Auckland's New Public Transport Plan. Reality vs Aspiration.
Auckland Transport is currently consulting on a public transport plan for the next eight years. It's been condemned for not being ambitious enough. But is that fair criticism?
A bit of context setting
Tāmaki Makaurau/ Auckland, Aotearoa/ New Zealand’s largest city, with a population of 1,695,200 in 2022, a one-third of the entire population of Aotearoa, suffers from typically significant primate city issues. High car dependency focused on an extensive motorway network, combined with the core of the region being on a narrow isthmus, means many Aucklanders lots of time staring at the brake lights of the car in front of them as they commute. Housing (un)affordability, lack of supply, zoning restrictions, and limited choice, location and quality means that Auckland has the seventh most unaffordable housing market on the planet1. And the situation doesn’t look like getting better in 2023. This exacerbates pre-existing transport issues with extensive greenfields growth on the urban periphery not washing its own face financially, requiring extensive public funding support.
At the same time, transport makes up around 39% of Aotearoa’s CO2 emissions. Aotearoa needs to reduce Vehicle Kilometres Travelled (VKT) by 20% by 2035 as an interim step to meet our statutory target of net zero carbon by 2050. The biggest single impact possible in the short-term is in Aotearoa’s largest cities, and Auckland is much larger than all of Aotearoa’s other large cities combined. Public transport, supported by all ages and abilities walking and cycling networks to town centres, schools and rapid and frequent transit, has a key role in addressing Aotearoa’s climate crisis.
A big gap between what is funded and what is needed
So the draft Auckland Regional Public Transport Plan 2023-2031 enters the fray. It projects that Auckland’s public transport patronage, 103 million per annum in 2019 prior to the pandemic, will recover to pre-pandemic levels in 2024, and reach 150 million in 2031, a target that the previous 2018 Regional Public Transport Plan expected to achieve in 2028. The current target equals a 3.75% annual increase in public transport patronage from 2019 to 2031. For a large part of the 2010s, Auckland’s public transport patronage increase was close to 10% per annum.
At the same time, The Transport Emissions Reduction Pathway (TERP) was endorsed by Auckland Transport’s board and adopted by Auckland Council in August 2022. The TERP gives effect to Te Tāruke-ā-Tāwhiri’s (Auckland's Climate Plan) target to halve Auckland’s regional emissions by 2030 (against a 2016 baseline). For public transport to achieve its part of the TERP requires patronage to increase to 550 million trips per annum in 2030.
Clearly, there is an enormous gap between the Auckland’s Draft Regional Public Transport Plan targeting 150 million public transport trips in 2031 and the Transport Emissions Reduction Pathway requiring patronage to achieve 550 million public transport trips by 2030.
On top of this, Auckland will account for half of Aotearoa's population growth over the next 30 years, under medium growth projections. This is similar to its share of Aotearoa’s growth over the last 30 years2.
While the impacts of the pandemic, border closures and reopenings, and the timing and rate of inbound and outbound migration makes the future even less predictable than usual, Tāmaki Makaurau’s role as Aotearoa’s primate city, business centre, and key international entry point is unlikely to change anytime soon. While more recent projections have been a bit more pessimistic, recent resumption of large scale immigration leads me to put more faith in the earlier projections shown above.
It is important to note ash the modest targeted public transport growth target of 3.75% per annum is impacted by the following:
Auckland’s projected population growth of 194,464 over the eight year period from 2023 to 2031. Per capita increases in public transport will be quite a bit slower than 3.75% due to the simple fact of there being a lot more people.
As at the 2018 Census, 73.9% of people travelled to work in a car while 10.7% used public transport. Until this changes significantly, even big increases in public transport trips will be overwhelmed by much more modest increases in car travel.
The big challenges
To say that Auckland’s public transport has been through a challenging period recently is quite the understatement. While the worst of the chronic bus driver shortage seems to be over for most Auckland bus operators, the Rail Network Rebuild, with its staged closure of significant parts of Auckland’s rail network over the next few years is contributing to a big ongoing drop in rail patronage. Rail patronage is sitting at around 60% of pre-pandemic levels, compared to over 80% for the public transport network as a whole. This in turn in not helped by regular rail network disruptions on top of the disruptions caused by the Rail Network Rebuild.
The rail network issues are more to do with systematic past neglect of infrastructure and an attempt, hopefully successful, to build a network suitable for intense metro style passenger operations.
The other big ongoing issue with Auckland’s public transport has been a shortage of ferry crew impacting on the ability to meet demand with regular ferry replacement buses on some of the lower-patronage ferry routes and times. This issue is not expected to be resolved until the end of 2024.
In spite of all of this disruption, Auckland’s public transport patronage recovery has been one of the better ones globally, with customers being remarkably resilient to a network that doesn’t always deliver the goods of on-time reliable operation.
But there’s also a lot to like in Auckland’s plans
In spite of limited ambition and the struggles to recover from pandemic impacts and staff shortages, there is in fact a lot to like about Auckland’s public transport plans over the next few years. A few highlights below:
Already introduced on 1 July 2023, free fares nation-wide for under 13s and half price fares for under 25s as well as for Community Service and Total Mobility card holders.
Auckland Council’s Climate Action Transport Targeted Rate (CATTR) will fund 10 new frequent bus routes servicing South Auckland, West Auckland, Ōrakei, Tāmaki and New Lynn to Onehunga via Mount Roskill, extend frequent Northern Express service to Hibiscus Coast station as well as frequency improvements to at least 69 existing bus routes.
Interim Northwest bus improvements in November 2023. These changes include the new Western Express (WX1) service will operate every 10 minutes between Westgate and the City Centre. Sadly, the degree of bus priority on the North-western Motorway and customer amenity, especially at new interchanges at Lincoln Road and Te Atatū, leaves a lot to be desired.
City Rail Link (CRL) is expected to open in 2026, converting Waitematā/ Britomart Station to a through station with two new (Te Wai Horotiu and Karanga-a-hape) and one redeveloped (Maungawhau) station putting virtually the entire city centre within 10 minutes walk of a train station. As well, it will improve journey times across the rail network, especially from the west. Train frequencies will improve to every 7 to 8 minutes at peak and every 15 minutes during the day.
Papakura to Pukekohe rail electrification, along with new stations in Drury and Paerātā, is expected to be complete in 2026.
The second and third stages of the Eastern Busway, from Pakuranga towards Botany, are due to be complete in 2027.
The existing Airport Link bus service between Auckland Airport and Manukau will be extended to Botany to connect to the Eastern Busway. This is a precursor to full Airport to Botany rapid transit, due in the mid-2030s.
Closing the gap between what is fundable and what is needed
Clearly, there is still a lot of investment going into Auckland’s public transport and it is my sincere hope that all this investment will easily overshoot 150 million public transport trips a year in 2031. The draft Regional Public Transport Plan is deliberately crafted as a fundable and funded plan, rather than an aspirational wish list. And Aotearoa's transport plans are littered with aspirational targets and no plausible, let alone fundable, pathway to get there.
But given that we need to get to a much higher level of public and active transport use to address an existential issue facing our planet, it would be useful to know what, when and how we need to invest to get to that point.
“given that we need to get to a much higher level of public and active transport use
to address an existential issue facing our planet, it would be useful to know
what, when and how we need to invest to get to that point.”
Auckland, like Aotearoa’s other large cities, is required to produce a VKT Reduction Plan by the end of 2023 to identify a pathway to get us to a reduction of at least 20% in VKT by 2035 (notably more modest than the TERP). Signals from central government are that the heavy lifting on emissions reductions is expected in Auckland and Wellington so the figure for Auckland is likely to be higher. So, hopefully by the end of 2023, we will know what we need to do to get there. And public transport will be a key part of this. Next comes the money needed to make it happen.
But public transport can’t do it alone
As my good friend Malcolm McCracken says, “There is no silver bullet to reducing emissions from our transport system, we need to pull every lever,” commenting on Labour Government’s “policy bonfire,” including ditching various climate change initiatives. Well worth a read here (and subscribe to Malcolm’s awesome Better Things Are Possible Substack if you don’t already!).
This point is critical. We need to pull every lever. Public transport is an integral part of an effective response to the climate crisis, but public transport cannot do it alone. Nor can it or should it be seen in isolation from walking and cycling as primary access modes to public transport, schools and town centres; getting parking and road pricing right; as well as building more and better affordable housing in places where walking, cycling and public transport are the natural choice, not the last choice, to get around.
Consultation on Auckland’s Draft Regional Public Transport Plan is open until 17 August, 2023. Have your say here.
Auckland ranked as world's seventh least affordable housing market, 1News, 22 March 2023
Tatauranga Aotearoa/ Stats NZ website, accessed 22 July 2023