Yesterday we covered a big part of a recent speech by Minister of Housing and Transport Chris Bishop. One aspect we didn’t cover was about the City Rail Link and his announcement of $200 million towards the removal of level crossings.
On the CRL he notes:
I’ve been down to the new stations. Aucklanders are going to be blown away. My prediction is that people will say what they always do once a big new project eventually finishes: why didn’t we do this decades ago?
I agree with that prediction. I also think we’ll find usage of the rail network will increase faster and in different locations to what existing modelling suggests and that will put pressure on for more services. One big constraint to more services will be the presence of level crossings. That brings us to the other part of the announcement.
It is critical for the city’s future that we take advantage of CRL and ensure that the maximum benefits are felt by Aucklanders. That’s why today I am pleased to announce a number of steps the Government is taking to fully harness the true benefits of City Rail Link.
The first step is removing level crossings.
CRL will only achieve its true potential capacity by the removal of level crossings – locations where roads and rail tracks intersect.
Frankly, every motorist under the sun hates them, me included. They require the direct trading-off between road-user efficiency and rail-user efficiency.
Separating our train and roading systems by grade-separating level crossings greatly reduces traffic delays for motorists, while at the same time enables more frequent and reliable trains. It means that, in future, we can run many more trains on the Auckland network, without having to worry about disrupting the road network.
Crucially, it will also make our railways safer. In the decade between 2013 and 2023, Auckland saw almost 70 crashes – some of these serious, as well as more than 250 pedestrian near-misses and 100 vehicle near misses at level crossings across the city. That’s almost one incident a week.
Investment in Auckland’s level crossings delivers a faster, safer, and more reliable transport system. It’s a win, win, win.
Sorting level crossings in Auckland will take many years and cost a lot – but it is imperative we crack on with the job of doing the most important ones first.
I am announcing today that, subject to final approval by the NZTA board, the Government will be allocating funding for its share of the cost of accelerating the grade-separation of 7 level crossings in Takāanini and Glen Innes.
The work will involve building three new grade-separated road bridges at Manuia Road, Taka Street, and Walters Road; constructing new station access bridges at Glen Innes, Te Mahia and Takāanini Stations, and closing two unsafe crossings at Spartan Road and Manuroa Road.
Auckland Council has previously indicated that it is willing to fund its share of the cost, so this announcement will provide Aucklanders with confidence that the work will go ahead.
I agree that removing level crossings has a lot of benefit, not just to road users but also being able to run more trains on the rail network as well as improving safety outcomes.
Theoretically the rail line has the right of way so level crossings shouldn’t impact frequencies but my understanding is the regulator (NZTA) has ruled that because more trains means barrier arms will be down for longer, that increases the safety risk. This is because people, both drivers and those on foot/bike etc, are more likely to take risks and bypass barriers and bells to cross the tracks anyway.
As such, the Western Line will actually see fewer counter-peak trains (4 per hour instead of 6 currently) in order to maintain the same number of movements through level crossings as exist today. With the big time savings the Western line will see thanks to the CRL, I feel the inability to add additional frequency will quickly become an issue.
The need to remove level crossings has been on the agenda for a long time the issue has always been a lack of funding and priority. This $200 million announced by the government will help but there is a key issue with it.
“Today we are pleased to announce that the Government will allocate up to $200 million for its share of funding to accelerate removal of the level crossings in Takanini and Glen Innes, which will include building three new grade-separated road bridges at Manuia Road, Taka Street, and Walters Road; constructing new station access bridges at Glen Innes, Te Mahia and Takanini Stations, and closing two unsafe crossings at Spartan Road and Manuroa Road.”
Auckland Transport’s Regional Land Transport Plan currently allocates $550 million towards removing the Takanini crossings but that doesn’t include the costs to grade separate station access to Te Mahia or Glen Innes which were also part of the announcement. This suggests the government will only be contributing about a third of the costs when it should be covering about half of them.
Worse is even that $550 million is not likely enough. Back in 2023 they said the road crossings alone could cost $650 million and I’ve heard suggestions it is now quite a bit higher, possibly as much as $800 million.
There is the question of why a handful of bridges will cost more than a typical motorway.
The crossings announced for removal, along with ones currently underway will mean that there will be no level crossings on the Southern or Eastern lines north of Papakura. Even if the funding for these crossings is sorted, they won’t be done by the time the CRL opens with the a press release noting:
The intention is that enabling works for these level crossing removals will be completed around the time CRL opens.
The $200 million from the government is welcome but it is also a drop in the bucket of what is needed to remove crossings across the entire network. Even with these ones removed it will still leave 34 others across the network, including 20 on the Western Line, though I’m unsure why Christian Rd is included in this list given it’s outside the electrified network.
Back in 2023 AT said they were working on a Programme Business Case for the removal of the remaining crossings and was possibly due to be completed that same year. However, my understanding is that the business case has still not been completed and that the person responsible for delivering it is the same person responsible for AT’s connected communities debacle.
It’s important that AT get this business case delivered so that the full impact of these crossings is understood and so that potentially funding could be made available to get them removed faster. There is probably greater benefit in getting them sorted than most of the projects government’s Roads of National Significance programme.
As a reminder, we have our event with Ray Delahanty, also known as CityNerd, on Thursday.
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How are they going to run 8 trains an hour into the city but only 4 trains an hour the other way on the Western Line? I would have through they would quickly run out of trains at Swanson to send to the city if they are not all coming back!
Probably stabling extra trains at hendo for the mornings, might also use trains from the onehunga service after they terminate at maungawhau
Seems like a headache either way
There does seem to be a high degree of catastrophising about driver delay at level crossings. Especially, as expected, by the road lobby, with the Road Carriers association being particularly giddy with panic and falsehoods.
But also the regulator also appears to be being disproportionately cautious.
After all at any signalised cross intersection a driver or walker can expect to be stopped at least 50% of the time, usually much more when there are dedicated turning and pedestrian cycles etc.
Frustration is also event at these conflict zones too, but I never see calls for reducing traffic flow to address that.
Frankly it is absurd to invest over $5b in a hugely enabling piece of infrastructure then choose not to use it fully, cos some people might not be able to control their frustration.
Of course we should remove all the level crossings, but that will take time.
So meanwhile, let’s run the trains properly, all day, minimum 6 trains per hour out west, and put very visible cameras with very big signs, backed by very big fines, to help the frustrated with their car-brained self control issues.
Looking at info from AT, with 12 trains per hour (tph), 6 tph each way, the barrier arms are only down 30% of the time.
Considerably less than a standard intersection.
This is surely more than fine, and be the bare minimum frequencies on the western line.
There are no Intercity services west either, currently 2 freighters per day, I understand.
Strongly agree. I think the most important short-term advocacy on this whole topic is to get full transparency from NZTA on the continued restriction to 12tph out West. Seems wildly conservative. Is it based on hard science, with international benchmarking? Surely this ‘cut red tape’ government can step in. Has anyone seen the actual underlying analyses?
I’ll also say it again one last time: the other big quick win pre-CRL is building the third platform at Puhinui.
Yes was thinking the same how most of the concern is about driver delay rather than train speed or efficiently and reliability.
Don’t disagree but some crossings on the Western line have ‘barrier downs’ longer than the train pass time due to station proximity. Add that to ‘out of sync’ city/west trains and suspect barrier down time will be much longer.
Does this appear to be forgetting the importance of West Auckland?
Is this actually just freight related…better for trucks?
My worry is that this government could turn into the last one, part funding things and then not following through to finalise these things, then blaming their political term, or something about communists and neoliberals.
Trains are the only salvation for Auckland, and the North may never have them. I just feel sad for those that cannot enjoy either inner city living, or the ease of movement that a passenger train provides.
The postcode bias-isms continue…
The Minister’s statement about completing 7 level crossing removals before CRL Day-One was very misleading. The most significant were three new road over-bridges to replace the 4 existing level-crossings at Takanini. Although the planning designations for Takanini are now in place, expert evidence given at the NOR hearing in mid-2024 was that each of them would take 2-3 years to construct on top of deep layers of soft peat – and they would need to be done sequentially (one-at-a-time) to avoid years of massive traffic disruption. AT actually requested a 15-year lapse period (up to 2039) to complete the Takanini grade separations – though they hoped that the job could be done by about 2032! Although the designations are inplace, no physical construction can start until a bunch of other planning work is carried out, such as obtains Resource Consents and an Outline Plan of Works. More months will be chewed up with compulsory land purchase using the Public Works Act and negotiating alternative access for adjacent commercial properties. So, despite our vey new Minister’s naive assertions, a start on physical works on the first overbridge (let alone completion of all 7 announced on Friday) before CRL opening in early 2026 is very doubtful.
Although the Southern and Western Lines have just as many suburban passenger services (6 each way per hour during peaks), the Southern Line also has dozens of freight train movements. So although barrier down times on the Western Line are about 25-30% of the time (each crossing is a bit different) on the Southern Line crossings it ranges from 30-50%. This is why the priority is to complete grade-separation of the handful of crossings on the Southern Line (at least as far out as Papakura) ASAP. The Western Line has 20 level crossings and not one cent allocated for grade-separation.
Higher frequency of trains will increase the barrier down-times – so expect to see only incremental increases per hour until the level crossings are progressively resolved over the next couple of decades. The expedient of running more inbound trains (say 8 ph) than outbound trains (say 4 ph) in the morning peak, and vice versa in the afternoons will require some “spare” EMUs. The idea is that early each morning a bunch of out-of-service EMUs would run out to stabling yards near the Western and Southern extremities of the network so that there were enough units available to run 8 inbound services while only 4 outbound services would run (a total of 12 ph as now). This is only a concept so far – it would require those “spare” EMus and construction of the stabling yards, which would require funding and construction time.
Likewise suspect Christian Rd, although outside electrified network, was included due to potential northern freight movements and housing development going on there.
It might be on the list but given the extended time frame for the high priority crossings and lack of adequate funding, will it ever happen?