Last week, the Council endorsed the Regional Land Transport Plan (RLTP) following it being signed off by the Regional Transport Committee – essentially just the Auckland Transport board with a different hat on – this, despite the RLTP not aligning with the Council’s own climate action plan. As we noted in our roundup last week, this was not a unanimous decision, with some Councillors voting against endorsement.
There were some changes to the RLTP from what was consulted on back in May and early June. The background paper for Councillors highlighted the key ones.
Key changes endorsed by the RTC in response to the public feedback are as follows:
- change to the ranking scores to elevate State Highway improvements projects so that they sit as the overall third ranked group amongst the discretionary projects, in alignment with public feedback.
- minor changes bringing forward funding for the Unsealed Roads Improvements and bus optimisation programmes, with some deferral of the ferry decarbonisation funding.
- allocation of an additional $600m, budget which was approved through the LTP 2024 to make PT faster, more reliable and easier to use, and to optimize the transport network, as follows:
- $503m to support the delivery of the Takaanini level crossings.
- $92m to the park and ride programme
It’s that last one I wanted to talk about, because based on the text below and reports I’ve seen from people watching the proceedings, it appears to have occurred almost entirely based on the reckons of the RTC – with little evidence behind it. It’s a classic case of car-first thinking.
An increase of $92 million to the Park and Ride programme. While other alternatives were considered based on local board priorities, including spreading the funding across cycling, grade separation of level crossings and park and ride, this approach reflects the RTC’s workshop preference to direct the funding where it could have a meaningful impact on a specific project or programme.
Park-and-ride does have a role to play in our transport system. It often gets attention because the facilities we do have tend to fill up early and there’s always a stream of people asking for more spaces. But far too often, the importance and impact of park-and-ride is overstated.
Cost
The cost of delivering parking facilities is something most people underestimate. So let’s look at what we might get for that $92 million.
AT have built a number of new or expanded parking facilities over the last decade or so, which we can use as a basis to answer this question.
- In 2015, the Swanson P&R was opened with 136 carparks at a cost of $2.5m. That’s $18k per carpark.
- In 2017, the Hibiscus Coast P&R originally opened with 481 carparks at a cost of $6.2m. That’s $13k per carpark
- In 2018 a further extension to the P&R at Albany was built with 135 carparks at a cost of $2.7m. That’s $20k per carpark
- In 2022 the Warkworth P&R opened with 137 carparks at a cost of $3.7m – $27k per carpark, although the cost here also included bus facilities and a signalised pedestrian crossing.
A few other park and ride facilities have opened in that time too, but in general, a cost of between $10-20k per carpark seems appropriate. Given the more recent examples have been at the upper end of that scale, and there’s been huge construction cost inflation in recent years, I’ll go with $20k per carpark for this post.
That means for our $92 million set aside in the RLTP, we may get about 4,600 parking spaces.
It’s not just the monetary cost either. These facilities eat up a lot of land. Based on some of our existing facilities, AT will need to find something in the region of 15 hectares of land for that many carparks. That’s over four times the size of the main Albany station carpark. Of course, this won’t all be at one station but it still a lot of land.
Even after these carparks are built, the costs don’t stop: there are ongoing operational costs for P&R, such as forlighting, security, cleaning and other maintenance tasks.
Public transport ridership
An additional 4,600 additional carparks might sound like a lot, especially when you consider we currently have just over 6,000 P&R spaces around the network. However, it’s not something that drives all that much ridership of public transport.
For the most part, these carparks will only ever be filled once a day, by one car, on the approximately 250 working days each year.
I would assume park-and-ride attracts a higher number of single-occupant vehicles than normal, but let’s use the typical 1.2 people per vehicle we see on the road. That means each carpark likely generates about 600 public transport trips per year (250 days x 1.2 people per car x 2 there-and-back PT trips per day).
So, these 4,600 carparks might result in around 2.7 million trips a year.
Not bad – but, even if every carpark attracted a brand new rider to the PT system, this would only increase usage by around 2.5% on what the system achieved pre-Covid. To put that in context, even Albany’s massive park-and-ride carpark only accounted for around a third of all boardings from that station.
There’s another issue: do new park-and-ride spaces attract new riders to public transport?
While park-and-ride is intended to serve areas not well connected by the public transport network, previous research by AT has highlighted that many of the people who park and ride live close to stations – some less than 2km away (a walkable and bikeable distance, if the streets are safe enough to do so), and many more on or close to feeder bus routes.
Providing more carparking is likely to have the side effect of encouraging some of those who currently access stations by other means to change their current behaviour, and hop in the car instead. So the actual gains in ridership from building more carparks is likely to be much less than the number of carparks.
Alternatives
If Auckland has a spare $92 million lying around, there are likely a lot better ways to spend it if the goal is to improve public transport. The report to councillors noted that the RTC chose the park-and-ride option over others, including a package of improvements to cycleways, more grade separation, and other improvements.
There are also, I believe, a huge number of often relatively simple changes that would make public transport much easier to access and would lift ridership. These include more and safer pedestrian crossings around bus stops/stations, and opening up connections to PT stops/stations so locals can more easily access them.
An example, shown below, is Greenlane, where a simple bridge at the southern end of the station plus a 200m path could significantly increase the walking catchment of the station.
What are the relative costs and benefits – and the potential ridership gain – from something like this, compared to 14 hectares of tarmac at $92m for 4600 parking spaces? With this RLTP, we’ll never know.
All of this isn’t to say that park-and-ride isn’t useful in some situations – but there are so many other priorities that should come before it, and you would hope they’d be openly discussed and assessed. It’s concerning that this particular call was made last-minute, offstage, in one of our most heated RLTP processes (and decades) so far.
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One typo in the costs of recent car parks
“In 2018 a further extension to the P&R at Albany was built with 135 carparks at a cost of $2.7m. That’s $20m per carpark” – should read 20k
Well spotted! Now corrected. Feels truthy, though, in the wider scheme of current transport decision-making and what it’s costing us.
I keep thinking of Councillor Bartley’s words as she voted against endorsing the RLTP:
“Ultimately what you’ve got as a councillor is your vote. Voted no re RLTP – I didn’t leave my dying mother’s hospital bed in June 2019 to vote for a climate emergency to now vote for a transport plan which is not a transport plan for a city that has declared a climate emergency.” https://x.com/jobartleynz/status/1817004211655303358
Absolutely, would love to see something included in council event planning, for instance, that in the same way they are required to include toilets, rubbish etc they have something like ” this is how we have reduced impact of emissions for this event…”
So annoyed that in council events we have communications that include promotion of parking and driving routes but no mention of other modes- even when event is on a bike path and opposite newly opened PT facilities!
I think Chris Derby’s comments were more enlightening. He basically called the RLTP writers liars when they wrote that the feedback from Aucklander’s said State Highways should be elevated up the priority list. I think if you watch the video of the meeting we all know who he meant.
Where will 4,000 cars off the road make a measureable difference to journey times? This is the key value for money question for P&R. NW busway is intending to provide P&R near Brigham Creek Rd interchange. This males sense. Paerata Station could expand P&R if demand grows. Silverdale has some problems with doing that.
Compare Norwich and Ipswich in UK. Cities with broad rural catchments using fringe P&R for last leg into the city centre, not for suburban commuters.
Fringe park and rides perhaps … Paerata area is an urban growth area right? Therefore we should be providing land use around the stations, residential, commercial etc. Not parking for cars.
Maybe rather than building car parks at bus stations they could build the car parks closer to where people want to go so we wouldn’t have to subsidise so many bus services.
Oxford too.
P&R should be in Orewa and Pokeno, no further in but of course all of these English cities are old, compact, have greenbelts as stipulated by law, and really not suited to cars. Auckland on the other hand has had wide streets and motorways for a significant part of its existence.
If there is one thing NZ could take away from the UK it is green belts. Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Wellington and Christchurch would all benefit greatly from them.
Why is AT asking for more money for P&R when they control Supervaluable land in town centres which is dedicated to parking. Just released that to Eke Panuku like the plans say. If we’re in a fiscal hole car parks are one type of asset that it absolutely makes sense to sell. If they want P&R at the extremities work with landholders and Wilson s to approve a temporary use consent. Wasting all our money.
You could spend $92m on 50,000 electric bikes.
Most people won’t ride a bike when there are few safe cycle routes.
Royal Oak roundabout anyone?
Mate, with another 50k bike commuters on Auckland’s roads each rush hour the balance of power would alter beyond recognition.
Which is why they are not giving out 50,000 eBikes…
92 million would be way better spent on upgrading the streets and public realm around the locations Council has directed Eke Panuku to regenerate.
Making it more attractive to live near public transport hubs will provide much better hang for your buck in transport outcomes / congestion terms than trying to help the dickheads that decided to live miles away from everywhere save a couple of minutes on their commute.
I’d like to see some analysis of the land value and opportunity cost of building car parks instead of something more productive. Whenever I go to Albany it feels like a wasteland, as if a city had been bombed and still hadn’t been rebuilt.
In New Lynn locals have been clamouring for a park ‘n’ ride for years. Recently a gravel car park with a token fee opened up across the road from the train station. Is it ever full? Of course not!
What a waste of money when it’s so short. Walking and cycling programmes or grade separation would of been a better spend.
Does this $92 million come off the PT budget & contribute to the farebox recovery rate?
Related, they should be charged for.
Why charge for the part of the journey we want encourage (PT fare) while the part we don’t (care use) is free. Perverse incentives.
At the very least these new P&R spaces should be delivered on a cost recovery basis.
Agreed, they should not be free.
Some back of the envelope maths… 20k @ 7% interest over 10 years would be a monthly payment of $232, weekly of $53.60. Assume an occupancy of 80% (who knows?), that would require a fee of $13.40 per weekday to pay down the capital cost.
That’s before running costs, of course. Add those in and I think $20 / day is a fair “user pays” price.
Nobody would pay $20 for park and ride which is why they will not charge for it. This is about encouraging people to drive. The RLTP writers want more people to drive and so does Simeon because his funders want that.
true, so how about we start with $4?
This makes perfect sense.
It makes even more sense to trial charges before building any more park and rides.
Let’s say the motorist response to charges is to leave the car at home and walk or use a feeder bus. That tells us park and ride is not valued by the market and there is no need to build more.
If, on the other hand, they still fill to capacity early each morning, then there is a potential lucrative source of revenue to fund other initiatives.
The whole Auckland public transport asset is worth several $billions and surely AT would want to increase their negative return on the asset. Auckland transport must make better decisions.
No businessperson would ever buy a business for $20 billion or more and get a ROA negative return.
Good thing Councils are not businesses, and should never be treated as such, no matter what capitalists and rich people say.
Is there a reason why P&R isn’t charged? We expect to pay for parking elsewhere, so why not at P+R?
We could build parking structures like in other parts of the world at our P&R facilities, reduce land use, increase spaces and then charge for it
P&R is not charged on the car-brained justification that it is ‘supporting PT’.
As Matt says if that is the aim, then there are likely higher value ways to spent $92m to gain a higher ridership bump than incentivising driving.
Or, do it, but on a cost recovery model and keep investing in station access improvements as well.
Perhaps there should be some fundamental analysis of why a car park costs $20k. If this is largely made up of the underlying land value, then multi storey parks would be more economical.
When residential growth is occurring so far away from the CBD, such as at Paerata, why don’t we have strategic plans for development of new industrial centres in places like Pukekohe?
The Aussies build new town centres, like Robina behind the Gold Coast, with infrastructure and industrial centres; then provide good incentives for companies and people to move there.
Aussies do some great TODs, like Chatswood, but also terrible big PnRs, esp in Melbourne.
How is it that some people, me included, can get anywhere in this ridiculously geographically enormous city using public transport? And yet our council still thinks car parks will help?
We already have the most number of cars per capita on planet earth, and they may have a place outside the city, but they have no place inside a real city.
We continue to pretend to be a city, but we are actually a town.
We need apartments, big, solar and wind powered apartment blocks, and stop trying to keep our awful wooden suburbs. They are crap, and always have been, and continue to make our people sick.
Live in an apartment, buy an electric bike, live the happy life. The more stuff we own, the more we worry about losing it, so simplify everything and reduce your wheels!
I have none personally, and am part degrowth, but mostly dewheel. Wheels are evil, they allow us to move around too fast. If you have a bike or skateboard, OK, but everything else costs us life, while the lines on our faces increase with the velocity at which we move.
Car driving persons, stop trying to run me down, please.
bah humbug
bah humbug
You obviously live a very different life to some of us, although I do live in an apartment. I have elderly parents and other family members scattered around opposite ends of Auckland. I would never visit them if I had to use PT as it would take all day (plus). Don’t get me wrong, I start every journey thinking if I could use PT, and it can often work. However we need viable alternatives for when it isn’t suitable. We need to have the right mix of “push” and “pull” tactics to get people to use public transport – for example charging at P&R’s to get people to consider other alternatives. And we need to make public transport more attractive as well.
A big reason that connecting bus services aren’t popular is the frequency and poor connectivity. For example when I worked at Britomart I tried catching the bus to/from Newmarket, and then the train to/from Britomart. However the connection coming home was too unreliable – the gap between buses could blow out, and also they could go past full. Sadly I gave up and then drove to/from Newmarket (and paid to park). Catching a bus to/from Orakei Train Station isn’t an option at it is a 15 minute walk to the bus stop. More work needs to be done on the feeder services, including some more innovative solutions such as “on demand” solutions.
Hiya Matt. Good analysis. One important point- Re”previous research by AT has highlighted that many of the people who park and ride live close to stations – some less than 2km away (a walkable and bikeable distance, if the streets are safe enough to do so), and many more on or close to feeder bus routes.”…..and….. “Providing more carparking is likely to have the side effect of encouraging some of those who currently access stations by other means to change their current behaviour, and hop in the car instead. So the actual gains in ridership from building more carparks is likely to be much less than the number of carparks.”
A real bugbear is not so much the location of car parking for the ‘park and ride’ model as the model as it is used being less than practical for users, and especially if you want to cycle or scooter for part of your journey instead of using a car.
If the journey to the local bus/train station, or urban center is fraught with 3rd world transit infrastructure [narrow streets with unmarked lanes, overgrown grass verges and narrow precarious footpaths] of course people are going to opt for safety and use their car to get from home to an urban center. Especially in the absence of a connecting local bus service. Traveling in such a infrastructure environment is life threatening for a pedestrian or cyclist.
The most difficult and dangerous part of a commute from the outer suburbs is often the first/last few KM or yards; in some instances even a resident’s own driveway- that is how the ‘Remuera Tractor” became so popular. As a pedestrian or cyclist; sharing an often narrow and footpathless road to the local rail station or bus stop with local motorists is not for the fainthearted, especially in dusk or dawn lighting when many of these routes are also plagued with ‘sunstrike’, and ‘blind’ corners which can greatly affect visibility. In those driving conditions it is easy for a motorist to run over a pedestrian and even easier for them to collide with a cyclist.
Most commuter cyclists prefer the new cycle ways not riding on motorways or major motorist’s thoroughfares. Someone is hardly going to prefer walking or cycling to their local station, especially after experiencing a few ‘near misses’. What they may want to do is put their cycle or scooter in the boot of their car and drive to a park-and ride- and either load their cycle onto the train to use at their destination or if the rail services are unreliable, make the whole journey to their urban center in the car, park where they can find cheap or free parking, and use the new cycle infrastructure to get around at their destination.
AT’s almost mythical belief in placing large expensive looking unattended or serviced covered areas of cycle stands at the rail station is up there with the historical erecting of large expensive religious monuments upon isolated mountaintops. [NB- also note the location of the new “Lockydocks’ ):^(] AT seems oblivious to the fact that many cyclists don’t bother to use them, for very practical reasons. -and its not because they’re worried about their bike being nicked- that can happen anywhere.
It seems to be a difficult concept for AT to grasp, that a cyclist might actually need to use their bike to get around at their chosen destination when out and about…so why would AT assume that a cyclist would prefer to actually go to the trouble of riding to their bike stands to park it up – then walk around their destination, which is usually where all the new cycle friendly infrastructure has been located,return to where they’d left their bike [at the rail station, some distance away from the mall business center] detach their bike from the bike stand, wheel the machine onto the train to travel home, and because they don’t want to get run over traveling the last mile of their journey, place their bike in the boot of their car and drive home? The rail service unreliability, eg; being replaced randomly with busses makes leaving the car at home even more unattractive; when there is the prospect of being stranded, because Auckland rail buses limit their services for cyclists.
Few cyclists would be leaving their cycle parked at their local station if they can avoid the safety issues and simply use their car to get to the station or bus stop, or wherever they need to go. Sure “Lockydocks” are a convenient idea, but wouldn’t they be better located close to the entrances of urban commercial retail outlet centers where users could leave their machine on charge whilst they shop, and actually have the use of it to get to and from public transport stations??
The best place for these hired scooters and ebikes would surely be where the “Lockydocks” are currently being located, and not randomly dumped all over the pavements. That way PT users could have a handy means of transport where they need it- at their PT destination – and some incentive would exist for users to return the machines to the original parking locations. The new concept of hired scooters and cycles is also being failed by the mismanagement of access to suitable business protocols and infrastructure. Under the current business model, machines are left with nowhere to park except to perch precariously on the sidewalks etc. Not only are they less accessible to people who may want to use them; but hire companies have to employ people to collect the randomly discarded machines, take them somewhere and charge them, then relocate them, often in random spots blocking pedestrian thoroughfares. Also they’ve become a damn nuisance when users are able to discard at will anywhere.
Imagine if cycle parks at transport centers, business parks and mall car parks were to be transformed into shop fronts for escooter and ebike hire, cycle, scooter and other micro-mobility parking and valet services. Cyclists would have safe dry parking, and valet services. Escooter and ebike hire enterprises would have to deal with less wear and tear on their machines and a easier work space to manage, and a more attractive customer service model.
P&R are also land banks.
Future more enlightened communities will be able to convert them from dormant car storage to something, anything more productive.
Possibly a massive return on investment, once we get past the everyone has a car stage of mobility, ie …. the distant future…
No issue with this as a strategy but it isn’t the strategy. AT will not even release the car parks in town centres where there is a demonstrable oversupply of parking. E.g. Takapuna, Panmure, Manukau, Pukekohe,