Comments on: Guest Post: A history of transport in Auckland

By: Kevyn

Kevyn — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:47:35 +0000

This is a very good history but it overlooks two key events in 1927 that suggest that the root cause of Auckland’s unbalanced transport planning hasn’t changed.

In 1927 Auckland’s ratepayers voted against a special loan to fund extensions to the tram system.
In 1927 Parliament voted to add a third ‘levy’ on motorvehicles to fund the development of national and regional highways.

That unwillingness of ratepayers to contribute to regional transport infrastructure, and a similar unwillingness from taxpayers viz. metropolitan rail, has resulted in the only group with a willingness to pay being the only group who’s needs have been met. Till that attitude changes nothing else will change.

One other point, the motorways haven’t significantly increased car ownership. Auckland’s per capita car ownership is pretty much the same and Christchurch and Wellington. What they have increased is average trip length because the motorways mean that a ten minute trip can be twice as many km in Auckland compared with Christchurch, ie the same travel-time budget lets Aucklander’s live twice as far from where they work.

By: Nick R

Nick R — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:12:00 +0000

Thanks guys, I was trying hard here to present a concise and meaningful history without divulging into preachyness. It’s quite easy to say our predecessors were fools or ideologically blinded but the truth is most of their decisions were quite understandable given the conditions and thinking of the day.

The points I really wanted to make were:

a)That the shape and the form of the city is largely a product of the nature of the transport system and planning/zoning controls (and the natural landform of course), and

b)the nature of the transport system and zoning/planning are a product of consious policy decisions that are maintained over time.

I hope that got across.

RTC, in regard to Melbourne’s freeways there are a couple of key differences. Firstly Melbourne’s first solution to increasing traffic was to widen and ‘boulevardize’ key streets, this meant that they didn’t get stuck in to freeway construction until almost two decades after Auckland and arguably these wide avenues are generally quite good examples of urban design. Secondly they never built a massive ‘CMJ’. Certainly radial freeways were built but these ended at main roads several kilometres from the central city. It was not until the late 1990s that the radial corridors were connected in the central area, again about twenty years after Auckland. I think the best thing is because they waited those extra two decades to build ‘City Link’ it was constructed almost entirely in tunnel or elevated sections. As a result today central Melbourne isn’t surrounded by a moat of motorway like Auckland is and the CBD has a much greater cohesiveness with it’s fringe.

By: admin

admin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:32:35 +0000

I didn’t actually write this. Hence the guest post. Sometimes it is good to be concise, sometimes it is good to dig deeper. I think that Nick does well in this post to detail a huge amount of Auckland’s trnsport history.

One positive thing to take out is that we made Auckland auto-dependent through ploicy choices; therefore we should be able to fix it through policy choices.

By: ingolfson

ingolfson — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:02:46 +0000

I admit that I don’t consider most of the pieces on Jarbury’s blog as “concise”. Thoughtful, yes – but conscise implies short (I know, I know – power point disease making me want shorter stuff for my short attention span)

By: Jeremy Harris

Jeremy Harris — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:50:25 +0000

Really concise, accurate post… Enjoyed it…

By: admin

admin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:36:26 +0000

When the northwest motorway opened it was actually called the northern motorway. I think we would have a much nicer city had we made SH16 and the western ring route the main north-south route across Auckland. It means we could have avoided destroying half our inner city through building CMJ.

By: rtc

rtc — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:51:33 +0000

@Nick R – they’ve built a few since then though looking at maps, they’re lucky in that most of them bypass the downtown unlike Auckland.

By: Nick R

Nick R — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:24:01 +0000

Guess how many kilometres of freeways Melbourne had in 1959, when Auckland already had those three main routes built and operational… absolutely none!

By: Nick R

Nick R — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:16:10 +0000

The north western motorway was originally developed as the main route north around the top of the harbour, but once the harbour bridge was built the focus shifted to extending the northern motorway northwards. With much less potential for development in the small region of the country to the north-west of Auckland, there was little need to extend the ‘intercity highway’ function of this motorway any further. It remained busy as a commuter motorway but there was little need to go beyond the city limits.

By: admin

admin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:04:02 +0000

Auckland did build its motorways further and earlier than most other cities around the world. That’s a huge reason why we have ended up so auto-dependent.

In 1959 I think we had the following motorways:

Southern: from Ellerslie to Wiri Station Road (where Manukau City is now)
Northern: from Fanshawe Street to Northcote Road
Northwestern: from Pt Chevalier to Lincoln Road

It is interesting that it’s taken 50 years to extent the northwest motorway any further. I suppose that shifting the commercial airport away from Whenuapai in 1966 took away a lot of the reason why the NW motorway was extended so early.