How rapid is our Rapid Transit

by Matt Lowrie

Last week Auckland Transport released their new rapid transit map for after the City Rail Link opens sometime next year. The implication that the rapid transit network (RTN) should be fast is right there in the name but for the avoidance of doubt, the Auckland Rapid Transit Pathway has a high-level description of the RTN of:

Rapid transit is fast, frequent, and reliable public transport. It mostly runs on its own infrastructure, uninterrupted by other traffic. That makes it an efficient way to move large amounts of people.

It sits at the core of our public transport system and will play a major part in meeting travel demand for Auckland’s growing population. It will also support congestion-free and sustainable travel.

Auckland's rapid transport network includes the:

• northern and eastern busways

• southern, eastern, and western lines of the rail network

• Western Express and Airport Link.

The question of how rapid our rapid transit actually is, is something I was thinking about again a few week ago. These days I typically ride my bike to work - from Henderson to the North Shore at Smales Farm - and as I passed by the Sturges Rd train station I happened to come across a 12 bus, and one of a handful in the morning that also happens to travel down the busway. That meant if I wasn't riding, I could have caught it for single seat ride to work. So I decided to track it on AT's app. Granted, the 12 isn't a rapid transit service but even so, I was able to get to work, have a shower and start working before that exact bus even reached the busway. Had I caught the train and an NX1 bus instead it would have been about the same travel time as the 12.

Most people probably aren't comparing the speed of their commute to a bike - even though bikes, especially e-bikes, are often the fastest option at peak times for many journeys. Instead, as AT's current Regional Public Transport Plan notes:

Aucklanders tell us that they use PT where it provides a faster travel time than cars, where it allows them to avoid the cost of parking, or because they do not have another option available to them (either by choice or necessity). Currently, our network is used primarily for trips at peak commuting times and is less well used off-peak. We want Aucklanders to use PT for all sorts of trips, throughout the day and the week. This will be particularly important as Auckland’s land use changes and the population grows, as more efficient transport options will be needed.

So I thought I'd do a bit of a comparison to see just how rapid our rapid transit is.

For now, Te Komititanga is the heart of our rapid transit system, with Britomart on one side and the Lower Albert St Bus Interchange, the terminus for the NX1 and WX1, a short distance away on the other. So how long does it take to get there on public transport from each of our rapid transit stations and how does that compare to driving.

A few notes about this comparison:

• For PT,

  • For trains I've used AT's timetables and for buses I've Google Maps as it feels more accurate than AT's timetables.

  • I haven't taken into account any time it would take to get to stations or wait for a service.

• For driving

  • I've used google maps to indicate a travel time. This is represented as a range e.g. 20-40 minutes.

  • Like with PT I only assumed someone is driving starting from the station so actual times may vary, I also haven't accounted for the need to find a carpark in the city and walk from that carpark.

• For each station I've done this analysis twice as if I was arriving at 8:30am on a Wednesday for the peak time component and I've also looked at 1pm to get an off-peak comparison.

Northern Busway (NX1)

The NX1 is the busiest and most successful bus route in country and it's even busier that most of our train lines too. Here you can that at peak times, buses are generally the fastest way to get to the city and even off-peak they are competitive. As such, it's not uncommon to see well used buses at all times of the day.

Interestingly the travel time Google suggests by bus is faster than the AT timetable suggests - from personal use, AT's timetable has always felt slow.

While buses are competitive now, they could still be faster and the biggest opportunity would be to speed up dwell times (what will become a common theme in this post). Double deckers can be much slower at stops due to needing to wait for passengers using the stairs so faster stops could be achieved with changes like all door boarding and possibly changing to using articulated buses and many modern ones have three or even four sets of doors to facilitate faster stops and can carry more passengers than a double decker. The downside to articulated units is they take up more space at bus stops so the implications of that need to be worked through.

Western Express

The lack of dedicated infrastructure means unlike its northern cousin, Google suggests the WX1 takes longer than AT put in their timetable and that's because the buses are subject to congestion more than the NX1 is. At peak times the service is competitive, but it isn't off-peak.

The long-term solution is a proper busway and that would give it the improved speed and reliability it needs but it will be many years off.

Southern Line

At peak times the Southern Line does pretty well compared to driving at peak times but off-peak it depends on where along the line. Most ridership tends to come from the more southern stations but they're the ones the least competitive against driving during the off-peak.

Eastern Line

The Eastern Line is more competitive than driving at peak compared to the Southern Line but like the Southern is more of a mixed bag off-peak - which is not surprising given they share stations.

Western Line

The Western Line is perhaps the most out of line with what we see above. Where most of the examples above are time competitive at peak and in the middle of the range for driving off-peak, the Western Line is only in the middle of the range at peak and is well above it off-peak. This is due to two main reasons, 1) drivers essentially get a shortcut compared to the rail line thanks to the causeway along SH16, which mainly benefits people near the outer stations and 2) the western line currently takes a circuitous route via Newmarket. The latter is something the CRL solves.

The CRL is expected to take about 9 minutes from Maungawhau to Britomart, about half the time that it currently takes. I've added an expected travel time with the CRL to the chart here too and as you can see, it makes helps to make the Western Line much more competitive to driving both at peak and off-peak.

Speeding up train services

Even without the CRL, our trains are terribly slow. As I've highlighted before, comparing the average speed of our rail lines on other similar systems you can see we're clearly below the curve.

It wasn't meant to be this way either. The travel times required by AT/Kiwirail and estimated as achievable by the train manufacturer prior to electrification are in line with the general trend you can see below.

There appears to be two main things holding us back from achieving the average speeds originally expected.

1. The quality of the tracks - As has been well documented now, Auckland's rail network is/was in a terrible state due to a lack of proper maintenance for decades due to not enough funding and attention towards improving things. That has changed as evidenced by the huge amount of disruption we've seen over the last five years as Kiwirail finally start to get the network up to a modern state. Doing so will allow most of the temporary speed restrictions (TSR) to be lifted and improving travel times. Last year it was reported that these TSRs were causing up to five-and-a-half minutes of delays per service on the Western Line.

2. Dwell times - these have been a regular bug-bear of mine for over a decade now. A few days before I raced the 12 my bike was having some maintenance done so I caught the train. Along the way I took the opportunity to time how long trains were stopping for to see if there's been any improvement over the years. There hasn't been ad at most stations (excluding Newmarket) the dwell time continues to average between 45-50 seconds, that's 15-20 seconds longer than it should be based on typical practice. Fifteen seconds might not sound like much but if you're travelling further, it can add up quickly and for someone travelling all the way to Swanson could add as much as five minutes to a journey.What's more frustrating about dwell time is it isn't even directly about the passengers as the doors themselves are typically only open for about 20 seconds. The other 25-30 seconds is waiting things like waiting for the doors to open once the train has stopped, for the ramp for the low-floor section to deploy and the process train managers go though before departing. That process could of and should have been improved by now but it hasn't.

Combined that's more than 10 minutes of travel time savings for some of further out stations and would bring the travel time close to those original expectations. So I've done some versions with the combined savings of the CRL and these additional travel time improvements.

As you can see, with both the CRL and the other improvements to travel times, even off-peak the Western Line starts to look much more attractive.

Is that enough to put the rapid back in Rapid Transit?