Why Auckland's failing transport is a Wellington problem

Saturday, 10 October 2020

Auckland's commuters are sick of the region’s fatigued train tracks and congested motorways and will be expecting action from the incoming government, Todd Niall writes.

When North Shore resident David Bowerman found Auckland’s damaged Harbour Bridge would turn his cross-harbour commute to chaos he thought he had a plan B.

“If I took public transport I would use the Northern Express bus, or the Birkenhead ferry, then the train. Both work well and I enjoy those,” said the 35-year veteran of commuting to the southern industrial belt.

He opted instead to carpool, and it was only when he arrived in Penrose that he realised plan B would not have worked.

On the first Monday after a strong wind gust tipped a truck into a bridge strut, weakening the structure, part of Auckland’s rail network closed for four weeks for the urgent repairs of badly worn tracks.

**READ MORE:

* Fresh calls for extra Auckland harbour crossing as bridge damage shows city's vulnerability

* Auckland's biggest transport fail isn't the damaged harbour bridge

* Is Auckland's grip on its destiny being loosened by the Government?

**

Bowerman’s plan B would have got him to the Britomart rail station, only to find the southern and Onehunga rail lines that he needed, were closed.

The commuting “perfect storm” combined the Harbour Bridge’s most serious partial closure in its 61-year history, and the unprecedented urgent repair and replacement of under-maintained rail tracks.

Further south, downtown worker Michaela Rush had already endured weeks of disruption to her rail commute from Manurewa, after the Eastern and Manukau lines were shut suddenly on safety grounds.

“At first you had to get off at Otahuhu and they’d send a rail bus to pick us up, but there were no signs or directions and it was hard to find,” said Rush.

”It makes me wonder why things are left to get to this point, and why the closure now.”

It took three weeks, far sooner than originally feared, for the bridge to be fully repaired, but the speed limits on trains, and rolling shutdowns for weeks on end, will last until February 2021.

You might think it is hugely embarrassing for a city about to mark 10 years since its eight councils merged into one, in an unparalleled move to get on top of Auckland’s historic and growing problems.

Except for the fact that Auckland’s transport infrastructure fails are on the only major elements owned, maintained and run by government entities – KiwiRail and NZTA Waka Kotahi.

KiwiRail owns and manages the Auckland Metro network, 200 kms of line stretching from Pukekohe in the south, to Helensville in the northwest.

It charges council subsidiary Auckland Transport (AT) a fee of around $20 million a year, for access for the city’s 72 electric commuter trains, which Auckland bought for around $600 million, from 2013.

AT pulled the emergency cord in 2018 after a broken track derailed a commuter train, limiting services into the Britomart terminus, with the council agency demanding a review of the state-run rail network.

The report by consultants WPS Opus revealed historic under-maintenance across much of the network, and estimated a $200 million upgrade was needed.

KiwiRail around the same time had brought in a high-tech rail inspection machine, common in most other countries, which found the network in more urgent need of repair than the consultants had indicated.

With wear and tear raising safety concerns, KiwiRail unveiled a six-month programme of speed restrictions, and progressive line closures while it replaced up to 120 kms of rail, and repaired others.

To put that in context, KiwiRail will replace 3-4 times as much rail in Auckland over six months, as it normally replaces across the entire country in a year.

The state-owned company’s chief operating officer Todd Moyle spoke to Stuff at the Penrose station, part-way through a four-week shutdown of that section of line, insisting gain will follow the present pain.

“Not only will Auckland have the network it deserves at the end of this work, but we will have the maintenance regimes to ensure it doesn’t happen again,” he said.

An unknown, despite the efforts of up to 500 track workers, is understanding exactly what has caused the “rolling contact fatigue” or RCF – which is more than simply wear caused by wheels rolling along rails.

Rail surfaces become damaged or cracked by fatigue, which can be due to the shape of train wheels, angles of contact, or even the state of the bed the track is laid on.

KiwiRail commissioned Canadian-based SNC-Lavalin to study the issue, which curiously found the cracking may not be due to increased rail traffic.

“It was noted that there was very little wear on the rails of the Auckland network. Wear is beneficial in that it wears away cracks before they can develop into RCF,” the firm’s report said.

“Despite the increased frequency of the EMUs, (electric commuter trains) overall traffic tonnage remains low. Remedial grinding is required to remove existing RCF damage, then cyclic grinding introduced as artificial wear to control RCF.”

Moyle said KiwiRail had just brought in a rail-grinding machine, and the frequency of ongoing grinding could double.

The rail work – part of which is repair, and part re-configuring tracks for projects such as the third southern freight line, and the $4.5 billion City Rail Link – is a commuting nightmare for tens of thousands.

Patronage was already down due to Covid-19, but in the week before the mid-September southern line closure, 12,000 passengers passed through stations between Newmarket and Penrose, and Onehunga.

Half of those are now using replacement rail-bus services, the rest are finding other ways to travel.

“I hope it’ll be over before six months, but I’m not holding my breath,” said Rush, whose 40-minute trip to downtown now takes an hour, with new disruption ahead as the closures move further south.

The disruption poses a long-term risk to Auckland Transport’s finances, and a jolt from its pathway of rising rail patronage – previously almost 22 million trips a year – and preparation for the 2024 completion of the downtown underground rail loop, the $4.5 billion City Rail Link.

Any revenue loss in 2020 will be masked by a Covid-19 underwrite for public transport by NZTA, but from February, AT will find out whether and by how much, patronage and fare income has suffered long-term.

While the rail chaos may be man-made, the damage to the Auckland Harbour Bridge was more in the “act-of-God” category.

On Friday, September 18, a forecast stiff wind of around 60 kmh, gusted suddenly to 127 kmh catching a high-sided truck as it crested the bridge, tipping it into the structure and bending a strut.

“That's really hard to design for,” in the words of New Zealand Transport Agency’s Brett Gliddon.

The Harbour Bridge’s damage was significant, being the first structural blow to the 61-year-old section of State Highway 1, but also because it re-ignited calls to speed-up a cross-harbour tunnel.

The alternative is the Upper Harbour highway and the Western Ring Route, as the transport agency works on a business case for a tunnel for rapid transit and possibly road traffic, that would take 15 years to create.

Away from the dramatic bridge damage, and the rail chaos, West Aucklander Sam Marshall has been altering her daily routine around growing congestion between Henderson and southern Mt Wellington.

“Every year it just seems to get worse, there’s more driving to uni, more high school kids in cars – every year you find it takes an extra 10 minutes,” said Marshall.

She takes a cross-city route through New Lynn, the southeastern motorway, and Onehunga, to a job where she shifted her start time by an hour to 7.30am, to avoid the worst.

“In the morning I get up at 5.50, leave at 6.20, arrive at 7 and start at 7.30 – going home can be a nightmare, it takes one to one-and-a-half hours.”

The longer term future for Marshall’s trek from job-scarce West Auckland, to the employment-rich south, could also be in the government’s hands which is sitting on a detailed report into congestion-pricing.

Stuff understands that four years of joint work between the government and Auckland Council has produced a proposal for technology and pricing to charge motorists to drive on certain city routes.

The Minister of Transport Phil Twyford has declined to release any detail to Stuff.

“Documents from ‘The Congestion Question’ (project) will be considered for release when ready and appropriate,” he said.

Many regard the ambitious policy lever as essential to changing motoring habits, not just to ease transport problems, but to shift behaviour in order to reduce climate-changing emissions.

Marshall can’t see an easy alternative.

”The only thing I can see is a road with lanes top and bottom, to reduce the congestion,” she said.

”It’ll take a long time to fix – not in my lifetime.”

Auckland can reflect on a decade of significant city-driven transport progress, from the City Rail Link which overcame government disinterest, to the electronic fare system that should have gone nationwide, and strong patronage growth on its revived electric rail network, and Northern Busway.

But as with the rest of the country, the smooth-running of its highways and rail network, are down to decisions made in and around the Beehive.