Title makes it sound like they just found an unknown tunnel and are investigating what it's doing there.
this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2024
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It was undermining constitutional foundation
That's what I thought at first. I watched too much Wellington Paranormal.
Maybe it'd be good, but this just feels like the Boris Johnson method of:
- announce some fantastical massive project that'll never get built but will pull some headlines for a bit
- funnel some public money to cronies for contracting services to do a business case
- quietly shelve it until it's time to pull out something else for the same effect.
If they want to reduce traffic congestion, expand public transport and make it more reliable and cheaper.
This is being explored as an alternative to a second Terrace and Mt Vic tunnels, and sounds like just an idea for now.
We desperately need to improve access to that area though, getting out to Miramar, Seatoun and Titahi Bay is a nightmare at times, including on weekends.
And public transport can only do so much, it's not an option for everyone.
It's not an option because we neglect it to the point it's not usable for a lot of trips.
That doesn't mean improvements aren't possible, and they would help free up capacity on the existing road network. Roads are such a poor investment at this point, especially ones like these
Can I use it for when I take my kayak out there? 5.5m long boat shouldn't take up too much space in the bus, right?
Sorry, not sure how investing in more PT options would require you to take a kayak on the bus.
That's not what I asked you.
I'm pointing out why I won't be taking the bus if I'm heading out that way.
So then don't, I didn't say it must replace every single trip for it to have value
The whole point of my reply was pointing out why public transport isn't an option for me, and why, no matter how good it gets, we will need to upgrade our road infrastructure eventually.
Absolutely nobody has said it won't help.
I think their point is that we don't necessarily need to upgrade road infrastructure. The majority of the people on roads could be using public transport.
Not the ones carrying kayaks or plumbing vans or disabled people that can't get to a bus or train stop. But imagine how much better traffic would be for those people if all the other people were on public transport!
Thank you. Doesn't even have to be the majority, there's studies out there that suggest moving as little as 10-15% of trips out of cars can take traffic from jammed up to free flowing. Although the more the better, motorways are expensive as hell and car dependency creates all sorts of wider problems.
Given what a mess Wellington traffic is, especially getting in and out of the city, I don't think many people are driving at the moment when public transport is an option.
I honestly think most of the people who could use PT are already on it, at least in and out of the city.
Public transport is expensive. If you are a couple working in Wellington, it's cheaper to drive in one car and pay for parking than it is to both take the train.
And these days with second hand Leafs being cheap, even on your own it's probably cheaper to drive. Public transport seems priced so that just enough people use it.
Auckland transport estimated about $300m extra funding a year would allow free public transport (assuming no additional services). I remember leading into the election last year there was controversy because National devided to spend 7B on roads people didn't think were necessary.
We could take that money, and pay for free public transport in Auckland for 20 years, and still have 1B left over for extra pothole fixing. This is money currently allocated to roads that no one wants.
I don't think we have reached the peak of public transport usage, not by a long way. Though I am admitedly only talking about one side of the story. I could write another comment about things I've not talked about here that mean free for all probably isn't the right answer, but my point was just that subsidising public transport further is still a good payoff. Currently using public transport as a user is not a financial no-brainer, so many people who could use it still aren't.
And despite that, a public transport journey is heavily subsidised, and the leaf driver is actually paying their own way via RUCs.
I don't understand how public transport is so expensive.
That's a good point. Pre-COVID there were about 70,000 journeys on trains alone per day in Wellington (based on something I remember reading years back when trains were broken). If those people are paying say $5 per trip, and the regional council and local councils pay $5 per trip (I seem to recall council subsidies being about half?), then that's $700,000 per day in revenue.
If we assume weekends are lower lets just look at about 250 work days a year. That's $175m per year to run the trains.
It would be interesting to know where the bulk of that sits. Is it cost of staff? Bill from Kiwirail for using lines? Debt costs for borrowing to buy units?
Depending on what exactly the bulk of the cost is would change what's worthwhile. Mostly staff cost? That would probably grow mostly proportionally as you add more passengers. Mostly kiwirail costs? The more trains you run the less it should cost per trip.
Though we could run free PT for 50 years if we don't build that $10B tunnel...
I suspect labour costs are the single biggest driver, you're not being paid to drive your car after all.
In theory, but a train (at peak times) has hundreds of people, two ticket checkers, and one driver. It probably costs $200k per year to run staff for a single train for 8 hours (say, $70k for a driver which are trained internally, and $55k for each ticket taker making a bit over minimum wage), plus some control people, cleaners, etc. Say $250k per train. Trains run almost 24/7 but probably 1 less staff outside of peak times, lets say double it to cover 24/7.
Let's ignore intercity and say each train line is an hour long max. Two hours return trip, trains every twenty minutes, so 6 trains to a line. 3 main lines = 18 trains + say 5 more for backups and the shorter Melling line.
18 trains x $500k per year = $9m a year. Probably some additional staff still. Let's double it - less management staff but higher salaries. So let's say $18m or even $20m.
This is still a tiny fraction of the $175m annual cost estimated earlier.
What dies a train carriage cost? It seems a couple of million per car ($210m for 70 cars).
If it was all borrowed, and assuming 6% loan over 20 years or so, it would also be less than $20m per year.
So far we have $40M in costs. Even if we assume I've underestimated or forgotten things in these categories and double it to $80M, we still have $95m to account for.
I can't think of other major costs except kiwirail charges. Is kiwirail charging almost $100m a year for Wellington to run (pretty) light commuter rail?
Edit: I just saw in my link that central government/NZTA paid for 90% of the trains in Wellington, so that cuts $40m off the cost leaving $135m to kiwirail or otherwise unaccounted for.
There's something else to consider, and that is all the people you lure off the road and onto public transport are not only now costing you money, but you also lose the revenue from them driving their vehicle, not only the RUCs or fuel excise, but the GST on all the running costs.
RUC isn't really extra money. Vehicles using roads damage them. Less vehicles means less potholes meaning less repair cost so to a certain extent that counteracts it (I doubt it's 1 for 1 but a large chunk least).
Plus we already pay for roads through rates (to some extent, councils also get money from RUC and petrol tax), no reason you can't socialise the road costs some more once you get more optional traffic off the road. Sure higher rates but you're getting free PT.
Another option often talked about is tolls. You could do that to recover the shortfall, though personally I'm against tolls in most cases as it feels like double dipping (we already have user pays through RUC and petrol tax, why not use the system we have).
As I mentioned earlier I'm not actually convinced that free public trandport is the right path, this was more a thought experiment (and I'm left wondering why running trains is so expensive!).
Even of the trains aren't free, it's mathematically true that every person who takes PT instead of driving reduces congestion by that amount.
It's not all that complicated a tasks to work out which has better value. If the money spent on roads will not reduce congestion by as much as the same amount spent on PT, then it's a fool's errand.
I think if you halved public transport costs (so it's clearly cheaper than driving) then you'll get a bunch more users. I knew many people during half-price fares that used public transport when before they didn't. I'd have full support for returning to the half price fares (so long as you had some way of mitigating pocmeting this since public transport is run by private companies since the law was changed to prevent councils running it themselves).
However, I'm less convinced that the second half of that cash is well spent. We would likely get most of the benefits from half price fares. You probably won't get the same benefit for money spent as you would for the first half, so you have to consider what that money would otherwise be spent on.
As an example, would you rather have free PT, or half price PT and rail to the airport?
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A tunnel that long would tale a similar amount of time and money as an underground metro... And have significantly less utility and economic benefits...
Also it will make traffic worse, not better, as it will result in more people driving...
Definitely should dig a second one for rail as well.
Do a first one for rail and then if it really seems necessary maybe we can discuss one for cars
Rail should go first. Or pedestrians.
Sure, but hopefully the car tunnel entrance won't cost too much to tear down when people realise it's a waste of land later
Tearing down the Wellington Urban Motorway would probably be better value for money.
Wellington isn't shrinking though.
Not yet... 😅
Lol From the sound of the headline, I thought someone had dug an unauthorized 4km tunnel and it had just been discovered. Was thinking WTF
It's an amazing idea, but the seismic implications are enough to discourage it, I'd have thought.
How the heck does one build it with a straight face when we have so many quakes and have been expecting something major for decades?
I mean, we've got no shortage of tunnels in Wellington, many of which have been around for over a hundred years, and withstood many earthquakes already. Building a quake resilient tunnel can definitely be done.
So there's 3 tunnels that we run vehicles through, day to day (that im aware of). Terrace tunnel, mt Vic and the bus tunnel. The city would struggle with either of them collapsing, and I understand the ones under mt Vic are already in dire straits, going by some of the points hopeful mayors that they were campaigning on. I'm no expert but your claim feels like a huge stretch.
As for earthquakes, there's one that was readily found via a search in 1855 and that "considerably reshaped the geography", so, respectfully, I completely disagree. https://www.wcl.govt.nz/heritage/earthquakes.html
edit sorry, I should have clarified earlier, it's the major quakes I'm concerned about. Not the frequent little ones
You're forgetting Karori, and that's just vehicle tunnels. There's also the many train tunnels around Wellington.
I realised there's the cable car too, although that's a funny great area.
Certainly the prospect of building a tunnel under the guts of the city for several km (where it's likely to cross a fault line) is edging towards this kind of nightmare: https://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/files/2011/03/10_10-Canterbury-22.jpg
I can't see how a tunnel would sustain that, which seems like a death knell for the whole idea...
It's certainly been done, it's not an insurmountable obstacle.
Earthquakes tend to go around voids, interestingly enough.
Let's pretend this government is going to stay in power for thirty years.
I predict this project wouldn't be completed in their tenure if they approved it tomorrow. Look at how long it took them to bypass Cambridge on SH1 FFS.
Listening to The Kaka this morning, Bernard Hickey has a nice take, one primary reason is that this will save politicians approx 15min between the airport and parliament...the cynicism made me LOL
It would save me fifteen minutes every day too, to be fair.
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