It’s interesting to see the variety of people who end up being “transport advocates”, “transport geeks” or just interested in transport issues. From the people I know interested in transport matters we have a software programmer, a police forensics expert, an accounting student and a radio marketer (among others). It’s quite interesting that there is such a variety of people who have each, for their own reasons, found themselves to be interested – and in some cases passionate – about changing Auckland’s transport system for the better. I think it’s interesting to explain why I care about transport – and how I ended up feeling so strongly about this issue that I generally keep this blog up to date quite easily on a daily basis, as well as have made over 6000 posts on the Campaign for Better Transport forum.
As most people probably know, professionally I am a Planner. Perhaps more specifically, an urban/town planner as most of my interest is in cities and urban areas. The main reason why I became a planner is because I want to make Auckland a better city. I spent much of my childhood (and more recent times too actually) drawing up fantasy cities – generally out of some sort of dissatisfaction with how Auckland worked and a feeling that it could be much better (or at least, I could create a city that was much better). Over the last few years, largely stemming from my MA Thesis and the research/work I have undertaken both in employment and in my own time, I have learned more and more about what makes some cities – or parts of cities – seem to “work better”; and other parts of cities to not work as well. Or at least in my opinion, which bits work better or worse. And in the end, I couldn’t get past this simple concept:
The more we build/plan/design for cars, the less we build/plan/design for people.
Now I know that that seems quite a simplistic approach – and I agree that it probably is rather over-simplified – but from observation of which parts of Auckland that generally seem nicer places to be, or less nice places to be, as well as a look at overseas cities that appeared to work better or worse, the simple concept appeared to hold true. Venice is perhaps the ultimate example – quite probably the most amazing city in the world (at least in my opinion), and zero cars. That is not a coincidence.
In other words, when planning or designing or building a city or parts of a city (down to the development of a single lot actually), transport matters. However much of our city we give over to shifting people around (or storing the vehicles in which people move around the city) , we effectively take away that space from the city itself. Furthermore, where we put transport – and in what form – has a huge effect on how a city grows. Motorways encourage the spread of development but discourage people from living directly next to them, railway lines encourage development around their stations, tramways tend to encourage linear development along their routes and so forth. In other words, transport effects land-use patterns and also effects how much city we end up with after we give up other bits of it to shifting people from place to place.
Ultimately, this is why I care about transport. Different types of transport policies, different types of projects, different weightings given to providing for cars and providing for people – it all makes a huge different to the type of city we end up living in. And ultimately, this is why I am a public transport advocate – because it’s far better at shifting people around a city while not ruining the city than a car-centric transport focus. Because public transport can shift more people in less space, and in a more sociable, environmentally friendly and ‘urban-interactive’ (ie. you engage with your surroundings) way, I strongly consider that public transport is the way to both improve accessibility around our cities while at the same time without ruining or dominating our cities with the transport network.
And now a question for commenters. Why do you care about transport? What motivates you to be interested in the matters I (and now Jeremy) talk about on this blog?
I used to draw pictures of motorways and streets. These came with street lights, railway lines, street lanes, roundabouts and grade separated intersections… etc etc. You could best described me as the next Robert Moses during my early years. I used to wonder things like: why we had bus lanes in Wellington City? and why the motorway didn’t go all the way to the Airport? (like it does in Auckland).
Then a year and a half ago I heard about how public transport can help create better cities and the effect auto mobilization had on U.S cities. My interests for better transport soon expanded fast into transport alternatives, such as cycling, walking, skating and push scootering. My hope now is that cities will adopt transport alternatives and make safe places for these modes of transport to take place, eventually making our cities greater places to live.
I’m guilty on the “wanting to be like Robert Moses” charge too Brent. I used to the CMJ was the most amazing thing ever, and my older street maps had LOTS of motorways.
+3 on the Robert Moses thing.
I can still look at a motorway interchange as an amazing engineering feat but then you look at the surrounding area and the effects and it says it all really.
Reason why I have; well partially from when I stopped owning a car years ago and started using public transport and realised that there was many ways it could have been oh so much better, and further now that I cycle everywhere.
Have to say the biggest thing with cycling though, you see so much that someone rolling along at 50k an hour in a box.
I became interested because I want Auckland to be the number 1 city in the world, we have everything to make it so;
- We live in one of the 30 functioning democracies in the world (and a pretty damn good one)
- A rainforest on our cities edge and heaps of parks and reserves
- Fantastic off shore islands
- Leafy suburbs
- Two magnificent harbours
- Two world class museums
- NZs best art gallery
- Excellent orchestra and ballet
- A world class zoo and a world first aquarium
Auckland really has it all, we’ve just screwed it up by filling the remaining space with cars and killing our city’s urban liveability, so getting involved in alternative transport issues is the best way to change our city for the better, the majority of our public space (road space) will become more non car user friendly and it will drive the land use change to enhance our communities…
I loved traveling on trains, I loved planning cities and motorway and was puzzled by the low frequencies on buses and things like that. These things clashed together a couple of years
I’m kinda with Jezza on this one, I became interested in transport and urban issues because I saw how awsome Auckland could be, but how it was failing from the planning and design perspective. I fought that for some time, and still do to an extent, but eventually I gave up on waiting for Auckland to get its shit together and decided to live in a city that has less natural potential but greater urban achievement.
I first got interested in transport looking with wonder at the CMJ and all these amazing motorway strucutres too. But once I left high school, started to travel more each day and read up and understand the issues I realised those massive structures weren’t going to provide a very good outcome on their own.
More recently after a spell living carfree in Buenos Aires and semi-car free in Melbourne, I realised how much of a drag driving in traffic all the time was, and how ditching the total dependence on cars can really improve your quality of life.
haha you are talking like private vehicle use isn’t transport, it still is. Give people the choice, I believe a balanced system involves a expansive motorway system, a expansive public transport system of equal size. In terms of why I care, Mine is more of common sense and through my job.
All these people that talk about AK’s transport system needing to be balanced annoy me sometimes. AK’s system isn’t balanced in anyway whatsoever, and it has once the Western Ring Route is done there will be no need or point to any other motorways in urban Auckland. Auckland invested little more than 0 in PT for nearly 50yrs, from when the Beach Road station and eastern line were built in the 1930′s, really until the govt bought the network for a rip-off price in 2001. I don’t believe there was really any bus investment, though someone please correct me if they know of anything.
There was anti-bus investment IMO but not renewing the trolley bus system in the early 80s, even after buying 20 new trolley buses…
I think we need a balanced system. What we have at the moment is anything but balanced, which means that we need to “re-balance” hugely.