NEW ZEALAND - Rail link the key to a unified city

The New Zealand Herald published an article on 7th November 2014 with the title “Rail link the key to a unified city”. It was written by Sudhvir Singh.
Nowadays a lot of people are addicted to every kind of vehicle. We often need to move from one place to another and we love to travel. Therefore we waste a lot of time being stuck in a traffic jam. Auckland is now trying to change this by reducing the traffic and revitalising suburban town centres.
Auckland has a wide range of rail networks. The rail usage has increased from year to year. Unfortunately the network ends in a dead end at Britomart, which makes it impossible for the Aucklanders to be offered services on a frequent schedule. In order to change this the city rail link (CRL) intends to break the bottleneck at Britomart.
The CRL is needed for being able to develop a "true" transport system. According to it the best way to positively influence the suburban development is to make it possible for people to have access to frequent public transport. By using the railway, a lot of people get off the road, which reduces carbon pollution. From these changes Auckland will profit the most because it will have faster access to the city. In addition by having access to improved railway transportation people will be able to save a lot of time.
 
What we have to say about this:
 
Reducing traffic by changing the railway networks has a lot of advantages. We are going to compare the public transport systems of Auckland and that of Basel. After that we’ll try to explain the reasons for the differences between the two.
In Auckland there are three different of public transport systems;  bus, train and ferry. The organisation behind them is called AT (Auckland Transport). Auckland’s public transport system used to be well maintained, but in the 1950s it replaced all of its trams with buses because it feared the high costs of electricity. But this replacement led to a collapse of the number of rides. This meant that there were fewer people who accessed public transport and therefore fewer rides took place as well. The urban intersection of the whole traffic system is the Britomart Transport Centre.
The Auckland transport system isn’t considered to be such a good one. It can’t be compared to the transport system of other large cities. In the eyes of the local population private transport is seen as more important than public transport, which is the cause for many traffic jams. Buses make up the most important part of the public transport system. Therefore, the bus connections are constantly being improved. Thanks to this effort, they’re fairly good. In order to fight pollution caused by exhaust gases, the railway network will be expanded, as described in the article. This is done because the trains don’t drive to Auckland’s central business districts.
In Basel things work quite differently. We have buses, trams and trains that are run by three different companies called BVB, BLT and SBB. SBB is in charge of the railroad lines while BVB and BLT take care of the large number of tram and bus lines. These organizations enable people to travel from A to B fast, safely and without having to wait long due to a tight timetable. Basel’s transport system is much more sophisticated than Auckland’s and it’s known for its punctuality. We therefore believe that Basel has a very good public transport system.
The reason why compared to Auckland Basel doesn’t have as many problems with managing its traffic is that Basel is a much smaller city. Auckland’s population includes almost
1,75 times as many people as the one of Basel and its agglomeration. The ratio is 1:3.8. It’s therefore easier for Basel to organize such matters. Another reason is the economic wealth of New Zealand and Switzerland. The latter is richer and thus has more money to spend on its infrastructure.
The importance of a good traffic system becomes apparent when we look at the various advantages of public transportation; there is less pollution and there are fewer traffic jams because more people use public transport if they can be sure about its reliability. For that reason we think that it’s a good idea to expand Auckland’s railway system. This will especially be helpful for such a big city and it will surely reduce the afore-mentioned problems.