Congestion Free Network (CFN) - 2020 Rough Order Costs

Today I'm going to get into some of the details for the Congestion Free Network (CFN) in the year 2020. With 2014 coming to a close we have 5-6 years to get this all built based on the plans.

CONGESTIONFREE.CO.NZ - 2014

In the 2020 map we have a number of new inclusions to the existing Rapid Transit Network (RTN) as follows:

1. Northwestern Busway from Britomart to Westgate
2. Upper Harbour Busway from Henderson to Constelation
3. Central City Busway from Britomart to Newmarket via the University & Hospital
4. Eastern Busway from Ellerslie to Puhinui via Botany
5. Mt Roskell Branch line

With the exception of the Mt Roskill Rail line all of the above are grade separated busways similar to that of the Northern Busway. Note that it is assumed that the Northern busway has been extended from Akoranga to Britomart as a grade separated busway at some stage. The cost of this would likely be in the range of $1-2 billion however I wont include that at this stage.

WIKIMEDIA.ORG - 2014

Based on the CFN website the costs for these 5 projects are as follows:

1. $250 million (17km)
2. $200 million (19km)
3. Free (5km)
4. $700 million (20km)
5. $150 million

So all up the cost of all this work is $1.3 billion which feels somewhat low.

For a quick comparison: The northern busway is just over 6km in length and cost $300 million to build in 2005 dollars. This work included a range of road upgrades at the same time which is likely to be required when converting existing roads to busways anywhere else in the city. If we choose to ignore any works at all on the disrupted roads we can say the busway cost $200 million which equates to roughly $35m per km including stations. If we use this value for the 61km of busway that is proposed to be built in the first phase of the CFN we are looking at a cost of $2.1b.

One big difference between the northern busway and the majority of these busways is that the northern busway was built on land that was already owned by NZTA & NSCC and therefore there was a rather massive saving. With the exception of about 10km of the Upper Harbour busway all of these busways require the purchase of all of the properties one side of the road from which they are to be built.

As a rough test on property cost it can be assumed that for every 100m of busway you will need to buy 5 properties, we will assume that 40km of the busway required property purchase and the remainder fits onto local roads or goes through parks that the council will handle over for free. Based on a $0.5 million per property we get a net property cost for these busways of $1b.

The above estimates are probably not too bad for most of Auckland city however there is one part we have missed and that is the CBD. Based on the 2020 CFN we have 3 busways feeding into the CBD which are grade separated all the way down to Britomart. We can certainly close off a few roads and reroute traffic however this is going to be no easy task and it certainly will cost a significant amount of money. As part of the CRL business case a bus tunnel was investigated that would generally provide for what would be needed here and it was priced in at $2.4b. That price does seem a little on the high side and I suspect we could get a similar result spending half that, however without further investigation I will use that value for now.

In summary, the busway portion of the works are expected to cost:

• 61km of busway = $2.1b
• Reinstatment of local roads = $1b
• Property purchase = $1b
• CBD busway works = $2.4b

Total cost = $6.5b.

So that's $5.2b more than the CFN estimate of $1.3b, given the total cost of the CFN is meant to come in under $10b there is some cause for concern here.

One thing I haven't taken into account yet is the Mt Roskill Branch line. This line is in luck in that NZTA has already spent a large amount of the money required and so we only have some 3-4km of track and two stations to build. The $150 million in the CFN budget isn't too far off the mark with 2 exceptions:

1. The connection with the western line may need to be grade separated in order to provide for the 5min frequencies on the western line to avoid causing flow breakdown which will cascade into the CRL and therefore the rest of the network.
2. The connection will require the purchase of the Pak'n Save supermarket which would add to the cost significantly potentially requiring a tunnel as mitigation.

If we are to add in the cost of the Mt Roskill Line along with extending the northern busway through to Britomart we are looking at a total cost of some $7-8 billion to bring the CFN to its 2020 vision. It seems in the case of the CFN we are sold a grade separated "Congestion Free" route when in reality what is priced for is really bus lanes on the side of existing roads which ultimately would be little different to that of existing in most cases.

streetsblog.org - 2014

Based on these numbers I've created the following image that shows what could be built if we limit ourselves to the $1.3b budget as per the CFN. There are two risks here however, putting the busway through the westgate shopping centre could add another $0.5 million (approx)  and making the eastern busway fully grade separated may push the budget a little to far in order to get it all the way to Botany. Also note that I've added in the CRL which is another $2.4b.

2020 CFN - as priced

This has been a quick look at the cost of the 2020 CFN layout and is based on per km rates. Each of these routes will have specific issues and constraints that will need to be addressed with detailed design work and as such this has only been a rough order costing.

In future posts I'll look into some of these routes in more detail, such as the northwestern busway.