Fixing Auckland's Transport - The "Essential" Transport Network

As many of you will be aware, Auckland is the the middle of sorting out it's 10 year budget and as part of this they are trying to encourage the people of Auckland to take a bold step and pay a little better so that we can start to improve transport in Auckland.

Being the councils transport body, Auckland Transport (AT) has a fair idea of what Auckland transport issues are and they also have a good idea as to how the city is going to grow in the future and hence what new transport issues arise.

This is why we are presented with two separate transport plans as follows.

• Basic Transport Network @ $6.9 billion
• Advanced Transport Programme @ $10.3 billion

Although AT and the Auckland Council have been working away on these plans for some time, the anti-road brigade over at GenerationZero have noted that some improvements to the road network have been proposed and so the next campaign has started to stop improving Auckland's road transport in the name of the "Essential Transport Budget" (ETB).

As an overview, the ETB is the Basic Transport Network with a few key road upgrades being removed, they then and in a bunch of new bus/rail interchanges which are all part of the new bus network. It also includes about $100 million for improved walking and cycling.

Background:

Based on the ETB Report, the Basic Transport Network will result in "serious delays to major transport projects", but other than that they don't identify any issues and are not at all concerned with increasing congestion or allowing Auckland to grow.

The ETB is said to "priorities the desired step change in transport choice in Auckland" which I assume means making the roads so congested people have little choice but the take a train.

The rational is that apparently for the past 50 years Auckland has invested in nothing but motorways. However if you read through my Auckland's Transport History series you will note that Auckland actually has a long history of investing in nothing. It was back in the 50 & 60's that the New Zealand government built some rural expressways outside of Auckland, the only real urban motorways that were built in Auckland were again built by the government with that being the CMJ which was built very slowly over a 40 year period. Most of the urban motorways you know of today are due to Auckland growing and engulfing the rural expressways.

In terms of what Auckland has done for itself, it has only built residential streets and a few 4 lane arterial roads. In reality, Auckland is where it is today due to the council doing nothing but the bare minimum for the past 70 years, waiting for the government to step in and do something. It has only been in the last decade that Auckland Council has started to do something with their first steps being turning the rail network into an effect Rapid Transit Network (RTN).

The repeated trend of Auckland in the past of doing as little as possible is what has resulted in a congested and unpleasant road network. Roads that were meant to be arterial were built as residential streets meaning they had very little capacity and no space to be upgraded. This in turn made them progressively less desirable to walk or cycle along as additional space for traffic was squeezed in.

One of the repeated chants from the anti-road brigade is that traffic volumes aren't growing and more people are using PT, which although true it is due to a simple and obvious reason. If the roads are congested people are going to look for other ways to perform their trip. In addition to this, rail usage has shot up due to the bus network being revised so that existing bus users are now required to transfer to a train.

To show the level of trust you can put in their document, they make the claim that passenger volumes on the Auckland rail network have been increasing by 20% per annum. However if you view the following image you can see that this is not the case; although its very clear that rail patronage has been increasing, it actually declined sharply only 2 years ago and has generally been growing at just over 10% per annum.

Transportblog - 2015

On a similar tune, GenerationZero have made the claim that we reached peak traffic in mid 2000's and will never reach such levels again, this is despite the fact we have reached those levels again, passed them, and have been continuing to grow at around 2.5% per annum when you look places like the southern, northern, northwestern and upper harbour motorways.

Pro PT

In terms of the projects that are in the ETB, I don't actually have an issue with any of them however I don't see them as going far enough.

In true to anti-road campaigner fashion, GenerationZero has removed a number of road projects where the primary benefactors are bus users. This is similar case to a previous post I did where the blind hatred of roads can lead folks to campaigning against projects not knowing that the main benefactors are the PT users.

An example of this is the Lincoln Road Upgrade, currently this road has two lanes each way with no cycling and poor walking provisions. The planned upgrade leaves the same number of general traffic lanes but adds a buslane each way along with new cycle lanes, and footpaths with improved safety along the route.

Similar targets are:

• Te Atatu Road upgrade, which is being done to improve buses, walking and cycling along Te Atatu Road.
• Local road Upgrades for the East West Connections Project, which is essentially bus improvements.
• Long Bay Southern Corridor, which provides benefits for all users.
• Dominion Road Upgrade

Growing Auckland:

The other obvious assumption in the ETB is that Auckland is only going to grow upwards and not outwards with their scrapping of the Mill Road upgrade.

Although this area is expected to have an additional:

• 22,000 homes
• 6,000 jobs
• 80,000 more people

The ETB assumes these people will be more than happy to take the bus along a narrow and congested two-lane road to the nearest train station regardless of where they want to go.

Effects of the Essential Transport Budget:

The aim of the ETB is clear in that they want to improve public transport along with walking and cycling. Unfortunately they have fallen for the all to common mistake of assuming anything with the word "road" in the title is bad and therefore must be stopped.

To this extent the ETB will roll out a suite of new train station and bus interchanges however, these buses will be stuck driving along congested local roads as they have removed all of the projects that were going to upgrade these roads to provide the fast and frequent bus services. The end result of the ETB is that we get to spend more money but have a slower and more congested transport network for everyone.

Funding:

I always enjoy reading the funding cases from anyone who is anti-road as they are always campaigning to stop road projects yet they insist that the people who are on the road should pay for their pet project.

We pretty much have the same situation here where they are pretty content with fuel tax but in a rare case of generosity they have actually supported increasing rates. Normally rates are completely off the cards as this means they will need to pay some money but they seem happy in this case as they have reduced the amount they would need to be to $15.73 per annum.

Fuel Levy:

We are told the fuel levy "affects everyone relatively fairly", well I guess this would be the case if we all drove relatively similar vehicles, relatively the same distance at relatively the same number of times a year. However in reality the person it effects the most is the person who needs to travel for work who doesn't have a company car. With a 7c/l tax that somewhat average person pays about $140 a year on tax towards the new transport network, however another equally average person who takes the train (that the guy driving paid for) to work pays nothing what so ever. And so this levy is in no way shape or form fair unless the person paying the $140 in tax is getting some sort of a benefit out of this additional money they are paying, which in the case of the ETB they get less than what they would get in the Basic Transport Network package.

A case of pay more and get less for road users.

Motorway Toll:

Strangely the motorway toll doesn't get the biggest round of applause because there is some concern that some parts of the city have poor PT provision. We are told places like Te Atatu and Messey, the ones who are getting brand new bus lanes built as we speak, have no choice but to take the motorway despite their express bus services. It is only once these places have greatly improved PT that we can toll them.

Without having to read too hard between the lines it's rather clear that a few of the contributors to the ETB live in these places and are probably not to impressed with their current PT service which is required to mix with motorway traffic due to the upgrades that are being built for them. It will be for this simple reason that they currently drive along here that they don't want a motorway toll, as it does add up to a bit at the end the year.

Similar to the fuel levy, if you make 2 trips a day you are looking at spending about $450 a year on motorway tolls, which once the motorway upgrade is finished in 2017 will reduce to nothing as you can start taking the bus again.

The interesting part for these folk is that the ETB does nothing for them. Once the motorway upgrade is complete buses will be able to drive along the motorway should free of congestion, however the ETB has cancelled the local road upgrades and so once they get off the motorway they will be stuck in congestion rather then using the nice bus lanes they were going to get in the Basic Transport Network.

Government Cash:

By far the most preferred source of funding for any project is from the central government. The general call is that PT projects should be funded in the same way as motorways are, from a big pot of money the government has.

The issue here is that the big pot of money gets its money from fuel tax and various other charges paid my motorists. So if you say you want PT to be funded in the same way motorways are then you are really saying you want to remove all subsidies from PT and have it entirely run as a users pays system.

Of course this isn't what they want, but rather they want road users to pay for PT. Currently about 57c in the litre gets paid towards the land transport fund and so for the average driver that's about $800 a year. The preference from the anti-road campaigner is that this $800 should be directed towards the train user and the road user should be rewarded with more congestion for their efforts.

Conclusion:

In the end of the day, the Essential Transport Budget is trying to push the Congestion Free Network into the 10 year plan. Although it's all well and good to campaign for better public transport, in this case it seems they have picked a battle that isn't really needed.

In it's goal of being cheaper the ETB has shot itself in the foot and removed many of the essential roading projects that are needed to support the public transport network along with many of the walking and cycling upgrades. Roading projects have never been just about cars, and even motorway projects these days are doing more for walking and cycling than many most other projects.

The way I see it, if you want one or more of the following:

• Better Public Transport
• Better Walking Provisions
• Better Cycling Provisions
• Greater Choice
• Great Flexibility
• Reduced Congestion

Then the only option you need to chose is the Advanced Transport Programme.

Congestion Free Network - Part 3

This is part three of a series on the Congestion Free Network (CFN). 

For those not familiar with the plan, I go into some detail here about its origins however it is essentially of copy of Auckland Transport's (AT) "Regional Land Transport Plan" although it upgrades everything to fully grade separated busways or railways.

Given the CFN is broken down into '5 Year Plan' segments I have been looking at each one in turn. In my previous post I looked at the network as proposed by the year 2020 and found that the initial portion of the works would likely cost in the range of $7-8 billion, this is despite the plan having had only allocated some $1.3 billion for these works. I also excluded the Central Rail Link (CRL) and the additional rolling stock from the previous estimate and so we should really round off the total cost for the first 5 year CFN plan at $11 billion.

In today's post I am going to look at the works for the 2020 to 2025 plan and see how far over budget we get given the we spent all of the CFN's budget in the first 5 year plan..

CFN - 2025

CFN 2020 to 2025 Projects:

The 2020 to 2025 plan for the CFN appears to be mainly extensions to existing section of the Rapid Transit Network (RTN) rather than creating new lines and therefore we can expect this phase to be cheaper then the $11 billion spent in the fist 5 year plan.

To set the context, the CFN is a network of grade separated high speed and high frequency public transport (PT) routes similar to the northern busway or Vancouver's SkyTrain.

Vancouver Sky Train - 2015

During the previous 5 year plan the busway was extended 4km from Constellation Station up to the Albany Station to remove the segment where buses are required to drive on a congested section of the motorway network, during this 5 year plan the busway is further extended 12km north from Albany through to Silverdale. Given this section of motorway only has an AADT of 40,000 it does seem somewhat excessive do build a grade separated busway however I can only assume that the authors of the CFN are expecting large amounts of traffic growth on this route, potentially due to the Puhoi to Wellsford motorway extension. 

Another busway extension is planned to go from Westgate 7km along SH16 to Kumeu. This is another peculiar extension as currently the two-lane two-way SH16 only gets 20k vpd here, it also sits on the existing rail line and could easily be served by extending the existing rail service slightly further. Personally I can see there being some merit in extending a high quality bus serves out here as part of extending the motorway, however I would only do this once we get some more urban sprawl, something which the authors of this work are dead set against and so their justification for this route is unknown 

We get two more busway extensions as part of the plan, a 6km extension to Howick and another 6km extension to the airport. We also get the Onehunga Rail Line extended 9km to the airport. All 3 of these make perfect sense and would be quite useful if there were here today for us to use, in particular the busway to Howick which is one of the most deprived parts of the city when it comes to PT.

The plan also adds a ferry to Northcote, Birkenhead, Beachhaven and Hobsonville. I'm not too sure how they plan it implement a fast and frequent ferry service as ferries are generally slow and their high capacity inherently means low frequency. Ferries are also pretty poor when it comes to CO2 commissions being about the same as a car on a per km rate, they usually offset this by taking much shorter routes however the route shown is no shorter than travelling by road

CFN 2020 to 2025 Costing:

The CFN website has the following costings for these projects:

1. Northern Busway Extension = $300 million (12km)
2. Western Busway Extenstion = $150 million (7km)
3. Howick Busway Extention = $150 million (6km)
4. Airport Busway = $235 million (6km)
5. Airport Rail = $700 million (9km)
6. High Speed High Frequency Ferries = $30 million

From that last time I looked as this we had a unit rate for busways of $35 million per km, we also had a property cost of $20 million per km in urban areas.

So using those rates and taking account that some of the busways are out in the country side we get the following values.

1. Northern Busway Extension = $420 million (12km)
2. Western Busway Extenstion = $245 million (7km)
3. Howick Busway Extention = $330 million (6km)
4. Airport Busway = $330 million (6km)

Looking at the rail option, $50 million per km is about what I would expect however due to the reduced geometric flexibility the property costs are likely to go up. On a pure per km rate we are looking at $720 million however the tricky part here is the crossing over the Mangere Inlet. The current plan is to have a bridge weaving its way across the inlet between the existing two bridges, however I suspect such visual destruction is not likely to be approved, unless it follows the same grade as the existing motorway bridge, and so we are more likely to see a tunnel here if this route is to be approved. Once you take this into account the cost of the route is more likely to at least $1 billion.

Mangere Inlet - 2015

So if we put the various parts together, the total cost for the CFN 5 year plan from 2020 to 2025 comes out at $2.3 billion, comparing this to the CFN budget of $1.5 billion we have managed to come in much closer to budget than we did in the first 5 year plan.

The total cost to date for the CFN is now at $13.3 billion running at 136% of the total CNF budget of $9.8 billion.

Similar to last time, I have updated the 2025 CFN plan to show what we could build if we limited are funds to what the CFN has allocated.

Costed 2025 CFN - 2015

The next post will cover the years 2025 to 2030. 

Congestion Free Network (CFN) - 2020 Rough Order Costs

Today I'm going to get into some of the details for the Congestion Free Network (CFN) in the year 2020. With 2014 coming to a close we have 5-6 years to get this all built based on the plans.

CONGESTIONFREE.CO.NZ - 2014

In the 2020 map we have a number of new inclusions to the existing Rapid Transit Network (RTN) as follows:

1. Northwestern Busway from Britomart to Westgate
2. Upper Harbour Busway from Henderson to Constelation
3. Central City Busway from Britomart to Newmarket via the University & Hospital
4. Eastern Busway from Ellerslie to Puhinui via Botany
5. Mt Roskell Branch line

With the exception of the Mt Roskill Rail line all of the above are grade separated busways similar to that of the Northern Busway. Note that it is assumed that the Northern busway has been extended from Akoranga to Britomart as a grade separated busway at some stage. The cost of this would likely be in the range of $1-2 billion however I wont include that at this stage.

WIKIMEDIA.ORG - 2014

Based on the CFN website the costs for these 5 projects are as follows:

1. $250 million (17km)
2. $200 million (19km)
3. Free (5km)
4. $700 million (20km)
5. $150 million

So all up the cost of all this work is $1.3 billion which feels somewhat low.

For a quick comparison: The northern busway is just over 6km in length and cost $300 million to build in 2005 dollars. This work included a range of road upgrades at the same time which is likely to be required when converting existing roads to busways anywhere else in the city. If we choose to ignore any works at all on the disrupted roads we can say the busway cost $200 million which equates to roughly $35m per km including stations. If we use this value for the 61km of busway that is proposed to be built in the first phase of the CFN we are looking at a cost of $2.1b.

One big difference between the northern busway and the majority of these busways is that the northern busway was built on land that was already owned by NZTA & NSCC and therefore there was a rather massive saving. With the exception of about 10km of the Upper Harbour busway all of these busways require the purchase of all of the properties one side of the road from which they are to be built.

As a rough test on property cost it can be assumed that for every 100m of busway you will need to buy 5 properties, we will assume that 40km of the busway required property purchase and the remainder fits onto local roads or goes through parks that the council will handle over for free. Based on a $0.5 million per property we get a net property cost for these busways of $1b.

The above estimates are probably not too bad for most of Auckland city however there is one part we have missed and that is the CBD. Based on the 2020 CFN we have 3 busways feeding into the CBD which are grade separated all the way down to Britomart. We can certainly close off a few roads and reroute traffic however this is going to be no easy task and it certainly will cost a significant amount of money. As part of the CRL business case a bus tunnel was investigated that would generally provide for what would be needed here and it was priced in at $2.4b. That price does seem a little on the high side and I suspect we could get a similar result spending half that, however without further investigation I will use that value for now.

In summary, the busway portion of the works are expected to cost:

• 61km of busway = $2.1b
• Reinstatment of local roads = $1b
• Property purchase = $1b
• CBD busway works = $2.4b

Total cost = $6.5b.

So that's $5.2b more than the CFN estimate of $1.3b, given the total cost of the CFN is meant to come in under $10b there is some cause for concern here.

One thing I haven't taken into account yet is the Mt Roskill Branch line. This line is in luck in that NZTA has already spent a large amount of the money required and so we only have some 3-4km of track and two stations to build. The $150 million in the CFN budget isn't too far off the mark with 2 exceptions:

1. The connection with the western line may need to be grade separated in order to provide for the 5min frequencies on the western line to avoid causing flow breakdown which will cascade into the CRL and therefore the rest of the network.
2. The connection will require the purchase of the Pak'n Save supermarket which would add to the cost significantly potentially requiring a tunnel as mitigation.

If we are to add in the cost of the Mt Roskill Line along with extending the northern busway through to Britomart we are looking at a total cost of some $7-8 billion to bring the CFN to its 2020 vision. It seems in the case of the CFN we are sold a grade separated "Congestion Free" route when in reality what is priced for is really bus lanes on the side of existing roads which ultimately would be little different to that of existing in most cases.

streetsblog.org - 2014

Based on these numbers I've created the following image that shows what could be built if we limit ourselves to the $1.3b budget as per the CFN. There are two risks here however, putting the busway through the westgate shopping centre could add another $0.5 million (approx)  and making the eastern busway fully grade separated may push the budget a little to far in order to get it all the way to Botany. Also note that I've added in the CRL which is another $2.4b.

2020 CFN - as priced

This has been a quick look at the cost of the 2020 CFN layout and is based on per km rates. Each of these routes will have specific issues and constraints that will need to be addressed with detailed design work and as such this has only been a rough order costing.

In future posts I'll look into some of these routes in more detail, such as the northwestern busway.

Congestion Free Network

Today I'm going to start a series where I look into the Congestion Free Network (CFN).

The CFN is a $10 Billion (approx) suite of projects that creates an additional layer on the transport system that is exclusively for the purpose of Public Transport (PT) built over a 17 year period. This system is to be highly integrated with itself and existing PT services creating a viable transport option over the majority of Auckland.

There are two key aspects to the CFN:

• It is grade separated meaning that it is completely separate from the existing transport network and therefore is unable to be impacted by congestion or other disruptions.
• It is high frequency with services being run at 5-10min intervals. It is assumed that the 5min frequency will be used during peak and shoulder peak periods with 10min frequencies off-peak or something similar.

Below is an image of a the Northern Busway which is an example of a grade separated PT link. Typically Rapid Transit Network (RTN) have greatly increased station separation reducing the amount of time spent waiting for other passengers.

TEARA.GOVT.NZ - 2014

Background:

Firstly, the CFN is a joint effort between 3 related lobby groups.

• Transportblog
• Generation Zero
• Campaign for Better Transport

However the actual basis for the CFN is the Auckland Regional Public Transport Plan (ARPTP) which was created by Auckland Transport (AT) a year previously. Sadly AT and the various consultants that put many years of work into developing this plan don't get any recognition but rather ridicule for their work.

"Auckland's current plan is contained in the Integrated Transport Programme. This is both expensive and ineffectual - a road-heavy 'build everything' transport scheme that is currently unfunded."

No reasons are given as to why it is ineffectual but the bias against road transport is made apparent in the first sentence.

The two following images show the similarities between the two plans.

ARPTP - 2013

CFN - 2014

Comparing the two images 2 things are clear, the CNF is based off the ARPTP and the CFN doesn't include any of the frequent service network which is why it appears to be smaller.

Goals and Benefits:

The CFN is said to achieve the following outcomes:

• Higher quality and better functioning city.
• Cheaper and more effective then Integrated Transport Plan (ITP)
• Improved air quality
• Reduced carbon emissions
• Reduced oil dependency
• Improved urban form
• Better public health outcomes
• Maximizes value from existing infrastructure
• Fit into efficient operating models
• Unlock hidden capacity
• Improve quality of place
• Reduce road congestion

From the above list it sounds like an infomercial and one could expect the CFN to cut through boots, clean stains and make nutrient rich super smoothies. In reality most of these benefits are completely unsubstantiated and are simply generic sales terms to make the CFN sound like it's doing more than it is and to differentiate it from the ARPTP from which it was copied. There is no doubt that both the CFN, and therefore the ARPTP, have some great benefits but lets look at the list we have been given first.

Higher quality better functioning city:

This statement could very well be true however the issue is we have no context; what are we comparing things to? what makes the city higher quality, why is the city functioning better? what is the CFN being compared against?

In a way this is like claiming that blue is better than red, why? because it just is.

Cheaper and more effective than the ITP:

Half of this statement is true; the CFN is definitely cheaper than the ITP because it only builds a small fraction of it, however it's not clear as to why it would be more effective. The ITP was not developed because AT had a surplus of cash they wanted to dispose of but rather the city has a range of transport issues that need addressing. It's not possible to remove a series of critical transport projects from the ITP and arrive at a more effective outcome.

Improved air quality, reduced carbon emissions and reduce oil dependency:

The obvious rational behind this is that by having more people use PT will result in fewer cars and therefore fewer emissions and hence improved air quality. Unfortunately, many of the CFN projects will result in additional congestion along the routes which it is built by reducing capacity and rerouting trips along longer paths. By removing various projects from the ITP congestion in the city congestion will only be made worse and journey lengths increased, the CFN will makes things worse in some regards.

We also face the fact that modern cars are now very efficient and clean burning with electric and hydrogen vehicles making their way onto the market, come 2030 you will be able to by 20 year old electric vehicles and the majority of the fleet is likely to have zero emissions.

Improved urban form and improved quality of space:

This benefit really has no basis what so ever, the CFN will do nothing in any way shape or form in terms of creating improved urban form and improved quality of space and in some cases will make it worse, such as along Dominion Road were various communities stand in its way. What governs this is city planning and not the mode of transport. Neither a motorway or a busy railway line are the sort of things you want to sit next to and enjoy a quiet cup of coffee, however both of them can be used to provide access to a lake side or some other idyllic location.

NZETC.VICTORIA.AC.NZ - 2014

A common claim is that Bitromart precinct is a shinning example of what happens when you build a train station, however the reality is Britomart precinct would be little different be the train station located under it or located 800m down the road at the old train station. The old train station itself is a good example of this; it spent 70 years there including the time when 60% of Aucklanders traveled by PT,with the railway land around it being returned for redevelopment yet it never became a trendy location like Ponsonby.

Better public health outcomes:

This is another baseless benefit, active modes of transport such as walking and cycling are known to provide for health benefits but few would believe sitting on a bus or train is healthier than sitting in a car. You could argue that the improved air quality would aid in public health, however as noted above this is not likely to be much of an issue in the future vehicles will have few or zero emissions. The other potential area is that you are required to walk to or from the train stations, but the this is similar to when you drive that you need to walk to and from your car park.

Maximises Value of existing infrastructure:

This benefit is true in respect to the existing rail however in general the CFN does the reverse. For example, rather than keeping the busway it gets closed down and converted to a light rail line. For the existing road network, roads like Dominion Road and Te Irirangi Drive get downsized with their intersection capacities being reduced.

Fit into efficient operating models:

This is a straight sales slogan with no basis or detail to even comment on.

Unlock hidden capacity:

The CFN does increase PT capacity, there is no doubting this. However the term 'unlock hidden capacity' implies that something is being done for free, almost as if we have an entire rail network sitting waiting to go that just needs its power plug connected to a socket. In reality we are adding capacity with the CFN and paying for the privilege of doing so.

Reduce Congestion:

This claim is put in here for one specific reason, and that is to get road users to pay for the PT network, rather than the PT users. This is a common thing in that we all want everything for free, however if the CFN were built and required to fund itself in the same way that roads are you would likely be paying $20 rather than $5 a trip.

In reality the CFN will do nothing to improve congestion and in many cases make it worse, however it is claimed that there will be reduced road congestion and therefore the road users should pay for the CFN through the National Land Transport Fund (NLTF). If the CFN were so successful that it reduced congestion it would negate the need for it to be on its own network as both networks would be congestion free.

With reference to the image below, even with the busway in operation the northern motorway remains congested at peak times. This is great for the bus users but little different to the road users, the CFN will simply replicate this in other locations.

AT.GOVT.NZ - 2014

It may not be expected that the NLTF will pay for 100% of the CFN, however typically local projects such as PT systems are paid for with a 50/50 split, capital expenditure of the CFN's magnitude is well outside of the councils fiscal constraints and so its assumed a 90/10 split or similar is proposed with road users paying the 90% portion.

Summary:

So in conclusion what are the benefits of the CFN, well from my point of view we get the following:

• an improved PT network
• an isolated PT network that operates independently of the road network avoiding delays brought on by congestion and random events such as accidents.
• an integrated PT network that has less reliance on going through the CBD
• increased PT capacity

The net result of the above is that we obtain a greater range of choice in the way we travel to different parts of the city which reduces our reliance on the private car.

Based on the CFN website the grand cost of this whole new grade separated system is $10 Billion, this sounds like a bargain price if ever there was one however how close is it to reality.

For future posts I'll look into a few of the key elements and compare the estimates with the current build price of similar works to see how close to the mark the $10 Billion tag is.