Best plan selected? Never mind, let’s do it

It’s done. After all the reports and debates and many millions spent, we have a decision on how, when and where Auckland will get light rail.

For half its length, it will run in the longest tunnel built in New Zealand, thus avoiding surface disruption on Queen St and Dominion Rd. It will all, says the Government, be built by the early 2030s.

It will connect the largest business and residential area in the country — the inner city — with the second largest employment area — the airport precinct.

It will run past Eden Park and through suburbs expected to get 66,000 new homes and 150,000 more people living in them.

That’s a quarter of all expected Auckland growth in the next 30 years.

In particular, it will provide mass transit to a large part of the city now “transport deprived”. During public consultation, feedback from Māngere and nearby suburbs was “extremely enthusiastic”.

Leigh Auton, who chairs the Auckland Light Rail Establishment Unit, talks about the excitement generated when they presented the project in local markets, on local Samoan and Tongan radio stations, on the local Filipino TV station, everywhere in the southern suburbs they went.

It’s sometimes easy to forget there are hundreds of thousands of Aucklanders whose views don’t often show up in the letters pages and on talkback radio. This service, the Government hopes, will be for them.

But its purpose is larger than simply connecting the people along the proposed route. It’s part of a larger plan to create a rapid transit network across the city.

For that reason, work on a new harbour crossing will be accelerated: within 15 or so years the City Centre to Māngere line (CC2M) will probably run through Takapuna and all the way north to Orewa. And it will link to a northwest line to Kumeu.

The more mass transit we have, the easier it will be to move around and to reduce carbon emissions. And light rail means housing density can be developed all along the route, without roads becoming gridlocked.

National transport spokesman Simeon Brown argues the transport project is really a housing one in disguise, and therefore the housing costs should be built in.

This is peculiar. Planning transport and housing together is a good idea. Utilities, employment, schools, parks and playing fields, shopping and more should, and likely will, be hooked into the integrated planning approach over time.

Safer roads: 10 things we already know A16-17 We desperately need the transit and this is a good option.

Brown also says the priority is the harbour crossing, but as Goff says, if the purpose of that is to deliver more cars into the central city, it will be a disaster.

There is a simple lesson from Auckland’s transport experience. Although there’s been enormous growth on the Shore in the past 20 years, almost all the extra trips made into the city are via mass transit.

The number of cars on the bridge has not grown much, but almost 40 per cent of commuters on the bridge bus to work. There’s every reason to expect light rail will repeat this experience.

In fact, the Northern Busway will be at capacity in about 10 years. The proposed new light rail on the Shore will address the growing demand.

But with an expected cost of nearly $15 billion, it’s a super-expensive plan. The cheaper option was surface light rail. If that had been chosen, the northwest might have expected something more than it’s getting.

Transport Minister Michael Wood denies the northwest is being ignored. The new bus lanes on the motorway will be completed by the end of 2023, he says. “And I have instructed officials to accelerate planning for transit to extend to Kumeu.” It’s not clear what that will mean but we’ll find out soon enough.

Surface rail would also have been easier for most people to use, because you just hop on and off. And although construction is disruptive, once it’s done it leads to the regeneration of whole streets.

Surface rail on Dominion Rd could have brought an end to the car-choked mess, and made the whole route magnificent (see Canvas).

Now, the risk is that all Dominion Rd’s problems will get worse. The tunnel will probably run under or in the vicinity of Sandringham Rd, which means Dominion Rd retailers won’t even benefit from the foot traffic to and from stations.

Wood says they did not choose the tunnelled option lightly.

So why opt for a more expensive option? Infrastructure minister Grant Robertson says Government debt levels are “extremely low” by international standards, and thus it’s hard to justify not spending money to fix some serious Auckland problems.

Robertson and Wood say they were persuaded the tunnelled option was best for “future proofing”.

Tunnels mean the trains can go faster, not having to worry about hitting anything or anybody on the tracks, and there can be more of them. So capacity rises: by 50 per cent, says Wood.

Auton’s establishment unit said surface rail would have at least a 50-year life, but Wood reckons it would be more like 20 years.

But were tunnels chosen for another reason too: because they allow construction disruption to be minimised? Because, for political reasons, no government will subject Queen St to any more disruption than is absolutely necessary? Or Dominion Rd, for that matter?

Wood says that was an issue but “not the main factor” in the decision.

Is it the best option? Actually, that’s not the question any more. We desperately need the transit and this is a good option. So for heaven’s sake, let’s get it done.