Auckland's Transport History - Part 2

Following is Part 2 of Auckland Transport History.

In Part 1 we looked at the years 1920 through to 1970 noting decline in PT usage as the automobile started to feature in New Zealands transport spectrum.

This post looks at the polices put in place over this period to see what impact they had on Auckland in terms of the way Auckland grew and how we chose to move around it.

Again, this post is using the evidence presented in the paper
"The American Heresy: Half a Century of Transport Planning in Auckland"

1945 to 1955

Before getting into the various plans of the time its important to fist know what Auckland was like back in this time, one good way to do this is to use the Auckland Council GIS Viewer that has historical aerial photos dating back to 1940.

Auckland - 1940

As you can see in the above image Auckland was very densely populated in a grid system which is pretty typical of a time when people relied on walking as their main form of transport. The development of the city generally spread along the tram lines which ran on arterial roads that were no wider than the average side street. Unlike most planned cities Auckland seemed to adopt a philosophy that space was hard to come by and therefore no effort at all was made to plan for future demand.

Looking at the transport network of 1940 it appears that even back then not much in the way of development had occurred along the rail network suggesting that it was being used more as a regional passenger system rather than a metropolitan system. It's noted that 10 years previously in 1930 a grand new train station had been built in the CBD that was integrated with the tram network. This station was built as the base of Grafton Gully between the CBD and Parnell.

Auckland Train Station - 1930

Based on the 1955 Plan over 90% of passenger and good trips occurred on the road, with rail contributing not a too dissimilar portion to that of today. At this point in time it is likely that a large potion of these passenger trips were occurring either on buses or trams.

1946 Plan

The first transport plan for Auckland you normally hear about is the 1955 Plan, however in 1946 the Ministry of Works developed a regional transport plan comprising of both motorways and railways. This plan looked at the region rather than what was Auckland city at the time as can be seen in the image below.

Regional Plan - 1946

With this plan being developed directly after WWII there is a good chance that the this plan was not just looking at providing improved transport around the region but also had a focus on defence as evident by the various air bases being shown. Interesting to note in this plan is that although quite a few large motorways are planed various railway projects are also included such as the Morningside Deviation and the Southdown rail-line.

The 1946 plan actually should take quite a bit of credit for creating some of the most important transport corridors in the city, even if it was somewhat incomplete in terms of its vision. By 1959 the southern motorway had been built from Ellerslie to Manukau, the Northwestern extended from Waterview to Lincoln road and the Lincoln Road to westgate section was under construction.

1955 Auckland Plan

The most popular plan to be blamed for Auckland's transport issues is the 1955 Plan, however this ignores the fact that in the years preceding the implementation of this plan PT volumes had already halved from 120 million to 60 million annual passengers. As mentioned in my previous post however this 120 million number was an inflation due to WWII and 60 million passengers was in-line with long term trends.

Auckland Plan - 1955

Looking at the way Auckland was growing at this time it is pretty clear that the city is growing out and people are choosing to live further from the city in larger sections and driving to where they want to go, one good example of this is the eastern bays such as St Heliers which experienced very little growth until Tamiki Dr was built in 1930, we saw this again in the 60's when the harbour bridge opened.

So when you look at the way Auckland was growing and they way people were choosing to travel, despite there being no motorways or large arterial roads, it is understandable as to why a heavy focus was placed on roads. This is pretty clear when you look at the expected mode share of the various schemes.

Morningside Deviation - 5% of regional traffic @ £11,710,000
Victoria St Spur Line - 3% of regional traffic @ £2,000,000
Motorway network - 75-80% of regional traffic @ £12,000,000

At first glance it doesn't quite seem right that the rail option cost almost the same price as the motorway network, however with further investigation most of the motorway network is being built in open farmland whereas the Morningside Deviation goes through built up areas and is approximately twice the length of the current CRL proposal. To a similar extent however the motorway system requires the construction of the central motorway junction and so really we could expect the motorway network to cost 2 or 3 times as much as what the plan quotes and this seems to be a rather large oversight.

Auckland Plan - 1955

1955 Plan and PT

The 1955 plan understandably discounts the Morningside Deviation as a practicable solution both providing little improvement in transport conditions and costing a fortune to do so, however the 1955 plan does not discount PT and actually promotes what would actually work quite well if implemented today.

With the newly built motorway network the 1955 plan proposes that park and ride and standard bus interchanges be built at most interchanges effectively converting the motorway network into a Rapid Transit Network (RTN) at the same time. With appropriate treatments buses running on motorway shoulders can actually deliver a level of service similar to that of a dedicated busway. Sadly however it seems that the PT part of the 1955 plan failed, I suspect the failure came through poor implementation and low initial patronage due to population density and travel preferences at the time. To make matters worse it seems we never left any space for such facilities to be built in the future.

Auckland Plan - 1955

For my next post I will continue to look at the polices since 1955 and just what was actually implemented.