"Christchurch as a city appears to be doing conventional bus very well...... Unfortunately it also blinds everyone to the fact that we are doing "mass transit" very badly!!"
According to The Ottawa Citizen [May 1, 2010] Gatineau's transit company has bought the rail line between the Prince of Wales rail bridge and Montée Paiement to build a busway. The article goes onto say .... "but its plans should hearten Ottawa transit advocates who still hope to see commuter trains cross the Ottawa River.Spokeswoman Céline Gauthier said the Société de transport de l'Outaouais [STO] will pay Chemins de fer Québec-Gatineau Inc. $2.5 million for the 15-kilometre disused rail line. The STO plans to remove the track on land to complete a 12-station $233.5-million bus transitway by fall 2011. But Gauthier said the STO will rebuild the rail line next to the Gatineau busway when the road is completed, in case the line is needed in the future. The STO will own the line through the Société de transport ferroviaire de Gatineau (Gatineau Railway Company)."
Gatineau is one of the cities our Mayoral team - or rather qualified transport planners - would have been wise to have visited. It is much closer to Christchurch in size (actually smaller in size) but doing public transport very successfully by Canadian standards. Canadian transit anyway carries approximately twice as many passengers per head of capita than the USA.
Urban growth associated with Ottawa, the national capital of Canada, created much new housing across the Ottawa River in the second half of the 20th century, with much of the development spreading away from the traditional centre of this area, the small city of Hull. On January 1, 1975, the municipalities of Gatineau, Pointe-Gatineau, Touraine, Templeton and Templeton-Ouest and Templeton-Est were merged to form the City of Gatineau in an effort to improve municipal services and coordinate urban growth. Gatineau is now a city of over quarter of a million residents, with most of the housing appearing - from satellite image at Google earth - to be similar in nature and density to Christchurch's suburbs, single unit, in "caulflower" street pattern curving road subdivisions. City of Ottawa statistics show [2006] that 43,000 people head to Ottawa from Gatineau each morning, while 17,000 travel in the opposite direction. I have been unable to ascertain how many of these use public transport.
Ridership on public transportation for the area, which had been provided by the private sector, had gradually decreased from 11 million in 1956 to a tiny 2.5 million passenger trips per year in 1971. The story of the rebuilding of public transport systems in Gatineau is impressive. The first bus lanes were introduced in 1971 forty years ahead of larger Christchurch and with many other innovations since, its ridership has consistently grown. The public transit system in Gatineau is possibly the most successful of any of the, public transport systems in CANZUS**. The STO bus network of Gatineau today serves 262,000 residents - only two thirds of greater Christchurch's population size and carries (latest figures) 19.3 million passengers per year. Peak hour patronage at 14.5% of all commuter journeys by any method (2006 figures) exceed those of any city in the USA except New York and are ahead of Vancouver (about 8 times the size). This proportion of all peak hour journeys is also ahead of those in Calgary and Edmonton, cities which have made substantial investment in light rail. An additional interesting factor is the proportion of peak hour commuters using transit in the greater Ottawa area rises dramatically amongst the younger age group which does not suggest buses are seen as uncool or an outdated mode.
The peak hour commuter ridership figures for Gatineau are also over three times the minimalist 4.5% of peak hour commutes by public transport that the joint strategy of CCC and ECan have generated to date. The basis of this strategy is to have no commuter rail and no segregated or partly segregated busway corridors, no services (at all) to some major industrial office park areas such as Parkhouse Road and Birmingham Drive, almost no special bus routes for more direct access during peak hours and to minimize the use of express bus services. The strategy offers only a lower end of the spectrum bus rapid transport technology, part-time on-street (not curb protected) bus lanes. These are to be implemented - it appears - over a 15-20 year period, starting in 1997 - with funding cuts slowing this process. By overseas experience as far as I can pick up these types of lanes have their role but appear notoriously difficult and expensive in man-power to police, and any illusion that one day people will learn to stop parking in them, does not seem supported by news reports or the accompanying comments of public and bus users. While they may generate sufficient income in fines to cover the cost of the several people per route needed for policing each route, by the time each obstructive vehicle is removed a lot of the value of the lanes is lost. [nor does it do much for credibility of bus lanes in Christchurch that many buses still seem to spend a lot of time driving beside the empty bus lane set aside for them, in the main traffic flow!] Even on the trips that encounter no obstructions on the lanes on-street bus lanes systems can offer more reliable bus times as scheduled, no significant time saving (faster than normal services, competitive with car use in the way of rail or segregated busways).
Getting back to Canada, there are of course factors involved in Gatineau's success - there always are in any situation. This makes blanket calls such as "we need rail" sound rather foolish to anyone with any with the slightest understanding of public transport which must be finely tuned in every aspect, to every specific situation, to deliver (a) quality service to consumers (b) cost-effective use of resources, (including in my opinion realistic amortized costs of infrastructure across 25 years). It is never easy to do public transport well in a car addicted society and Gatineau has several obvious advantages. For a start it is near a capital city - always a great generator of white collar commuters, along with tertiary students probably proportionately the largest single user group of public transport in CANZUS cities; it's connection to Ottawa has bottlenecks around a relatively small number of Bridges (the Ottawa River is deep and wide and expensive to bridge); the Canadian Government has deliberately decentralised growth by building several major Government department high rise office blocks in Gatineau. Yet all said and done, it is a separate bus system, from Ottawas and cross river traffic of passengers is carried by routes from both bus services, clearly most trips are internal, within Gatineau.
Christchurch as a city appears to be doing conventional bus very well. This includes a good spread of routes, service frequency, extent of operating hours, real time and smart card technology, and operate a clean modern bus fleet. Unfortunately it also blinds everyone to the fact that we are doing "mass transit" very badly!! . By this I mean really tackling peak hour commuter travel, which appears to be about 70% of public transport patronage in many comparable systems. A mass transit strategy has the effect of targetting public transport supply to the source of most congestion, greenhouse gases, time waste in people's lives, and cost of roading infrastructure which is always determined by highest traffic use periods.
The foolish "City Hall" romance of rail and light rail during the last decade may be a factor. Rail of any sort has no precedent in a city of our size and other key factors; demographics such as car ownership levels, wealth distribution; population intensity, national Government taxpayer size/funding base for each kilometre of track per capita; or geographic footprint. This pointless dalliance with the fantasy of rail but but doing nothing and creating no alternative strategies has clearly cost this city tens of millions of dollars over the last decade. This was funding that was clearly available had committed mass transit strategies been in place and projects ready to fund, at a time hundreds of millions were being poured into public transport infrastructure in Auckland and Wellington.
Let us not mourn for lost opportunity, the city must look to what is real and effective and plan for the future irrespective of the current Government. Governments come and go, Christchurch must hold to the long vision. Even on reduced budget a vision can hold the line. Studying Gatineau seems a good start. Why is this city building a 17 km segregated busway, how are they building a busway, where are the cost occurring, where do delays and difficulties arise, how are they handled, what translates into the NZ context. What options might Christchurch have in a similar situation. This includes scoping out and identifying potential busway corridors far faster and more direct than current routes (even those that are bus laned). Also perhaps negotiating to buy a couple of the third hand diesel rail units that will become available as Auckland rail electrifies.
Not least because nobody knows how far or fast fuel will rise. Too late then to plan projects that take five year run ups and need ready access to resources - skilled planners, engineers, oil-based materials, specialised vehicles - all by then in high demand, in chronic under-supply worldwide and easily captured by larger systems with larger incomes
**CANZUS - the nearest demographic match to Christchurch smaller cities of Canada, Australia, NZ and the USA. There are 120 cities between 200,000 and 500,000 in these four countries, though the 19 in CANZ are probably best match.
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