Whangarei to Auckland transport links

Between COVID19 and a very wet 2023, the transport links between Northland and the rest of the country have suffered from major disruptions. They simply are not resilient. This post is the start of an examination of the problems and some of the possible solutions. It will be edited as I add more material but let's start with SH1.

I will also look at the months-long failure of the rail link, the proposals to build a rail link to the port at Marsden Point and move Whangarei airport, and an interesting new proposal for a ground-effect service along the coast called Ocean Flyer.

Before the Labour Government was elected, its National Party predecessor had promised a four-lane highway.

The current SH1 four laneing has now reached north to Warkworth with the recent opening of a new road north from Puhoi. This was part of the previous Government's Roads of National Significance (RoNs) programme.

At the same time work has been done to improve the safety of the existing section of SH1 between Warkworth and Wellsford.

But what was investigated before the change of Government in 2017? There is still information on the NZ Transport Agency web site about what might have involved a major rerouting of SH1, avoiding both Dome Valley and the Brynderwyn Hill. See, for example, the August 2017 Programme Business Case: https://www.nzta.govt.nz/assets/projects/whangarei-to-te-hana/Whangarei-to-Auckland-PBC.pdf

Information about the current work programme is available from the NZTA web page on Connecting Northland: https://www.nzta.govt.nz/projects/connecting-northland/ 

New Zealand Government releases transport policy direction statement

On 31 August 2011 the New Zealand Minister of Transport, Hon. Steven Joyce, released a new 44-page transport policy direction statement, Connecting New Zealand.

In contrast to the previous coalition government's 2008 New Zealand Transport Strategy (see previous post), Connecting New Zealand includes three pages specifically focussed on civil aviation.

Road safety continues to be a major priority. Also featured are the Roads of National Significance, a programme of investment in the road network around New Zealand's three main centres, and major investment in rail.

Breakthrough for the Gotthard Base Tunnel Project

In a major civil engineering achievement, after 14 years on 15 October 2010 the boring of the 57km Gotthard Base Tunnel through the Swiss Alps was completed. swissinfo.ch carried a report on the breakthrough.

The new rail tunnel, the longest in the world, will not open until 2017 but will become a major transport between Germany and Italy when it does. The cost is expected to be US$10.6bn. The travel time by passenger train between Zurich and Milan will be reduced by one hour.

Wellington rail patronage growth largely driven by petrol price changes

In a previous post linking to Greg Mankiw's cross-price elasticity of demand examples, I noted that the car park at my local railway station seemed fill up when petrol prices went up. I recently found the two data series and graphed the relationship to see if I could confirm this.

The graph below and the R-squared value of 0.76 indicate that the changes in petrol prices have in fact been quite strongly related to changes in Wellington train patronage. For each cent the average quarterly price of petrol rises Tranz Metro can expect to have seen patronage rise by just under 8,000 passenger journeys per quarter.

I downloaded the data series for the inflation-adjusted quarterly average price of regular petrol from here UPDATED on the New Zealand Ministry of Economic Development web site. The rail passenger numbers come from here UPDATED on the Metlink web site.

It would be interesting to see what the relationship is with respect to other urban rail passenger systems, particularly in Auckland.

Meanwhile another factor is currently influencing rail passenger demand in Wellington. Service disruptions, while the system goes through a massive upgrade, are driving down demand as some rail commuters resort to more reliable alternatives transport modes (see Dominion Post story dated 13 August 2010).

Air transport and the NZ Consumers Price Index

Buried deep in the revamped Statistics New Zealand web site one can find using Infoshare NEW data series for international and domestic air transport prices, together with road, rail and sea passenger transport prices - look under Economic Indicators: Consumers Price Index: CPI Classes for New Zealand.

I am not sure precisely what of the many thousands of tariffs the statisticians are monitoring to come up with these series. With respect to domestic air travel Price Index News: July 2009 UPDATED does however state:

"The initial impact of a recent new entrant [Jetstar], offering passenger air transport services on several routes within New Zealand, including the main trunk routes between Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, will be mostly reflected in the CPI for the June 2009 quarter. Domestic air transport prices are collected monthly, for travel the following month. For example, prices collected in mid-May for travel to be taken in mid-June are included in the May month for CPI purposes. As such, approximately two-thirds of the impact of the introduction will be shown in the June 2009 quarter, with the remainder in the September 2009 quarter. Of the domestic routes tracked for the CPI, flights between the three main centres carry between 50 and 60 percent of the expenditure weight of the domestic air transport index."

Our daily commute - New Zealanders' travel patterns

A couple of recent reports focus on the changing travel patterns of New Zealanders.

In August 2009 the Ministry of Transport published a 44-page report, How New Zealanders Travel, based on its Ongoing Household Travel Survey work that started in 1988. One of the notable changes is how fewer children are walking to school. The report also focusses on the safety risks we face when travelling, highlighting the dangers of motorcycling and cycling.

In terms of my personal morning 30km commute, I am in the 1% group that travels by a combination of car, public transport (in my case a train) and walking.

On 6 July 2009 Statistics New Zealand published a report, Commuting Patterns in New Zealand 1996-2006, based on census returns. This focusses on Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. Further papers released on 29 July 2009, Workforces on the move and Human capital and commuting to and within the four cities of Auckland, cover similar ground.

The distance of my personal commute is clearly at the high end.

Life-cycle research suggests aviation may cause less environmental impact than rail

Environmental life-cycle research done by Mikhail Chester and Arpad Horvath from the University of California, Berkeley questions the assumptions being made about the climate-change impact of the various passenger transport modes. The research includes the climate change impact of construction of the necessary infrastructure and vehicle manufacture (HTs to SciTechDaily and Transport Gooru).

The researchers have established a web site http://www.sustainable-transportation.com/ NEW that has links to the 8-page results summary of the research published on 8 June 2009 in Environmental Research Letters and some of the media coverage their work has received.

There are parallels in this research to that being done on so-called "food miles" (see previous post).

Will the Bishop of London now change his attitude to rail versus air transport (see previous post)? Perhaps not given that the 9 June 2009 BBC coverage of the research failed to include the conclusions on heavy rail!

Lord Turner suggests flight rationing

In early February 2009 the Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Financial Times Westminster weblog all carried stories reporting that the UK Government's Chairman of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), Lord Turner, has raised the possibility that in future flying be rationed in order to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

On 1 December 2008 the CCC published its first report on Building a low-carbon economy – the UK’s contribution to tackling climate change. Chapter 8 covers International aviation and shipping.

The CCC is now writing an Aviation Report to be published in December 2009.

A critical look at rail transport in New Zealand

A 19 February 2009 presentation by Dave Heatley, a research fellow at the New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation takes a critical look at rail transport in New Zealand. It is certainly thought provoking and has generated considerable debate on the frogblog weblog run by the Green Party.

Liberty Scott has highlighted this presentation in a 19 February 2009 post and summarises what he describes as "some simple myths about rail."

A third runway for London Heathrow?

In all the coverage of the UK Government's decision announced on 15 January 2009 to allow the go ahead of a process to construct a short third runway for Heathrow airport (LHR)(the Guardian, for example, has extensive coverage and GreenAir has a comprehensive report NEW with links), there has been some interesting analysis that goes beyond the expected reporting of NIMBYism and the kind of band-wagon environmentalism that saw the doors of the Department for Transport in London broken (the planned Heathrow expansion is certainly a lightning rod for wider concerns about climate change).

For example, anna.aero has analysis dated 23 January 2009 showing amongst other things the decline in the share of domestic air travel through Heathrow.

In a 27 May 2008 article The Economist took a critical look at the proposal.

The Liberty Scott weblog argues that transit traffic would simply fly from other airports if Heathrow is not expanded. On 16 January 2009 Aviation Week reported NEW that Frankfurt Airport NEW has just gained court approval for a fourth runway (for landings only)(see Information on Airport Expansion NEW for more details).

One of the more interesting plans is to also directly link Heathrow airport into the high-speed rail services network as is already the case with some other major airports around the world. This idea of creating a rail "hub" at Heathrow was the subject of a proposal by Arup, an engineering consultancy, announced on 16 May 2008.

Even here though there are questions with a 23 January 2009 posting on The Economist's Gulliver weblog looking at emissions from high-speed rail compared with aviation and pointing to a 22 January 2009 article in the Guardian by Fred Pearce.

"Fire & Steam" by Christian Wolmer

I have recently finished reading "Fire & Steam - How the Railways Transformed Britain" by transport journalist Christian Wolmar.

It is a very good history of the development of rail transport in the United Kingdom. It is particularly interesting on the relationship between the rail industry and successive governments over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is a real lesson in the need to clarify objectives and not be surprised if an industry struggles when required to meet conflicting ones imposed by government. It is also a lesson in the complexities of the transport system.

One comment in the book in particular struck me as worth thinking about:

"... expenditure on roads has always been deemed to be investment, while rail spending has been classified as subsidy." (page 284)

Reviews of Fire & Steam have appeared in:

• the Independent
  
• the Guardian
  
• the Times
  

This book is clearly written by an advocate for rail but deserves to be read not just by rail enthusiasts.

LAX versus SFO

On 23 February 2007 the Los Angeles Times carried a story about how Los Angeles Airport (LAX) is losing popularity amongst international airlines to San Francisco (SFO). Certainly in my experience SFO does a much better job in upgradings its facilities and promoting itself, and has secured an Air New Zealand service that is proving to be very popular. It may also yet be the home of Virgin America. Last year Air New Zealand downgraded its LAX-LHR service from B747s to B777s and intends withdrawing from operating PPT-LAX.

I also recall that while SFO now has a BART station, the Los Angeles politicians seem to have stopped their mass urban transit system, Metro Rail, short of LAX to appease the local parking lot and taxi industries!

Rail Photos taken in Geneva

I first visited Switzerland on holiday in 1986 and for part of my time there travelled around by train and boat using a Swiss Pass. I also travelled on the Glacier Express and the very expensive Jungfraubahnen. It was a wonderful experience and a great way to see the Swiss Alps. More recently my visits to Switzerland have been to attend World Trade Organization (WTO) meetings in Geneva.

Here are a few photos I took on different more recent visits to the main railway station in Geneva, Switzerland. The lighting conditions were sometimes less than ideal.

A modern electric Swiss Rail train with double-decked passenger carriages.

An older Swiss Rail electric engine pulling single-decked passenger carriages.

The RER operates local services as part of the Geneva public transport system.

A TGV that operates between Paris and Geneva is visible on the left of the photograph above.

bmi to suspend London-Paris air services

Star Alliance partner, bmi (British Midland Airways Ltd) announced on 19 January 2007 that it is to "suspend" air services between London Heathrow (LHR) and Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG) airports from 26 February 2007. bmi cites intense competition, including from the Eurostar train service that will be significantly faster when the second section of the new Kent-London high-speed Channel Tunnel Rail Link is completed later this year.

bmi is the second largest airline at Heathrow and code shares with many long-haul airlines, including Air New Zealand, providing feeder services to and from Heathrow.