Greetings to the Wellington light rail email list
… including those with a more ‘high level’ interest in light rail – councillors, MPs and journalists (added to this list without asking!), plus many contacts who have expressed an interest in the subject to me and gave me their addresses. If you don’t want it, just let me know by return email.
Remember the format: black and red text is my doing, dark green is copied from somewhere, and hyperlinks are blue.
1 Happy New Year?
While COVID-19, vaccines and hopes for a return to sanity in the US hog the headlines, climate change is already making itself felt and is the ultimate human existential issue. New Zealand has already been called out internationally for its ’talk but no action’ stance – ‘all hui and no do-ey’ we could say – and nowhere is this more apparent than in the area of transport, one of our biggest greenhouse gas sources. Even the low-hanging fruit of a complete electrified rail spine, including a light rail extension through Wellington City, is not being picked – even though the technology is developed and already partly deployed (unlike, say electric aeroplanes or long-distance trucks). An inexplicable anti-rail superstition has taken hold in Wellington over the last 20 years
The long-running and mis-directed Lets Get Wellington Moving transport study is meant to release its plan for ‘mass transit’ sometime early in 2021. The portents for it being a contribution to a solution are not good. (See 7(c) below.)
From what has been released so far, it looks as though the concept of a complete regional electric rail spine is being ignored and an inappropriate, China-dependent, proprietary guided bus system – masquerading as a ‘trackless’ (i.e. sham) tram – shuttling only south of the Railway Station on a silly route is being favoured. A more foolish and ineffective strategy could hardly be imagined. See item 4 below.
2 What is this newsletter for?
From the earliest days (1878!) to about 2008, ‘everyone’ in Wellington recognised that having a regional rail transit system which didn’t run through the dense heart of the region where most of the economy happens was a very silly state of affairs. Many were the schemes to overcome this obvious and egregious infrastructure deficit. The plethora of studies and plans produced in the 1990s remain relevant today.
No one then dreamed of suggesting that the term ‘light rail’ meant anything other than an extension of the existing rail system (which has many ‘light rail’ characteristics) – even if only involving the Johnsonville Line in the first instance!
But a change of Government in 2008, to one advocating only a ‘roads only, not sustainability’ (RONS) transport policy, plus the ascension to local power of several conservative politicians and officers, plus the single daily newspaper being indifferent to a complete rail transit system (unlike its Evening Post predecessor), meant that institutional knowledge and political momentum was lost. Wellington’s local political, media and commercial culture now seems to be one of denial of this most egregious infrastructure deficit and its far-reaching consequences for housing, economy and the climate.
It is clear that the Lets Get Wellington Moving transport planning exercise, set up under the previous National Government and continued under Labour, offers no solution. Its denial of the need for a complete rail spine, and the interim selection of the most bizarre route for any “mass transit” south of the Railway Station, indicates a lack of understanding of the basic principles of rail transit and a stupid determination to keep Wellington's rail spine sub-optimal and broken. Let alone being ineffective in reducing transport GHG emissions!
Wellington’s unique – but not in a good way: Wellington is probably the only city in the world which has a large (100 km) rail transit network which is the public transport spine for most (75%) of the region’s population, carries most (70%) of the PT function measured in passenger km, parallels most (92%) of the regional road transport corridors (SH1 & 2) – and yet the network does not penetrate the central area where most (77%) of the region’s economic activity happens. Moreover, ‘the powers that be’ no longer show any interest in correcting that situation!
Only the Trams-Action trust and myself remain focussed on the advocacy of a complete and coherent zero-carbon rail transit system joining most of the population to most of the economic activity and travel destinations in Wellington. This fortnightly newsletter is a modest attempt to keep the dream of normal transit development alive in the capital.
Brent Efford – NZ Agent, Light Rail Transit Assn
3 TRAX lunch this Friday!
Our lunch get-togethers – fortnightly (on average), on the 2nd and 4th Friday of the month, at TRAX Cafe and Bar, Wellington Railway Station, 12.00 – continue.
The next one is Friday, 22 January.
4 “Secret” Sydney report spotlights sham tram concerns https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/longer-commute-inconvenient-not-competitive-internal-report-raises-trackless-tram-concerns-20201224-p56pzw.html
The NSW government will have to overcome a series of impediments – including a lack of suppliers – before it can operate trackless trams in Sydney, an internal review of the technology by the state's transport agency has found.
The review, completed in December 2019, raises a "number of issues" for the technology pursued by the government as an alternative to light rail, including its impact on bridges and road pavements and the regulatory requirements they will have to meet. ...
… Road pavements were also likely to have to be designed specifically for trackless trams, while bridges may have to be altered to accommodate their loads. Furthermore, the standard design of roadside barriers "may not cater for the dynamic behaviour of trackless trams in an impact situation”. …
… Western Sydney Business Chamber executive director David Borger said trackless trams seemed to have "questionable viability" and the government should build the light rail line it promised. …
‘Trackless’ sham trams need expensive tracks: The point about the preparation of the right of way is deliberately glossed over by the shills for guided bus/sham tram systems. “Done in a weekend with some painted lines” is what Prof Newman told us.
Our experience here is that a proper road for concentrated bus traffic needs as heavy a foundation, at least, as for a tramway. Steel rails have considerable tensile strength (whereas asphalt and concrete have almost none) and so support the rolling point load of a vehicle as it moves along, reducing the demand on a foundation.
In places where heavy bus traffic uses an ordinary pavement without a reinforced foundation the surface breaks up quite quickly. The one block Manners Mall busway, with more reinforced concrete than the earthquake-proven Christchurch Tramway, has required no maintenance for the 10 years or so since it was built. By contrast, the unreinforced paving in places like the Kilbirnie bus hub – also on a reclaimed former beach – has broken up after only three years. (Photos show the multiple layers of reinforced concrete being installed in Manners Mall 23/8/2010 and Christchurch tram tracks being installed earlier the same year. The tram tracks and the sheaf-of-wheat steel sculpture were the only two structures visible in the photo to survive the earthquake of 22 February 2011).
And, of course, there is the moral, strategic and commercial hazard of being dependent on China for anything, let alone a proprietary technology.
The ultimate argument for us, though, is that a trackless system could never be joined to the existing 100 km light-rail-like regional electric rail system to provide, at last, the downtown ‘direct through service’ which Wellington’s railway, alone of all the world’s core rail transit systems, lacks.
Manners Mall busway construction 23/8/2010, Christchurch Tramway construction 3/4/2010. The Manners Mall busway has stood up to a decade of intensive use well because of its very heavy foundation – more than required for a tram track. The concept of a cheap right of way with ’trackless’ trams is a myth! Both photos: Brent Efford
5 San Diego – showing Wellington the way?
Election shake-up in San Diego bodes well for envisioned $177 billion rail expansion https://www.masstransitmag.com/management/news/21202188/ca-election-shakeup-in-san-diego-bodes-well-for-envisioned-177-billion-rail-expansion
Getting people out of greenhouse-gas-spewing cars and onto electrified transit systems will almost certainly be a top priority for the region in coming years.
Just a few years ago, a $177 billion plan to dramatically expand rail and bus service throughout the San Diego region would have summoned skeptical chuckles from the area's top political leadership, long dominated by business-friendly Republicans.
However, following November's elections, such an ambitious vision now appears to be gaining steam — rolling toward perhaps its most daunting test, the ballot box.
Getting people out of greenhouse-gas-spewing cars and onto electrified transit systems will almost certainly be a top priority for the region in coming years. Environmentally minded Democrats now control the city of San Diego as well as the county Board of Supervisors for the first time in modern history ...
Given recent political changes, "advancing a more aggressive green agenda for the region, from developing mass transit to increasing urban densities and slowing outward sprawl, will be much more doable," said Carl Luna, longtime local government observer and professor of political science at San Diego Mesa College. …
Progressive political leadership was required at the start of San Diego’s first light rail line in 1981. This was the first ‘new generation’ light rail line in the US, and initiated the boom in new LRT and streetcar systems which continues to this day. The full story is on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Diego_Trolley This pioneering effort was led politically by local Californian Senator James Mills – who was inspired by information about European light rail in the Light Rail Transit Association’s ‘Modern Tramway’ (now Tramways and Urban Transit) magazine. The Metropolitan Transit System's headquarters building is named the James R Mills building.
I had the privilege of meeting Senator Mills at the 2009 light rail conference in Los Angeles where he gave a keynote speech outlining his political struggle to get US light rail started ...
Left: meeting Senator Mills, Light Rail Conference, Los Angeles, 22/4/2009. Photo: Tom Matoff. Right: San Diego Union Station – passengers from the commuter train from Los Angeles (at the left) make an easy transfer to the San Diego Trolley – maybe bound for Mexico. Photo: Brent Efford, 23/4/2009.
Currently about the same length (96 km) as Wellington’s ‘light rail like’ Metlink electric rail network (100 km), the system continues to expand with enthusiasm – such as the Mid-coast extension north of the city centre https://www.masstransitmag.com/rail/vehicles/press-release/21157264/metropolitan-transit-system-mts-final-trolley-arrives-in-san-diego-to-complete-mts-midcoast-trolley-project-fleet.
There are several features of the San Diego light rail experience which are relevant to Wellington:
The first stage was a low-cost minimalist conversion of an existing freight railway, extended through the CBD to Union Station. The line runs to San Ysidro on the Mexican border, beside Tijuana – hence the moniker The Tijuana Trolley. The line is still used for rail freight to various industrial sidings, switched in the ‘wee small hours’ when no passenger services are running.
Light rail services use two platforms at the Union Station (or Santa Fe Station); diesel-hauled commuter trains from Los Angeles terminate at the other platforms.
This is one of several examples where light rail runs through a central station, sharing adjacent platforms and making only brief stops where diesel heavy rail trains terminate. Other examples of my acquaintance: Los Angeles, Dallas, Manchester Victoria.
The first vehicles were ‘high floor’ trams, requiring clunky hoists to provide wheelchair access – because thats all there was in 1981. The system is converting to low-floor cars which are now the industry norm. (Wellington, of course, would be low-floor from the start, requiring raising tracks or lowering platforms for level boarding when using current tracks.)
6 Or Los Angeles? https://www.masstransitmag.com/rail/infrastructure/press-release/21126420/los-angeles-county-metropolitan-transportation-authority-metro-la-metro-to-connect-three-rail-lines-with-regional-connector-project?utm_source=MASS+NewsViews+Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=CPS201230012&o_eid=2005H5570989F9G&rdx.ident%5Bpull%5D=omeda%7C2005H5570989F9G
Los Angeles is one of the very few cities where new light rail lines have been built which do not immediately traverse the city centre – analogous to Wellington’s urban rail system (though of course carrying many more passengers). But this situation was never intended to be permanent, just a stage in LA’s huge rail transit development programme.
Planners always recognised the necessity of having rail transit traverse the CBD seamlessly and connect to suburbs on the other side – a suburb-CBD-suburb (SCS) continuous route configuration. SCS is the optimum for all forms of public transport route planning, and we see it as the target in every system, from London’s huge underground network, to all the new light rail lines around the world, the raison d’etre of Auckland’s City Rail Link, to bus systems like Christchurch’s, and even in most of Wellington’s bus routes.
7 New links
(a) Can New Zealand create a low emissions public transport network? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ1eusV_qBU
A recording of a VUW Institute of Governance and Policy Studies Zoom seminar. Includes our hero, Wellington regional councillor Thomas Nash, talking about “rebuilding a rail network”.
(b) Upgraded Dutch light rail lines enter service https://www.railjournal.com/regions/europe/upgraded-dutch-light-rail-lines-enter-service/?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=22127
Reconfiguring a high-platform route with heavy rail limitations to be a true low-floor light rail service with five and seven-section trams. An example for the Johnsonville Line, with its steep grades and curved platforms and tunnels, where 5 or 7-section trams would fit and operate much more effectively than the two-section ‘heavy rail’ Matangis.
(c) Will 2021 bring any hope for LGWM? https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/123695260/what-can-people-expect-to-see-from-the-64-billion-lets-get-wellington-moving-programme-in-2021
Disconnected from the dominant regional rail system and routed along the waterfront, Taranaki St and Cobham Drive – the very worst, pedestrian-unfriendly, locations for mass transit – this is what Lets Get Wellington Moving has come up with so far!
(d) Some Wellington NZ trains in 1966/67, 8mm film https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRnyiDKupD4&t=2s
YouTube: good quality 8 mm film shot by Robbie McGavin, mainly in the Wellington railway yards before the motorway viaduct was constructed. Red units, Eds, Ews, new diesels and old steam locomotives.. Includes electric locomotives hauling freight and long-distance passenger trains. If the Main Trunk electrification is completed it could happen again!
8 Enduring links
Information resources pertinent to light rail and tram-train for Wellington:
1 Direct through service … tram-train for a complete rail system https://www.rtsa.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/190214-Efford-RTSA-presentation-notes-attachments-with-disclaimer.pdf
My Valentines Day 2019 presentation to the Railway Technical Society of Australasia, plus other PDF material.
2 TramTrain connects town and country https://www.kvv.de/fileadmin/user_upload/kvv/Dateien/Broschueren/AVG-Broschuere_TramTrain_EN.pdf
The PDF booklet explaining the Karlsruhe tram-train experience, published by the operator KVV. Note the population size similarity to Wellington (Karlsruhe is actually somewhat smaller) but the massively greater PT use in the German region.
3 The Karlsruhe Model https://www.karlsruher-modell.de/en/index.html
More about Karlsruhe.
4 Light Rail Transit Association http://www.lrta.org/
Established 1937, the world’s senior light rail advocacy organisation.
5 Light rail is a feminist issue https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/10-07-2020/why-labours-new-plan-for-auckland-rapid-transit-is-stupid-and-sexist/
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.
9 Attempted media comments – sometimes published, sometimes not
(a) The forgotten Superlink study
Tony Sutcliffe (Letters, Jan 4) claims to have heard of only one of the eight people interviewed (That’s a capital idea, Jan 1) which rather begs the question of how connected he has been during his 50 years in Wellington.
While fresh and waste water have to be the first priorities, I cannot agree with placing roads third. The problem is the inefficient way we use them.
His suggestion to ignore the needs of those coming in from the wider region and concentrate on a local solution is utter nonsense, as they are the main contributors to congestion, according to figures published by Let’s Get Wellington Moving.
The urgent need is to extend the existing rails through the CBD, operated by tram-trains. A seamless commute through town by rail would make it much more attractive. Furthermore, light rail offers 10 times the capacity of private cars using the same road space.
To do this, we need German engineers, not Chinese as suggested by Bob Brockie (ibid.). They pioneered tram-trains in Karlsruhe 28 years ago. Unfortunately, the ground-breaking Superlink study, produced locally in 1992 and strongly supported by the Evening Post of the time was subsequently shelved, never to be heard of again.
Demetrius Christoforou
Mt Victoria [4/1/21, not published]
(b) Lack of electric rail joinup
Yes – Lack of joined-up thinking permeates transport planning at all levels of government. Two more examples:
1 Complete electrification of the NI Main Trunk is a necessary and practical step towards 100% zero-carbon transport by 2050, yet despite the Government's "climate emergency" declaration it is nowhere in official thinking. The regional council is planning on hybrid diesel/DC electric trains to update the Capital Connection, rather than dual-voltage EMUs as commonly used in Europe. (Hybrid diesel EMUs will do nothing towards making freight transport zero-carbon, either.) Also, think of the potential for a 6 hour Wellington – Auckland tilt-train trip, as in Queensland, to replace air travel for a lot of passengers.
2 Wellington is the only region in the world with an extensive (100 km) core electric rail transit system, operating like light rail but which does NOT penetrate the centre, despite the latter being the location of most (77%) of the region's economy. This encourages a huge amount of the long-distance car commuting which is a main source of regional emissions and congestion. Neither the regional council currently nor the struggling Lets Get Wellington Moving transport planning exercise shows any interest in overcoming this absurdity. Instead, current indications are that it will be permanently embedded!
This lack of electric rail join-up is something I would hope the Green Party could be a lot more strident about.
Brent Efford, Green Party Transport Discussion Facebook page 26/12/20
(c) Shameful contrast
Oh dear! Even as we are in a climate emergency and commuter motor traffic strangles the capital, the juggernaut of car-based urban sprawl rumbles on (Tick for Porirua housing plan, 14 Jan). This is justified by the current housing crisis, but the alternative strategy of higher density housing clustered around zero-carbon high-capacity electric rail transit – transit-oriented development, or TOD – is ignored.
There are no plans at all to extend our current ‘light-rail-like’ Metlink rail transit system to facilitate TOD. This is a shameful contrast to the turn of the century, when the regional council, in 1999, suggested light rail extensions through the Wellington and Lower Hutt CBDs and even to Whitby and Stokes Valley. All was proposed to be implemented from 2004 to 2019.
Instead, the hysterical pressure for the Transmission Gully motorway – a huge sprawl enabler – overtook those moves towards zero-emission transport investment.
A new generation of regional council officers regards light rail and rail network extension with derision, and appears to have instructed Lets Get Wellington Moving accordingly. Which is probably why the latter seems to have such difficulty coming up with a transport plan which will actually work!
Brent Efford
NZ Agent, Light Rail Transit Assn [Dominion Post 15/1/21]
… which elicited this feedback:
Hi Brent
That was an excellent letter of yours in the DomPost today
The term you used -juggernaut - apply captures the absurd, irrational and perverse obsession with spending on roads
As you point out the "system" ie GWRC/WCC has regressed - from where it was in 1996
Its like there are two planets - planet roads is endless spending; planet public transport is left with tokenistic crumbs
In the same paper there was article that even more millions are now needed to repair the Kapiti Expressway - a road that has been under continual remedial action since it was opened in 2017
But of course that is always OK - its roads!
I regret to say I see no end to this madness - but thanks again for standing for sanity!
Regards
Brian [Jameson, chair, Trams-Action, 15/1/21.]
Have you sent letters on similar light rail lines to the Dominion Post or other media? Or even just made comment on Facebook. 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.
10 Clipping of the month
Finally – a reminder that ambitions and actions for a complete rail spine and ‘direct through service’ in Wellington go back a long way – Press, 28/1/1879. In the first decade of tramway and railway development in Wellington there wasn’t a permanent station and the site for one was a matter of debate.
In the event, the steam tram from England and trailers from Denmark were imported but diverted to Dunedin, and destroyed only a year later in a depot fire. Physically, that was as close as Wellington ever got to a tram-train system!
Nga mihi
Brent Efford
NZ Agent, Light Rail Transit Assn