I am not sure light rail is the right answer for a small country like NZ. I think dedicated bus roads and frequent buses are easier and cheaper to put in place and run.

[–] Dave 13 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'm not sure the size of the country matters that much. 1/3 of the country live in Auckland, so the population in that one city is far higher than anywhere else in the country.

We should be comparing against similar sized cities in other countries.

As an example, Adelaide is slightly smaller in population than Auckland but has light rail. The gold coast has half Auckland's population, but has light rail. Calgary in Canada is slightly smaller in population than Auckland but has light rail.

Light rail makes sense when you need to move a lot of people over a specific section, such as to and from an airport. Anyone in Wellington knows how hard it is to get bus drivers, but light rail can carry several times the number of people per driver.

I've never read a cost/benefit analysis on a potential $30 billion to build this (as per article, they don't really know what the end cost could have been but this was quoted as a possible upper limit), it seems kinda crazy for a 20km track. But at the same time, it seems they were purchasing new land to build it. Given skyrocketing house prices in Auckland since 2017, I can see how buying people's properties could have been a hard to estimate number.

If this could have cost up to $30 billion, can we get a subway for $30 billion and avoid paying people for land?

[–] TagMeInSkipIGotThis 3 points 9 months ago

This is way out of date but its talking about cities in Europe that both have, and don't have underground systems.

https://www.skyscrapercity.com/threads/misc-largest-cities-without-metro-subway-and-smallest-cities-with-it.404033/

Back then Belgrade was guessed at being the largest without an underground, but they note small cities like Lausanne, 130k center, but including wider population 320k were getting a subway. Or Rennes which had a wider population of 550k at the time and had a subway system. Now, they're not digging on a volcanic field so perhaps it was easy to do, but in terms of Europe, 1.6m without an underground system of some kind is a slight aberration.

Of course, there's cities in Asia where there's 10+ million without an underground either so on pure population its not unusual at all :)

[–] awwwyissss@lemm.ee 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

New Zealand is about the same size as Japan, it can stretch from Florida to Boston on a map.

[–] TagMeInSkipIGotThis 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

That's something a lot of folks both in & out of NZ don't appreciate. We are very long; that's why you can wear shorts in Paihia in June while its freezing in Gore!

So geographically, in terms of sea crossings we have it easier than Japan in only having to really consider 1 - but their's are much shorter (and shallower?) crossings so they were able to bridge where we can neither bridge nor tunnel.

But also, in terms of mass transit there is absolutely no need for NZ to consider it anyway as we just don't have anything near a comparable population. So the routes we have to consider are much, much shorter and contained within distinct metropolitan areas.^1^ Where Light Rail shines is by being 3-4 times more capacity in a single unit than a bus, hopefully having much faster acceleration & deceleration and being routed ideally on an exclusive right of way.

Yeah, busways can be exclusive as well, but every bus requires a driver; and we've just been through a period of driver shortage destroying schedules around the country so its hard to see moar busses being a great long term solution.

1 Though if we could speed up regional rail^2^ there's things in the possible category like commutes from Hawkes Bay -> Wellington, Bay of Plenty -> Auckland. And in some of those areas there are routes that could probably provide a convenient railcar now - eg Waipukurau -> Napier.

2 Queensland has narrow gauge like us and with tilt technology I think was looking at getting trainsets that could go up to 170km/h. Other than that NZ would have to adjust all of our rail network to standard gauge which would also require updating all the rolling stock so with all the short term thinking in government would never be palatable.