February 27, 2025 • 15 mins
March Madness is upon us – which means it’s the busiest time of year for anyone trying to get anywhere.
It usually marks the end of the summer holiday period – school and university is back in session, and most people are back at work.
So whether you’re biking, driving, or taking a train or bus – it's nightmarish.
But it does lead back to that age old question – how do we solve our traffic problems?
Today on The Front Page, we’re joined by Matt Lowrie from Greater Auckland to look at some of the possible solutions.
Follow The Front Page on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can read more about this and other stories in the New Zealand Herald, online at nzherald.co.nz, or tune in to news bulletins across the NZME network.
Host: Chelsea Daniels
Sound Engineer/Producer: Richard Martin
Producer: Ethan Sills
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Yoda.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
daily podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Presented by the New Zealand Herald.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
March madness is upon us, which means it's the busiest
time of year for anyone trying to get anywhere. It
usually marks the end of the summer holiday period. School
and university is back in session and most people are
heading back to work. So whether you're biking, driving, or
taking a train or bus, it is night marish. But
it does lead back to that age old question how
(00:39):
do we solve our traffic problems? Today on the Front Page,
we're joined by Matt Lowry from Greater Auckland to.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Look at some of the possible solutions.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
So, Matt, we always love to find someone or something
to blame with problems like this. Auckland's Mayor Wayne Brown
has pointed the finger at road cones mostly for example.
But do we actually know what causes traffic jams and congestion?
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Yeah? I mean, ultimately it's too many people trying to
use the same piece of road or service. And so
if you have too many people and not enough capacity
or not enough alternatives, then you get congestion and you
get frustrated.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Well, Auckland does have been bitching about traffic for decades,
probably since the first motorway was built. Why does it
seem like we haven't done much to change anything.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
There's a lot has.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Been done that The issue is that Auckland has grown
massively over even just the last decade, and so there's
only so much infrastructure that can be built, particularly when
this stuff costs a lot of money. It takes a
long time to deliver, you know, that's hard to keep
up with the demand of.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Essentially, is it time to start introducing congestion charges? I
know we all love talking about that.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
Yeah, I think it is.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
We've seen in cities where it has been introduced that
it has made a big difference, and the most recent
one of those is New York, and New York is
seeing substantial crops in congestion and that means people who
are driving and taking having faster journeys. But it's also
not impacted local businesses and what have you that have
that was you know, people were worried about. So it
has been beneficial and it does raise revenue, and that revenue,
(02:17):
as you can be used to fund other infrastructure or
other services that can help make it easier to get around.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Yeah, but when I think of New York, I think
about the subway system. Do we have something similar here?
Speaker 3 (02:27):
We don't, not directly, but we will have the city
round and shortly, which will make our rail network significantly better.
And then you know, we have the Northern Busway, which
is which is kind of like around network, which is great,
and we've got more of those coming, but we also
need to build a lot more of them that you know,
that will cost money, takes time, and one of the
things that congestion pricing can do is encourage people to
(02:48):
think about.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
How their travel and when their travel.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
So you know, sometimes there are people who are traveling
who simply could delay their trip by an hour or
something like that to go to where they might be
wanted to go, and that might be enough to help
these congestion. We see the impact that a slight reduction
and traffic and it feels like a lot, but it's
only a slight reduction in real numbers that school holidays
have and that means that as soon as school holidays
(03:10):
come around, the roads are generally a lot freer.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
There's still some congestion.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
It's still not like a free flow condition, but it
is easier to get around, and that's a small percentage
of users changing their habits and the travel. And if
congestion pricing can enable that, you know, we could have
school holiday levels of traffic all the time.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
It's not a surprisingly new thing.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
You're just encouraging people to change their day or do
something differently or better still, get on a bus. There
are options, you know.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Get on a bus.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
Browns take more people.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Yeah, but therein lies the problem with our public transport.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
The main problem is people just don't want to do it.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
I remember having a conversation here on this on this
program and the feedback that came through from people.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
When they tried to.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
People when we talk about congestion charges, how much like
what are some of the numbers being thrown around?
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Yeah, generally it's potentially a couple of dollars per journey,
and that means you might travel in an out of,
or through congestion zone.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
And so it's a cost to travel through that. It's
not a huge roup. It's also not in significant over
a long period of time.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
But the exact amounts have to be whipped out and
whipped through that The previous estimations were sort of in
the in a few dollars to three four dollars, depending
on the time of day, the location.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
Per journey.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
What has patronage been like on Auckland's public transport?
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Has it picked up post COVID not.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Fully, So we're back to sort of around eighty five
to ninety percent of what it was post COVID pre COVID,
I should say, but what we're seeing is that there
are a wider range of people using public transport, but
they're using it often at different times. So where particularly
on things like crosstown buses or buses that aren't going
to the city center or trains, those trips are actually
higher than they wear pre COVID on the weekends off,
(05:16):
so those trips are there are more people using public
transport now than there were back prior to COVID. Where
the drop has been is in the sort of commuters
to the city center, and that's really what's driven those
numbers to change.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Has anyone actually ever crunched the numbers and worked out
how much it had cost to make public transport completely free.
Speaker 4 (05:37):
Yeah, I don't have the.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Exact number of the topic, but it's hundreds of millions
of dollars a year to do that. And the challenge
has always been with this discussion is what's the best
use of that money. Is the best use of that
money to make public transport free and make it easy.
But the problem that you come with that is if
you have a lot more people using it at buses
are also also have congestion issues and capacity issues, so
(05:59):
our trains do we have enough capacity.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
In our public transport system to be able to cope
with that?
Speaker 3 (06:04):
And what has been seen in some cities that have
tried this is that the buses and the trains get
so forward people who are who might be instead of
walking a short distance or cypling a short distance or whatever,
they switched to using the public transport system that clogs
the public transport system up, which means that it's not
very usable for people who might want to use it
somewhere else, and so you don't necessarily get the beach
(06:26):
shift in usage or in behavior that you might expect
you to get if you just gather for free, and
that money is money that could be used to help
improve the system well.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Organs train services will have been suspended for almost one
hundred days between Christmas and January twenty twenty six as
improvements are made to the rail network before the City
rail Link is complete.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Have we seen much disruption here so far?
Speaker 4 (07:03):
Yeah, there's been.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Huge disruption that has occurred within the round it within
the last five years.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
Really since about twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
We've always had disruption that's occurred, but the last five
years it has been quite significant with various amounts of you
know what called rebuald work, with various issues that have
had to have cropped up and needed to be fixed,
and these often take quite some time. That is still
being worked through, and their intention is to hype, is
to get that finished before the City rail and opens up.
And if you actually look at what's going on and why,
it's really frustrating as a user to have to experience
(07:31):
that disruption. We're effectively building a whole almost a brand
new railway system in the middle of that times because
they're having to dig out all the foundations, relay all
the tracks because you know, some of these foundations are
of the tracts are over one hundred years old, they're
not in great condition, they need to be replaced. And
now we actually seen similar things happen and a lot
(07:51):
of other cities around the world where these networks are
having to be gone to undergo quite significant maintenance and
repair cycles. In Australia number of lines that can think
of that are doing that right now, and other countries
as well.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
That has to be frustrating for people who usually do
or do rely on those services. Hey, do you think
there's any changing that attitude, particularly when I guess rail
network seems to be shut down all the time, blood
buses can't turn up late, and I mean, what do
we do?
Speaker 4 (08:20):
Yeah, it's really it's a really tough thing.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
It's hard to justify someone using a public transport system
when it's unreliable. And so the two biggest drivers of
public transport usage is the frequency of services and obviously
where they go to is important, but the frequency of
services and the reliability, and so we've taken the reliability
away quite substantially.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
Buses.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
We also had the reliability issue last year or a
couple of years ago when we had a bus driver shortage.
Those that bus driver shortage has been resolved and actually
if you look at the bus the numbers, the bus
usage is almost back to what it was pre COVID,
so that the bus usage is about ninety seven percent
of what it was prior to COVID versus trains and
ferries are trains are sort of more in the sixty percent,
So that's where we've talked earlier about the up to
(09:03):
ninety percent of pre COVID levels, but buses are actually
closer to one hundred and that's because they are more reliable.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
Again, they are.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Moving people that The issue with buses is often that
they get stuck in congestion, and the solution to that
is generally we need more bus priorities, a bus lanes,
things like that that allow buses to avoid that congestion.
And that means that when they do that, they'd be reliable,
they're faster, and they become more intrecutive. And we just
have to look at the Northern Busway as a great
example of a very high level bit of structure. More
(09:32):
people travel on the Northern Busway than any other bus
route of the country by a substantial margin.
Speaker 5 (09:44):
There's no such thing as a sure thing in construction.
Nothing is guaranteed. And I've been around long enough to
see things come and whack you around the head when
you thought you heard everything resolved. And I've stopped in
my career some time ago, promising ministers there's certainty because
there's a danger they'll be disappointed. If you look at
(10:05):
any project, you have a whole series of traditional construction risks.
You have a procurement risk, numbers are always different once
you get into contract. You have a design risk. We
had a big underground risk where nearly all the city
ratlink is built underground. So once you go underground, you're
going to find things you didn't anticipate. We've found faults
(10:27):
and various things we didn't anticipate.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
What are we expecting the CRL to be up and
running by the way, Yeah, current.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Planning is that it will be open early next year.
The executator has not been set. That depends on how
testing goes. And there's a bunch of work that can
transport has to do inters, training drivers and setting up
their own processes. So that stuff is underway. But the
indications are currently probably early next year, maybe February to April,
but that's.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
Not locked in yet.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Well, given all the red tape there is around this stuff,
do you think it's enough time from saying now to
February next April for this to be sorted out?
Speaker 4 (11:03):
Yeah? These level crossings won't be sorted out by then.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Part of the issue with resolving them, particularly that six
years mentioned in Southakland, is that they can't all be
done one at the same time, because that would mean
that there's no crossings available for people to get across
it around it, So you have to do some and
then wait for that to be finished before you can
start the next one. So that's why that time frame
is in place. But those will be resolved at least
relatively shortly. You know, six years is a long time,
(11:26):
but it's still relatantly shortened the ground scheme of things.
But there is currently as I mentioned, no there is
twenty level crossings on the Western Line.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
There's no plans for those.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
And the Western Line is actually going to experience huge
benefits from the Cereal because it have much shorter Juney
times to the city center and there's gonna be a
lot of usage and not going to be able an
increased capacity very much.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
From what it is currently.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
I mentioned earlier.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Wayne Brown's anti traffic cone stance is just this week
called for a pause on the sixty million dollar Victorious
Street upgrade, which is adding cycle paths from Sky City
to Albert Park and reducing traffic to one lane each way.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Do you think his concerns here are valid?
Speaker 4 (12:05):
No, I don't.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
This has been a plan that's been in place for
over a decade. It's twenty twelve that original Council Ridgie
signed Blok. It was confirmed again back in twenty twenty
that this was a preferred option.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
And what's recapning here is Victoria.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Street is where one of the main entrances of the
t y Heritaria station for the City railminkers. We're going
to have thousands and thousands of people pouring out of
that station every single day, and the upgrade that's going
on is about making sure there's enough capacity within that pedestrial,
within the streets, and within the parts to handle all
these people that are going to be using the trains
that now from the City railant when it does open
(12:40):
in the future. And it's about making the city center
more walkable, more pedestrian for it. And what we're seeing
is when we do that in other areas of the
city center where individuals have happened, that we see increases
in usage in retail it occurs, and better outcomes for businesses,
for residents and to make courage more people to use
(13:01):
it as well.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
It feels like we're constantly talking about how unequipped to
Auckland's roading network is for its population size, and we're
only getting bigger. Is there any hope on the horizon?
And don't tell me that everyone needs to get on bikes?
Speaker 3 (13:15):
No, I don't think you've runs on bikes and even
a small a smaller proportion using bikes at five ten
percent would make a huge difference to how Aucklander is
get around it, and really is we need a wide
range of options. You know, we need better better bike options,
we need better public transport options, and we need to
make it easier to It's hard to make it easier
to drive, but we can, through things like congestion pricing,
(13:37):
make it free up the roads a bit and that
by encouraging people to either is it not travel at
the side at peak times or change out they travel.
And so it's really not a single solution. There's a
wide range of solutions that are required.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
Yeah. The challenge. One of the.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Challenges with Auckland is because of our geography, we have
a lot of pinch points on our roading network that
other cities don't necessarily have, but that means a lot
of traffic is funneled into into and full of crossings,
and so for you to think about on coming into
the dismus you've got, it's only a can full of
roads that.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
People can actually use, and that funnels all.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
That traffic into very narrow corridors, and so it's very
hard to avoid congestion completely when you've got that sort
of situation occurring.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
Looking at road options, there's very few options.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
That you could build that for that you do, particularly
anything affordably betwood, that you make any material difference to
congestion with an auckland. So it's really about providing more
options for people, is the key.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Thanks for joining us, Matt Problem.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
That's it for this episode of The Front Page. You
can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
at enzadherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is
produced by Ethan Seals and Richard Martin, who is also
our sound engineer.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
I'm Chelsea Daniels.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you
get your podcasts, and tune in on Money Day for
another look behind the headlines.
Yoda.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
daily podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Presented by the New Zealand Herald.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
March madness is upon us, which means it's the busiest
time of year for anyone trying to get anywhere. It
usually marks the end of the summer holiday period. School
and university is back in session and most people are
heading back to work. So whether you're biking, driving, or
taking a train or bus, it is night marish. But
it does lead back to that age old question how
(00:39):
do we solve our traffic problems? Today on the Front Page,
we're joined by Matt Lowry from Greater Auckland to.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Look at some of the possible solutions.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
So, Matt, we always love to find someone or something
to blame with problems like this. Auckland's Mayor Wayne Brown
has pointed the finger at road cones mostly for example.
But do we actually know what causes traffic jams and congestion?
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Yeah? I mean, ultimately it's too many people trying to
use the same piece of road or service. And so
if you have too many people and not enough capacity
or not enough alternatives, then you get congestion and you
get frustrated.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Well, Auckland does have been bitching about traffic for decades,
probably since the first motorway was built. Why does it
seem like we haven't done much to change anything.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
There's a lot has.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Been done that The issue is that Auckland has grown
massively over even just the last decade, and so there's
only so much infrastructure that can be built, particularly when
this stuff costs a lot of money. It takes a
long time to deliver, you know, that's hard to keep
up with the demand of.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Essentially, is it time to start introducing congestion charges? I
know we all love talking about that.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
Yeah, I think it is.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
We've seen in cities where it has been introduced that
it has made a big difference, and the most recent
one of those is New York, and New York is
seeing substantial crops in congestion and that means people who
are driving and taking having faster journeys. But it's also
not impacted local businesses and what have you that have
that was you know, people were worried about. So it
has been beneficial and it does raise revenue, and that revenue,
(02:17):
as you can be used to fund other infrastructure or
other services that can help make it easier to get around.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Yeah, but when I think of New York, I think
about the subway system. Do we have something similar here?
Speaker 3 (02:27):
We don't, not directly, but we will have the city
round and shortly, which will make our rail network significantly better.
And then you know, we have the Northern Busway, which
is which is kind of like around network, which is great,
and we've got more of those coming, but we also
need to build a lot more of them that you know,
that will cost money, takes time, and one of the
things that congestion pricing can do is encourage people to
(02:48):
think about.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
How their travel and when their travel.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
So you know, sometimes there are people who are traveling
who simply could delay their trip by an hour or
something like that to go to where they might be
wanted to go, and that might be enough to help
these congestion. We see the impact that a slight reduction
and traffic and it feels like a lot, but it's
only a slight reduction in real numbers that school holidays
have and that means that as soon as school holidays
(03:10):
come around, the roads are generally a lot freer.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
There's still some congestion.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
It's still not like a free flow condition, but it
is easier to get around, and that's a small percentage
of users changing their habits and the travel. And if
congestion pricing can enable that, you know, we could have
school holiday levels of traffic all the time.
Speaker 4 (03:34):
It's not a surprisingly new thing.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
You're just encouraging people to change their day or do
something differently or better still, get on a bus. There
are options, you know.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Get on a bus.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
Browns take more people.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Yeah, but therein lies the problem with our public transport.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
The main problem is people just don't want to do it.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
I remember having a conversation here on this on this
program and the feedback that came through from people.
Speaker 4 (04:05):
When they tried to.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
People when we talk about congestion charges, how much like
what are some of the numbers being thrown around?
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Yeah, generally it's potentially a couple of dollars per journey,
and that means you might travel in an out of,
or through congestion zone.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
And so it's a cost to travel through that. It's
not a huge roup. It's also not in significant over
a long period of time.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
But the exact amounts have to be whipped out and
whipped through that The previous estimations were sort of in
the in a few dollars to three four dollars, depending
on the time of day, the location.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
Per journey.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
What has patronage been like on Auckland's public transport?
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Has it picked up post COVID not.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Fully, So we're back to sort of around eighty five
to ninety percent of what it was post COVID pre COVID,
I should say, but what we're seeing is that there
are a wider range of people using public transport, but
they're using it often at different times. So where particularly
on things like crosstown buses or buses that aren't going
to the city center or trains, those trips are actually
higher than they wear pre COVID on the weekends off,
(05:16):
so those trips are there are more people using public
transport now than there were back prior to COVID. Where
the drop has been is in the sort of commuters
to the city center, and that's really what's driven those
numbers to change.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Has anyone actually ever crunched the numbers and worked out
how much it had cost to make public transport completely free.
Speaker 4 (05:37):
Yeah, I don't have the.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Exact number of the topic, but it's hundreds of millions
of dollars a year to do that. And the challenge
has always been with this discussion is what's the best
use of that money. Is the best use of that
money to make public transport free and make it easy.
But the problem that you come with that is if
you have a lot more people using it at buses
are also also have congestion issues and capacity issues, so
(05:59):
our trains do we have enough capacity.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
In our public transport system to be able to cope
with that?
Speaker 3 (06:04):
And what has been seen in some cities that have
tried this is that the buses and the trains get
so forward people who are who might be instead of
walking a short distance or cypling a short distance or whatever,
they switched to using the public transport system that clogs
the public transport system up, which means that it's not
very usable for people who might want to use it
somewhere else, and so you don't necessarily get the beach
(06:26):
shift in usage or in behavior that you might expect
you to get if you just gather for free, and
that money is money that could be used to help
improve the system well.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Organs train services will have been suspended for almost one
hundred days between Christmas and January twenty twenty six as
improvements are made to the rail network before the City
rail Link is complete.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Have we seen much disruption here so far?
Speaker 4 (07:03):
Yeah, there's been.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Huge disruption that has occurred within the round it within
the last five years.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
Really since about twenty twenty.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
We've always had disruption that's occurred, but the last five
years it has been quite significant with various amounts of you
know what called rebuald work, with various issues that have
had to have cropped up and needed to be fixed,
and these often take quite some time. That is still
being worked through, and their intention is to hype, is
to get that finished before the City rail and opens up.
And if you actually look at what's going on and why,
it's really frustrating as a user to have to experience
(07:31):
that disruption. We're effectively building a whole almost a brand
new railway system in the middle of that times because
they're having to dig out all the foundations, relay all
the tracks because you know, some of these foundations are
of the tracts are over one hundred years old, they're
not in great condition, they need to be replaced. And
now we actually seen similar things happen and a lot
(07:51):
of other cities around the world where these networks are
having to be gone to undergo quite significant maintenance and
repair cycles. In Australia number of lines that can think
of that are doing that right now, and other countries
as well.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
That has to be frustrating for people who usually do
or do rely on those services. Hey, do you think
there's any changing that attitude, particularly when I guess rail
network seems to be shut down all the time, blood
buses can't turn up late, and I mean, what do
we do?
Speaker 4 (08:20):
Yeah, it's really it's a really tough thing.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
It's hard to justify someone using a public transport system
when it's unreliable. And so the two biggest drivers of
public transport usage is the frequency of services and obviously
where they go to is important, but the frequency of
services and the reliability, and so we've taken the reliability
away quite substantially.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
Buses.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
We also had the reliability issue last year or a
couple of years ago when we had a bus driver shortage.
Those that bus driver shortage has been resolved and actually
if you look at the bus the numbers, the bus
usage is almost back to what it was pre COVID,
so that the bus usage is about ninety seven percent
of what it was prior to COVID versus trains and
ferries are trains are sort of more in the sixty percent,
So that's where we've talked earlier about the up to
(09:03):
ninety percent of pre COVID levels, but buses are actually
closer to one hundred and that's because they are more reliable.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
Again, they are.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Moving people that The issue with buses is often that
they get stuck in congestion, and the solution to that
is generally we need more bus priorities, a bus lanes,
things like that that allow buses to avoid that congestion.
And that means that when they do that, they'd be reliable,
they're faster, and they become more intrecutive. And we just
have to look at the Northern Busway as a great
example of a very high level bit of structure. More
(09:32):
people travel on the Northern Busway than any other bus
route of the country by a substantial margin.
Speaker 5 (09:44):
There's no such thing as a sure thing in construction.
Nothing is guaranteed. And I've been around long enough to
see things come and whack you around the head when
you thought you heard everything resolved. And I've stopped in
my career some time ago, promising ministers there's certainty because
there's a danger they'll be disappointed. If you look at
(10:05):
any project, you have a whole series of traditional construction risks.
You have a procurement risk, numbers are always different once
you get into contract. You have a design risk. We
had a big underground risk where nearly all the city
ratlink is built underground. So once you go underground, you're
going to find things you didn't anticipate. We've found faults
(10:27):
and various things we didn't anticipate.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
What are we expecting the CRL to be up and
running by the way, Yeah, current.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Planning is that it will be open early next year.
The executator has not been set. That depends on how
testing goes. And there's a bunch of work that can
transport has to do inters, training drivers and setting up
their own processes. So that stuff is underway. But the
indications are currently probably early next year, maybe February to April,
but that's.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
Not locked in yet.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Well, given all the red tape there is around this stuff,
do you think it's enough time from saying now to
February next April for this to be sorted out?
Speaker 4 (11:03):
Yeah? These level crossings won't be sorted out by then.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Part of the issue with resolving them, particularly that six
years mentioned in Southakland, is that they can't all be
done one at the same time, because that would mean
that there's no crossings available for people to get across
it around it, So you have to do some and
then wait for that to be finished before you can
start the next one. So that's why that time frame
is in place. But those will be resolved at least
relatively shortly. You know, six years is a long time,
(11:26):
but it's still relatantly shortened the ground scheme of things.
But there is currently as I mentioned, no there is
twenty level crossings on the Western Line.
Speaker 4 (11:33):
There's no plans for those.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
And the Western Line is actually going to experience huge
benefits from the Cereal because it have much shorter Juney
times to the city center and there's gonna be a
lot of usage and not going to be able an
increased capacity very much.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
From what it is currently.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
I mentioned earlier.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Wayne Brown's anti traffic cone stance is just this week
called for a pause on the sixty million dollar Victorious
Street upgrade, which is adding cycle paths from Sky City
to Albert Park and reducing traffic to one lane each way.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Do you think his concerns here are valid?
Speaker 4 (12:05):
No, I don't.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
This has been a plan that's been in place for
over a decade. It's twenty twelve that original Council Ridgie
signed Blok. It was confirmed again back in twenty twenty
that this was a preferred option.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
And what's recapning here is Victoria.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Street is where one of the main entrances of the
t y Heritaria station for the City railminkers. We're going
to have thousands and thousands of people pouring out of
that station every single day, and the upgrade that's going
on is about making sure there's enough capacity within that pedestrial,
within the streets, and within the parts to handle all
these people that are going to be using the trains
that now from the City railant when it does open
(12:40):
in the future. And it's about making the city center
more walkable, more pedestrian for it. And what we're seeing
is when we do that in other areas of the
city center where individuals have happened, that we see increases
in usage in retail it occurs, and better outcomes for businesses,
for residents and to make courage more people to use
(13:01):
it as well.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
It feels like we're constantly talking about how unequipped to
Auckland's roading network is for its population size, and we're
only getting bigger. Is there any hope on the horizon?
And don't tell me that everyone needs to get on bikes?
Speaker 3 (13:15):
No, I don't think you've runs on bikes and even
a small a smaller proportion using bikes at five ten
percent would make a huge difference to how Aucklander is
get around it, and really is we need a wide
range of options. You know, we need better better bike options,
we need better public transport options, and we need to
make it easier to It's hard to make it easier
to drive, but we can, through things like congestion pricing,
(13:37):
make it free up the roads a bit and that
by encouraging people to either is it not travel at
the side at peak times or change out they travel.
And so it's really not a single solution. There's a
wide range of solutions that are required.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
Yeah. The challenge. One of the.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Challenges with Auckland is because of our geography, we have
a lot of pinch points on our roading network that
other cities don't necessarily have, but that means a lot
of traffic is funneled into into and full of crossings,
and so for you to think about on coming into
the dismus you've got, it's only a can full of
roads that.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
People can actually use, and that funnels all.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
That traffic into very narrow corridors, and so it's very
hard to avoid congestion completely when you've got that sort
of situation occurring.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
Looking at road options, there's very few options.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
That you could build that for that you do, particularly
anything affordably betwood, that you make any material difference to
congestion with an auckland. So it's really about providing more
options for people, is the key.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Thanks for joining us, Matt Problem.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
That's it for this episode of The Front Page. You
can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
at enzadherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is
produced by Ethan Seals and Richard Martin, who is also
our sound engineer.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
I'm Chelsea Daniels.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you
get your podcasts, and tune in on Money Day for
another look behind the headlines.
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