Brian Rudman: Rail boffins need sprinkling of 'be happy' dust

COMMENT

Reports of an Inland Revenue manager prancing around her office in a fairy costume, complete with wings and tiara, recall whispers of a similar apparition that appeared before Auckland Regional Council staff a year or so back.

On that occasion, chief executive Jo Brosnahan is said to have ghosted into one of her mass motivational sessions garbed as a witch. Or, if you believe the subsequent PR spin, as a wizard, a la Lord of the Rings.

After catching up on the latest episode in the Onehunga rail saga, I can't help thinking it's time for Ms Brosnahan to jump on the old broomstick again and sprinkle "be happy" dust over her rail boffins. What a bunch of defeatists they are, as far as the Onehunga branch line is concerned anyway.

After years of losing out to roads and buses, rail planners seem to have missed the message that rail is now sexy. Well sexier than it has been for at least 50 years.

The evidence is in the statistics. Patronage on Auckland commuter rail was up 32 per cent in January this year from January 2003. That's 50,000 extra journeys. For February, the growth was 29 per cent. For the year ended February 2004, 425,000 more journeys were taken.

Much of this is a result of the opening of the new Britomart station and despite continuing erratic service and decrepit rolling stock. With this sort of dramatic turn around for the better, you would have thought even the Rip van Winkles of the ARC rail division might have been aroused when on their desks dropped a proposal to reopen the historic 3.5km Onehunga branch line to passenger traffic.

The first train to Onehunga left Fort Britomart station at the foot of Anzac Ave, downtown Auckland, on Christmas Eve 1873. The regular driver rapidly earned the nickname "Hell-fire Jack" for achieving speeds of 25mph (40km/h). The last passenger service to Onehunga came a century later, in 1973.

In June last year, lobby group Campaign for Better Transport came up with a $460 million scheme, dubbed Airport Maxx, including an electrified rail service from Britomart to Auckland International Airport, via Penrose, along the Onehunga line then across Manukau Harbour to the airport.

Campaign spokesman Cameron Pitches proposed reopening the Onehunga branch line as far as the town centre as a first stage, with the airport extension to coincide with the completion of a second runway.

In September last year, Don Houghton, manager, transport planning, recommended to the passenger transport committee that no further study be made of the Airport Maxx proposal. He noted that for the Onehunga line "the existing track is considered to be unsafe for train operations" and that the estimated replacement cost in 2000 was $4.2 million.

Disgruntled councillors gave him a "try harder" message, calling for "a further report ... on the costs and benefits of reopening the Onehunga branch line and the implications of the second Manukau Harbour Crossing and the configuration of the second airport runway on future rapid transit services."

Last week, ARC rail boffins came up with another rejection slip for Onehunga, declaring it "undesirable to carry out further elaboration of either the operational arrangements or the infrastructure and station upgrades needed for Onehunga branch services due to the lack of justification on patronage benefits".

Their modelling showed only 300 passengers using a peak morning, half-hour service by 2011. Half of these would be existing bus users.

To replace the track, modify signalling and build new stations at Penrose, Te Papapa and Onehunga would cost between $3.5 million and $8.6 million. For a coup de grace, the officials said that by 2009-2010, Britomart would be too busy to handle any traffic from Onehunga. An alternative, they said, might be to reinstate the Strand Station as a downtown destination.

I don't know whether to be shocked or delighted at the suggestion that Britomart could be gridlocked by 2010. It suggests either that the transport planners got it very wrong when Britomart was designed, or that patronage is expanding beyond their wildest dreams. But neither seems sufficient reason for rejecting the Onehunga branch line proposal.

On the other hand, there are good reasons for taking it seriously. One is that Onehunga is identified in the regional growth strategy as a place of high-density population growth.

Another is that the regional council-owned Ericsson Stadium, alongside the rail line, is undergoing a $23 million upgrade. The benefits of instant rail access are surely self-evident.