KEY POINTS:
Rail patronage in Auckland has shot up from two million passenger trips a year to six million in just five years. That impressive statistic points not only to rail's strong recovery from many years of neglect but the potential if the city boasted a quicker, more convenient, more efficient, more comfortable, safer and more frequent service. Not the least of this would be the presence of a very attractive option to the car. If, as Auckland Regional Council planning suggested when the Britomart station opened in 2003, 25 million journeys were achieved by 2015, rail would have gone a long way towards solving Auckland's road congestion woes.
Such ambition is all for the future, however. At the moment, rail needs to get over its next development hump. Much of the large sum that has been, and is being, spent on attracting patronage will be to little avail if the service is poor. Currently, there are obvious problems. Herald articles have highlighted passengers' frustrations, only some of which can be attributed to the system's growing pains. Much of the anger is directed at lengthy delays near the entrance to Britomart, which are the product of a basic design flaw. Incomprehensibly, the tunnel installed by the Auckland City Council before the station was built was given only one line in and one out. At peak times, this creates congestion when trains come in faster than they can get out.
The eventual solution will be a 3.5km 'loop' tunnel between Britomart and Mt Eden, beneath Albert St and including underground stations near Wellesley St and Karangahape Rd. According to the Auckland Regional Transport Authority, this $1 billion project will not only eradicate the bottleneck but boost central-city retailing and commerce. Turning Britomart into a through station will also allow greater frequencies than the 10-minute services expected by the end of next year from the Government's $600 million upgrade of the network.
Like the entrance to Britomart, however, this project has an Achilles heel. That lies in its likely 12- to 16-year lead time. The idea of the tunnel as part of an inter-city rail loop was proposed to the Auckland Regional Council in 2005 but only recently, at the behest of Treasury-led officials, has planning begun in earnest. That process must be accelerated. Given Britomart's inherent problem, it is asking too much of rail passengers, present and potential, to wait until at least 2020 for the problem to be ironed out fully.
In the meantime, part-solutions become important. Some are imminent. The arrival of new rolling stock and electric trains will reduce the number of breakdowns, a significant cause of delays. Improvements to signalling and maintenance will also help, as will double-tracking on the western line, which will allow better sequencing of arrivals and departures from Britomart. Set against that, however, will be increased pressure on the station when branch lines from Onehunga and the Manukau City centre open by the end of next year.
Other improvements to the rail infrastructure will include new "feature" stations at Newmarket and New Lynn and the refurbishing of others. As with the coming of Britomart, this should spur patronage. But enthusiasm will wane rapidly if the service is blighted by inefficiency. People will return to their cars, and rail will remain a bit player in Auckland's transport system. Everything possible must be done to stop that happening. Rail's potential has prompted large-scale spending. That can only be justified if progress is sustained. And that means seeking urgently to make the system as good as it can be in the immediate future, and pressing on quickly with long-term improvements.
