Posts by Matthew Poole
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Each of the proposed new stations will be placed within 1400 m of an existing station. This study (pdf) of Singapore's MRT system shows their design criteria was for station catchments to be 2000 m radius
Last time I checked, a 1400m straight line would equate to a 2800m radius. And at an average human walking speed of 4km/h 1400m's still a 17-minute walk.
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Angus, Mt Eden station is closer than Britomart to AUTU and U.Auck? Really? On what planet? It's a fast 10-minute walk from Britomart to Wellesley St/Symonds St. It's another nearly-10 minute fast walk from Wellesley St/Symonds St to K'Rd. I know because I've done it frequently. It's at least another 10 minutes from there to Mt Eden train station, if I'm reading Google Maps correctly.
Your argument seems to be along the lines of "Get people close enough and make them walk/bus the rest" rather than "Get people as close to their destination as possible by a single mode." Changing modes is a disincentive to use public transport, especially if the mode change has to be done so close to the destination.
Have you paid attention to the distribution of employment within the CBD. Most of it is east of Wellesley St, as is the majority part of the tertiary campuses. Most of the really high-density office space is east of Victoria St. This is observable with a walk around the CBD.Where would you send all these buses you want to have servicing the Mt Eden train station? If you want to take a third of train passengers off at Mt Eden and get most of them to then bus to their CBD destination, you're going to need a whole hell of a lot of buses. Stopping where, exactly, without jamming up Mt Eden worse than it normally is? Have you actually thought this through, or just jerked your knee at the $1.5b figure for the tunnel? What's your position on the Puhoi extension, incidentally?
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So Matthew what do you can a road that only has one lane, for both directions?
I believe the term-of-art is "one-lane road". I find it confusing and illogical too.
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Ben, one line in, one line out. Same as a "single lane road" actually have two lanes, but only one in each direction. It's a consequence of Britomart being a dead-end station.
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Also remember that there was a pretty good mechanism -- regional fuel taxes -- proposed to pay for local transport infrastructure projects.
It wasn't just proposed, it was happening. Labour had passed legislation and everything. National canned it when they came in, at least in part because they're terrified of what might happen if Auckland got the power to fund its own transport rather than having to go cap-in-hand to central government. The subservient, begging relationship would end.
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Demolition of Flatbush, Dannemora and Albany
With the current residents relocated to...? What of all the commercial activity in Albany? It's becoming the Silicon Valley of Auckland, along with a fair whack of heavy industry.
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Colin, that sounds like a light-rail system. Auckland's already got a heavy-rail system and is having enough difficulty getting funding to make it work properly, without adding in another mode that will need more funding, space, etc to come into being.
Given that many parts of the Auckland rail network are also used by freight, they cannot be replaced with a non-heavy rail alternative. That means corridor duplication and all the other fun, if a light-rail system is intended to be rolled out to cover the same areas currently serviced by commuter rail. -
these stations are already through stations
Yes, stations. Britomart is a terminus, a stopping point. Grafton and Mt Eden aren't designed for tens-of-thousands of passengers an hour, they're designed for hundreds, at most, because they're meant to be points along the way not destinations.
I note that you haven't said a thing about Britomart being nearly at capacity. No rebuttal? No trite words about people walking? If we're going to have services running more frequently than every 10 minutes, the tunnel has to happen. That's 10 minutes on the existing lines, and accounting for the improvements that electrification will bring. Adding more lines means more services means less capacity at Britomart for any given line.
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Takapuna maybe, but Devonport? From the city?
I was picking the closest point, not the practical one. I know the rail's never going to go to Devonport, but when you've got Angus demanding a rail link to the Shore it's useful to show how expensive even the shortest tunnel would be as way of demonstrating that, actually, the CBD tunnel ain't that expensive.
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making crazy highways to nowhere in Panmure that will not address this huge need
Whether or not they'll address the need for quality transit options to the south-eastern suburbs largely depends on the design of the highway. Right now it's pretty sparse on bus lanes and other enablers of public transport. And even if they built a rail line, see my comment above about the tunnel being absolutely essential before any new lines are added to the network. The tunnel is not optional, and is not deferrable if any expansion is to take place.