Auckland's light rail: Under Queen St and over Mt Eden, the Super Fund's tunneling, or flying, tram

Monday, 21 October 2019

A Busway to Auckland Airport will be on the way following an upgrade to Puhinui Station. (Video from June 2019)

A tunnel under Queen St, elevated sections over Mt Eden, and automatic driverless trains are part of the secretive bid from the Super Fund to build Auckland's light rail.

Details of the plan and the route have been kept secret by NZ Infra, the company the fund has formed to manage the proposal.

But a massive leak of documents to Stuff shows a radical plan that differs substantially from anything previously proposed by the Government, including the well-known NZTA plan for light rail along Dominion Rd.

Renderings from the NZ Infra project show a design that looks more like heavy rail, with underground and elevated sections.

* Auckland Light Rail plan questioned by National MP

* NZ Super Fund's bid to build light rail in Auckland under Government review**

The plans date from last December, and Transport Minister Phil Twyford and the Ministry of Transport say they have been updated since.

If successful, the partnership with NZ Infra could mean more enormous projects throughout the country, including in Wellington and Christchurch.

But some experts are concerned the project, if it resembles the leaked plans, could be extraordinarily costly — perhaps upwards of $10 billion — and lead to years of disruption.

The plans show two train lines from central Auckland; one to West Auckland, ending in Kumeu, the other to Auckland Airport. It's believed that only the airport line is being seriously considered as part of the current proposal.

There would be two underground stations on Queen St, before heading to Mt Eden.

Transport Minister Phil Twyford and Auckland's mayor Phil Goff.

The other proposal from NZTA had been for tracks to be laid down Dominion Rd. While this is still an option, a route down Sandringham Rd is also being considered.

The most controversial detail is just how the rail will get through Mt Roskill. NZTA's plan has been for the rail lines to be 'at grade', meaning at the level of the road.

NZ Infra's proposal is for much of the project to be 'grade separated', meaning either below the ground or flying above the road on an elevated railway.

Matt Lowrie, of the Greater Auckland transport blog, said the fact that NZ Infra wanted to automate the system meant it would have to be grade separated as automated trains could not share a road with cars.

He said that could mean large elevated tracks, six metres tall and 12 metres wide, running down Dominion or Sandringham roads.

But Lowrie was strongly critical of the proposal, saying earlier designs from NZTA would deliver 95 per cent of the benefits of the NZ Infra proposal, at much lower cost.

He said the figure for the NZ Infra bid could be $10b or more, nearly double the $6b figure currently being discussed.

He compared the NZ Infra bid to trying to build the entire London Underground - which opened in 1863 and evolved over subsequent 150 years - at once.

'From an Auckland perspective, we're not necessarily big enough to justify that yet,' Lowrie said.

Associate Transport Minister Shane Jones told Stuff on Monday that his party had reservations over the escalating cost estimates of light rail, putting NZ First's future support of a plan like NZ Infra's in serious doubt.

But Twyford poured water on those costings, calling them 'wild speculation'.

'Our Government makes no apologies for wanting to fully investigate the NZ Infra proposal as it would mean every time you ride light rail, you are contributing to your retirement,' he said.

Another concern with the NZ Super Fund project was the small number of stations. There would be just 17 on the line to the airport, including three at the airport itself.

That means far fewer stations along parts of the line that the Government had wanted to open up, at Eden Terrace, Ballantyne Square, Balmoral Rd, Duke St and Mt Roskill.

Lowrie was sharply critical of this, as it went against one of the original aims of the project, which would be to replace buses on Dominion Rd.

'The whole point of the original proposal was that there would be fewer buses,' he said.

Auckland was already at capacity, and could not take any more buses, so cutting the number down Dominion Rd to zero was thought of as a solution to dramatically reduce the number in Auckland as a whole.

But Lowrie said that having so few stations along Dominion Rd meant buses would still be needed to get people into town.

There are currently ten bus stops between Eden Terrace and the motorway, double the number of proposed light rail stops.

One potential impact of this is that areas around stations will become far more dense, whilst other areas along the route will be left out.

NZ Infra's plan could have the potential to cause massive disruption. Queen Street would have to be tunnelled under, and enormous raised sections will be required.

This could draw unfavourable comparisons with the disruption and cost blow-outs associated with the City Rail Link, which is also underground.

Twyford and the Ministry of Transport cautioned that the plan has been altered, after the Government changed what it wanted from the project. These new goals, set out in a 'Requirements document' have not been made public.

The Government is furious that the documents have been leaked.

Twyford would not comment on the proposal, given it was commercially sensitive, but Transport Ministry chief executive Peter Mersi said that he was 'disappointed that outdated but still commercially sensitive information about the Auckland Light Rail project has been leaked to media'.

He said that the ministry was focused on running the process that would allow the Government to consider proposals from both NZTA and NZ Infra.

'It's important to note that what has been leaked is outdated and that both NZTA and NZ Infra are now responding to a requirements document by developing new Proposals. The requirements document sets out the outcomes the Government wants to achieve from the Auckland Light Rail project. NZTA and NZ Infra's new Proposals will set out how they plan to meet these outcomes and may be significantly different to what we have seen from them before,' he said.

NZ Infra said it was 'disappointed and concerned at the leaking of confidential and commercially sensitive information with the process underway'.

But said it remained confident that both it and NZTA would be treated 'will be treated fairly and equally'.

It said the project had been developed 'significantly' since December.

'The information that has been put in the public domain is based on an outdated view of our proposal. A number of alternative options are under active consideration and no final decisions have been made – nor would be made until after such time as extensive public consultation and an associated consenting process had been undertaken,' they said.