Auckland Rail System

In the 1980s, New Zealand embarked in a zealous plan to deregulate anything and everything. New Zealand's rail network became a victim of privatization in 1993. The rail system entered a 10 year period of "deferred maintenance" with the private corporation running the system into the ground. See the lack of investment in rail, New Zealand's central government bought back the rail network infrastructure in 2004 and in 2008 basically re-nationalized rail under the name KiwiRail. This is important to note because Auckland's public transit rail network infrastructure is owned and maintained by KiwiRail.

Current Rapid Transit Network: Solid Red
Proposed Rapid Transit Network: Hashed Black
Future Rapid Transit Network: Hashed Red

Seeing the sorry state of public transit usage in Auckland, the regional and central government embarked on a 1.6 billion dollar upgrade of the rail network in the region. The upgrades includes $500m to electrify the network, $500m for new electric trains (EMUs), and $600m for Project DART which include:

-The redevelopment of Newmarket Station and Junction completed in January 2010
-The double-tracking of Western line from Newmarket to Swanson completed in June 2010
-The re-opening of the Onehunga branch line in September 2010
-The new Manukau rail link which will be completed in 2011

The suite of projects will be completed by 2013. The next major rail project is a 3 kilometre double tracked rail tunnel in Auckland's Central Business District which is estimated to cost between $1.99b and $2.38b and proposed to open in 2021. Auckland has certainly embraced rail as an essential part of growing transit usage in the region and it is already starting to pay off.

Almost five million extra journeys were made on public transport during the last calendar year, with big increases in passengers pushing numbers to the highs of the 1950s.

Auckland Transport released a patronage report today that shows total passenger numbers reached 64.07 million in the 12 months to the end of February, an increase of 8.3 per cent on last year.

Highlights include:

Northern Express bus passenger numbers for February increased 20.7 per cent on February 2010. Total Northern Express for the past 12 months reached 1.97 million passengers

Total bus patronage exceeded 50 million. An increase of 3.36 million boardings or 7.5 per cent growth

Rail patronage reached 9.2 million for the past 12 months with passenger numbers for the month of February up 17.9 per cent on February 2010. For the first time one million journeys were reached on rail in one month.

Rail patronage on the Western Line for the month of February increased 25.6 per cent on February 2010 to reach 305,208.

Ferry patronage totalled 4.6 million for the 12 months to February, with passenger numbers for the month up 12.6 per cent on February 2010

Auckland Bus System

One of the big pushes in Auckland in recent years is to improve the public transit (transport) system. Just like in the UK in the 1980s, the public transit bus system was deregulated allowing anyone to run buses anywhere they liked leaving regional councils (aka the taxpayer) to foot the bill and provide service for non-profitable routes. Each bus operator set their own fares and things that we take for granted like transfers are non-existent. Today there are 10 bus transit operators with just as many fare structures. This lead to transit ridership crashing and with Auckland only having a transit mode share of 4% in 2006. Realizing the mess that deregulation left, in 2008 New Zealand’s central government passed the Public Transport Management Act which allows regional councils to:

(a)confers powers on regional councils to set standards for commercial public transport services provided in their regions; and
(b) provides for and regulates the registration of commercial public transport services; and
(c) confers powers on regional councils to require all or any public transport services in their regions to be provided under contract with them, and consequently to discontinue any commercial public transport services provided in their regions that are subject to such a requirement; and
(d) helps regional councils and the Agency obtain the best value for money in achieving an affordable, integrated, safe, responsive, and sustainable public transport system, having regard to the desirability of encouraging fair competition and a competitive and efficient market for public transport services.

Basically, it allows public transit to be managed by the regions much like it is done in most North America cities. In Auckland, this has resulted in the launch of a smart card system and fare integration project. There is now common branding, timetables, and real-time information for the bus network. According to the Auckland Plan:

The transport system is one of the key shapers of the urban environment. If we don’t understand how the transport system works in connecting settlements across Auckland nor how it works with the development around it, we get poor quality places for people to live and work. Most international cities that have reinvented themselves well have been endowed with a roading and transport system that is very well networked because it was not originally based on the car. Rather than adapt to the car, these cities have been able to adapt old traditional networks to manage concentrated populations, with a range of transport modes – trains, buses, cars, taxis, trams, ferries, cycles and walkways for pedestrians - that produce fabulous places to live. Below are examples of the city form of places such as Vancouver, Paris, Barcelona, Melbourne and Sydney. If you look at them carefully you will see that their roading and transport systems are highly inter-connected.

An integrated bus system is the first step to getting the transit system needed to support the goals of this plan. Next time, I’ll talk about the rail network.

The Auckland Plan

Auckland is New Zealand's largest region with a population of close to 1.5 million, home to a full 1/3 of Kiwis, and 35% of the country's GDP. Up until the end of 2010, the region had seven municipalities and one regional district. The central government of New Zealand thought that this many local governments were hindering Auckland's progress, and form a Royal Commission which recommend the formation of a Toronto-style megacity. While this might be a mistake if Tornoto is any indication and most livable regions in the world have many local governments and a strong regional government (think our region or Portland), it has allowed the region to embark on a new regional growth strategy.

The Auckland Plan will be a bold 30-year vision and strategy for Auckland underpinned by the Mayor's vision of making it the world's most livable city.

This is a triple bottom line plan and I'll be going over it in more details in the next little while. The following video is posted on their website and give some context to the challenges the region must overcome.

Smarter Cities - Developing The City

IBM has a whole section of their website dedicated to the "A Smarter Planet" marketing campaign they launched a few years ago. There is good information posted about sustainability and I really like the section on Smarter Cities. Anyway, the following video is on building and retrofitting commercial office space to be more energy efficient and is worth a watch.