Myths & Reality #3

Back with another "Myths & Reality" post, this time I am going to be looking at the a pet hate for many self proclaimed 'urbanist' and that is the cul-de-sac.

Now I say self proclaimed as many of these folk have no formal qualifications related to urban planning but still feel they are they authority to tell others how the city should be. I'll admit that I'm not an urban planner either, however I do have many years of experience of designing transport infrastructure.

So back to today's myth:

Cul-de-sac

"Cul-de-sac's promote auto-dependency and make walking and cycling non-viable options of transport"

Background:

The background to this myth is that cul-de-sac's happens to appear in many auto-dependant suburban subdivisions that have been built in many places all over the world and so by coexistence have been accredited with the poor planning behind the subdivision as a whole.

The real issue here is that we have gone through a period of time where cities have grown under strict zoning laws that have prevented mixed use developments and have focused on building large swaths of residential land which is completely disconnected from commercial, industrial and municipal area and hence resulting in long journeys.

The Reality:

Although the cul-de-sac is accredited with promoting auto-mobile use, obesity and the decline of walking and cycling the reality is it does the complete opposite.

In the following image you can see the standard grid layout, what you will note is that it is rather dense and efficient being able to serve a large number of properties with a minimal number of roads.

The downside of this layout however is that you will get large amounts of traffic heading along every road. Due to every road being busy there will be significant disruption at every intersection as there will be no primary movement to take priority. There are no benefits from using one mode in comparison to another when you are looking at the distance needed to be travelled, you also wont find some routes that are more suited for pedestrians and cyclists and other more suited for cars and trucks.

The Grid - Hamilton

Looking at the more modern suburban layout I have the following image which is from an area of Hamilton developed in the 70s & 80s.

What you will notice here is that the road network has changed so that we now have semi-direct main roads and then various local roads that comprise of loops or cul-de-sac's. What this does is funnel the traffic onto the larger main roads leaving the local ones for the few people who live on them as opposed to the grid that had everyone driving along every road. So in the modern case the arterial road will likely have more traffic than any individual road in the grid layout, the majority of roads will actually have less traffic. In the case of the cul-de-sac it will have such a low amount of traffic you could happily let your kids learn to ride a bike out on the road when you wouldn't dream of doing such a thing on a grid road network.

The other benefit we have is that these developments tend to be focused around a community shopping centre or park, and when you look at the road network you will find the distance you need to walk or cycle to these places is significantly less than the distance you would need to drive due to various short-cuts being provided. In some cases you may only need to walk about 500m to get to the shops, whereas if you drove it could be as much as 2km. This also helps when it comes to running public transport services as the various short cuts give pedestrians easy access to the main road where the service would be running.

70s & 80s - Hamilton

Comparison:

So when you compare the two different layouts we find the following:

Grids:

• Every road is busy
• Travel distance the same for all modes of transport

Cul-de-sac's

• Busy main roads
• Quiet side streets
• Short journeys when walking or cycling
• Driving not effective for short drips

The Anti-Road Campaigner

Yesterday there was a rather large announcement for people who are passionate about transport, sustainability and urban design. In what will likely become a rather influential president a group of apparent 'pro-public transport' and 'pro-active transport' activists successfully campaigned the Auckland Council not to improve the walking and cycling facilities on Great North Road and not to improve the public transport on Great North Road. The announcement I refer to is the saving of 6 Pohutukawa trees that were going to result in a number of significant benefits for all transport users, primarily being PT users and cyclists.

Now you may think this is strange, why would people who are pro-PT and active transport campaign against what they are in support of? Well it all comes down to why people become campaigners in the first place, and it also comes down to those who are most vocal being happy to lie and misrepresent the facts to get others on board.

So to start with, when it comes to people who are pro-PT or pro-active transport there are two types; there are those who simply want to promote these modes whilst letting other people go about there own business, and there are those who who simply hate other people using cars and want to prevent anything that makes driving easier for other people.

Hatred of Cars:

What it is that makes certain people hate other people using cars so much generally comes from a high degree of self interest, they don't like the fact that roads get congested and they don't like the fact that increasing the capacity of roads generally results in them using up more space. These same people may very well use cars themselves, however this they will claim is because they have no option because the PT system is so poor. In their world they may very well only ever travel from inner suburbs to the CRD where PT is ideal however the fact that other people have lives of their own and are making different trips is of no relevance, these other people are simply getting in their way are nothing but an inconvenience unless they are adding to the ambiance of the area.

For example, the following image shows a busy street with many people eating away at a cafe. In the average anti-car campaigners world the entire city should be full of streets like this, how these people get there, where they live, or what they do for a living doesn't is irrelevant, their only purpose in life should be to add to the ambiance 24/7. In a way its like these campaigners live in a theater where they are in the audience and they don't want to ever see or know the inner workings going on behind stage. 

Busy Street

Save the Trees:

Although the project in question has been in the public arena since 2013 there hasn't really been all that much concern over the loss of these trees until recently, the main objection to the project was that money was being spent to improve vehicle travel. This is actually evident in the numerous submissions that were made to save the trees, when reading the submissions that were in objection the general message in most of these was

"save the trees because I don't like you improving the intersection for cars"

Quite possibly the most important thing to get out of the way first is that most of these campaigners aren't actually all that fussed about chopping down a tree or two. In fact some of these folk have campaigned for years to have trees chopped down so they can get what they want. One good example of this is the Grafton Cycleway that required the removal of hundreds of trees and the only criticism was that it should have been done sooner. They will be equally keen to chop down any trees that get in the way of the Skypath.

The Lost Trees

Being a bit of a keen cyclist myself I've taken a few rides along this path however I have somewhat mixed feelings about it. The grade of the path makes it both a bit of a challenge for the average Joe and coming down the path is potentially quite dangerous as you can get up to some insane speeds and when you come into the corners that have the camber sloping the wrong way is an accident waiting to happen. Additionally the path doesn't give you access to anything, apart from a few mid-block access points its most suited for people going from the top of the CBD to the bottom and nowhere in between.

There other thing I have noticed about this path is that it hardly gets used, most times I've taken this path I haven't seen anyone else on it although one day I did see 5 pedestrians.

How Old is a Tree:

A good example of how disingenuous the "save the trees campaign" was is the quoting of the age of the trees. Throughout the campaign these trees were referred to as 6 giant and magnificent trees that were over 80 years old and in some cases almost 100 years old, yet in reality they were more in the range of 65 years of age.

You can see in the following image taken in 1940 that the trees didn't exist, yet they are claimed to be 6 years old at this stage.

Tree Location - 1940

The following image is taken in 1965 where we can now see in the red circle the trees which they look to be around the size of 15 year old Pohutukawa, this would mean they were planted around 1950 making them about 65 years of age. In the blue you can see some other trees that were not overly apparent in 1940 however given there size are obviously older.

Tree Location - 1965

Livable City:

One of the big slogans being used during the campaign was the "most livable city" which is what the current Mayor is championing.

To start the campaign they decided to claim there were 19 lanes in the area. Technically there were 19 lanes however this is because the count was based on 4 different roads. You could very well say there are 50 lanes here if you include a few more roads.

In reality Great North Road has 1 general traffic lane and one bus lane each way and so that's a total of 4. Add in the fact that we are at an intersection were you get additional turn lanes and we are up to 7.

The other thing the campaign implied was that the 6 trees would be removed and replaced with nothing but road pavement, when in reality 9 semi mature trees would to be put in their place along with some new and improved landscaping. All up there would be 3 more trees after the works than there were before.

Proposed Landscape Plan - 2015

The general sentiment was that removing these trees would result in such extensive environmental damage that it would take generations to grow back. Given the trees were planted around 1950 and looked pretty snappy in the 90's, that would imply that if 9 semi mature trees were planted here it would take about a decade to get to where we are rather than some 80 years as implied.

The hypocrisy of this all is that trees get chopped down all over the show for a number of reasons, many of which are for improved pedestrian and cycling facilities.

Of course this in situation it is a bit of a special case as 230m down the road there is a long line of trees of the same species and so people like to imply these trees are part of that line.

Great North Road - 2015

This is similar to other tree lined streets within the city.

Howe St - 2015

The difference with these 6 particular trees however is that they are not part of a greater picture but rather a small disconnected patch of trees.

When is a Cycle Lane a Cycle Lane:

One of the most amusing aspects of the "save the trees" campaign was the unanimous opinion that shared paths are no good for cyclists, with the TransportBlog stating "in my book shared paths don't count".

To a similar extent Cycle Action Auckland doesn't like shared paths either as they put cyclists in conflict with pedestrians. What's ironic in this case is that it was only the previous day they had celebrated the opening of another section of shared path just up the road.

One of the criticisms was that the path was "only" 3m in width, that's 3m plus an extra 0.5m clearance either side but they chose to ignore that for their case. So in effect, this 4m (including buffer area) wide path was hopelessly inadequate, this is despite the path they were celebrating the previous day was 3.0m with no clearances. If they really were of the opinion that 4m is not enough space then they would be up in arms about the 4m width of the SkyPath, however we see here they think the 4m width of the skypath is fantastic and safe for all users regardless of the 5% grade.

The other criticism they had was that the path only extended for the extent of works and didn't connect into the existing network. This is again another rather funny one, if you look at a map of the area you will see that there isn't an existing network of any shape or form and so that makes it rather hard to tie into it. To a similar extent a project can only work within its extent of works and hence the name. A complaint of this nature is rather short sighted, it suggests that nothing should be done in stages and that they would rather get nothing than get it delivered to them one section at a time.

As it turns out they have got what they wanted, they said they didn't want a shared path and the council has listened to them and it no longer features as part of the works.

Stop Planning for the Future:

The other great argument they had was that the traffic model was predicting congestion in 2026, given the road is congested today it's pretty obvious that it's going to be congested in the future but the campaigners didn't seem to think this was an issue and that there was a good chance that if we do nothing that the congestion we experience today will simply vanish.

The following image is Great North Road on a typical Saturday when nothing special is going on, this is hardly a busy time of the day but as you can see there is a large queue of cars trying to turn left onto St Lukes Road and another large queue of cars trying to turn right onto the SH16 eastbound on-ramp.

Great North Road - 2015

Another funny thing to be seen was from the TransportBlog when the posted the following image.

TransportBlog - 2015

I can only image they weren't wearing their glasses when viewing this image as the only difference they could make out was that there were "slightly fewer vehicles on the eastbound off-ramp". I don't know how they failed to notice the queue on Great North Road gets extended over 700m to the Grey Lynn town centre and and off the map.

Buses are Too Fast:

The biggest losers in this situation are the bus users travelling along Great North Road. In the preferred scheme buses travelling both eastbound and westbound had a relatively uninterrupted run however the campaigners seemed to not like improvements being made to the bus network and for now they have go their way.

It was only last week that the people campaigning against bus improvements at this intersection were celebrating a new bus lane being installed. It seems the issue here is these people simply don't understand how the dynamics of traffic work and therefore don't understand how small changes can make a big difference.

In the case of the preferred option two things were being done for buses. The first thing was that by adding the additional left turn lane the congestion on Great South Road will be greatly reduced and therefore bus movements freed up.

As shown in the congestion map above the queue of vehicles on a typical weekend PM peak can be expected to extend back all the way to Grey Lynn town centre and therefore before the existing Great North Road bus lanes start.

Grey Lynn Town Centre - 2015

So first up the buses will get stuck here, once in the bus lane they will be able to pass much of the stationary traffic up to about Tuarangi Road where the bus will again get stuck in congestion. The bus will then slowly make its way through the intersection of both Stadium and St Lukes Road before it is able to get back into a bus lane.

In addition to longer trips brought on by added congestion buses will also end up getting stuck behind other buses that are dropping off passengers as there will be no space to pass.

The 2nd benefit the buses get comes from the short 100m bypass lane. Although 100m doesn't sound like much, when it comes to peak time traffic this is the difference between waiting for the same set of signals once rather than twice.

Of course it seem the apparent "pro PT" supporters were not at all impressed with improving PT in the area, despite this being part of their Congestion Free Network (CFN).

CFN - 2020

This makes you wonder how they plan to build this section of the CFN. According to their pricing it will cost zero dollars to build a grade separated busway from Te Atatu all the way to Britomart which they show going going through this area. If 6 trees is too high of a cost to improve PT in this area I don't know how they plan to build a grade separated busway through this area, even if they increase their $0 budget.

I am No.6

Throughout most of the campaign there was a claim there there was "an alternative option that provided all the same benefits but saved the trees", this option was referred to as 'Option 6'.

If there was such an option it would have been good to see, however if this 'Option 6'  was an option that removed the 3rd eastbound lane on Great North Road then it wouldn't have provided all the same benefits.

One of the benefits of the preferred option was that it was safe for all users and that it provided for eastbound buses. If you were to simply remove the 3rd eastbound lane and then move all the other lanes over you would create 2 issues.

1. Westbound vehicles would be directed into the eastbound right turn lane resulting in head-on collisions.
2. The traffic waiting to turn onto the SH16 eastbound on-ramp would block the eastbound buses.

TransportBlog - 2015

Winners and Losers:

So now that the trees have been saved, and we are no longer going to see as many improvements to the pedestrian, cycling and PT in the area who won in the end of the day?

Well in 1st place comes the trees who get to stay, apart from some long overdue trimming.

In 2nd place comes the automobile user. Although Great North Road is going to be more congested than it is today, this added congestion is a result of the benefits these users will be getting from using the SH20 tunnel, and so although their trip may take an extra 7mins or so in comparison to the 2-lane option they are still getting to where the want to go faster than they are today.

In 3rd place comes the humble pedestrian, although not great in numbers for most of the day they do come out in swarms from time to time when there is an event. They will get to enjoy some new and improved crossing facilities at the intersection which should reduce their wait time, although the existing slip left turn which is a bit of a safety hazard will be retained as chosen by the campaigners. Sadly they will have to live with the existing footpath width that reduces to 2m in width rather than the 4m (including clearances) path that was proposed.

Unfortunately for cyclists they have been hit rather hard by the campaigners, they were going to be given a nice and wide shared use path which could have been easily extended to Ivanhoe Road however the anti-road campaigners have put an end to this. The poor cyclist will now need to remain on the carriageway with the general traffic until they can get to the shared paths that have survived.

In last place comes Public Transport users, due to the overwhelming hatred of cars that many of the campaigners have they have managed to make life worse for those who take the bus in the westbound direction along Great North Road.

Moral of the Story

This is a classic case of people being unable to see the wood for the trees. So much focus was put on there being an additional general purpose left turn lane that the majority of people were unable to see that the biggest winners in the 2 left turn lane option were the bus users. The 2nd left turn lane effectively got the cars out of the way and by extending the bus lane just 100m was enough for it to be able to bypass this reduced queue.

What is probably most disheartening about this is that the main campaigners actually knew the benefits of the project yet chose to ignore these and set out on a campaign of spreading misinformation. This is quite possibly the best example of an anti-road advocate you can get.

Sadly the call has been made to slow down buses, increase congestion and provide no improvements to cycling and pedestrians and it has all been driven by the people who claim they want to improve PT, cycling and pedestrian transport.

The Community

All up there were only some 3,000 people who in favor of saving the trees despite there being extensive coverage in the media, yet the campaigners claim the entire community and indeed all of Auckland was in favor of saving the them. Even when it comes to these 3,000 people however, the majority of them were being sold lies on the project by a small group of anti-road campaigners, not being told of the benefits, the actual age of the trees and what was going to be put back as mitigation.

It is hardly a democratic process when 0.03% wins out over the other 99.97% of the city, or the tens of thousands who will be inconvenienced daily due to this result.

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.

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.