I have written a number of posts about Flat Bush in the past. For those that don’t know, Flat Bush is a large greenfields development in the southeast corner of Auckland. Over the next 20 or so years around 40,000 people are expected to call Flat Bush home. It approximately covers the area outlined in red in the map below:
As might be reasonably clear from the map above, Flat Bush doesn’t have particularly good transport links with the rest of Auckland. Links with the southern motorway are generally via quite highly congested roads (particularly to the north), while any form of half-decent public transport out in this corner of Auckland is completely non-existent. Bus timetables for the area show that trips between Flat Bush and the CBD are expected to take about an hour and a quarter.
That’s not to say that no thought has gone into the transport problem that Flat Bush creates. A recent NZTA board paper that I’m having a read through at the moment suggests that a lot of time, effort and money has gone into creating a transport network for Flat Bush. However, unfortunately in Auckland what that means is basically “we’ve build a pile of really wide roads for everyone to start driving their cars along and clog up”. Now short of building the much needed, but probably very expensive southeast railway line, it does seem as though Flat Bush’s transport future will be roads based. But I think it’s worthwhile having a look into how much this approach to addressing transport in Flat Bush is costing.
NZTA’s board paper outlines what’s happening and Flat Bush, and does point out that the area doesn’t gain access directly from the state highway network:
So what’s it costing to make this new suburb viable in terms of its transport? Well that’s where things start to get expensive:
$676 million to be spent on roading in the area is a lot of money. It is true that a significant portion of this money is to be paid for by developers, but that money will be paid for through higher property prices – not just out of thin air.
Of course this money doesn’t cover roading upgrades that will probably be necessary (or at least considered necessary by roading engineers) as a result of putting 40,000 people out in this corner of Auckland. You can add to the amounts above part of the cost of the $1.3 billion AMETI, previous expenditure on Te Irirangi Drive, the Highbrook interchange and so forth.
While it’s obvious that as our city grows we will need to spend money on improving transport infrastructure, I just wonder whether it would be possible to more cheaply accommodate 40,000 people than what we’re seeing with Flat Bush.
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I grew up in Howick, and having now lived in other citys, cannot fathom, how pakuranga and howick were allowed to grow together without a plan for a fast rail link through the city and into the CDB, let alone how howick & manukau were left to do the same with zero planning for rail!
Do our transport planners have no foresight? Why not at least protect a route so you don’t have to destroy communities later. The south eastern line should have been planned 20-30 years ago, and would now be linking flat bush both with the north of the peninsula and onwards into the CBD, but also down to manukau and on to the airport.
There have been some very long standing highway plans for the region, there is always plenty of foresight and plenty of funds when it comes to road based transport.
By the way, a south eastern line was planned almost a hundred years ago, and has popped up periodically since. They also did exploratory studies as part of AMETI. Despite the report indicating that a rail line would cost about as much as a bus based solution yet attract far more passengers, they latest round of ‘consultation’ has dropped the rail option completely, presenting the bus lane ‘RTN’ (actually only bus lanes anyway) as the only option.
MEMO TO AMETI: Buslanes on the side of the road do not constitute a rapid transit network! It is a QTN, so call it one.
Any idea how much a south-east rail line would cost?
edit: Just read the other Flat Bush post. In the Billions, eh? And developers won’t be forking out there. Ah well.
I wonder how much an extension of the Manukau Branch to the vicinity of flat bush would be, probably only in the hundreds of millions.
What they should do is establish a sinking fund of developer contributions for a proper RTN line, so that in ten years when a lot of it is all developed there’ll be some money in the pot to help with what they will desperately need by then.
Rail tunnel from Manukau to Botany then Botany to either Silvia Park via Greenmount / East Tamaki and a bridge over the river or carry the line towards Highland park and tunnel to the river and across to Glen Innes. Who ever in govt says it’s too expensive to tunnel then say well leave some rail corridors in new subdivisions. Why this wasn’t done in such a new subdivision (Botany South) I don’t know.
They did include a public transport corridor in Te Irirangi Drive, all 10m of it. That bit would be pretty straightforward, it is the connections to the existing rail network at either end that are the problem.
Te Irirangi Drive is for light rail or bus not heavy rail according to the Manukau CEO.
It’s not *for* anything, it’s nothing more than a 10m wide median in the middle of an expressway. The original light rail plan the corridor was reseved for died about the time the road was built, and there is no current plan for the space. It was going to be used for more road lanes as part of the Eastern Transport Corridor a few years back.
It could easily be used for light rail, heavy rail, buses, more road lanes or one hell of a cylceway.
It’s the single largest development in the country. The cost above includes the cost of all new roads (internal and surrounding to City Centre) within a massive project to accommodate (supposedly) 40,000 new residents – an additional 15% of the entire Manukau population. $670M does not seem like a lot of money for this; especially since NZTA and Council are each only putting in $70M or so.
there’s no way you could an Airport monorail for less than a billion dollars, I certainly will not be voting Chapman or Banks
Ooops posted that on the wrong thread!