Straight from city council A personal view, by Councillor Steve Morris

Over the last few weeks, I've written about several ‘keys to gridlock.' Commuter rail is an often-mentioned solution; however, is it viable?

As Cr John Robson frequently used to say, 'we have to be big enough to admit we're small”.

There's only one city in Australasia under 800,000 with commuter rail and that's Wellington with a suburban population of more than 400,000. Tauranga's population is approaching 140,000, in line with projections. Those same projections show a peak population of 200,000 in 2063 because of declining birth-rates.

Feasible rail services require a population density of 2500-3000 people per square kilometer. Tauranga's density is 800/km2. Viable rail services need to carry between 5000-10,000 passengers per hour during peak hours. Could you imagine that many people catching an 8:30am train from Matua to the CBD? There aren't that many people working in the CBD.

Is there a more elegant solution? Adelaide and Essen both have bus services that use the rail corridor to get around congested roads. If we did this in Tauranga, buses would use existing bus stops but then use rail as a shortcut. Imagine a bus using the Matapihi rail bridge to skip Hewlett's Rd or to bypass Chapel St from Otumoetai.

What's standing in our way? Kiwirail, NZTA, Regional Council, and TCC would all need to agree. The Urban Form and Transport Initiative has recently been formed to bring decision-makers from all the agencies together at the same table instead of working in isolation. Theoretically, this should speed up decisions on critical transport issues.