusual. However, for the Queen Street and Victoria Street intersection this Barnes Dance is particularly important, as I've heard it is one of the busiest pedestrian intersections in the Southern Hemisphere. But anyway, in the last couple of weeks the phasing has been different. Originally I thought it was a malfunction on behalf of the traffic lights, which has happened before (particularly at the Wellesley Street intersection) where for some reason a phase keeps on getting missed - damn frustrating if you're kept waiting forever. However, after a bit more careful observation this isn't a malfunction, and is a deliberate change. Effectively, this is what happens now:

1. Right turn for Victoria Street traffic into Queen Street (both ways)
2. Straight ahead traffic from Victoria Street across Queen Street (both ways)
3. Pedestrian phase (Barnes Dance)
4. Northbound Queen Street traffic (straight ahead and right-turning)
5. Southbound Queen Street traffic (straigh ahead and right-turning)
6. Pedestrian phase (Barnes Dance)

Yes, I know it's a little nerdy for me to notice all this, but I do use this intersection a fair amount and I am the kind of person to note such happenings. Now, the obvious change is that an extra pedestrian phase has been squeezed in between the Victoria Street traffic and the Queen Street traffic. First things first, this is great. Queen Street is primarily a pedestrian-oriented area (or at least should be) so it's absolutely fantastic that council has taken one further step towards prioritising pedestrians ahead of cars. It's a pity that more significant efforts like considering the full pedestrianising of Queen Street or narrowing it down to one lane of traffic each way wasn't fully considered in the upgrade of a few years back, but I totally support any step taken to make life easier for pedestrians and this certainly does, but halving the length of time that one has to wait to cross this very busy intersection. However, more than that it is a good symbolic move by council that clearly says "the pedestrian has priority here, yes sit in your car and watch them all crossing the road.... again!"

However, with the extra 45 seconds or however long that pedestrian phase is, clearly the effects on Queen Street's traffic have been significant. Today in particular it seemed semi gridlocked for almost the whole day for traffic heading up Queen Street approaching this intersection. Now I don't have a problem with that in one sense. As I mentioned before, all efforts should be made to present Queen Street as a place where you should avoid taking your car - it is Auckland's "main street" and a lot of money has been spent on creating a nice pedestrian environment for people wandering up and down it. It is a very vibrant street, with thousands walking along the footpaths at most hours of the day, but particularly around lunch time. A few years back I did some pedestrian counts for McDonald's and we were hitting close to 5000 people wandering past certain locations between 12pm and 2pm every weekday. Outside Vulcan Lane on a Friday I think the final total was close to 7000. So I'm not concerned about car traffic being held up by particularly slow traffic traffic light phasing - if you take your car into town and think you can drive it along Queen Street then I reckon you deserve to get stuck in a traffic jam and for it to take you 20 minutes to drive its length. Perhaps next time you'll think twice about it and catch a bus into town.

No, my concern is how this effects the many buses that make their way up and down Queen Street throughout the day, particularly in the evening peak when a trip up Queen Street on a bus can take about as long as the rest of the trip from the top of Queen Street all the way to Point Chevalier (something Leila experienced on many occasions). Due to the lack of a city rail-loop, a number of routes that utilise Queen Street and the existence of 50c bus trips within the bounds of the CBD, the buses that head up Queen Street are very popular. In fact, the few times I have caught a bus up Queen Street recently (usually getting up to Karangahape Road to have an awesome Kebab at the Turkish Cafe) the buses have been busier than any bus I have ever seen travelling along my usual routes (New North Road and Sandringham Road). The congestion that these buses have to deal with on Queen Street inevitably leads to longer trip times, less reliability and general all-round frustration. I can speak from experience that this has got significantly worse in the last few weeks since the signalling changes were undertaken.

The solution is pretty simple though: bus lanes for Queen Street. There are a number of streets in the CBD that now have bus lanes: Fanshawe Street, Albert Street and Symonds Street in the near future. In many cases these bus lanes operate at all times or at least for extended hours compared to the suburban ones. This enables a significantly increased number of buses to travel along these routes as they are not held up by the general congestion that other cars cause. Having caught many buses down Albert Street during the evening peak I can say that the prior situation was very dire, with the buses often taking 10-15 minutes to travel from Victoria Street down to the Waterfront. One could walk that distance in half that time I imagine. Whilst I haven't caught many Albert Street buses of late, I imagine that the bus lanes have fixed that problem significantly. Bus lanes on Queen Street would also have an excellent precedent in the form of Lambton Quay: Wellington's main street. Lambton Quay is definitely the closest approximate to Queen Street you can get anywhere in New Zealand and there are bus lanes along almost its complete length. Just about every bus servicing Wellington's CBD runs along Lambton Quay without any congestiong problems that I noted. In fact, even the general traffic lanes were pretty quiet as motorists clearly reliased it was not their domain, and stuck to the wider one-way streets located further towards the waterfront.

Council did in fact investigate the option of bus lanes a while back, but abandoned that proposal because even though most people they consulted thought it was a great idea, shop-owners couldn't get their heads around the idea that someone might actually buy stuff even though they didn't drive there! The whole opposing argument to bus lanes on Queen Street was pretty laughable really, and in actual fact was only a disguise to opposing the removal of parking spaces from the side of Queen Street. According to Mr Spencer in the above linked article, each P15 free parking space had a significant economic benefit to the street, which had (somehow) been calcuated at around $500,000 a year per space. Now while I still think it's dumb to really think that people drive into Queen Street to do their shopping in 15 minutes before driving home again, I can somewhat see a logic in that removing parking space might actually have an effect on businesses. However, that argument is long gone as most of the free P15 parking spaces were actually removed from Queen Street to widen the footpath. Most of the remaning spaces are loading zones rather than parking spaces, but for most of the street's length (between Customs Street and Mayoral Drive in particular) there are simply the four lanes of traffic and then the footpath.

I also don't get how having bus lanes would adversely affect business activity. The lanes are not going to take up parking spaces, they would take up a lane of general traffic in each direction. So there is no sense in the previous argument made my Mr Spencer. Furthermore, the argument that "far more people drive than catch the bus" is probably moot point. Perhaps council did over-estimate the number of people riding the bus along Queen Street during the course of a day - particularly when one considers that buses don't actually operate 24/7. However, it is clear to me that the average passenger load is far more than seven people per bus, unless of course you're counting right at the bottom of Queen Street when everyone has either already got off the bus, or the bus is only just starting its route and has yet to pick people up along Queen Street.

So all in all, with the recent changes to the signals at two of the major intersections along Queen Street and the irrelevance of the "parking space" argument, I think it's high-time that Auckland City Council looks again at installing the bus lanes along this critical public transport route. I recognise that this is not a time that they want to be embarking on huge projects, but I can't see how implementing bus lanes would be a huge project. You just need to paint some of the road, put up a few bus lane signs, perhaps install a 'bus priority' signal at all the traffic lights and you're done. No costly earthworks, no massive disruptions to the street itself. And once you're done with it, the buses will flow easily up and down Queen Street in a similar manner to how it works on Lambton Quay in Wellington. Even more people will be able to easily access the CBD, bringing in more shopper for those complaining businesses. For those who insist on driving their cars along this street, well they can continue to suffer in the traffic jams that will inevitably occur. And all I can say is shame on them for being stupid and choosing that street to drive along. It's not like there are no other options. Perhaps in their gridlock they might even be held up long enough to pop out of their cars and into the nearby stores - now that would make the business owners happy!

As a few of my recent posts have shown, a significant amount of work has gone on throughout Auckland's railway system over the last few weeks. Yesterday the Southern and Western Lines reopened for the first time since Christmas, with trains operating once again throughout the whole network.

It is quite impressive to see what OnTrack have achieved throughout that time. The Avondale work I have covered in a previous post, although I will at some point head back there to take some more photos of the finished product (well, the finished product at this point, as the final train station is probably going to be slowly constructed over the next year). However, there was also a huge amount of work around Newmarket and also between Newmarket and the Boston Road station. OnTrack have fantastically kept a great record of the works they've been doing on their website. A few pictures from that site are included below:

This photo appears as though it's taken from the Broadway bridge over the rail line, looking east. It's interesting that the entire track base has been concreted in this area - I guess there must be some instability in the ground around here. I still haven't figured out exactly how the train movements will work through Newmarket when it's complete (the under-construction station is over to the right side of the picture), but I think the two tracks clearly in picture are mainly to be used over the next year or so while the rest of the station area is constructed.

This is a particularly interesting photo as we don't often get to see 'close up' how the tracks are constructed and tested. Perhaps the machine above is 'bolting' the tracks to the sleepers between them or checking that they have a consistent width. I'd be curious to know.

I am pretty sure this photo looks back towards the same bridge that the first photo was taken from. Pretty amazing to think that this crazy work site is now a completely functional rail line again.

This is another interesting photo of the Newmarket area. I'm not sure exactly where it would have been taken from, but I think it looks south towards where the station is being constructed.

This photo shows a part of the recently double-tracked line between Newmarket and Boston Road. Previously the double-track line finished about where the photo is being taken from, but now it extends further towards Boston Road. I need to get to this area and have a look at it myself to see exactly what progress has been made - perhaps I will be able to get out there myself in the next couple of weeks.

I am particularly looking forward to Newmarket station being opened. Another year....

Amid the reasonable number of transportation oriented posts that I come up with, I guess it's important for myself as much as anyone else to write some sort of record about what's actually going on in my life at the moment. I suppose that it hasn't been particularly interesting or noteworth of late, but still worthy to mention.

It's now about a week and a half since I've been back at work - not too far short of the length that I was on holiday for. Of course it's always slightly depressing to head back to work after the Christmast-New Year's holidays, knowing that the next break is most probably a significant while away. However, I've managed to keep reasonably busy over the last week and a bit, which has kept things fairly interesting. Life has settled back into a bit of a pattern that actually feels nice in some respects - although I definitely miss the sleep-ins that I enjoyed over the holidays. I had a fairly quiet weekend when I think about it, although at the same time it did feel very pleasant. On Saturday I took Amalia out to see my Nana, along with Ella and Joseph. It was pretty good and I think it brightened up my Nana's day quite a lot, as she has pretty nasty health issues and doesn't get out much. Later in the day I bought the movie Wall E, and the whole flat watched it together which was also very nice.

A few months ago Leila and I took Amalia to see Wall E at the movies and I really absolutely loved it. It really felt like the kind of movie that Pixar have been wanting to make for years (the idea had actually been floating around since the days of Toy Story) but I presume had never quite had the guts to do it. To be fair, it is a very different kind of movie - especially for kids - as it has barely any dialouge throughout its first half, and is basically a love story between two robots that can barely say anything more than each other's names. Yet it is so well shot, the characters are so amazingly complex and the sounds that they do make are so well thought out that I honestly didn't really notice the lack of dialouge until about halfway through the movie when the humans enter into the story. I remember when I watched the movie the first time, when the humans did enter the story and start talking I thought for a while that something different had happened and it actually took a while to realise that the movie now seemed different because there was dialouge - I hadn't actually noticed the lack of it before! Wall E is an incredibly sweet movie, but at the same time one with a very necessary and at times quite disturbing message. Is our planet doomed to end up in a situation where it is nigh on impossible to live on it? Are technological advances necessary always going to be a good thing? I think it's really great that such essential questions for the future are being explored by a kids film, and explored in a really strong way. There's a lot to learn from that movie for all concerned.

On Sunday Leila, Amalia and I spent most of the day at Ella & Pete's place, which was also quite nice. Although Ella has now been back from Europe for almost a year, the time when she was away still seems fairly recent in some respects, so it was nice to spend some extended time with everyone. Amalia certainly enjoyed playing a lot of "The Sims" with her.

Next weekend is Anniversary Weekend, and I will have the opportunity to spend a couple of days at Mangawhai Heads, which will be great as I haven't been up there for ages. Furthermore, on the way back we will get to drive along the newly opened Orewa-Puhoi motorway for the first time - something I have been looking forward to for quite a few years now!