What happened to Auckland's airport light rail?

back in 2015 Oakland's public transport agency ockland transport announced plans to start building a light rail network in the city but some 9 years later there's no light rail to speak of and in fact just a couple of days ago New Zealand's government announced they were pulling the plug on the struggling project now I like public transport and I'm never happy to see a project like this get cancelled but that doesn't mean I can't understand why New Zealand made the decision that it did with this particular Pro project it has been going for close to a decade already cost upwards of $200 million but not a single meter of track had been laid so what went so disastrously wrong with Oakland's Light Rail Project was it ever actually needed in the first place and what does this mean for the future of public transport infrastructure in Oakland and New Zealand in general well before we answer those questions I think we need to understand what led to the project being considered in the first place like so many other cities around the world ockland actually used to have a pretty substantial tram Network reaching over 70 km in length at its peak but then from about the middle of the last century it was closed down as the government shifted its infrastructure spending away from public transport and towards cars over the decades with little investment in public transport and a lot into demand inducing roadways it's not that surprising that ockland is now a city plagued by traffic issues in recent years however governments Across the Western world have finally started to put at least some investment back into public transport infrastructure you can see this elsewhere in places like the famously car Centric Los Angeles where multiple new Metro projects are currently underway as well as places more close by like Sydney which has recently seen the largest expansion of its rail network in close to a century with its new Metro lines and also similarly controversial Light Rail Project and Oakland has not been left out of this to help relieve some of the city's Infamous traffic congestion and to give a boost to the city's public transport Network the city undertook a series of public transport projects of its own the two most notable ones with the city Rail Link a new underground rail tunnel that aims to boost rail capacity through Oakland City Center and the airport life Rail Project now the city Rail Link actually seems to be progressing fairly well with construction well underway and an expected opening date of 2025 but the same cannot be said for the now canell airport Light Rail Project the origins of this project can be found in 2015 when ockland transport called for studies on converting some of the city's busiest bus corridors into Light Rail various roads were considered for light rail from sandream road to Queen Street to Dominion Road Oakland transport had projected many of the bus routs on these roads would be reaching capacity in the coming years and by converting them to light rail the capacity could be increased with even Street running light rail offering double the capacity of buses running in dedicated Lanes an early proposal for the light rail featured a kind of orbital line that would connect Oakland's airport with the suburb of botony downs this proposal did not pass through the city center and passengers traveling there would need to change at the existing station at Pui hope I'm pronouncing that right if they wanted to continue into the city this line would have provided a new East West Link in Oakland's far Southern suburbs but this proposal didn't really go anywhere however in 2018 New Zealand's transport Minister announced $28 billion of funding for Oakland's transport infrastructure and part of that was to go towards the construction of a light rail system then just a few days later that same government unveiled the most promising Light Rail proposal yet it called for the construction of two lines one from the city center to Westgate in the city's West and a second from the city to the airport both lines would share common set of track that would run along Queen street from rart where the city's main train station is located as well as a number of Ferry lines towards the southern end of the city center at the end of Queen Street the lines would split the first would proceed along the street a little further before it reached the Northwestern Motorway where it would then run along the freeways medium all the way to Westgate bringing the line to a total of 18 km the second airport bound line would continue from the split running down the street for about another 6 km via Dominion Road eventually it would reach the southwestern Motorway which it would then run down for about 8 km including a potential interchange with the existing one hunger train line before heading down George bolt Memorial Drive a further 5 km to reach the airport as part of this proposal there were also potential plans to extend the northern section of the line to the existing but tiny tourist tram Loop in the wyard quarter on the city's Northwestern Edge the estimated total cost of the project was $6 billion which isn't super cheap but for the distance of new track being added to the city's rail network as well as the number of new areas gaining access to frequent rail servers I think it would have been easily worth the money but if the project was so promising what happened to it well instead of getting on with construction the planning scope started to creep up that same year with interest from private investment alternative plans were drawn up that would have put the trains in a tunnel rather than and running along the street for the inner city part of the line with elevated tracks used for the more outer sections while this would have cut the estimated Journey time from the Oakland City Center to the airport from 47 minutes to just 30 minutes it would also dramatically increase the Project's cost on top of that while part of those speed increases would have come from the line being gr separated so it wouldn't need to be waiting at things like traffic lights the other part came from fewer proposed stops meaning the line would be able to serve fewer people further work on the project then stalled as the pandemic was happening although the government did at the time announce they were still committed to the project once the pandemic was over however in 2022 the government confirmed they were still proceeding with the airport line this time as a tunneled light rail line to mount roskill and then an elevated line to the airport at a cost of $14.6 billion so a fair bit more than the 6 billion required for the street running lines and without the Westgate line included in that cost at the time there were even proposals for future phases where the light rail would continue in a tunnel under orland's Harbor to serve its northern suburbs as well but fast forward to today and New Zealand has a new party in power who campaigned on ditching the night Ro project and they kept that promise with the project being canell just a couple of days ago now for most voters I don't think the light rail was the main reason for choosing that particular political party but I can see why for many people they would be frustrated enough with the project to want it gone a lot of proposals had come and gone since the project had been announced but despite hundreds of millions of dollars being spent there was basically nothing to show for it it seems like every time a concrete plan for the project appeared somebody else wanted their say and the plans were changed so instead of sticking with an initial good idea the project kept getting sent back to the drawing board so as the scope of the project kept creeping up and as these new ideas were tacked onto it so did its cost the initial plans for light rail from the city to Westgate in the airport using these Street running sections might not have been 100% perfect but they were practical and cost effective yes travel times might have been a bit on the long side to get to the airport from the city but the real benefits of the line would have come from the suburbs it connected up with on the way a benefit that would have been substantially reduced by the fewer stops allowed for in the later grade separated FL hands airport rail links have a bit of a history of underperforming at least initially so while the airport connection was a big bonus the fact that the line would have also formed an effective Suburban transport line was in my view much more important and if the airport patronage proved high enough nothing needs to stop other rail connections being built in the future as RM Transit has noted before when you start putting light rails in tunnels you kind of defeat the point of building Light Rail I'll put a link to his video on the topic in the description if you want to know more but basically one of the main benefits of Light Rail is that it's cheap to build but that's lost with tunneling on top of that tunneled light rail doesn't bring many of the benefits of a proper tunneled or elevated Metro especially the high capacities you should either build a predominantly atg grade light rail system or a fully grade separated Metro going for something in between just gets you the worst of Both Worlds ultimately while I'm not happy to see ackland's Light Rail Project get cancelled the project probably should never have really gone ahead in the state it was in anyway the cheapest Street running 2018 proposal could have been a solid option but the scope creep that affected this project left it unnecessarily expensive and not an overall good use of Light Rail as a transport mode it's also disappointing that the new government in New Zealand hasn't proposed any alternatives to the project but that's why it's so important transport projects like this are kept focused we unfortunately live in a world where some groups will look for any excuse to cancel a Transit project and allowing projects to creep in scope and spend years going nowhere just gives them the perfect excuse to do so well I hope you enjoyed the video if you did consider giving it a like and subscribing to the channel I also want to know if you guys think or's Light Rail is worth salvaging should it be tried again and if so do you think there are ways you could make it better and of course I'm City Moose thanks for [Applause] [Music] watching

Channel: CityMoose

Views: 14,624

Keywords: auckland, new zealand, light rail, tram, transit, auckland transport, public transport, airport, railways, trains, urbanism, infrastructure

Id: RBaJ0rHnLC0

Length: 10min 11sec (611 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 26 2024