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+{%- block title -%}Auckland Rail Maps{%- endblock -%}
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+<h4>Auckland Rail Maps</h4>
+
+<p>Git repository: <a href="/cgi-bin/cgit.cgi/rail-maps">Link</a></p>
+
+<h5>14/10/2024</h5>
+
+
+<h5>Overview</h5>
+
+<p>Auckland, New Zealand has notoriously <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/aucklands-transport-crisis-how-it-was-made-and-why-it-will-only-get-worse/ZQJIDROB7CXKMAKFFVDNF7IN3I/"
+class="external">terrible transport</a>. It was bad enough in 2017 that it was estimated to be
+costing the city almost <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/336352/auckland-traffic-congestion-costs-city-almost-2b-a-year"
+class="external">$2 billion per year</a> in lost productivity and this number has no doubt become
+worse since then. You could build a lot of useful infrastructure with that sort of money.</p>
+
+<p>While a heavy rail loop underneath the CBD is <a href="https://www.cityraillink.co.nz/"
+class="external">under construction</a> it is questionable whether this will add enough capacity to
+ease the problem. Aside from that the New Zealand government has inexplicably been mostly
+interested in applying light rail to the issue, both as part of a
+<a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/second-auckland-harbour-crossing-five-combinations-of-tunnels-and-bridges-revealed-construction-begins-2029/PMT66B7P3FESXKRMIG4ARHLMFA/"
+class="external">second harbour crossing</a> and an <a href="https://www.lightrail.co.nz/the-route/"
+class="external">Auckland airport connection</a>. These strangely circuitous projects have since
+been cancelled, and as they were only light rail and generally still included a focus on more direct
+car routes they were unlikely to have been effective at reducing congestion anyway. Overall, the
+situation remains dire.</p>
+
+<p>But let's suppose there is a sudden outbreak of common sense, priorities are reworked to be more
+sane, and enough political will becomes available to make Auckland's rail network functional. What
+could that look like?</p>
+
+<div class="figure">
+    <a href="/img/auckland_rail_map_full.png">
+        <img src="/img/auckland_rail_map_preview.png"
+             alt="Hypothetical Auckland rail map"
+             height="680"
+             width="560" />
+    </a>
+    <div class="figcaption">A hypothetical Auckland heavy rail and ferry map</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The above map was constructed as a 2240x2720 SVG and has been exported as a PNG here. Click to
+open a full scale version. Similar styling was used to the current Auckland rapid transit network
+map, and since that map has ferries as well, why not have them here too?</p>
+
+
+<h5>Line Differences and Notes</h5>
+
+<p>While there are really only four rail lines on this map, each of them branches once it leaves the
+centre of the city. This strikes a reasonable balance between service frequency and coverage vs
+population density. In addition, two extended services out to Helensville and Waiuku occupy a
+nebulous area that goes outside of the Auckland urban boundary but doesn't really qualify as
+intercity. Nevertheless, those rail corridors are already there so using them to provide effective
+transport makes sense.</p>
+
+<p><i>Metro lines</i>:</p>
+
+<ul>
+    <li><i>Northern:</i> This is the main addition. The corridor from Akoranga to Rosedale covers
+    what is currently the Northern Busway. Running alongside a motorway is not ideal for a metro
+    line, but we will come back to that. The branches from the new Mount Eden station to New Lynn
+    and Auckland Airport approximately cover the same area the light rail airport proposal would
+    have covered except much more direct and hence likely to be used. Finally, the section up
+    through Browns Bay is a matter of ensuring decent coverage and allowing for a connection to
+    Whangaparāoa and beyond.</li>
+    <li><i>Eastern:</i> Rail from Ōtāhuhu to the airport replaces the current AirportLink bus. The
+    branch through Botany to join up to the existing stub at Manukau covers a lot of the same area
+    the <a href="https://www.nzta.govt.nz/assets/projects/southwest-gateway/Southwest-Gateway-Airport-to-Botany-rapid-transit-poster.pdf"
+    class="external">Southwest Gateway</a> bus rapid transit would cover. A missing station at Saint
+    Johns is added. The Strand becomes a regular metro station connected in with the rest of the
+    network.</li>
+    <li><i>Southern:</i> Not a whole lot of change here. The Onehunga line is now just a branch of
+    this line, trains now go around the loop formed by the City Rail Link, and the line extends to
+    Drury.</li>
+    <li><i>Western:</i> Also not a whole lot of change here. Trains also go around the loop formed
+    by the City Rail Link, and a new branch is added out to Westgate. Trains on this line no longer
+    go to Newmarket.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p><i>Extended services</i>:</p>
+
+<ul>
+    <li><i>Waiuku:</i> Makes use of the old Waiuku branch railway and incorporates the new stations
+    at Ngākōroa and Paerātā. Notably this does not involve trains to Pukekohe at all, as those are
+    left for intercity services.</li>
+    <li><i>Helensville:</i> Makes use of the old alignment heading north. Trains actually going
+    towards Whangārei would use a brand new alignment via Hibiscus Coast, but this section remains
+    useful for freight and the few small settlements that exist. Woodhill station is to allow for
+    people to travel to and from the mountain bike park there without needing a car.</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>Two stations have been conspicuously renamed. Parnell station is now Auckland station because
+that is the only suitable location with enough space for a proper intercity rail terminus that
+connects reasonably well with the rest of the network. Maungawhau station is now Eden Terrace
+because the <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/britomart-to-be-renamed-as-seven-auckland-railway-stations-receive-new-names/5VG2VNAC75C4LEWOQJJZH3OX6E/"
+class="external">recent renaming</a> from Mount Eden to a Maori word for mountain and trees was
+pointless since the meaning is the same. Further, doing so while claiming it to be from drawing on
+intergenerational wisdom shows it to be obvious political nonsense. The station itself ends up
+being barely in bounds of the suburb of Eden Terrace after being restructured from the City Rail
+Link, so it gets the suburb name. The new Mount Eden station on the map is further south down near
+the Mount Eden shops.</p>
+
+<p>A new ferry line to Te Atatū Peninsula has been added. This would require around a kilometre of
+dredging, but otherwise stands out as the only potential expansion for ferry services with minimal
+impact to the harbour.</p>
+
+
+<h5>Unmapped Features</h5>
+
+<p>Each line has its own dedicated track. This generally means a track pair, except in the city
+centre where the Western and Southern lines each operate in a one way loop and so use a single track
+each. In total this means Te Waihorotiu and Karanga-a-Hape stations end up with six tracks each,
+with Waitematā having four.</p>
+
+<p>Having dedicated track isn't just for isolating each line into its own sector to improve service
+reliability. It's outright necessary for capacity. On the map it is noted that each line gets a
+minimum of 4 trains per hour. That's on each branch, so towards the centre of the system that
+becomes 8 trains per hour. But during peak times it's expected for those numbers to double. At the
+busiest stations mentioned above that ends up being 48 trains per hour which a fair bit more than
+could fit if lines were sharing.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, this does mean the City Rail Link project is woefully lacking for the task.</p>
+
+<p>The extended services out to Waiuku run express between Papakura and Newmarket. Similarly, the
+extended services to Helensville run express between Henderson and Eden Terrace.</p>
+
+<p>Actual intercity services have been left off the map completely. Figuring those out will be an
+entirely separate project. Likely included out of Auckland would be train services south to
+Hamilton, Tauranga, and Rotorua, train services north to Hibiscus Coast and Whangārei, ferry
+services to Gulf Harbour, Tryphena, and Coromandel, and a long distance train to Wellington. The
+train services would all operate from Auckland station and share track with the metro lines.
+Auckland station itself would have an extra six terminating platforms to accommodate this.</p>
+
+<p>Passing loops would be needed for maintaining high capacity while running the extended services
+and intercity trains express on their way into and out of the city as well as allowing for
+freight. Eventually quadruplicating track on significant portions of the Western, Northern, and
+Southern lines will become necessary.</p>
+
+<p>The proposed Avondale-Southdown line makes no appearance because, while useful and necessary, it
+is a freight rail connection.</p>
+
+
+<h5>Points of Contention and Comparison</h5>
+
+<p>Let us address a few questions and objections that may come up.</p>
+
+<p><i>Is the capacity of heavy rail really needed?</i></p>
+
+<p>Comparing the passenger capacity of different modes of mass transport to decide what will work is
+often a messy subject. As bus rapid transit systems have proven, it is possible to add dedicated
+right-of-ways, fare payments before boarding, more doors per vehicle, more platforms per station,
+and other optimisations to just about anything. Those things will never apply much to something that
+has to contend with mixed traffic on public roads, but let us assume they do. What difference is
+left? Only the number of passengers per vehicle.</p>
+
+<table>
+    <tr>
+        <th>&nbsp;</th>
+        <th>Bus</th>
+        <th>Bendy Bus</th>
+        <th>Light Rail</th>
+        <th>Heavy Rail<br />(6 car)</th>
+        <th>Heavy Rail<br />(9 car)</th>
+    </tr>
+    <tr>
+        <th>Vehicle<br />Capacity</th>
+        <td>90</td>
+        <td>150</td>
+        <td>340</td>
+        <td>750</td>
+        <td>1125</td>
+    </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Figures are approximate and assume an articulated bus of 18m length, a tram of 45m length similar
+to an Alstom Citadis 405, and trains similar to a New Zealand AM class, all operating at maximum
+nominal seating and standing capacity. All other things being equal, building light rail lines to
+replace buses would get a 2-4x increase. Even if this successfully addressed the traffic problems in
+Auckland today it would leave little to no headroom for future growth as higher density housing is
+built to solve New Zealand's housing shortage. Transport infrastructure has to last decades. This
+detail has already <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/auckland-city-rail-link-to-be-bigger-and-more-expensive/WOXHL3N3BEYWQIBNBHVZLICKNY/"
+class="external">caught the City Rail Link out</a> requiring some reworking before completion. The
+capacity from heavy rail is really the only sensible option for future proofing. Note also that the
+heavy rail numbers given here are somewhat lower than what they could be due to the need to operate
+on the steep alignment of said City Rail Link.</p>
+
+<p><i>What about the cost?</i></p>
+
+<p>The <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/second-auckland-harbour-crossing-governments-mega-plans-revealed/TB3WTGHGR5BYFH6S4XXKWWZNMI/"
+class="external">projected cost</a> of the 2023 second harbour crossing proposal was $35-45
+billion NZD. This was outrageous on several levels, such as how the plan involved adding further
+inefficient car capacity which would have been pure waste. But most importantly, that price tag.
+Fortunately such ridiculous prices are not inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>There are tricks to keeping the costs of building a subway or other metro system down, as
+<a href="https://marroninstitute.nyu.edu/blog/what-is-the-cost-of-building-a-subway"
+class="external">multiple</a> <a href="https://conversableeconomist.com/2021/11/24/holding-down-costs-of-megaprojects-the-madrid-subway-example/"
+class="external">people</a> have written at length about. Doing some back of the envelope
+calculations with numbers from the <a href="https://transitcosts.com/" class="external">Transit
+Costs Project</a> adjusted for inflation and with further margin added, it is likely that if New
+Zealand were to do things similarly to
+<a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/need-for-speed-drives-madrid-miracle/article1327078/"
+class="external">how things are done</a> in places like Madrid, Spain, then everything on the map
+proposed here could become a reality for less money than that 2023 amount. Good value, that.
+Especially if viewed on a per passenger capacity basis.</p>
+
+<p><i>Is a rail system this big really called for in a city like Auckland?</i></p>
+
+<p>The city of Copenhagen in Denmark is surprisingly similar to Auckland in terms of size and
+population. They both have around 1.4-1.5 million residents in their urban areas and they both have
+an average urban density of around 2400-2500 people per square kilometre.</p>
+
+<p>Both cities are located on islands called (New) Zealand too. That one is definitely a coincidence
+however, since the etymology is unrelated.</p>
+
+<p>The useful point of comparison here is that Copenhagen has extensive passenger heavy rail in the
+form of their S-train system which has 170km of track. They also have light rail rapid transit in
+the form of the mostly underground Copenhagen Metro with 43km of track. And regular surface light
+rail under construction. It's all <a href="https://cphtransitmap.dk/en/" class="external">quite
+extensive</a>. Meanwhile, Auckland currently only has around 105km of heavy rail. An approximate
+doubling of passenger rail system length in Auckland is thus entirely in line with what is known to
+be necessary in a city of comparable size. Especially when the high amount of bicycle usage in
+Copenhagen is taken into account, something Auckland does not have to ease traffic pressure.</p>
+
+<p><i>Will all of this actually fix the traffic congestion issues?</i></p>
+
+<p>Now that is an interesting question. The truth of the matter is most people use whatever mode
+of transport is convenient and that they are in the habit of using. If a city is designed to make
+high capacity modes convenient then everything works well. If a city is designed to make low
+capacity modes convenient then you get massive traffic problems.</p>
+
+<p>To go back to the Copenhagen comparison again, if you look at that city on a map you may notice
+something. There are no motorways that will take you into the city centre. Now I'm sure that is
+partially down to historical reasons, but that's not important. In Copenhagen it is easy to take
+heavy rail into the city and not so easy to drive. In Auckland it's currently the other way around.
+Building out passenger heavy rail to have a functional network would help a great deal, but it
+doesn't completely solve the problem. Those motorways leading right into the centre need to go.</p>
+
+<div class="figure">
+    <img src="/img/auckland_motorways_highlight.jpg"
+         alt="Motorways leading into the centre of Auckland"
+         height="490"
+         width="445" />
+    <div class="figcaption">The offending motorways highlighted</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The corridors are still important to have, since proper roads for traffic that isn't constantly
+stopping, starting, and turning unpredictably all the time is important from a safety and
+practicality point of view. But at the moment those corridors are set up primarily to dump up to
+7600 vehicles per hour into the middle of the city. All that traffic comes from somewhere, and this
+is where. It's not even justified from a capacity viewpoint since nearly all cars at peak times only
+have one occupant and four lanes of such bumper to bumper traffic is less than seven of those max
+capacity 9-car trains mentioned earlier. Once the rail system is working properly, change these
+eight lane wide motorways to four lane regular roads and the
+<a href="https://cities-magazine.com/traffic-evaporation-impact-reallocating-road-space-from-cars/"
+class="external">traffic will disappear</a> while people can still get to where they want to go.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the space freed up by this redevelopment can be used for quadruplicating rail track where
+applicable. A lot of it can be used to add fully separated arterial cycleways. In particular, the
+harbour bridge can be reallocated to have four lanes for general car traffic, two lanes for buses
+and trucks, one lane for mopeds and microcars, and one lane for bicycles and pedestrians. Ironically
+all of this would actually increase its capacity. That is good though, since making it possible for
+more people to be able to get around Auckland easier is the whole goal here anyway.</p>
+
+
+<h5>Closing Remarks</h5>
+
+<p>For quite a while I had no idea where to even begin with Auckland's rail system. It's just that
+bad after decades upon decades of neglect. Then I saw the loop formed by the City Rail Link and
+things just started falling into place. I could go even further, connecting up Puhinui to Auckland
+Airport and reworking the map layout around New Lynn a bit, but I figured this was a good place to
+stop. For now.</p>
+
+<p>Overall though, after a deep dive into all of this I strongly suspect the New Zealand government
+isn't really trying to solve this transport problem. No, I'm not talking about any sort of
+conspiracy. That would actually be easier to deal with. There are just too many ongoing
+institutional and ideological blindspots that prevent things being properly addressed. Most
+politicians still buy into the swindle of thinking that adding more cars, the lowest capacity mode
+of transport available, will somehow lead to anything but more traffic problems. Just as the most
+obvious example.</p>
+
+<p>Too bad for the people who have to live in that city, I guess.</p>
+
+{% endblock -%}
+
+