Queen Street: The challenge of turning Auckland's 'golden mile' green
Friday, 23 April 2021
Nothing is as simple as it looks, and the launch of a fleet of electric buses to clear the air in polluted Queen Street is no exception.
The ceremonial ribbon-cutting on the fleet of 12 electric buses comprising the red-liveried City Link fleet, is the biggest step yet in converting the city’s 1300-bus fleet away from diesel power to zero emissions.
While the fleet will be in service when you read this, the goal of restoring Auckland’s “golden mile” from its current status as the country’s worst black-carbon urban canyon will take more than two years.
The kaleidoscope of other downtown projects underway means additional diesel buses will be re-routed into Queen St, or travel longer stretches of the retail hotspot, until mid-2023.
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First the good news. The City Link service is the most travelled route down Queen Street, the Wai Horotiu valley, making 350 journeys daily, carrying 1.6 million passengers a year.
So going all-electric will remove 93,000 tonnes of CO2 a year.
The not so good news is that the surge of diesel bus routes spending more time on Queen Street means 250 more carbon-pumping buses daily in the short-term, taking diesel-burners to 600 trips a day.
From mid-year the popular Inner Link loop service will leave Queen Street, when works on the underground Aotea Station on the City Rail Link, will close the intersection of Albert and Victoria Streets.
From then on, zero emission buses – the City Link service – will make up half of the 650 bus journeys on Queen Street until mid-2023 when the end of CRL surface disruption will allow all other routes to leave the street.
At that point, bus-pumped diesel fumes and the rumble of bus engines should be gone from Queen Street for good, replaced by the turbine hum of electrics.
All future buses bought for Auckland public transport services from now on are expected to be electric, but diesels are expected to remain in the fleet for the rest of the decade, with no New Zealand-compliant electric version of the high capacity double-deckers, yet on the market.
The electric buses are a highly visible part of the required shift to reducing carbon emissions in Auckland’s vehicle fleet.
But the excitement that accompanies each new eBus fleet launch, risks underplaying the real challenge in reaching the target of halving 2016-level emissions, b 2030 – an Auckland Council pledge.
That will need an estimated 64 per cent reduction in transport-produced emissions and, forget the role of boosting the electric car fleet, people will have to reduce their use of cars. A lot.
The electric bus fleet will be a plus for Queen Street, which is struggling due to the loss of foreign tourists and international students, and office workers spending more time working from their homes.
Auckland Council’s project to make the lower end of Queen St more people-friendly, with a pocket park and wider footpaths will also help, but businesses continue to close, leaving more shopfronts empty.
Stretches of Queen St may continue to have no meaning for some time, without the trade that the tourists and students brought, and restoring its health and vitality may be more challenging than cleaning its air.
More electric buses are just part of the answer to Queen Street become a more appealing showcase for the central city, as are wider footpaths and places to relax.
While it will take a couple of years to really banish the bus-generated diesel fumes from Queen St, Auckland’s decision makers need to move faster to bring back the vibrancy that any city centre needs.