Claims CRL plans hobble Auckland commuter growth
Thursday, 30 March 2017
The agency charged with delivering Auckland's multi-billion-dollar City Rail Link is defending claims the project won't meet passenger demand.
Waitemata and Gulf councillor Mike Lee said Auckland Transport can't place new bus stations near the link's central city Karangahape Rd station because there won't be enough train capacity to take extra passengers from buses.
Instead, the agency's new CBD bus terminal planned to handle commuters from Auckland's northwest will function separately on Albert St.
'[Auckland Transport] claim that the CRL trains would be unable to accommodate with the number of [northwestern busway] passengers [arriving],' Lee said.
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'No [passenger] projection data has been offered to support AT's position but given the scale of investment going into the CRL I find this claim astonishing.'
Auckland Transport CRL communications manager Carol Greensmith insists the CRL 'works with other modes, bus, ferry, cycling, walking and eventually light rail'.
'We need all of it.'
But placing a bus station at Karangahape Rd would create problems, Greensmith said.
'The real issue is the additional time it will take to get off a bus, get to the station, travel via three escalator banks to the station below ground and get to their city centre destination, rather than just staying on the bus with bus lanes.
'This would perhaps put off passengers from using public transport as their mode of choice and putting them back in their cars.'
Bus stop capacity and turning buses on busy Karangahape Rd would also present problems.
Although the CRL design can't accommodate larger, double-decker trains, there is no problem with CRL's eventual capacity, she said.
Its design allows for up to two-and-half times its initial 9000 passengers per hour capacity when it is scheduled to open in 2021.
Straight away, Auckland rail network's capacity would jump 50 per cent before another increase no later than the 'early 2030s', she said.
By that time 48 trains per hour would travel in both directions through the CRL carrying 21,000 people.
Doubling-down on buses
The 2013 Census showed more than 119,000 people commuted to work in the Waitemata Local Board catchment covering Auckland CBD, and 21 per cent of Waitemata commuters used buses and trains.
Preparatory work on the 3.4km CRL, which will enable trains to circulate around the city centre and out to the wider Auckland network, has already begun but costs could balloon from $2.5b to $3.4b.
'There is the bizarre notion of express buses being routed directly over and along the the same corridor as the $3.5b-plus City Rail Link,' Lee said.
But Planning Committee chairman, councillor Chris Darby, said central government foot-dragging on funding bus-replacing Auckland light rail could mean that duplication stayed for decades.
''The government has said 'advanced' buses could address Auckland's transport needs for up to 30 years,' Darby said.
Auckland's aim should be for seamless public transport commuting requiring few or no transfers between services, Darby said.
Putting bus interchanges above CRL stations would mean commuters, who had already perhaps faced one suburban transfer, would face one more transfer to and from destinations.
Light rail which can travel where buses do would prevent that extra transfer, Darby said.