ARC hammers Auckland Transport

The Auckland Regional Council presented its submission on the 3rd Super City bill today, and (putting it mildly) it is absolutely damning. The full details of what was said can be found here, and I include matters relating to transport below:

Transport Overview – Mike Lee

The area of most concern to the ARC is transport. Clearly the City’s greatest infrastructural challenge is transport on which more than half the ARC’s rates are spent – and indeed more than half rates of the city and district councils. The ARC is adamantly opposed to the creation of Auckland Transport, and believes that the proposal should be shelved.

The proposal for an Auckland Transport bureaucracy is the aspect of the Bill which is most obnoxious to us – because it is the most threatening to achieving the purpose of the reform. It means that Auckland will not have integrated decision-making, and it will prevent the region and its communities from having genuine input into transport-related decisions affecting their local areas and across the region. In short it means regional governance is not unified and strengthened, it is instead and weakened.

The transport agency will be spending over 50% of the Auckland Council’s rates revenue $1.3 billion of Aucklanders’ money, yet the arrangements proposed do not make it accountable to the public for the expenditure of that money, and nor do they make it accountable to the Auckland Council.

It is also unclear to us how members of the public, members of local boards or members of the Auckland Council will be able to influence the transport agency, or any transport projects in their local area.

The accountability arrangements for Auckland Transport fall well short of what is required. There has been some debate in the media about the inappropriateness of Auckland Transport being able to conduct its business behind closed doors, in secrecy and about the initial directors being appointed by government Ministers, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. The more significant problems are that:

The Auckland Council is unable to appoint the Chair and Deputy Chair

Auckland Transport is not required by legislation to act in accordance with the requirements of its shareholder

The Board is not made accountable to the Auckland Council

The Auckland Council may be able to make changes to Auckland Transport’s statement of intent, but the provisions in this Bill would mean that Auckland Transport is not even required to act in accordance with its statement of intent

Auckland Transport is not required to give effect to the Regional Land Transport Strategy or to any other policy of the Auckland Council that relates to the transport agency

Auckland Transport could set up companies, sell assets and enter into major financial commitments without the approval of Auckland Council, even where the transactions may leave the Council with significant liabilities or commitments

Auckland Transport won’t be required to have regard for the wider land use and development objectives of the Auckland Council.

One thing we find particularly disturbing is that management positions for Auckland Transport have already been advertised. The Auckland Transition Agency is already in the process of setting it up this bureaucracy. Yet the public has had no opportunity to voice its opinion whether its wants this body or not. The work and the deliberations of this select committee have not been completed and parliament has not yet made a final decision. And yet this is going on – clearly it’s a sign of things to come. This makes a mockery of this committee’s work – it is a disgrace.

Back when the Super City was first announced I was enormously hopeful for this transport agency. In fact, here’s what I said about the Regional Transport Agency (as it was known then) proposed by the Royal Commission:

…effectively the big change here is that we get a new Regional Transport Agency (known as the RTA I guess). This agency takes over the roles of ARTA – but also has many more jobs than before, having equal status with NZTA about state highway development in Auckland and also having many responsbilities that are currently undertaken by city and district councils – like maintenance and improvements to arterial roads, the provision of bus lanes and bus stops, setting policies regarding levels of off-street parking provision and so on. In short, this is fantastic news. One of the biggest reasons Auckland’s transport is so problematic is because there are just too many agencies involved, often with incompatible agendas and differing priorities. All this kind of stuff leads to stupid situations where Manukau City looks after its rail corridors well but Auckland City ignores theirs; or how you have bus lanes in Auckland City, transit lanes in North Shore City but basically nothing in Manukau City. Having all of this stuff under the control of one agency, and as a bonus having that agency somewhat separated from the day-to-day politics of councils, will be brilliant.

One big difference in the transport agency proposed by the Royal Commission and what we’re ending up with is that the Royal Commission felt that joint management of state highways between a local agency and NZTA was critical. The government threw that idea out the window pretty much immediately, which means that transport will remain fragmented – particularly as KiwiRail will independently operate significant parts of the rail network.

It’s interesting to not that last sentence, where I said that I thought it would be good to have the transport agency somewhat separated from the day-to-day politics of council. Now this could still be a good idea in principle, but it has been taken to the absolute extreme in the final structure of Auckland Transport. As the ARC’ submission above points out, the balance of power is completely wrong – with Auckland Transport effectively being able to do whatever they like unless the Auckland Council can convince them otherwise, whereas in reality we should have a structure where Auckland Council sets out the big picture issues and a transport agency fills in the details. Unfortunately, what we’re ending up with is a situation where Auckland Transport will basically do everything – big picture issues, day-to-day details and everything in between. Oh, and it’s difficult to envisage there will be much interaction between land-use planning and transportation planning, as those matters which need to be considered together will be split into two completely separate agencies.

It is rather depressing to see something that could have been a great opportunity to improve transport matters in Auckland turning into such a big mess. I suppose that there’s still some hope Auckland Transport will be staffed by really “onto it” people, the board will not be full of truckies and we might be able to continue along the path that ARTA and the ARC have been taking us towards over the past few years. If that happens, then the lack of political interference could be a good thing – we might get rid of minimum parking requirements, we might end up with more bus lanes, we might be able to implement more of a transfers-based public transport system and so forth. However, if things start to go wrong, and Auckland Transport takes things in the complete opposite direction, then the results will be terrible as there will be hardly anything we can do about it – because the elected Council will have so little power over this agency.

I do wonder whether, with so much opposition to the current structure of Auckland Transport, we will see many changes to the legislation. Considering that jobs within the agency are already being advertised, I can’t see too many big changes happening, but there are a lot of little things that need cleaning up and it’ll be interesting to see if that happens.