An appropriate way of using those odd pockets of land where full-size apartment buildings wouldn’t fit. The Wellington railway system has many such sites.




5 New links


For our grandchildren’s sake, one of the most important documents to be issued for public comment in a long time. 

Transport electrification is an important part of NZ’s climate change response. Rail electrification is the real “low hanging fruit” of transport electrification: it is already widely deployed and supported by a local skill and resource base, and requires no technological breakthroughs and experimentation for a wider rollout. 

But it is discontinuous (like the Wellington ‘light rail-like’ rail transit spine). It is therefore much less effective in offering a competitive zero-carbon alternative to long-distance diesel trucking. Nor can it offer faster half-day Queensland-style tilt-train trips between Wellington and Auckland as an alternative to flying or driving.

In a summary table (3.1, p 55) of key transitions, the CCC proposes “Electrification of rail” for the first budget period of the three leading up to 2050 – i.e. pretty much immediately. Submissions urging a reluctant Government and KiwiRail to get on with it would be worthwhile.  


Following my item on light rail pioneer and example San Diego in the last newsletter. The pandemic has hit US public transport generally far more severely than in NZ …

The agency plans to continue pursuing an expansion of its rail and bus network while overhauling its approach to public safety. It's also on track to start service this fall on the roughly $2 billion Blue Line trolley extension.

(c) Hitachi tests battery LRV

Battery power for trams, supplementing or even replacing the use of overhead wires, is now quite commonplace around the world – among the many light rail vehicle manufacturers, Hitachi Rail is rather late in the game with this design for the wire-free historic centre of Florence. Battery power for Wellington tram-trains, charging on the existing rail network and running wire-free down the Golden Mile, would solve a number of aesthetic and engineering problems.

 The Japanese company took over Ansaldo Breda of Italy. Prior to the takeover, Ansaldo had a very poor reputation for the quality of both its trams and high speed trains.  


Hybrid electric and diesel tram-trains is another approach for ensuring unbroken 'direct through service' over railway and tramway lines, like this example in Hungary. Advantage: introduces direct through service quickly and cheaply even over non-electrified railway lines. Disadvantages: doesn’t eliminate the use of fossil fuel, and doesn’t provide zero-carbon electrified track that freight trains would also use – an important consideration in the NZ context, where freight is the dominant rail use. (A similar second-best solution of electro-diesel hybrid trains is being considered in Wellington, rather than the more climate-friendly but costly alternatives of completing electrification to Palmerston North and Masterton.)

When I visited Canberra in 2010, light rail there was just a Green Party proposal, derided by conservatives. But Australia’s capital moved faster than NZ’s seems capable of. Light rail Stage 1 opened in 2019, stage 2A has been approved for tender and design work on 2B – including wire-free operation in the Parliamentary Precinct – is well under way.  


The ‘last mile’ issue – how to connect a fixed-route (particularly rail) transit system with homes and other destinations some distance from the station – dogs public transport. Walking and cycling are desirable but lose their practicality and appeal as the ‘last mile’ becomes two, or three, or more miles. Park + ride is big around Wellington, but hogs land which could be used for TOD, and does nothing to reduce car dependence and help those who do not own cars. Scheduled feeder buses are the current solution but have a myriad of problems, are quite costly per passenger and thus generally very intermittent if residential density is low. 

Automated rail for the trunk corridors, and automated ‘robotaxis’ serving defined low-density urban areas, may be the answer:
“The first Apple Cars will not be designed to have a driver,” said one source with knowledge of the current plan. “These will be autonomous, electric vehicles designed to operate without a driver and focused on the last mile.”  That could mean Apple cars, at least initially, could focus on package food delivery operations and firms incorporating robotaxis.  

Coordinate the tram-train and robotaxi automation systems and your robotaxi will be waiting for you when you arrive at the station! And the park+ride lots could be repurposed as bases for the storage and charging of the robotaxis.

Coincidentally, an short article on AV development in this week’s NZ Listener (Look, no hands, p 45) notes that the cost of them, when they happen, will militate against them being individually owned and used like current motor cars, and notes:
Part of the green case for going autonomous involves car ownership overall declining as people increasingly use car-share schemes, which should be more affordable as running costs decrease. But that will require linking up public transport with car-share hubs to make them attractive to use. 

So those park+ride lots, even if not used for TODs, have a legitimate post-carbon future after all!

(g) Ponti Design Studio creates driverless tram concept for Hong Kong post-Covid

Of interest here – the track gauge of the Hong Kong double deck trams is the same as would be used in Wellington for light rail, if sanity prevails. Trams like this could be used on a waterfront – Golden Mile loop once light rail downtown is implemented.

Driverless control systems for trams are already being developed by companies like Hitachi and Bosch, as a spin-off from autonomous vehicle research, and are obviously much closer to practical deployment.

6 Enduring links
 
I don’t have the time and resources to run my own website any more. Instead I use others, like these:

My 2019 presentation to the Railway Technical Society of Australasia, plus other PDF material. It was delivered on Valentines Day, hence the corny introduction, and terminated early because of a fire evacuation. Note the extra material, including the academic paper by Nageli et al: “A checklist for successful application of tram-train systems in Europe"

The PDF booklet explaining the Karlsruhe tram-train experience, published by the operator KVV. Note the population size similarity to Wellington (Karlsruhe is actually 33% smaller) but the massively greater PT use in the German region.

More about Karlsruhe.

Established 1937, the world’s senior light rail advocacy organisation, which I represent in NZ.

The “voice of light rail” – the UK industry organisation for light rail operators. Daily news, conferences, guidance and standards documents, expert papers and presentations.

That’s my title for this perceptive Spinoff op-ed about why street-based light rail is more accessible and convenient, particularly for women, compared with expensive higher speed, but limited stop, and harder to access, underground or overhead transit lines.

7 Attempted media comments

(a) Why just Auckland?

Investment expert Paul Brownsey ( Borrow now at cheap rates to fund the future, 25 Jan) is quite right to decry the lack of mode choice in transport investment, and cites several Auckland exurbs which should be connected to its electric rail network. 
But why is it always just “Auckland, Auckland, Auckland” when more rail connection is being urged? 
Here in Wellington, we have an extensive (100 km) “light rail-like” suburban rail mass transit network which doesn’t traverse the central area where 77% of the region’s economy happens – our most egregious transport infrastructure deficit by far. 
Wellington is the only metropolis in the world having rail transit where a continuous downtown link neither exists nor is planned. Even Auckland is getting its City Rail Link.
Considering the effect that the lack of a continuous CBD rail spine has on congestion, pedestrian access, carbon emissions, urban sprawl and housing distribution, it is a very bad look for the responsible councils, the interminable Lets Get Wellington Moving planning project, and the Dominion Post to ignore the issue. 

Brent Efford
NZ Agent, Light Rail Transit Assn [25/1/21, not published.]

(b) Inner-city access

Jo Healey of the Wellington Chamber of Commerce (in “Dynamic Auckland tops stagnating capital” 28 Jan) observes … “ to keep attracting people into the CBD, it must be made as easy as possible to get into the middle of the city from the suburbs.”
Precisely!
Why then does the Chamber, and apparently Lets Get Wellington Moving, not back reviving the various 1990s proposals to extend our light rail-like Metlink rail transit network down the Golden Mile?
One such regional council proposal was greeted editorially by the Evening Post (23/11/1993) as creating …” exciting possibilities for recharging retailing and ending commuter agonies … a long-term expansion to the airport would make real sense … the ordering of modern equipment which can operate anywhere on the Wellington system and through the city should be a major consideration.
Instead we got the Matangi trains – not suitable for street running – and a continuous programme of roading expansion, which is the absolutely worst strategy during a climate emergency, or for improving access to a dense inner city. 

Brent Efford
NZ Agent, Light Rail Transit Assn [28/1/21, not published.]

(c) Light rail to Wainuiomata?

Lack of train station derails ‘effortless daily commute’ * (Jan 29) brings to mind the long-forgotten 1999 Regional Land Transport Strategy, as well as other meritorious studies and proposals during the 1990s with the common theme of seamlessly linking outlying residential suburbs with Wellington’s Golden Mile and airport.  Existing rail infrastructure would be used as per the so-called Karlsruhe Model (tram-train).
 
Serious proposals for both a heavy rail link as well as a tramway to Wainuiomata date back to the 1920s**, much earlier than the 1970s quoted by the KiwiRail spokesman.  A road tunnel was commenced in 1932 but never completed for lack of funds.  The 1-in-15 gradient through such a tunnel could easily be handled by light rail, while heavy rail would struggle, as evidenced by the flange squeal and wheel slip still experienced by the Matangi units on the Johnsonville line.  Unfortunately, the Draft NZ Rail Plan curtly dismisses light rail, obviously through a lack of experience and expertise in this mode.
 
Wellington’s sad history is one of studies and proposals without follow-up.  Lighter tram-trains can do exactly the same work as the Matangis, while also being able to be operated on-street like trams.  This would enable future rail extensions at much lower cost than heavy rail.
 
Demetrius Christoforou
Mt Victoria

[*A Christchurch-based developer risibly advertised properties “close to the Wainuiomata train station” in ignorance, to the amusement of the Dominion Post. **Actually, like the Newtown to Lower Hutt tram-train project, the idea of light rail to Wainuiomata dates back to 1879! See the 1879 Evening Post clipping, item 8 below. For more on serious studies of heavy rail to Wainuiomata see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wainuiomata_railway_proposals  For more about the partly-completed tunnel, now owned by the GWRC, through which light rail could be routed, see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wainuiomata_Tunnel. ]

(d) Broken rail spine

‘Doubling cycling and bus trips won’t shift carbon dial’ (Feb 4). Maybe not – but doubling the use of our regional electric rail system sure would make a dent in the tens of thousands of cars driven quite long distances from Hutt, Porirua and Kapiti to congest central Wellington every day!

World experience, reflected in the configuration of every other rail transit system, is quite unequivocal: to achieve a usage increase of that magnitude, Wellington’s ‘light rail-like’ Metlink rail system must be extended through the CBD and beyond, and through central Lower Hutt.

NGO and local government proposals to do exactly that were published in 1992, 1993, 1995, 1999 and 2000. They were spurned in favour of Transmission Gully and other motorway development – and appear likely to be ignored by Lets Get Wellington Moving and government at all levels even in the ‘climate emergency’ environment of 2021. 

Unlike broken pipes, the effects of our broken public transport spine stopping short of the densest travel destinations  doesn’t get much coverage in the Dominion Post, either! 

Brent Efford
NZ Agent, Light Rail Transit Assn [4/2/21, not published.]

(e) Mass transit hallucinations

Unsurprisingly, Lets Get Wellington Moving has failed its own health check. 

Symptoms of its sickness include hallucinations: that the travel habits of three-quarters of the region are irrelevant; that there is no existing mass transit system (when we actually have a 100 km Metlink rail spine doing 70% of the regional public transport task, despite being incomplete); and that keeping us the only metropolis in the world where the main mass transit does not penetrate the CBD is somehow conducive to “getting Wellington moving”.

Other hallucinatory symptoms relate to the proposed route of the short fragment of new “mass transit” that LGWM does envisage: avoiding the convenient corridor where mass people are (the Golden Mile and Courtenay Place) in favour of the inconvenient mass car arterial – waterfront and Taranaki St. 

Even more of a delusion is the route to Miramar: several sharp curves, crossing Cobham Drive (SH1) at grade and through the cutting, before heading to the airport. Hardly competitive with the mass of airport-bound cars and taxis!

A cure requires direction by LGWM’s governors, who should know better – like, how effective rail transit systems are organised, with ‘direct through service’, not a broken spine. 
 
Brent Efford
NZ Agent, Light Rail Transit Assn [13/2/21, not published.]

(f) Plans but no action
 
I sympathise with Nigel Williams (Letters, Feb 15) about the gross inconvenience of going to the airport by public transport from Stokes Valley.
 
The 1999 Regional Land Transport Strategy specifically planned for outlying residential suburbs such as Stokes Valley and Whitby to be linked to a rail network extended through Wellington’s CBD and operated by tram-trains as pioneered in the German city of Karlsruhe, to be implemented by 2019.  Eventually, the rails would have reached the airport.
 
Wellington’s history is one of plans but no action.  The excellent plans of the 1990s have long been forgotten and 25 years later as urgency and congestion builds up, Let’s Get Wellington Moving is having a “health check”.  Having made submissions to them three times, with three different directors, but never having received any feedback whatsoever on these, I would suggest that LGWM should be dispensed with forthwith.  The $4M per month being wasted would purchase a new light rail vehicle or lay 200 metres of track through the Golden Mile every month.
 
Hopefully, a more streamlined Greater Wellington Regional Council, with its draft transport plan about to be released, will at last see the light and proceed with implementation of these long overdue rail plans.
 
Demetrius Christoforou
Spokesperson
Trams-Action [15/2/21, not published]

Have you sent letters on similar light rail lines to the Dominion Post or other media? Even if never published, if you would like your thoughts to not go entirely unrecognised, I would be delighted to have a copy to share in these fortnightly newsletters. 

8 Clipping of the month 

Thanks, again, to Papers Past – another 1879 reminder that ambitions and actions for a complete rail spine and ‘direct through service’  in Wellington go back a long way – Evening Post 26/6/1879

As shown in the clipping in the last newsletter, the intention to link railway and tramway to give a through service from Newtown to Lower Hutt – tram-train in modern parlance – came close to realisation in 1879. Rolling stock was even imported for it. At least one budding politician envisaged it extending to Wainuiomata.

Unlike Victorian anti-Chinese racism and enforced sabbath-observance, a light rail link to Wainui still has merit, particularly if it was part of affordable and accessible housing provision and sustainable community-building. (His broad-based taxation suggestions are also worthy of 21st century consideration!)


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