Auckland 2038: A city on the move but not at the wheel (as much)

Friday, 11 January 2019

Big, brash and bold, Auckland is a city in the fast lane. But how will it look in 20 years' time? Stuff asked the experts to gaze into their crystal balls to predict the super city of 2038. In the fifth of our five-part series, we look at the ways we'll get around.

More than half a century after Sir Dove-Myer Robinson thrust it on a sheepish Labour government, and later a horrified National Prime Minister Robert Muldoon, Robbie's Rapid Rail is finally here.

By 2038 Aucklanders should be able to use the shiny new toys its local politicians have been dreaming about for decades. 

Aucklanders will see light rail trams cruising along Dominion Rd, noiseless and exhaust-free electric buses shuffling down busways, and people strolling out of several central city underground train stations and moving across streets in large numbers on foot or by bike.

**READ MORE:

* Auckland 2038: The Superdiverse City

* Auckland 2038: Jobs, but not as we know them

* Auckland 2038: We're growing upwards

* Auckland 2038: A new take on the traditional backyard**

And there might even be free-flowing road traffic.

But despite the flowering of Robinson's vision, Aucklanders are still likely to have at least one car in their garage, according to transport advocate Ben Ross.

'The car will still be there because Aucklanders love their beaches and travelling south of the Bombay Hills on holiday.'

In the decades to come the car's dominance of Auckland is likely to be challenged, not only by major public transport improvements but an ageing population and road pricing.

Greater Auckland Editor Matt Lowrie believes road pricing could replace revenue from fuel taxes as the light vehicle fleet becomes more electrified.

While Ross thinks an ageing population could mean fewer drivers. Modern-day Korea – which is ageing faster than any other developed country – is tearing motorways down as car usage declines.

But Auckland is not Seoul, and while Auckland's population will likely have a greater proportion of over-65s than it does today, the total number of people in Auckland will have grown substantially. 

That population growth could create a city that has more in common with Greater Vancouver (2018 population: 2.4 million) than it does with today's super city.

Vancouver started its light rail building binge in the 1980s when its population was around the 1.1m mark. By 2018, when it had added more than a million more people to its population, it had 80 kilometres of light rail track installed.

The impact of light rail can be seen in the average driving figures: Aucklanders drive 8000km a year, Wellingtonians 7000km per year but Vancouverites only drive 5000km a year, according to Lowrie.

'It's not about making everyone use a bike or a bus … but driving 100km across the city is not practical if everyone wants to do it.'

While new transport systems like light rail will be in play by 2038, major improvements will also have been made to Auckland's traditional public transport workhorse: the bus.

A regional fuel tax would have funded the last three stages of the Auckland Manukau Eastern Transport Initiative (AMETI) busway along with a host of new stations, improved interchanges, and a bus-rail interchange near the airport.

The bus fleet would have been almost completely upgraded to an electric fleet by that stage. 

Lowrie believes the public transport changes would have stacked up to make travel by train and bus 'time competitive' with cars.

Aucklanders have already experienced what such a change in commute times can do to public transport patronage.

A huge increase in public transport use over the past few years has seen more people come into the CBD by public transport than by car for the first time since the 1950s, and a similar change could be on the cards across Auckland as a whole. 

Ross believes by 2038 Aucklanders 'don't have to use the car to go from Papakura to Manukau to do shopping, you don't have to use the car to go down the road, [and] you don't have to use the car to get to entertainment'.

It's the future Auckland's longest-serving mayor, Sir Dove-Myer Robinson, dreamed of. 

A flamboyant Jewish atheist with a string of failed marriages to his name, Robinson was a magnet for controversy and would attract even more as the public face of the last great push for a rapid transit in Auckland.

Robbie's Rapid Rail was the much-used nickname for a combined bus-rail network championed by Robinson through the 1960s.

Robinson's rapid transit plan included connections out to Whangaparaoa, through an Auckland harbour rail tunnel, Hobsonville, Howick and the airport, along with an underground rail loop in the CBD. 

The Labour government of 1972 campaigned on funding the scheme, then balked at the cost, and the later-elected Muldoon government put the plan to bed once and for all. 

It would be more than 40 years until any part of Robbie's Rapid Rail would get the green light. 

But the current plans for a rail network differ from Robinson's in one notable aspect: they don't include the North Shore. 

Lowrie believes this could be a source of tension and increasing debate by 2038. 

At that stage the North Shore's bus routes would be at capacity, he said. 

'One of the challenges with the light rail is not that it won't do its job, but that it'll do its job too well and everyone will want it.'

The planned Constellation Dr to Albany busway was being constructed today in a way that could accommodate light rail in the future, Lowrie said.

However, even with some parts of the North Shore light rail-ready, installing it would prove a costly and difficult upgrade, he said.

And by 2038 we could be living with the outcome of another public-transport centred debate involving the North Shore: a second Auckland harbour crossing. 

'Within 10 years' time we'll be having a debate about the harbour crossing, and it won't be the debate we're used to having.

'Previously it's been a road crossing with a rail crossing tacked on. I think we're going to see the conversation changed to being a rail crossing only and not building a road crossing at all.'

All of these changes envision a future where the $28 billion Auckland Transport Alignment Project (ATAP) happens on schedule.

But the history of Auckland is one littered with dreams delayed – just think of Robbie's Rapid Rail. 

Ross sees one such possibility if central government did an about-turn on the regional fuel tax. 

If the fuel tax was repealed over the next few years, a funding gap in ATAP could set back the development of Auckland's bus, cycle and pedestrian networks. 

'It's not a complete impossibility but it's one we should try and avoid.'

And you can add 'sci-fi', as Lowrie refers to it, to the list of unknowns too: autonomous cars, car-sharing and electric cars. 

Will Auckland 2038 see an autonomous electric car in every garage? Lowrie doesn't think so. He believes commercial operators – buses, trucks, taxis – are likely to adopt autonomous vehicles first and more widely. 

But this poses its own challenges: an increase in autonomous vehicles could mean an increase in 'dead-running': no passengers using the vehicles between pickups or returning to garages.

As autonomous vehicles return home, seek new customers or simply keep driving around to avoid parking charges, the strain during peak hours might spread to counter-peak periods too. 

'If you’re working on Albert St do you have 100 autonomous vehicles all turning up at the same time trying to offload passengers and all trying to get out again?' Lowrie says.

'The fight will be for the kerb space so instead of being a parking spot, it’s the loading zones. It’s the taxi-rank type situation, that’s a challenge no one’s really addressing and no one’s really thinking about.'

TRANSPORT PROJECTS EXPECTED TO BE COMPLETED BY 2038:

* Light Rail (City, South and the Northwest)

* City Rail Link

* AMETI Eastern Busway

* Downtown Ferry Terminal

* Airport to Botany rapid transit connection and interchange

* Pukekohe to Papakura heavy rail electrification

* Northern busway extension to Albany

* Two-lane Penlink toll road

* Mill Rd corridor improvements

* Puhoi-Warkworth motorway

* Papakura-Drury motorway widening

* Electric bus fleet across Auckland (by 2040).