Auckland transport: Trackless trams to be trialled before the end of the year – Simon Wilson

THREE KEY FACTS

• Trackless trams and cable cars cost only a third as much as light rail, according to their makers.
• They can be built much more quickly, and carry more people than buses.
• A passenger train service to Huapai would be cheap and easy to establish, but authorities are still reluctant.

Simon Wilson is an award-winning senior writer covering politics, the climate crisis, transport, housing, urban design and social issues, with a focus on Auckland. He joined the Herald in 2018.

OPINION

Trackless trams will be trialled in Auckland before the end of the year. Probably.

target="_blank">Foiling aeroplanes have been proposed for the Hauraki Gulf. And an earlier proposal for cable cars, also known as aerial gondolas, is also being looked at again.

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And in a surprise for the northwest, Auckland Transport (AT) has revealed that passenger trains to Kumeū and Huapai are on its radar, although not in a terribly committed way.

There’s a lot going on for transport in Auckland, but the trackless trams proposal is the most significant and the most advanced.

It comes from China Rail, one of the largest rolling-stock manufacturers in the world, which has a regional office in Sydney. China Rail operates its Digital-rail Rapid Transit (DRT) system in Shanghai, Mexico and elsewhere, and last November ran a trial in Stirling, part of the city of Perth in Western Australia.

China Rail is working on the Auckland proposal with the infrastructure consultancy Beca and local company TransitNEXT.

AT executive Stacey van der Putten told Auckland Council in June they were “very keen to get one here to trial”. China Rail is too: as council executive Barry Potter revealed last week, it’s going to ship a unit over at its own expense.

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Potter also said they plan to have the trial before the end of the year. October or November seem most likely and they will do it on the Northern Busway on a Sunday, when there aren’t so many buses.

On the face of it, DRT looks like a very good concept for Auckland. China Rail says the system is – wait for it – about a third of the cost of surface light rail.

And it takes – okay, I’m jumping up and down with excitement now – “only weeks to install”.

This is because the units are guided by magnetic nails driven into the road. No overhead lines, no tracks. Apart from some pretty simple stations, the nails are the only infrastructure required.

Trackless trams are like bendy buses. They can be driverless, although the trial here will involve drivers. They have rubber tyres, but stabilising technology is said to make the ride as smooth as a train. They can handle a gradient of 15% (the harbour bridge is 6%).

The technology has been looked at before and rejected. But that’s mainly because it used to involve enormous lithium-ion batteries, which made the units so heavy they chewed up the roads.

China Rail’s new units are powered by much-lighter hydrogen cells. The units are now about the same weight, per axle, as a double-decker bus.

Double deckers already damage the roads, though, so weight is still a key issue. The main purpose of the trial will be to determine if it has been resolved.

Still from promotional video from CRRC in China of a trackless tram passenger transport system in operation in Nanjing City picture supplied FREE FOR EDITORIAL USE

DRT isn’t a magic bullet. A three-car unit can carry 300 people, which is far more than buses but still less than light rail.

But it could be the next best thing, especially if it provides feeder services, getting commuters to metro centres like Takapuna, Henderson and Manukau.

Cheap and quick to build, route flexibility, ride comfort. You’d expect everybody involved will pull out the stops to see if it really is as good as China Rail says. But will they?

DRT is significant in another way: it’s a rare example of the council saying yes to a proposal from the private sector.

Far too often, the council is where proposals from creative entrepreneurs go to die, for no obvious reason other than a computer-says-no mentality among council officials. Especially among council’s Auckland Transport officials.

They’re being tested with this. No delays, please, and no dumb reasons not to proceed with the trial.

“We want to get it done this year”, Potter and van der Putten have both said publicly. They cannot be empty words.

And what about those foiling planes, also known as sea gliders? The idea is proposed by Ocean Flyer, a company that wants to use the vessels – is that the right word? – on outer Hauraki Gulf routes and perhaps between Auckland and Whangārei.

Computer generated image of a Viceroy Ocean Flyer sea glider. Image / Ocean Flyer

The company’s Viceroy vessel looks like a plane with lots of little propellers, floating on the water. For the first and last parts of your journey, it behaves like a boat with stabilisers. Then it gets up on the foils, and then it gets airborne, to a maximum height of about 10 metres above sea level.

Ocean Flyer will not be trialled by AT and the council. Van der Putten told me she thinks the technology is “pretty cool”, but she suspects it will be more applicable to tourism than public transport.

Perhaps it will become part of the future for private travel – an alternative to flying.

Meanwhile, the Doppelmayr company, which makes skilifts and cable-car (gondola) lines for cities, has re-presented its idea to the council.

Last November Doppelmayr proposed 10 gondola commuter lines around the country. Now it’s focused on one route: Botany to the airport.

Like China Rail, it says its service would cost only 30% as much as surface light rail and a tenth of underground light rail. It could be delivered within two years and carry at least as many passengers as a dedicated busway.

The company also claims the lowest land-use footprint, the lowest carbon footprint and the highest resilience to transport network disruption of any motorised option.

Would it work? There are 23,000 people working in the airport precinct, not to mention airline passengers. The Government says it wants to provide them with rapid transit options, but on current planning that will be at least 10 years away. The previous Government was the same.

But Doppelmayr and China Rail both say they can fix the problem, quickly and cheaply.

The proposals of both companies deserve to be taken seriously.

Doppelmayr cable car line in Portugal. Photo / Doppelmayr

And what about passenger rail to the northwest towns of Kumeū and Huapai, which has been proposed for the umpteenth time by the Public Transport Users Association (PTUA)?

This time the PTUA has been joined by All Aboard, an umbrella group for public-transport lobby groups that focus on road congestion, climate emissions and public health.

The northwest is one of the fastest-growing parts of the city, its arterial roads are among the most congested and its public transport services among the least developed.

The plans of the current and previous Governments to address this basically amount to yeah nah, we’ll probably spend a vast amount of money on it one day, maybe get it done by late next decade. It’s an outrageous failure of public planning.

And yet both towns are on the railway line currently in use to carry freight from Northland. Both even have stations. And there are serviceable trains – old railcars – waiting in storage.

All they need to do is do it. AT even told the council recently it’s likely to be included in its plans. That is, however, its 30-year plans. And van der Putten told me it’s “more likely to be a busway”.

She said the railcars would have to operate as a shuttle service to Swanson, where passengers would switch to the Western Line. That’s not a reason to ignore them.

She also said KiwiRail will be reporting to the council about this “soon”.

This is what’s happening in transport in Auckland. Technology and lateral thinking are delivering options to solve the single largest problem the city faces, and those options are very often cheap and easy to implement.

But decision-makers in local and central government are wedded to big, expensive, old and partisan ideas. Knowing each side will cancel the other’s as soon as it gets the chance.

We need consensus decision-making on long-term infrastructure. And it needs to be forward-thinking, open to trials and dedicated, wherever possible, to solving problems quickly, affordably and for the long-term. That’s not easy, but new technologies offer hope.

What would it cost the Government, the council and all the risk-averse officials supposedly serving them to agree to this one big thing? Do the Botany to airport route with a new-tech option, do it fast, and learn from it. Then, by decade’s end, have the lessons rolled out for the rest of the city.

Fancy being able to fix Auckland’s transport woes. And save money.

Hot tip for Transport Minister Simeon Brown: last week the trackless tram trial in Stirling featured in the Australian National Awards for Local Government. It won the gong for “Best Productivity through Infrastructure”.