Myths & Reality #2

Today we have Part II of the "Myths @ Reality" series

You can locate Part I here.

For today we are going to look at what is quite possibly the most popular anti-road argument being.

"Building Roads Doesn't Reduce Congestion"

This one comes in multiple forms but the general idea is that when you build a new road or widen an existing road the reduction in congestion is only temporary and you quickly end up back where you were before. This implies that the work done to improve the road was a waste of time as congestion has not reduced and therefore there has been no benefit.

Background:

Like all myths and legends there is actual an element of truth to this claim; It is true that when you add more capacity to something that has unreleased demand that usage will go up, but the conclusions that there has been no benefit is completely misplaced.

In a previous post I elaborated on what congestion is and based on what was discussed there we can expect that when we upgrade a busy road to have more capacity more people will come start using that road.

What about Public Transport:

Although I have started off mentioning roads this same induced demand effect also effects Public Transport (PT), in fact you could argue that one of the main driving factors of PT usage is the inadequacy of capacity in other modes. For example, since the extensive and disruptive roadworks have been occurring on the Northwest Motorway there has been a notable uptake in rail usage on the western line.

However if you look at PT in isolation; If you had a given bus route that's operating one bus every 15mins, and each of these buses tends to be approaching its limits in terms of capacity you will find some potential users are being turned away. To increase the capacity you can start running buses every 10mins which will make life more comfortable for the existing users until the customers who were previously being turned away come back making the buses just as busy as before.

PT supporters will claim that it is cheaper to increase the capacity on PT routes as you have already done the hard part of building the road, however the issue here is that the costs of running a bus, rail or ferry service is directly related to the capacity you are operating.

The Myth and the Reality:

To test this claim, that when you build a new road you simply attract more users and leave things just as congested as before, we are going to look at the SH18 Upper Harbour Motorway here in Auckland.

This section of motorway was built during the mid to late 2000's and bypasses Hobsonville Road and Upper Harbour Drive. The way this road bypasses the old State Highway is actually very similar to when the Southern Motorway was built between 1950 and 1970 and how it bypassed Great South Road.

So this section of motorway was built in two sections:

1) Hobsonville Section - Bypassing Hobsonville Road 

2) Greenhithe Section - Bypassing Upper harbour Drive

Hobsonville Section:

Hobsonville Road 2010 = 37,000 vpd

Hobsonville Road 2014 = 6,700 vpd

SH18 Motorway 2014 = 35,000 vpd

Greenhithe Section:

Upper Harbvour Drive 2006 = 31,000 vpd

Upper Harbvour Drive 2012 = 4,500 vpd

SH18 Motorway 2014 = 43,700 vpd

So as you can see from the numbers above there has been a significant reduction, >80%, in traffic on the existing route. For those of you that are not familiar with this section of road, the existing road alignment was a two-lane two-way road which that was at its absolute limits of capacity presenting a hazardous environment for cyclists and locals and a very low Level of Service (LoS) for all users.

Biking along this road now is both quiet and pleasant with there being very few cars, nice views and an open environment.

Upper Harbour Drive - Google Maps

Here Comes the Induced Demand:

So the above Upper Harbour Drive section has had 8 years for the induced demand to come and fill up the released capacity, however it seems here we are with 85% traffic less traffic than before. The motorway meanwhile as been growing as can be expected due to the demand that was being held back by the existing route that was at capacity, this will also be driven by cross harbour traffic which is unable to cross the main harbour bridge which is also at capacity.

2010 = 31,100

2011 = 33,700 +8.3%

2012 = 38,900 +15.4%

2013 = 40,900 +5.1%

2014 = 43.700 +6.8%

So yes we can see that motorway is attracting more traffic, but what about the existing roads that have had their traffic flows reduced by over 80%. Well if Auckland stopped changing, the city stopped growing and new business stopped establishing quite possibly these traffic volumes would stay down, however this is not the case.

One of the reasons for building the new motorway through this section was that the existing roads were at capacity and therefore development was on hold. Now that all this new capacity has been opened up the area can now handle more people and business.

The planned growth is shown in the following image of the Northern Strategic Growth Area (NorSGA).

NorSGA - AT

Busted:

In terms of the short term, ie 5 years we can safely say this myth is busted, however one issue we have is that the people who make this claim never actually quantify any of their claims. If their talking about 20-50 year time frames I guess they are correct in that any arterial roads we built in a growing city have a good chance of getting congested, but it makes you wonder what they are arguing against.

Are they arguing against roads or are they arguing against growth?

In most cases the people who make this claim live in large metropolitans and their greatest joys come as by-products of large number of people and the concentrations of wealth found in a growing city yet it seems they don't appreciate that this growth comes with increased travel and therefore congestion for all modes of transport.

Auckland Transport History - Part 4

Following is Part 4 of my series on Auckland's Transport History.

As before, this series is sort of in response to a paper I read:
"The American Heresy: Half a century of transport planning in Auckland"

Recap:

To recap from the previous posts there have been 3 main transport plans developed for transport in Auckland, these are:

• 1946 Regional Transport Plan
• 1956 Auckland Plan
• 1965 Auckland Regional Transport Plan

Of these plans, the 1946 plan presented a regional road network that was outside of the Auckland urban area.

The 1956 Auckland Plan reduced the regional extent of the previous plan but envisaged an extensive series of motorways wrapping around all 4 sides of the CBD. Of the 35km of inner city motorways that were planned in the 1955 plan only 4km (10%) of these were built during the years 1955 to 1965.

The 1965 plan was the most extensive of all the plans and included both an extensive motorway network and rapid transit network. Approximately 65km of additional motorway was marked out over the urban area of Auckland, however in the 50 years since this plan was put in place only extra 20km (30%) of these urban motorways have been built. Of the RTN component roughly 75km was marked out to cover existing urban areas, the existing rail lines made up 50km (65%) of this network however nothing was added to this until 2008 when the Northern Busway was opened.

When you look at Auckland today it may appear that Auckland has an extensive urban motorway network, however this network is actually a result of Auckland growing and following the regional motorways into the country (similar to the Waikato Expresssway) rather than these motorways being planned as urban links.

In terms of what was planned inside the urban area it has taken 50 years to complete roughly 40% of what was planned to be delivered over 20 years. In terms of the rapid transit network; 65% of the urban area was was already covered by the existing rail network, however slow and unreliable service meant it was never operated as a rapid transit network.

Auckland Councils Part:

As we have seen, the various plans were all regional plans and were mainly in relation to the surrounding areas of Auckland rather than the urban area itself. Of the routes that went through the urban area, the ones that were built were intended to connect the northern, southern and western areas of Auckland but also provided access to the CBD.

The above regional connections were all delivered by the government as building and maintaining regional connections is managed and delivered at a national level. When it comes to local transport needs such as local arterial roads, bus services and metropolitan rail the local council generally manages the delivery. So while the government built their regional state highways what did the Auckland Council get up to?

Well it turns out, they didn't do much of anything.

One thing the council did do is remove the tram network and replace it with buses, this was done with the intention of making PT faster and more flexible. It's not overly clear how well thought through this plan was as the bus terminal in the city was built in 1937 when most PT users took trams yet no upgrades were made when the tram network was replaced with buses.

The other thing the council did between creating the various transport plans was sell off land and approve construction of housing and industrial developments where these planned transport links were intended to go.

The councils worst contribution however was to prevent these future routes being built  by building local roads along the planned alignment with property access for the full length. For any transport link to be effective at moving freight or people is to reduce side friction, being property access and intersections, however the council maximised side friction meaning these links become trapped as low speed urban roads.

One example of this is Ti Rakau Drive, this road was planned to be "expressway standard" meaning no side access but some high standard at grade intersections. Although for a time this road would have been rather nice with little traffic and wide grass berms, as the city has grown it has become a constraint on the area and not the most ideal street to live next to.

Ti Rakau Drive - 2015

Slightly better is Te Irirangi Dr which does have some level of access control but rather than being an expressway is a partial boulevard. With this section being posted at 80km/h with various major signal controlled intersections its not a very safe route to drive. Adding to this are poorly design entrances and exists from side lanes along with trees in the median which makes it understandable that there have been some serious crashes here in the past.

One of the merits of this route is that they did try to future proof for rapid transit with the wide grass median, however this is appears to not have been thought through all that well as there is no logical place to have stations in the middle of the road and every intersection would need to be grade separated.

Te Irirangi Drive - 2015

Robbie's Rail:

One of the things the Auckland council did do back in the day was try and stop the CMJ. Although first planned in 1956 and scheduled to be completed by 1976 by 1970 the only connection that had been built was a now removed bi-directional link to Wellesley St.

Although quite a bit of rural motorway had been built with few issues over the previous 20 years the work on the highly destructive inner city section was only just starting. It is estimated that as part of building both the CMJ and the southern motorway from Ellerslie that some 15,000 homes were destroyed forcing the relocation of some 50,000 people and so it it understandable that it was not very popular at the time.

Wellesley Ramp - 1996

Adding to the disruption that was going on as part of the building the CMJ, congestion levels were growing as the city had grown along the rural motorways letting users quickly drive into the city but then being left to use the existing local roads through the most congested parts of the city.

In the lead up to this when the full costs of the CMJ were starting to be appreciated the Mayor at the time (1968) Sir Dove-Myer Robinson championed the scrapping of the CMJ and building an inner city loop, similar to the CRL of today, as the way forward out of Auckland's congestion. The design presented was pretty much the RTN design from the 1965 Regional Transport Plan and the idea was to build the rail link first rather than scrap the CMJ altogether.

Given the size of the proposed inner city loop and the technology at the time this rail link would have been similar in terms of extent of destruction as the CMJ was and would have likely resulted in the loss of a number of historical buildings in the CBD. In the end the rail scheme was put on the back burner and plans for the CMJ continued.

Not long after this the world experienced the biggest and longest spike in world oil prices with oil prices increasing by up to 600% and taking 13 years to return to normal prices. This oil price increase resulted in a large increase in PT usage which would have meant many of the public would have seen the continued progress on the CMJ as a waste of money when PT funding was needed, however as soon as the oil prices when back to normal PT usage also declined to the lowest annual usage in Auckland's history.

Between 1970 and 1978 the southern and northern motorway's where connected at the CMJ and in 1983 the northwestern motorway was connected. However it took till 2006, 30 years late, to complete the various ramps and Dominion Road was removed from the scope. 

Conclusion:

In general, Auckland's transport History seems to be one were we make pretty good plans but then fail completely to deliver them.

For the Rapid Transit Network, we had 65% of it in place however didn't actually start running an effective service until recently, and even then we still limit ourselves to trains every 30mins off-peak.

For our motorway network, we only managed to build 40% of it yet we have taken more than twice as long as planned to do that.

For the sections of both motorway and RTN that we haven't built, little has been done to future proof these and so we are left with significant expenses and disruption if and when we actually try to implement them.

This all comes at a rather convenient time as the Auckland Council is looking for feedback on their new 10 year plan.

It's very clear that the reason Auckland's Transport is in the shape it's in now is from under investment in the past along with inadequate vision to invest in the future. If your at all passionate about Auckland's transport I suggest you provide feedback to the council which they are engaging the public.

Auckland's Transport History - Part 3

In the previous two posts we have looked at what was happening with transport in Auckland and the first policy put in place being the 1955 Auckland Plan.

In this post I will look at the implementation of the 1955 plan and how this influenced the next next plan created in 1965.

Prologue - 1920 to 1955:

To summarise the first two posts; we found that as far back as 1920 the transport mode of choice in Auckland started to change from walking and public transport to the private auto-mobile, this resulted in Auckland rapidly branching out from what was a small dense city. So whereas in the existing city people needed to live within easy walking distance of public transport resulting in small houses on small sections, residents started to take advantage of the freedom offered to them by the auto-mobile living on larger sections further from the city.

Continuing a trend that started in the late 20's the annual growth in PT trips plateaued  and then started to fall with there being approximately 65 million annual PT trips by 1955. At this time the 90% of all passenger and freight movement occurred on the road network with the PT component being on buses and trams, the rail network at this stage accounted for less than 3% of all passenger trips. 

Something else that happened over this period was the conversion of the tram network to buses. One of the driving factors behind this conversion was that the tram network had been heavily overtaxed during the WWII PT surge and was in need of repair, however the main reason for the conversion was that buses were faster, cheaper to operate, more flexible and less disruptive.

1955 to 1965:

By 1959 Auckland had exploded in size, one example of this is by the eastern bays of such as St Heliers as shown in the following images. In 1930 this area was mostly grassland until Tamaki Drive was built in 1930, the resultant growth can be seen between 1940 and 1959. Many more examples can be seen using the Auckland Council GIS Viewer.

Eastern Bays - 1940

Eastern Bays - 1959

The Ministry of Works(MoW) had developed a regional transport plan in 1946 and a slimmed down version of this was included in the 1956 plan, by 1959 the easier "green fields" sections had been completed however pretty much nothing had been done inside Auckland City itself.

In 1965 a new plan was developed which built on the previous work that had been done, similar to the two previous plans this one looked at the region as a whole and proposed an extensive motorway network along with a large Rapid Transit Network (RTN) roughly double the size of today's railway network.

1965 Motorway Plan:

Based on a review of the historical aerial images one of the more interesting things I have found is that of the 1955 plan very little was actually built; all of the sections of motorway built by 1959 were part of the 1945 MoW Plan with the one section shown as being under construction in 1959 at Westgate not even being part of the 1955 plan, to a similar extent all of the planning and design for the harbour bridge occurred during the late 40's.

When the 1965 plan was released Auckland had gone through a period of some 30 years of not making any improvements to its inner road network. Although the rural motorway network had been largely been put in place 10 years prior Auckland city itself had gone through a process of infilling with little strategic direction.

The 1965 Regional Plan was based on extensive surveys, such as origin destination surveys, traffic counts and developed a programme looking forward to 1985. The plan was very extensive, and somewhat excessive with its liberal application of motorways, however it had vision as to where the main traffic corridors would be and these corridors hold true to today.

1965 - Motorway Plan

With the plan in place land could be set aside so that as Auckland grew around the locations for these planned transport links, in true Auckland fashion however the amount of land reserved was hardly adequate for the intended purpose and quite often developments were allowed to occur within this corridors forming a road block.

Blocked Eastern Highway

Quite a few sections of the 1965 plan are actually on the ground today, although many have been implemented on the cheap as arterial roads rather than motorways, in addition pockets of land can been seen around that form part of a route but have been rendered redundant by other sections of the route being sold off.

Pakuranga Motorway

1965 RTN Plan:

The 1965 Plan realised that Auckland was spreading out from the old city centre at a great pace and therefore the existing network wasn't going to be sufficient for the growing city. To this extent some rather large upgrades were proposed heading to the Northshore, the Airport and east Auckland.

Similar to the motorway plan, the RTN links shown in the plan would be extremely effective if they were part of the city today. Sadly the only part of the RTN network to get implemented has been the Northern Busway as far as Albany, this has the eastern and western sides of south Auckland without any RTN. East Auckland by Botany and Howick have been hit particular hard with neither the planned rapid transit or motorway network.

Of the various routes shown its extremely hard to find much evidence of there being any more than token provisions of land for these routes which is likely to be one of the main reasons why these routes are yet to be implemented.

1965 - Rapid Transit Plan

1965 to 1996:

The following plan shows the parts of the Auckland motorway network that were built both prior to 1965 (blue) and then after 1965 (red). As can be seen, much of the outer motorways where built prior to 1965 when these areas were rural farm land making them very similar to the Waikato Expressway or the Northern Motorway past Albany. In the years after 1965 the rural motorway sections were further extended to both the north and the south, the inner section of the motorway was built and construction started had started on Western Ring Route to let traffic bypass the CBD. 

1996 - Auckland Motorway Network

Referring to the above map it can be seen that although the 1965 plan had roughly 145km of motorways planned, and 37km of this had been built in the 15 years between 1950 and 1965, over the next next 30 years Auckland only managed to add another 43km to the motorway network with 40% of this being extensions to the rural motorway network.

Although only 30% of the planned motorway network got built over the 30 years between 1965 and 1996 this is more progress than what was seen on the RTN plan. All up 120km of RTN was planned for the city however no progress was made on this, although the existing rail network did provide for approximately 65km (45%) of the network a service was never run to satisfy the definition or rapid transit.

Lost Opportunity:

The current going rate for building a rural expressway is $20 M/km and therefore the total cost of the 1965 motorway network in today's money would be $2.7 billion, excluding the CMJ and Harbour Bridge and the Southern Motorway between Ellerslie and the CBD which would all have a much more expensive unit rate.

The cost of not building these routes or planning for them adequately has come at a huge cost to Auckland, one such example is the Waterview Connection which had it been built or had land set aside 50 years ago when first planned would have cost $80 million rather than the $1.4 billion we are spending today equating to a 6% annual construction cost increase.

To a similar extent Auckland's poor implementation of its plans has left it with than half of its planned Rapid Transit Network. Similar to the planned motorway network much of the planned RTN was in rural farmland and therefore would have been very cheap to build, however this would have also required electrification of the network, a new harbour crossing and two new undergound rail lines in the CBD.

Shaping the City

In my next post I will look at how the implementation of these plans have shaped our city.

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.

Auckland's Transport History - Part 1

A few years back I came across a paper called
"The American Heresy: Half a century of transport planning in Auckland"
The paper is a rather interesting read however it came across as rather bias with the conclusions being what the author wanted them to be rather than using the evidence presented which generally implied the opposite.

For this post I'm going to generally use the same information which was used to write this paper and present it as I see it which should make for an interesting comparison for those who read both.

The Early Years

The following chart is quite good at showing how our transport mix has changed over the years with the fluctuating levels of PT usage.

TransportBlog - 2015

As you can see in the chart, back in 1920 there was hardly a car in the country and the total number of PT trips were similar to that of today even though the population was not even 200,000. Back in this time personal transport was extremely limited and most people relied on the tram network to move around and therefore Auckland was a very small and dense city.

Starting in the 1920's car manufacturing started moving into assembly lines and assembly factories started to be built in New Zealand, this resulted in cars becoming not only available for purchase but actually affordable for the average family. You can see this reflected in the chart where the number of vehicles in NZ starts to increase and the number of PT trips being made starts to reduce. This trend continues through to the 1930's where The Great Depression strikes and car sales flatten out and PT trips also take a dive. It's during this time when a few of New Zealands large public works programs went into action such as hydro dams on the Waikato River and the railway from Auckland to Tauranga (which was never completed), for this reason it is understandable that a large number of the men of Auckland would have left to work on these projects resulting in the big decline in trips.

After The Great Depression PT trips jumped back up to 70 million and car sales started to boom. You can see that by 1939 PT trips were flattening out and car volumes were increasing at a great rate, however in September 1939 Briton and therefore New Zealand declared war on Germany, it was at this time New Zealand became devoted to feeding the war machine and PT trips doubled in the space of 5 years to 120 million trips annually.

After the war PT trips went back to declining and the growing demand for automobiles that had started in the 1920's continued. This decline in PT trips and growth of automobile demand had started in the 1920's however it is most prominent from the years 1945 through to 1970 where the annual number of PT trips declined from 120 million to 40 million.

In the following image I have added two black lines for the way I think things may have gone if it were not for The Great Depression and WWII.

• The solid black line shows the change in mode share while Auckland transitioned from a small dense city that only existed around our current CBD into a sprawling city merging with the surrounding town.
• The dashed line is simple a smooth out vehicle purchase profile.

TransportBlog - 2015

There is another spike in PT usage through the years 1970 through to 1990, similar to the increase in PT usage from 1990 on wards, I will talk about both of these later.

So now that we have looked at what the numbers show from 1920 to 1970 in my next post I will look at the polices implemented through this time and see what impact have had. The paper I referred to at the start blames the decline in PT usage squarely on the 1955 Auckland Plan  and similar plans thereafter however looking at the chart we really see the decline in PT usage starting in the 1920's the exact time that automobiles started to make their way onto the market in mass. This pre-dates the Auckland Plan by 35 years which questions the impact this plan really had on the way people changed this choose of transport.