21 July 2007

It is not just trainspotters who yearn for rail as the solution to Christchurch's commuting demands. MIKE CREAN looks at the case for and against bringing light rail to the Mainland.

Commuters park their cars in the secure area and board the sleek craft waiting at Rangiora's swish new railway station.

The electric vehicle sweeps quietly away, reaches a cruising speed of 120kmh, and glides to a stop, right on time, at Kaiapoi. More passengers, their tickets already franked at terminals, enter the spacious craft and it sweeps off once more.

After brief stops at Belfast, Redwood and Papanui, the articulated vehicle moves off the rails. Its diesel engine takes over and powers it along the bus-only lane in Papanui Road.

All the traffic lights turn green at its approach, and 20 minutes after leaving Rangiora, it draws into the new bus exchange by Victoria Square.

The future of Christchurch commuter transport or pie in the sky?

Such visions are exercising the minds of transport planners and shaping as an issue for the coming local-government elections.

Press articles on rail, light-rail and monorail for commuter transport always stir a lively reaction. Now the passion in letters to the editor is being matched by fervour on the political hustings from seasoned campaigners Bob Parker and Denis O'Rourke.

What are voters to make of it? After all, they are paying for investigations into commuter transport options. Most recently, a team of Christchurch City Council and Environment Canterbury (ECan) technical staff toured Australian cities to assess transport modes.

The options are:
Use existing rail corridors.
Build new light-rail tracks, similar to tram tracks.
Build an elevated (monorail) system or sunken (subway) system.
Enhance the bus system.
Combine some of the above.

ECan's passenger transport portfolio chairwoman, Nicky Wagner, says the Australian tour showed "all options are very expensive".
Rail systems cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and building one may be 10 times more costly than enhancing bus services.

Doing nothing would be even more costly. Christchurch's population will reach 500,000 by 2040. Traffic volumes on arterial roads are increasing 4 per cent a year. The city will crawl to a standstill unless new motorways, bridges and streets are built. And that is not counting the environmental and health costs of motor-vehicles burning depleting fuel reserves and car crashes.

Wagner says the Australian tour demonstrated most modes of commuter transport. Christchurch is lucky to be able to learn from the Australian examples. It also has the newly operative Urban Development Strategy to guide planning for city growth. Now is the time to strike.

However, Wagner cautions against focusing on transport modes. Such a focus can lead to hijack by people with romantic and subjective feelings about rail, or by those who have experienced a successful system in another country and are enthusiastic about transplanting it here.

The debate must start by considering what people want in public transport. ECan's consultation has shown they want it to be reliable, quick, accessible and cost-effective. For a city that sprawls over a mostly flat terrain, that means a network system with an accent on flexibility, she says.

The network may include a rail backbone, but will use other modes too. The key is dedicated transport corridors for whatever vehicles are used. And that means land purchases, which is where the costs start to rise.

ECan's studies show that if existing railway lines are to be used, they will need to be double-tracked, with a new track built beside the present one, as TranzRail has prior rights to existing track for freight and long-distance passenger trains.

That will be a major cost. Add to that the price of locomotives, carriages and stations. Studies estimate the cost of a new locomotive at $6m, compared to $300,000 for a new bus.

"It is important not to raise expectations about rail," Wagner says. "It is cheaper only if you fill up the trains."

However, Richard Worrall, Christchurch-based associate editor of Profitable Transport and Logistics, who has a master's degree in transport geography, says the initial outlay on trains must be balanced against the lower running costs. Trains have a longer life-span. Over 20 years, the labour, operational, maintenance and repair costs are many times lower for rail than for buses.

Worrall supports a rail system for Christchurch, perhaps using a newly developed train-tram hybrid vehicle that can also run on roads. He says a new track-laying method devised at Liverpool University reduces costs significantly.

Much opposition to rail is based on studies that show insufficient demand. Worrall says these studies are flawed, as they use current bus-patronage figures to calculate future passenger numbers. Some bus services are poor – "I wouldn't use them" – and a social stigma is attached to buses, he says.

The total commuter market is a more appropriate figure. More than 130,000 commuters cross the Waimakariri River or pass through the Sockburn Roundabout, in total, each weekday.

Get people out of their cars. Provide secure parking areas for park-and-ride services and run feeder buses around places such as Rangiora to bring people to the rail line.

Worrall dismisses monorail as an option. The costs are "astronomical" and the infrastructure would be "an eyesore", he says.

University of Canterbury lecturer in transport planning Andre Dantas dismisses rail options.

He says Christchurch is too small and the demand is insufficient. Perhaps in 40 years it could begin to look at rail.

Experience around the world convinces him demand must be built up over many years. Building tracks, putting trains on them and expecting people to jump aboard and pay would simply saddle taxpayers with the high cost of subsidies, he says.

He warns that debate on rail can attract lobby groups and commercial interests. This is less so with buses, "so the stakes are lower". Buses serve Christchurch well and the city would be "smarter" to develop these services with dedicated corridors and priority rights in traffic. Dantas says light rail can give a marginal increase in capacity over the efficient use of buses, but buses are more flexible. The urban area is changing. Once rails are laid, they must remain in place. Bus routes can be easily moved.

However, Worrall sees this as a plus for rail. People are more likely to commit to something they see as permanent. They will not opt to get rid of their cars for a bus route that could be shifted in a few months.

Worrall says bus services have had 40 years to create demand on the Rangiora-Christchurch route since the last commuter trains ran. It is time for new rail options.

Mayoral candidate Bob Parker agrees. "It is feasible. I want to start the debate now," he says.

Parker has a grand view of commuter trains linking Christchurch with Rangiora, Ashburton and Lyttelton on existing lines, and Lincoln on the resurrected line from Hornby. He envisages a new line from Belfast, curving west of Brighton to a station near Jade Stadium.

All would connect with bus services and bus exchanges. Christchurch's engineering sector would benefit from the building phase.

"We must look to the future with courage and vision," Parker says.

His mayoralty rival, Megan Woods, says rail may be part of the long-term solution to traffic congestion, but the costs are enormous.

"Who pays?" Woods says. Christchurch should build on its successful bus system, with clearways and priority rights in traffic. "We can put in bus corridors that can be converted to rail in the future."

ECan candidate and former city councillor Denis O'Rourke admits the costs for light rail would be "in the hundreds of millions", but he urges a long-term view. He wants rail planning to "leapfrog" road and bus-service planning and hopes the first light rail will be operating in 10 years. "Get one route started. Do it incrementally: for example, city centre to Belfast. It takes years to get anything done, so we should start now."

O'Rourke says local government will need to enter a partnership with central government for funding. Such a partnership would involve Land Transport New Zealand (LTNZ), which subsidises approved roading and public passenger transport services for local authorities.

LTNZ partnerships manager Jackie Curtis says LTNZ would expect to be involved in rail commuter studies by the city council and ECan, as an adviser and assistant. It would then assess any proposal put to it by matching it against criteria for funding. No proposal for rail services has been received from Christchurch, so no work has been done on the issue, Curtis says.

It may not be far away, though. The council's principal strategy and planning adviser, Dave Hinman, says a consultant's report on extensions to the inner-city tram service is to be presented to the council next month.

While the tram is seen primarily as serving tourists, the consultant was asked to study the possibilities of also serving Christchurch residents.

Commuters on trams? Perhaps the future lies in the past.

For further comment contact:
Megan Woods - 2021 Candidate for Mayor
Mobile: 027 669 0457
Email: megan@megan4mayor.com