Light Rail: An Enabler of Sustainable Growth for Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland

The Auckland Light Rail project is more than just a transport project; it will unleash a range of benefits and opportunities that will reach far beyond proposed City Centre to Māngere corridor.

Like the City Rail Link, an expanded Rapid Transit System (RTS) has the opportunity to shape the future of Tāmaki Makaurau through economic growth, urban densification, improving equity and wellbeing outcomes, and helping to reduce transport-related carbon emissions.   

To put in place the right RTS, we must first determine what a medium density city for Aotearoa looks like and what sort of future the people of Tāmaki Makaurau want for their city.  

What is the vision for the future of Tāmaki Makaurau?

The 20-minute neighbourhood concept is gaining favour in urban policy settings for cities locally and globally and I am hopeful to see more of this thinking in Aotearoa. Cities including Helsinki, London, Melbourne, Paris, Singapore, Sydney and Toronto have embraced the principles of a 20-minute city or neighbourhood and WSP is working with many of these cities to help them realise their vision. We are already seeing Light Rail and metro rail enable the 20-minute city vision around the globe. 

Tāmaki Makaurau is a city with many urban villages, not just one. It is easy then to see how an expanded rapid transit network could bring a 20-minute neighbourhood to life for places like Māngere and Mt Roskill. We have a unique opportunity to create a future where these communities could access everything they need – school, work, supermarket, shops, entertainment, culture, shared green spaces – within a 15–20-minute walk, bike ride, or public transport journey. 

In principle, it’s about:

• Proximity – the things you need are close
• Diversity – there is mixed land use
• Density – there are enough people living there to support businesses
• Ubiquity – these neighbourhoods are common enough that they are accessible and affordable to everyone.

 

How can we deliver on the different needs of our communities?

The proposed City Centre to Mangere Line is over 20-km-long and will traverse many different communities. Each will have different needs, different aspirations, and a different vision of a future for themselves. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Increasing community wellbeing and enabling them to take advantage of future opportunities requires removing as many barriers to inclusion and participation as possible.

Light Rail provides a solution that solves for existing inequities in our communities i.e. safe and secure access to public transport and improved mobility and accessibility. To achieve this kind of equity, the planning and design for a light rail project needs to feature inclusion, diversity, ethics, and empathy. This can be achieved by authentic engagement with communities as part of the consenting and design process. 

We’ve seen first-hand the positive impact of effective community engagement in Sydney, a city plagued with many of the same issues as Tāmaki Makaurau.  
 
The Sydney Metro West, Parramatta Light Rail and Newcastle Light Rail have been delivered with the community at the heart. These projects have invested in innovative ways to communicate with the community, support local businesses throughout construction and, ultimately, keep up with the evolving conversations. The result is a human-centric RTS that delivers on the needs of each neighbourhood it services.  

How do we justify the costs?

Investing in infrastructure that supports a liveable, sustainable, and accessible city will be an expensive project by Aotearoa New Zealand’s standards. 

This project should be seen as part of a future network and we know from our global experience that building subsequent extensions is so much easier if you build the first one correctly. The cost of this investment should therefore be considered in the context of its ability to catalyse expansion to other areas (such as the North Shore) and thus providing access to other significant benefit streams.  

We have witnessed first-hand the pay-off from investment in rapid transit networks supported by densification from similar sized nations and cities facing similar, unrestrained growth.  

The long timeframes of major infrastructure projects such as light rail can be challenging; construction taking a decade or more with a life of half a century of more beyond that. Short-term thinking - including the ‘cheapest’ option temptation - is easy to fall into. Above all, we need to remember we are not doing this just for ourselves, but mostly for future generations.  

How do we manage a project of this size and complexity?

The scale and complexity of light rail projects makes them difficult to manage and deliver. At all stages of a project, good quality, rapid decision-making is needed, which in turn requires the right information at the right time. Traditional programme management capability has not kept pace with the demands of these projects, so, new thinking is needed.  
 
A ‘systems approach’ is increasingly used for large and complex projects, an approach we think is extremely well-suited to this project. Systems thinking means understanding how all the component parts of a project work together to meet a common objective. System Integration (SI) is the practical task of bringing together all these components and taking them into service as a single, fully functioning system.  

But for SI to work you want to be thinking about integration well before construction starts. At the same time, you need to know where the project wants to go – the why, what, and how. So, you need to start SI with the end clearly in mind. In this light, we think it’s very encouraging that Tamaki Makaurau seems to know what it wants, and why. We are now ready to figure out the “how” and bring it all together.  

The time to create a sustainable future for Aotearoa and Tāmaki Makaurau is now. With thoughtful guidance, smart investments, and engaging community outreach we can build a truly accessible city for future generations.  

 

About

Sean Myers, Head of Rail and Transit
Sean leads rail and transit infrastructure projects in the Australian and New Zealand market. He is an industry leader in strategic planning for urban networks, including option selection and feasibility assessment for new corridors. Sean has advised clients on capacity enhancement assessments for existing networks and step-change asset management programs. He has led numerous multi-disciplinary projects in New Zealand such as City Rail Link, Papakura to Pukekohe and Wiri to Quay Park business cases.