New Auckland harbour crossing

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#3493810 19-May-2026 16:22

pdh:

Yes that's NZ planning for you.
I don't blame the engineers - but the politicians do insist on building infrastructure for yesterday and then spending four times as much upgrading.

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#3493816 19-May-2026 16:30

SaltyNZ:

pdh:

Yes that's NZ planning for you.
I don't blame the engineers - but the politicians do insist on building infrastructure for yesterday and then spending four times as much upgrading.

100%!

The busway business case assumed that it would reach capacity in 2045. What actually happened was they built it and the people came. It wasn't really a political problem, it was more of a case of grossly underestimating the impact that quality public transport has. We had the same thing happen with rail electrification in Auckland. The "Len Browns trainset" jibes stopped once it actually got into service and was genuinely a massive improvement which attracted more patronage than expected.

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#3493818 19-May-2026 16:34

pdh:

KiwiSurfer:

The current northern busway service is already at capacity with fully packed standing room only double deckers on NX1/NX2 running every 2-3 mins at peak so the assertion that light rail is an obsession is a bit strange. In a way current demand already justifies the need for high capacity than what can be provided even with high frequency double decker buses.

I would agree that the current bridge is at capacity - but not the busway.
If vehicles are going along it with a 2 minute gap between them - then you can easily double its capacity - and then double it again.
So four times the capacity it's got now.
Even at two vehicles a minute - come on, the busway itself is laughably empty at peak.

Its station capacity, not vehicles on the road capacity. They have to stop, load/unload passengers which takes up time and space.

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#3493820 19-May-2026 16:41

Handle9:

pdh:

Well, I am an engineer - and it would be refreshing if you did anything more than wave _your_ hands and say it can't be done...

...I would say ours is critically throttled by poor parking facilities, by poor secondary road/bus networks and critically by the huge bottleneck of the existing harbour bridge.

I'm not waving my hands and saying it can't be done. I'm saying the system is reaching capacity.

They are two quite different things just as saying the road is not 100% utilized therefore the busway is not at capacity is not the same thing. The roadway/railway is never the constraint it's always the stations and approaches/departures.

I'm sorry - the voices here arguing for putting light rail into the busway corridor are blind to this.
I'm pointing out - and now perhaps you are agreeing - that the existing bus mode could handle many more if we improved the passenger flow at the stations.

This is hugely important if we build a second bridge - an asset for 100 years - and waste time and money making it contingent on (or cost more for) light rail.
Light rail is fine - but it's not the future.
And NZ has a truly terrible record of keeping rail working reliably.

(To try and forestall the light rail fanatics' outrage, yes its great for some things.
It's brilliant for Terminal A to Terminal B at airports.
It's fine if you have a city network and just want to extend it.
It's good if you have a _big_ city and huge numbers.
But it's not a swiss-army-knife, fix-all for transportation problems.)

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#3493823 19-May-2026 16:59

Jase2985:

Its station capacity, not vehicles on the road capacity. They have to stop, load/unload passengers which takes up time and space.

Yeah - I learned that playing Transport Tycoon back in the early ‘90s.

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#3493824 19-May-2026 17:01

Transport planners absolutely disagree that light rail (or metro/heavy rail) is not the future. Quite the opposite in fact. The rail has grown significantly with urban density and will continue to grow significantly faster than the economy. Multimodal transport is the future not moar roads or any single technology.

Trying to position people who think considering rail would make sense as some sort of fanatic is stupid. Rail is what you use to scale public transport, especially in space constrained cities. There is an inflection point where busways don't make sense and rail does. Running a rail spine down the north shore of Auckland, where 20% of the city lives, is absolutely worth considering.

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#3493825 19-May-2026 17:06

Handle9:

The busway business case assumed that it would reach capacity in 2045. What actually happened was they built it and the people came. It wasn't really a political problem, it was more of a case of grossly underestimating the impact that quality public transport has. We had the same thing happen with rail electrification in Auckland. The "Len Browns trainset" jibes stopped once it actually got into service and was genuinely a massive improvement which attracted more patronage than expected.

Look - this argument is wearing thin.
We were astonished in 1959 when the same thing happened with the harbour bridge.
Hence the clip-ons.
We hear it every time we build a bit of motorway and find it overwhelmed a few years later - and in need of an upgrade.

We spent a very large sum of money on the busway and provisioned it with parking and stations for a foolishly small uptake.

It was either not worth building - for that number of people.

Or it _was_ worth building, because a large number of people needed and would use it - if it was fit for purpose.

Figures show 5000 per day in 2009 - rising to 35,000 now.
That's from a population of 350 000.

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#3493827 19-May-2026 17:08

MikeAqua:

Dragon flies are even cooler from a processing efficiency perspective. They pursue flying prey with an astonishing success rate, with relatively simple but highly refined neurology.

@kingdragonfly Is this correct? Is your neurology highly refined? 😀

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#3493828 19-May-2026 17:11

pdh:

Handle9:

The busway business case assumed that it would reach capacity in 2045. What actually happened was they built it and the people came. It wasn't really a political problem, it was more of a case of grossly underestimating the impact that quality public transport has. We had the same thing happen with rail electrification in Auckland. The "Len Browns trainset" jibes stopped once it actually got into service and was genuinely a massive improvement which attracted more patronage than expected.

Look - this argument is wearing thin.
We were astonished in 1959 when the same thing happened with the harbour bridge.
Hence the clip-ons.
We hear it every time we build a bit of motorway and find it overwhelmed a few years later - and in need of an upgrade.

We spent a very large sum of money on the busway and provisioned it with parking and stations for a foolishly small uptake.

It was either not worth building - for that number of people.

Or it _was_ worth building, because a large number of people needed and would use it - if it was fit for purpose.

Figures show 5000 per day in 2009 - rising to 35,000 now.
That's from a population of 350 000.

So what is the problem with rail then? It solves the scale problem in a way that wheeled vehicles never will.

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#3493832 19-May-2026 17:19

Handle9:

So what is the problem with rail then? It solves the scale problem in a way that wheeled vehicles never will.

They are already freaking out about running the new schedule on the CRL, and that is before it gets popular and needs more service than they are offering on day 1.

Going to the shore would need a new bridge without steep up and down, but still clearance for boats, or else a tunnel that again has to be deep enough and find areas to come up into that will not affect boats. Mt Eden had to be lowered somewhat just to be able to meet up with the tunnel down to the city and one of the stations is stupid deep to allow for the slope to not be too inclined.

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#3493835 19-May-2026 17:23

richms:

Handle9:

So what is the problem with rail then? It solves the scale problem in a way that wheeled vehicles never will.

They are already freaking out about running the new schedule on the CRL, and that is before it gets popular and needs more service than they are offering on day 1.

Going to the shore would need a new bridge without steep up and down, but still clearance for boats, or else a tunnel that again has to be deep enough and find areas to come up into that will not affect boats. Mt Eden had to be lowered somewhat just to be able to meet up with the tunnel down to the city and one of the stations is stupid deep to allow for the slope to not be too inclined.

If there is a design study and it comes back that it's not feasible then that is rather different than the "rail bad wheels good" argument. Those sort of studies would have to be done as part of a business case for the project anyway. What I don't agree with is the argument that rail is inherently flawed.

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#3493837 19-May-2026 17:30

Rail would be the best thing ever to get over the shore, but it will probably never happen because any time they talk about spending money the pearl clutchers are worried about it. I dont think that a single link would be enough tho, really needs to be at least a loop up northwest, across somewhere and around to the existing bus depot areas and back into the CRL to be worth it.

Richard rich.ms

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#3493838 19-May-2026 17:31

pdh:

York's park & ride, for example has 5000 parks at its 6 stations.
York, UK was the last park n ride I used - so it came to mind.
Note that York has a city population about 1/8th Auckland's.)

Not a fair comparison - very little to do with population and commuters. York is one of the UK’s top destinations for domestic and international visitors. It has millions of visitors each year and limited parking means that the park n rides get massive use.

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#3493844 19-May-2026 18:07

richms:

Rail would be the best thing ever to get over the shore, but it will probably never happen because any time they talk about spending money the pearl clutchers are worried about it. I dont think that a single link would be enough tho, really needs to be at least a loop up northwest, across somewhere and around to the existing bus depot areas and back into the CRL to be worth it.

They also need light rail down Dominion Road, absolute insanity that the council had the design and contracts ready to go in 2017, then Labour campaigned on funding it and ended up cancelling it...

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#3493846 19-May-2026 18:20

cddt:

richms:

Rail would be the best thing ever to get over the shore, but it will probably never happen because any time they talk about spending money the pearl clutchers are worried about it. I dont think that a single link would be enough tho, really needs to be at least a loop up northwest, across somewhere and around to the existing bus depot areas and back into the CRL to be worth it.

They also need light rail down Dominion Road, absolute insanity that it the council had the design and contracts ready to go in 2017, then Labour campaigned on funding it and ended up cancelling it...

If that fairly straightforward project hadn’t turned into a bloated mess of a pseudo-metro it’d be finished and we’d be taking about where to build the next line.

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