I hear those things are awfully loud ...

It glides as softly as a cloud!

I swear it's (Auckland's) only choice, throw up your hands and raise your voice, MONORAIL!

Every so often I like to break into song and The Simpsons have provided some lovely songs over the years. Lyle Lanley's song advocating the Monorail for Springfield is one of my favorites as you can tell. This is mostly because I think my own city, Auckland, seriously needs to look at its public transport issues and find some system than would connect the sprawling city in a way that didn't leave commuters frustrated.I personally feel a monorail could be the answer, plus I can sing the great Simpson's song and substitute Auckland for Springfield to make my point.
I am really not a fan of Auckland City public transport, it is the most frustrating experience in my fair city. When waiting for buses, they sometimes don't show up at all, at some times of the day you need to wait half an hour for one. Once I was waiting for a bus on a Sunday, they only come every half an hour, I was on time for one that didn't show up so had to wait another half an hour for the next one to arrive. Other times three will show up at once, but are all full so you have to keep waiting as they sail past. This often happened to me on Dominion Road when I was attending university. Perhaps one of the worst things is that after midnight the buses all stop, if it's a Friday or Saturday you can wait to get the hourly night-riders but say you work late on a weeknight in the city you are screwed to get a bus home. I used to work in a bar on the other side of town, finishing at around 3-4am my only option was an expensive taxi home. Staying out past midnight one would have to taxi home. Really the system is appalling, in the evenings and weekends buses are few and far between but still prone to simply not showing up. During peak commute times the buses are often overcrowded, it's no wonder most people just drive places.
The trains are a little bit faster and cheaper, but you can only get a train to certain places. There are only 3 lines running from central Auckland, so if you don't live near a station it's not practical and the trains are also prone to simply not showing up. They do have 'park and ride' which is useful if you live in say, Pukekohe and worked in Central Auckland, or Newmarket. But if your work isn't walking distance to the train station why bother leaving your car at another one.
Auckland is too concerned with it's cars and is very unfriendly to other transport. Many other cities are taking note to create car-free zones and toll areas to reduce the congestion. Auckland however will not remove cars from the streets to make room for buses, trams, or a monorail. Instead the roads are made wider and we a subject to construction, if these roads are so important for bus routes why do they not make them bus only? This could be feasible in the central city for Queen St and Symonds Street.

Having been to other cities in recent years I have become even more scathing of a system I already hated. I have been on the tube in London, I've been through the network of the Metro in Paris. Oh and I took a train from Sydney Airport to right up the road from the hostel I was staying in. When I returned to Auckland from Sydney I had to get a rather expensive bus into the city then get another bus up the road to get home. There are wonderful examples of cities where public transport is successful, where there has been active effort to reduce car use and make cities more pedestrian friendly. Why is Auckland, our council and our government so opposed to this?

Auckland needs two things in my opinion.
1) A link to the Auckland Airport.
There has been discussion of a train service to the Airport, but nothing yet. I think it is simply appalling that as a city that tries to claim international status there is no easy link from the central city to the international airport! We are hosting the Rugby World Cup soon, I think it is going to be a huge embarrassment that there is no train service for people to use to get from the airport to the city. I think the transport to and from the stadium will also be an embarrassment, currently when a rugby match is let out there is a huge influx of people to cram into public transport, to wait for the few trains or buses that may (or may not) show up to take them into the city. The surrounding area is packed with cars and taxis. I imagine the scene after a world cup match would be even more chaotic! Extra services are often put on when there are events on, but these aren't always that useful. It is cringe worthy to think what tourists will have to say when they try to get to and from the games at Eden Park, even if additional services are put in place.

2) Circular transport routes to connect suburbs.
Currently there are very few services that connect the many widespread suburbs or our isthmus city. At a sprawling 1,086 km² Most of the services run radial. Running down the major Auckland Roads (Greath South, Great North, New North, Dominion, Remuera Rd, Mt Eden rd) going back and forth from Britomart or another stop in the central city. To get from one Suburb to another requires first going into the central city. Travel between suburbs can be difficult and rarely direct. When I lived in Grey Lynn and Worked in Parnell my commute required me to either take two buses or walk a stretch to work. My typical morning commute, 10 min bus and 15min walk, wasn't much shorter than my evening walk home which took about 45min. There are a couple of services that connect suburbs, you can get from Dominion Rd, Mt Eden, to Broadway, New Market. There is a bus that runs from out St Heliers to Pt Chev, but there needs to be more of these sorts of services. Auckland is a sprawling city, but driving from destination A to B is often the best choice because the public transport is so rubbish.

I personally think a monorail would be the perfect solution. It is too late in our city's infrastructure to put in underground trains connecting all the many suburbs, it would be too complicated and we don't have existing tunnels that cities like London did. So we should look at something we can construct above ground. The structure of a monorail should be easy to build above our current road systems. Perhaps I'm a bit idealistic, after all I have no engineering knowledge of the logistics of putting in a monorail. But still just imagine a speedy monorail over the southern motorway, zipping down to the airport to pick up passengers. Once the Airport connector is in place other monorail lines could be built to connect the many suburbs in ways the current train and bus services fail. Perhaps the monorail could even run after midnight! Wouldn't that be amazing! And I'm sure we can have an electric monorail, it would be very environmentally friendly. We love our clean green image, even though we are only now getting electric trains (100 years after everybody else) and are too stubborn to part with our cars.

Auckland really needs to sort out its transport woes and building more roads won't fix the problems. Building more roads for buses doesn't fix the already poor system where you can't always get a bus from A to B, especially if it's late, or if your bus doesn't show up. Having a more accessible system should come before speed and congestion of the roads those systems use.
Electrifying our trains only now seems to point out how old our systems really are.
The simple fact we have no quick and easy transport to and from out major airport is simply an embarrassment. I am fearful of the influx of tourists for the rugby world cup.

If only someone who held power would open their eyes to a bigger picture and would stop pumping money into pointless roads and look at fixing the basic ways our transport operates, if we can get people out of the cars and into the buses there will be less congestion on the roads anyway. If we had reliable public transport surely people would be more interested in using it. Currently the National government has reduced funding to public transport, making our public transport look even more dismal before the 2011 rugby world cup. If there ever was a time to look at improving our public transport surely the influx of tourism from the world cup would be a reason. We need some sort of train service to connect all the suburbs and since an underground system isn't possible we should look at something else, say a monorail.

There is an organisation onto the right track, Campaign For Better Transport so go check them out, they have some really good ideas to make Auckland better.
Although they haven't picked up the idea of a monorail ... yet.