Will public transport ridership ever meet the City's grandiose targets?

Russell Jones says the COVID-19 epidemic has to affect the viability of Auckland’s public transport infrastructure investments, and the recent changed behaviour may never fully return

18th Apr 20, 12:00pm by Guest

By Russell Jones*

Auckland is currently investing heavily in public transport infrastructure, much of which is to transport people to and from their offices, tertiary institutions and other organisations in or near the CBD.

The COVID-19 epidemic has led to many of these people working at home and communicating with their colleagues and customers by teleconferencing.

If a significant proportion of these people continue working remotely, at least part of the time after the epidemic is over, it will affect demand for public transport and hence the viability of these projects.

The economic case for these projects is affected by any reduction in people working in the areas served in two ways. The first and direct way is the reduction in conventional transport benefits (traffic decongestion, savings in existing public transport users travel times, etc.) due to lower patronage. The second way is through a potential reduction in wider economic benefits.

These projects are inherently risky as a very large lump of capital has to be committed at the start to build them with the payoff coming over many years. Calculating the payoff requires many assumptions about the future, many of which are now likely to be incorrect.

Problems also occur where politicians commit to a project before they have been properly evaluated and costed. The City Rail Link is an example of this; Len Brown (the former mayor of Auckland) pushed for this project before it had been properly costed, with the result that the cost has escalated significantly since he proposed it. It now remains to be seen whether patronage has also been over-estimated.

There are also potential problems with the City Centre to Mangere Light Rail project, about which little has been heard in public recently. It appears officials are working on several proposals for the project, one of which has the added complexity of the Government being both a purchaser and an investor through the NZ Superannuation Fund.

Russell Jones is a reader.

We welcome your comments below. If you are not already registered, please register to comment

Remember we welcome robust, respectful and insightful debate. We don't welcome abusive or defamatory comments and will de-register those repeatedly making such comments. Our current comment policy is here.

36 Comments

by Graham Adams | 18th Apr 20, 12:15pm 1587168934

Yes, the last time I looked the CRL was costing $1.28 billion a kilometre of rail. Retrofitting already built-up cities is eye-wateringly expensive.
And it's possible that hundreds of thousands of temporary visa workers will leave the country (and there won't be much chance of using mass immigration for a while to replace them).
With a reduced population and more people working from home, the public advocates for vastly increasing public transport may have to fall silent. Julie Anne Genter will lose her political raison d'etre.

by Lanthanide | 18th Apr 20, 2:35pm 1587177341

"And it's possible that hundreds of thousands of temporary visa workers will leave the country (and there won't be much chance of using mass immigration for a while to replace them)."

I wouldn't be so sure about that. If the virus lurks around the rest of the world and causes a lot of disruption for years to come, NZ may be quite a desirable place to be. While the government won't be waiving the quarantine requirements for new entrants, they could do all sorts of things to sweeten immigration, such as new visa classes, shorter and easier paths to permanent residence, etc.

If the government decides we need immigrants, they have a lot of levers to pull in order to attract them, and there will always be people clamouring to live here.

by Weld | 18th Apr 20, 12:17pm 1587169026

Public transport = virus propagation capsules

by CommonMan | 19th Apr 20, 6:26pm 1587277595

Motorways = More people dying of accidents

by Foyle | 19th Apr 20, 8:33pm 1587285227

Motorways are amazingly safe. About 40 people a year die in accidents in Auckland, but only about 5 on motorways.

by Foreign buyer | 18th Apr 20, 12:20pm 1587169215

In future I will only ever go on a bus, train or plane if I can use my scuba gear.

by Henry_Tull | 18th Apr 20, 12:37pm 1587170241

Question.
Has the super city Auckland Council been a success?

by Lapun | 18th Apr 20, 1:31pm 1587173460

No. These are the antonyms for 'super'
bad
inferior
insignificant
ordinary
poor
unexceptional
second-rate

by David Chaston | 18th Apr 20, 4:36pm 1587184579

I reckon it has. There has been good and bad (some quite), but overall I think it has been a resounding success.

Standards are the same across the whole City. "Little" things like upgraded footpaths have been completed and they have made a big difference. Roads and crossings are in very much better shape. Wastewater and fresh water is in much better hands (even if in COOs). There is one point of contact for most services and they are integrated, even if they get their delivery in a muddle sometimes. AT is even better than what we had before. And "rates" are much better, fairer across the whole region. They are also less expensive than in other regions, for most anyway.

And they are actually big enough to tackle region-wide issues, unable to claim they don't have the resouces because they do. We have had some amazing infrastructure completed, even if some of it was with general taxpayer help. But they are big enough to stand up to the "Yes, Ministers" in Wellington.

The biggest failing without a doubt is housing, in all forms. Consents, social housing, RMA application, zoning, the whole mess. And we have been bequeathed an unaffordable, socially divisive situation that will take years to unwind - and they haven't even really started yet.

But apart from that glaring problem, it is fair to claim it is a 'great City'. It is lucky its on the naturally great harbour, but even so, they have done a more than credible job of enhancing that advantage.

Apart from housing, I doubt you will find many people wanting to move away. There will be the odd oddball who will complain about anything. But on balance, the SuperCity has been a singular success. (One particular thing I like is that it is much harder for tiny splinter groups to capture the policy reins. They try, and try often, and sometimes loopy people succeed. But it is much harder for them to screw things up by screwing the scrum their way. Real change is now debated in an adult way.)

by Uninterested | 18th Apr 20, 4:47pm 1587185228

I assume that David lives in the inner city.
Yes, the CRL is already a financial disaster even without the loss of patronage.
On the North Shore, very little has happened in recent years and there are many many projects which have had their budgets removed. Always tantalizing: there is no money in the upcoming budget but a report is being undertaken.....
One example of another disaster in the making will be the Takapuna central carpark selloff. Land values will be very much lower when it comes time for the bids, so the economics of this Council run land speculation project become losses.

by GV 27 | 19th Apr 20, 12:35pm 1587256548

"Very little has happened" The busway you had a decade before anyone else had one is already being extended. Devonport has its own ratepayer funded ride-sharing program operating at a massive subsidy. Should we wait until we've paved every street in the Shore with gold before we build anything else in Auckland?

If the Shore could monetise their complaining about being hard-done-by then they could build a dedicated monorail to every house in the district.

by Roger Witherspoon | 18th Apr 20, 4:58pm 1587185893

Homelessness and overcrowding have shot up, or so I thought. Hardly a sign of progress.

by Lapun | 19th Apr 20, 5:01am 1587229283

Libraries were good but they got better.

I dislike the impression that everything in Auckland exists for the CBD; I preferred the feeling of a mass of overlapping over grown villages.

Given the population boom imposed by a greedy central government's population plan (they do hve a plan don't they?) then maybe Auckland was doomed to have got worse (less liveable) under the old system too.

by Boatman | 19th Apr 20, 3:37pm 1587267452

I concur its a great place to live , however I dont think its efficiently managed .

I am at a loss to understand why the city runs a fleet of 800 vehicles including luxury SUV;s ( and they dont run a single Bus or Rubbish truck or parks vehicle which are branded AT etc , but are outsourced to and owned by private contractors )

Its likely the biggest fleet in the country , and a massive carbon footprint to boot .

We were told the headcount would reduce on the merger into the Supercity .............. its has not !

I am at a loss as to why the city needs circa 10,000 staff to be run properly , and suspect there are a lot of people on the payroll doing very little all day .

We have heard horror stories about them buying a massive leaky building , and if any one should have been able to see a leaky building , it should have been the City .

We have seen horror stories about the costs of IT spend blowouts.

And in my interactions with the City I am astounded at the spectacular free-spending by staff of money which just flows in from the hapless ratepayer.

by waymad | 18th Apr 20, 1:11pm 1587172315

Indeed, the combination of the WuHuFlu, the steel 'bubble' of private transport, the sudden move to remote everything outside actual materials handling, and the sudden drop in congestion, removes a great deal of the appeal of PT everywhere. Some other consequences (crystal ball, have salt shaker handy):

If the 'knee of the curve' (basic MM1 queuing theory) has been semi-permanently avoided, then congestion may be considerably lower, and for an extended period. This removes both the need for PT refinement let alone extension, and the will to pay for it (as the problem has very visibly disappeared).
The fear of contagion in small spaces will remain and affect ridership at least until there is a widely effective, widely available, and widely administered vaccine.
In the interim, smaller, cheaper, faster and less environmentally damaging modes of private transport will have the time and space to colonise the ridership which otherwise would have relied on PT. This might well be irreversible.

by beachouse | 20th Apr 20, 7:42am 1587325320

It will be very interesting to see how it pans out. I get the feeling people will avoid PT (like the plague). I think you are right about smaller, cheaper, faster modes having a chance to really get going. I suspect we will have been wishing we built more cycleways that are wider and not so CBD focused.

by powerdownkiwi | 18th Apr 20, 1:17pm 1587172621

Public transport is largely the right answer.

If we disregard the 'personal right to' brigade, the question is a multi-generational one, and private energy-consumption at car-use level is probably unsupportable.

But both ends of the current political spectrum miss the 'going to work' question. What will future work look like? And the answer is; Like now. Or like now but more local and hands-on food-production. Too many cannot divest their 'status-quo' assumptions when addressing the future

by Uninterested | 18th Apr 20, 4:50pm 1587185403

Don't you like the idea of electric cars and buses?

by Dale Smith | 18th Apr 20, 1:36pm 1587173768

Much of the push to use most products, is the marketing of your needs and wants to convince you that you MUST have it, and as a 'happy coincidence,' those that are selling you the spin make a lot of money out of it.

Transport is no different, and in many ways, they do not want you to work out that don't have to take 1/2 the trips you do.

PT could be severely hit by the new normal as it is mainly for people, whereas roading extra space will be partially filled with courier vans making more home deliveries.

The shape of cities could change too with more localized suburbs and subrurals, in a way exactly what Christchurch had to do after the earthquakes.

by delboy | 18th Apr 20, 1:35pm 1587173719

Ive commuted to the city for work on the Northern Express busway service daily since it first opened but never again.

Public transport especially buses and trains are just germ tubes.

by JimboJones | 18th Apr 20, 6:53pm 1587192829

Am I the only person expecting life to go back to normal once they find a COVID cure? It reminds me of when everyone thought AIDS was going to kill us all.
If we honestly don’t think there is going to be a cure then we may as well all just get it and be done with it.

by sunchap | 18th Apr 20, 5:23pm 1587187389

What worries me is that only 3% of trips are on public transport in NZ despite the billions poured into it over the last 20 years. 80% of jobs are now in the suburbs, rather than 20% in the 1950's.

Public transport has a small role to play for the elderly and low income but can never fix congestion IMHO. I believe the future is a spread out city with electric cars. This would solve congestion and high land/house prices. The RUBoundary has to go....

As Don Brash says "The councils have created an artificial shortage of land".

by JimboJones | 18th Apr 20, 6:59pm 1587193191

Nothing will ever fix congestion, but good public transport offers an alternative to it. Realistically very few parts of NZ have access to good public transport. And I’m sure you’ll find that for every $3 spent on public transport in the last 70 years there has been $97 spent on roads around the country so it’s hardly surprising.
And the spread out city is also part of the problem. How many people do you know that live anywhere near their jobs?

by waymad | 19th Apr 20, 12:50pm 1587257454

Congestion, au contraire, is easily managed. It's basic queuing theory: move service time down and/or queue entrants down, and this promptly moves the wait time back past the 'knee of the curve' - the point at which more throughput results in vastly increased wait times.

This can be achieved by a multitude of approaches: moving timings of business/school opening/closing (affects queue entrants), decreasing service time (on-ramp lights, more lanes), congestion charges (affects queue entrant behaviours) and so on.

by Foyle | 18th Apr 20, 5:20pm 1587187245

electric micro cars would be a good '3rd way' quad bike sized, limited speed, can double lanes and almost double number of people moving on same roads and in same parking area - all while maintaining good isolation and individual flexibility in transport.

by MAH | 19th Apr 20, 7:20pm 1587280824

There are a couple being readied for production around the world. One was exhibited at CES 2020, it featured semi-automation to safely follow other traffic and park itself. Fully electric and 5G ready.
These smaller electric vehicles including scooters and motorbikes are on the cusp of much greater take up, here and worldwide.
The Megatrend and associated pressures of urbanisation will ensure it - along with PT’s new status as Petri dishes.

by printer8 | 18th Apr 20, 7:04pm 1587193471

It is time for a change and the current pandemic could be the same trigger for Auckland as the earthquake was for Christchurch.
Many businesses really need to question why they are located in the CBD. An insurance call centre just located off Queen Street near Sky Tower doesn’t make sense. Costly and time consuming transport for workers and expensive office rent for business. Quite capable of working from home and if not in a suburban or regional location which surely is in the interest of employees and employer . . . and Council and ratepayers infrastructure costs.
My understanding is that many Christchurch pre-earthquake CBD businesses have not since returned.

by waymad | 19th Apr 20, 12:44pm 1587257096

Exactly, Printer8. Christchurch CBD is mainly inhabited by Gubmint-funded Departments (Justice, Police, Stats, etc), local Councils, high-end stores (Ballantynes, H&M), numerous hospo outlets that will now be Goneburger because of high ground rents, tumbleweeds and expensive public artworks and playgrounds. Few to no residents who would have provided custom for retail. The stupid City Council is still attempting to pump the chest of the corpse with scads of OPM, but That will probably come to a screaming halt once they digest the Draft Annual Plan. The emergent city has a doughnut shape, which can be summed up in the notion that it's easier to do business anywhere that the Dead Hand of Council and Gubmint don't control.

by Dale Smith | 20th Apr 20, 7:21am 1587324070

yes, the Christchurch earthquakes answered that, up until then, theoretical question, 'What would happen to a city if it had no CDB.'

The thought was, especially by the compact city advocates, was 'the CBD was the heart of the city' and if you removed that, 'the city would die.'

Well guess what really happens when you close down the CBD? Not much. Everyone just moved within days/weeks and got on with it.

by solardb | 18th Apr 20, 10:40pm 1587206412

If people work from home , all those motorway expansions are a waste too . Why is no one questioning them ?.
Lower patronage because of people working form home will actually benefit public transport. Thats because trains and bus services (and roads) have to be built to serve the peak hour rush . You might need 10 trains at peak times , and 2 for the rest of the day. so the system costs are for 10 trains , which are actually only used for maybe 4 hours a day . Thats why public transport cannot make a profit , the fixed costs are only covered in the peak hours , because those costs are related to peak service. ( either can urban motorways , but like I say that isn't counted , cos they are roads ). So if everyone doesn't have to be at work at 9 a.m , the costs can be spread , revenue will be down , but costs will be down more. And seeing as they don't make a profit anyway , lower costs/ lower revenue means an overall gain.

by delboy | 19th Apr 20, 8:32am 1587241935

Trains work well in densely populated cities and countries. But here in NZ with a spread out population of 5 million transport by private car or dedicated bus lanes is much more practical.

Also when a train breaks down most of the network grinds to a halt whereas if a bus breaks down the other buses simply drive past it.

by CommonMan | 19th Apr 20, 6:23pm 1587277423

what a load of crap, How many buses you can fit in the CBD , also As many lanes you add you will end up in CBD which only has 2 lanes , ever heard about bottleneck.. And CRL is for Auckland with 1.8 million population. It will future proof our PT network and will enable rails in the Northshore in future. Read about when NEX is going to reach capacity.
I am just hoping that these so called shovel ready projects does not takes us back to stupid 50s when we stopped our Tram and built just motorways and now the people have to suffer because of no viable alternative.
Remember You cant build your way out of traffic.

by agrisorb | 19th Apr 20, 7:52pm 1587282764

Light rail down Dominion road. Get real.
SkyBus ran every 10 minutes down that road to airport up untill 3 or 4 months ago.
Guess what. lack of patronage .
Its been pulled.

by Boatman | 19th Apr 20, 9:57pm 1587290235

I looked at using Skybus............ just once ............. and it was so horrendously expensive that I would not entertain using it .

It was cheaper for me to ask one of my sons to give me lift to the airport and take my car back home , and then fetch me on my return .

It was almost as expensive as an airticket to Wellington ............ Skybus was never going to fly , and its demise was no surprise .

As for the Light rail on Dominion Road , that too will never fly

by waymad | 20th Apr 20, 12:52pm 1587343943

Well, the Greens have come up with a $9 billion plan to electrify the main trunks (NI plus SI) at least around the major cities and get high-speed (160km/hr), high-frequency-of-service trains running.

At an electricification cost per km of around $USD10m/km, that $NZD9B will extend electrification for 450 km at a USD/NZD rate of 0.50.

But I suspect the proposal has at least five deep flaws:

To let pax rail run in two directions, double-tracking is needed. That's probably north of $50m/km. Christchurch is the testbed here: there's no double-tracking, few passing sidings, no stations, no pax-capable signalling, and so on. Even if a slew of passing sidings is posited, that's gonna reduce that 160km/hr max speed to maybe a 60-80km/hr average. Not that much different to a bus or car. Suppose (say) a 15min frequency for three hours twice a day, over a 70km single trip at 70km/hr, and assuming instant turnarounds, that needs four trains per direction per hour on that trip. That's three or four crossings if single-track for the returning units.
Stations, signalling, ticketing, and meshing with last-mile services. No use turning up at the nearest station to your workplace (like Christchurch Airport freight ops) and finding you have 8-10km still to go and no last-mile PT. All this stuff is expensive, and uncosted, I suspect.
Electrification is absent in the middle third of the NI, and absent from the SI except for heritage stuff through the Arthur's Pass tunnel. By no coincidence, these are the very parts that are toughest to electrify at all: tunnels, bridges, tight curves, high (for rail) gradients). The cost/km is likely to be an order of magnitude higher in these areas.
Where is the power to come from? A single source of power (overhead catenaries, substations) is vulnerable to outages which stop the entire block section - er- in its tracks. And, especially in the NI, there just isn't the spare capacity to impose significantly higher loads: most daytime top-up power comes from SI hydro. Perhaps Tiwai closure is part of the Green's assumptions. But there's still no way to get That power from the deep south to Auckland without expensive line duplication or upgrades (last estimate was north of 0.5B and that was some time ago).
Patronage in those shiny new commuter trains. It's all very well creating them, but who is actually going to use (say) a Hamilton-Auckland route, and in sufficient numbers? The sectors that can't or won't include tradies, the elderly, the very young, the WuFluFearFull, the poor and the unemployed. That's a big chunk of potential patrons.

Can't see it going anywhere but Off the Rails......

by Rob | 21st Apr 20, 12:07am 1587384427

Not sure how much confidence people are going to have in public transport moving forward in the post covid world, where social distancing will become the norm for a few years, (unless we eliminate the virus in NZ). Maybe everyone should travel in their own electric powered bubbles instead.