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By Matt L, on February 4th, 2012 This carries on from my first post about the briefing from the Ministry of Transport to the incoming ministers.
The report makes only brief mention of what will likely be the biggest issue for transport going forward, funding. We have already seen the NZTA have to do a deal with the Auckland Council to help cover some of their funding shortfall but the next graph shows that we will only be able to cover the planned expenditure with a ‘high growth’ scenario.
Figure 18 shows projected NLTF revenue and investment projections to 2030.
Under ‘median’ and ‘high growth’ revenue scenarios, the revenue raised will be able to fund projected investments. Our modelling predicts that high oil prices and lower GDP growth could reduce revenue to the point that it is insufficient to meet current projected expenditure. However, higher oil prices would also reduce the demand for road travel and expenditure on roading, and increase the demand for public transport
NOTES:
1. High oil price scenario is based on the Ministry of Economic Development’s oil price reference scenario (US$ 115 per barrel in 2009$ by 2030) with appropriate fleet replacement adjustment.
2. Low GDP growth scenario assumes annual GDP growth is 1 percent lower than current GDP growth path.
3. High GDP growth scenario assumes annual GDP growth is 1 percent higher than current GDP growth path.
4. The large increase in NLTF revenue observed since 2008 is due to 100 percent hypothecation of NLTF (effective from September 2008).
5. Expenditure projections from 2011–12 to 2021–22 are sourced from Government Policy Statement (2009 and 2011 versions). Thereafter, a $100 million increment per year has been assumed.
A ‘high oil price’ scenario would erode FED revenue with the gap between revenue and currently forecasted expenditure increasing rapidly after 2020 — under this scenario, revenue would be $4.9 billion less than forecast expenditure over the periods from 2021 to 2030. This scenario is in the nature of a risk rather than a certainty
I don’t know about others but to me it seems like they are playing a game of chicken with oil prices, this might help to explain the sudden rush we are seeing with low value projects and many of the RoNS. I think this will be an area of increasing concern and one that we will need to keep an eye on closely.
One area that is made pretty clear is that there is going to need to be a lot of continued focus on Auckland (and it’s surrounding areas) in the future due to the amount of population growth that is expected. Auckland is expected to take about 60% of the national population growth while the Waikato and BOP regions will also get bigger. This is best shown in the form of graphs and these two from the document help to highlight the change we will see over the next 20 years.
This kind of population growth will put a lot of pressure on Auckland’s transport system, as we are already seeing many of the easy/low cost projects have already been completed which means that to dramatically expand capacity things start getting very expensive regardless of the mode i.e. in the billions of dollars. The MOT picks up on this a little bit: (note – when they say to urban transport it appears they are just referring to all forms of transport in urban areas)
61. Because the majority of New Zealand’s growth will be in urban areas over the next 20 years (primarily in Auckland) urban transport networks will play an increasing role. This means they will need to become more effective through better use of infrastructure, urban planning, and demand management tools.
There is also a bit of paranoia starting to creep into the report, in this case a paranoia about rail, the high level comment in the section titled Investment in Roads says:
Roads are critical to the efficiency of urban centres, with private motor vehicles and buses providing transport modes for most people. This importance will continue.
Rail’s role is supplementary. It provides commuter rail travel in Wellington and Auckland and reduces road congestion.
Rail provides about 15 percent of freight movements. This share is expected to remain about the same through to 2031.
In Auckland, commuter rail travel will account for about 4 percent of peak commuter trips in 2041 compared to less than 2 percent now
So for a comment about investment in roads we get absolutely nothing about the governments investments in the RoNS yet we get 3/4 of the comments about rail. This paranoia is something that gets repeated in other parts of the report, especially the last comment about the percentage of trips.
Carrying on with the report we get to the usual traffic growth predictions that suggest unending growth in traffic volumes despite both local and international evidence showing that is not the case, even the graphs they present show this yet they seem to expect the valve will keep being opened further, this also related directly to the amount of money that will flow into the NLTF. One thing I noticed is they also show a high growth path but never show a low one which could quite possibly happen with the way the world economy is struggling along at present.
The last area I will touch on are the comments related to Auckland. As mentioned earlier the shear amount of growth that is expected to happen in the region will add considerable pressure to transport networks that has the potential to soak up large amounts of central government transport funding. They suggest that there is a $10 to $15 billion funding gap and once again we see the rail paranoia come back as in relation to the transport projects outlined in the Auckland plan we get:
The draft Plan emphasises a shift to public transport to accommodate future trip growth and reduce congestion. It proposes over $5 billion of new rail capital spending to support this goal. The proposed spending on rail is part of an ambitious capital plan which proposes some $22 billion of new capital spending on major Auckland transport projects, predominantly roading related projects, over the next 30 years. The draft Plan canvases new funding mechanisms, with an emphasis on a road pricing scheme, to fund this programme.
So $5b or slightly over 20% of the planned funding is in rail yet that is considered ambitious while around $17b, planned mostly for roads isn’t. You would think that culling a few excessive roading projects would be recommended however slightly later directly responding to the draft plan we get:
The draft Plan does not address forecast congestion on the State highway network
Much of the forecast congestion occurs on the State highway network. The draft Plan has a heavy focus on public transport, which will reduce pressure on the State highways. However, the draft Plan does not
propose significant new highway capacity (with the exception of the proposed additional Waitemata Harbour Crossing and a possible new connection between the southern and southwestern motorways).
Those two projects alone will cost around $7b which is more than the suggested rail improvements and yet they say there isn’t enough focus on the state highway network. The MOT have also claimed that many of the projects in the draft plan “may provide limited value for money” which is odd considering that many of them haven’t even been assessed in great detail yet. Out of step with most of the report which tends to avoid making specific suggestions they have given an idea of some measures that could be taken to make better use of existing roads.
(a) improvements to traffic light timing and control
(b) variable lane markings and signals
(c) high occupancy vehicle lanes to increase the passenger capacity of bus lanes
This basically equates to “lets give cars more space”, especially the last one which is just a fancier way of saying that we should allow cars in bus lanes (also worth noting that this is the only time in the main part of the document that the word ‘bus’ is used). In the end the MOT’s recommendation on Auckland seems to be to do nothing as they say that there will be a little bit of breathing space after the current group of projects finishes before the next major round of projects needs to be decided upon. My feeling though is that in two years time when the EMU’s start rolling we will start to see some really major jumps in rail and other PT use (from feeder buses etc.) and that the window the MOT thinks it has will actually be quite small.
By Matt L, on February 3rd, 2012 The government has released the briefings ministers received from their ministries and of course this blog is fairly interested in what the transport ministry has to say. The briefing has been split into two sections, one giving an overview of the portfolio and the other the policy challenges and upcoming decisions.
The first briefing gives a fairly high level description of what the portfolio is about, what the ministry does and what powers the minister has. It also goes through the various law and rule changes that have happened recently and the levels of funding that the ministry/portfolio is involved in. Overall there isn’t really anything new in here but that is what I would expect to see.
The second briefing on the policy challenges and upcoming decisions is much more interesting as it gives a good indication on the ministries thoughts which are what are likely to heavily influence the minister. The first section that really caught my eye was the section on oil prices on page 17. It seems that there is a bit of confusion in the message they want to deliver, first up there is a sort of high level comment about oil prices saying:
Almost all road transport is fuelled by petroleum products. This fuel source will persist over the next 20 years, but electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles will gradually become more widely used, as the real price of oil continues to increase. However, petrol and diesel will probably still fuel around 85-90 percent of vehicles in 2030.
In the short-term, people resist changing transport usage as costs increase. However,over longer time periods, oil price increases are more likely to induce changes in travel, lifestyle, and locational decisions.
but later on the same page they say
New Zealanders have a range of preferences for how they arrange work, shopping, socialising, and participation in education. These lifestyle preferences usually require travel. In the short term, individuals are reluctant to make lifestyle changes when the cost of transport increases. However, sustained oil price increases are more likely to induce change in travel patterns over longer periods:
• In the medium term (say 2–5 years), people can purchase more fuel efficient vehicles and make greater use of public transport, cycling and walking, where those choices are feasible.
• In the longer term (5–20 years), people will be more willing to make substantive and permanent changes to lifestyles in order to reduce their transport demand. For example changing patterns of social interaction, and living closer to places of employment and education.
So in 20 years time with high oil prices most vehicles will still be powered by oil based fuels but at the same time now where near as many will be driving them as most people would have made large changes to their lives to reduce their demand for transport or at least oil fuelled transport (but more on that soon).
The next thing that caught my eye was in the section on Land Transport starting at page 20. In the very first comment they say:
It will be increasingly important to manage the existing land transport network to its full potential.
There are wider economic impacts that cannot easily be estimated and considered in the traditional benefit cost ratio (BCR) evaluation framework. The current BCR assessment is based on a relatively high discount rate (8 percent real) and a 30-year horizon. This rate tends to discount away the benefits of long-life projects, such as motorways.
In the cities, cars remain the dominant means of people transport. Urban transport networks will need to become more effective through better use of infrastructure, urban planning, demand management tools and public transport increasing its role.
They acknowledge that we need to move away from the traditional BCR framework but this is exactly the thing they slammed the CRL business case for, it has also noted here in the past about just how much impact having a high discount rate and relatively short assessment time frame has on the outcomes of projects.
Continuing to work my way through the document I really had to have a chuckle at these two comments:
55. New investment in State highways is evaluated by the NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) using three criteria.
(a) Strategic fit which considers national strategic objectives as specified in the Government Policy Statement on Land Transport (GPS)
(b) Effectiveness which considers how well proposed activity would achieve the GPS impacts identified in strategic fit
(c) Efficiency which measures the BCRs
57. The major highway projects tend to score well on strategic fit. The BCRs for major improvements to the network have declined in recent years.
Basically that means the government tells the NZTA what projects it want and if the NZTA goes to do them then they can tick off two of the three assessment boxes which means that economic considerations get largely pushed out of the way and that is evidenced in the last part of comment 57. In just 5 years we have gone from have over half of all approved projects having high BCR’s to over half of them having low BCR’s. That’s an astounding change in such a short time considering there are a large number of projects out there that haven’t even been approved yet, things like Puhoi to Wellsford or the group of projects in Wellington.
The last thing I will cover in this post is showing just how much our transport expenditure has changed over time, as you can see spending has really ramped up in the last few years and in the space of about 5 years we have more than doubled how much we spend as a percentage of GDP. Of note the transport and storage sector accounts for around 5.2% of all of our GDP
There is quite a bit more to cover, especially the parts that relate to Auckland but I will leave that for the next post
By Patrick Reynolds, on February 1st, 2012 Two interesting articles in the Herald this morning. Both a refreshing change from the largely silly and scaremongering level of the debate about Auckland’s future in that publication and other parts of the mainstream media recently.
The first is about the future of the Port including its impact on the city. Great to see a private logistics company stating the obvious about the port:
Mainfreight boss Don Braid says better rail and use of an inland port should restrict the need to reclaim more of the Waitemata Harbour.
Mr Braid, the Herald Business Leader of the Year for 2011, is unconvinced by the case from the board and management of Ports of Auckland on the need to fill in more of the harbour.
And
Mr Braid said he was frustrated at how reliant the port was on moving containers by truck and the lack of rail.
“If you are running an efficient port with an efficient transport network feeding it in and out, then you have a very good chance of being able to use the inland port to help with the overflow and restrict the additional land the port might well need.”
Very hard to see this as anything other than good sense and good business. Land in South Auckland has got to be way cheaper than trying to make the stuff out in the harbour. And there clearly is more capacity on the rail line, although the future amplification of the Eastern Line must be protected, especially as passenger demand on the AK network is showing no sign of halting its dramatic climb.
Also he makes the second obvious point that a level of proper government led strategic control needs to be exercised over this whole industry, to co-ordinate our investments in this vital area. Let’s hope ideological prejudice doesn’t prevent this equally sensible idea from being exercised:
He also wanted to see a national port strategy to stop spreading limited capital over 13 ports “fighting for a little piece of the action” and an end to Auckland councils “raping and pillaging” port dividends instead of reinvesting in greater efficiency.
I’m still struggling with the mixed messages out of the Port company, which I have to say looks increasingly poorly run. I mean which is it?: Either the port is being run out of business by evil unions and the under-bidding of Tauranga or it’s booming like a Chinese subway and they demand to be able to pave the entire harbour….? Such a missed opportunity that proposed merger with Tauranga in 2006, then there would at least have been co-ordination for surely the upper North Island is effectively one market for the movement of goods at this scale.
Interesting though that council ownership doesn’t seem to help much, in fact may muddy the council’s thinking and actions. Torn between wanting that return on investment, and doing right by the city and citizens….?
The second is more problematic. On the one hand Michael Barnett of the business owners union appears to be completely on the money, especially if you only read the headline:
I fully agree, 2030 is a ridiculous wait for the urgent need to balance Auckland’s distorted transport infrastructure pattern. To still only really have road based transport as the one widespread network in our biggest and growing city would be a disaster in 10 years let alone 18. Len Brown is showing every sign of being worn down by relentless opposition to his sensible vision for Auckland. Especially the bullying obstruction from the government, who of course jealously hold all of our taxes, the money required for intergenerational investment. His Anniversary Day speech was timid, he’s exhibiting a bit of Stockholm Syndrome I’m afraid, getting very defensive. So isn’t this good?:
Mayor Brown’s estimate that we have until 2030 to get an integrated transport solution in place to avoid unacceptable day-long congestion has to be seriously questioned. There are major bottleneck sections in the motorway network – for example at Mt Wellington and Constellation Drive.
Well no. Because Barnett’s idea of an integrated transport solution is simply more and more motorways. He goes on to say:
NZTA commissioned research in 2007 for the east-west corridor indicated that if a strategic solution is not in place by 2020, the whole route will be gridlocked most working days. Yet there are no firm plans or funding to get the project under way.
And finally the killer; the line that has been used again and again by the the road building lobby for years in Auckland: completion.
The point: The economic and social benefits of the major roading investments Auckland has made over the past 15 years will not be realised until these gaps and weak links in the network are tidied.
Really Mr B, will there ever come a time when you and your members will agree that we’re done here, that to build anymore motorways would only trap every individual and business deeper into auto-dependency, congestion, and uncompetitive transport costs: Time to build that long planned complementary rapid transit network to free up the existing and lavish motorway system? Because it is clear to any detached observer of Auckland’s motorways that the last missing link, the last gap in the network, is now consented and about to be built: the Waterview connection. Especially when you add all the millions of dollars of extra work also funded and occurring on SH1, and SH 16. No, to create an integrated transport network we need to urgently invest in everything else, and not spend anything much more on motorways. We have pretty much built nothing but motorways for 60 years in Auckland, many of them twice, and very little else. So to get to an integrated system we have to play catch-up with the other modes. It is absurd to believe that we could afford to spend to the degree that Barnett is urging.
And remember the investments that have been recently made in the RTN network, the Northern Busway and the rail system, are paying of handsomely: the busway is delaying the need for further huge spends across the harbour and rail use keeps booming: at an outrageous 384% since before Briotmart was opened. Again saving us from trying to expensively accommodate ever more cars onto our narrow isthmuth. Reading though and it is clear that Barnett is being more than a little sly, is he urging the government to get behind Brown’s programme?, to free up our transport capital to support the council’s wishes? Oh no. His real agenda is to say sweet words about the necessary public transport plans of the council but then to launch into a vast list of road projects that he knows have a far greater chance of being funded under this current government, simply because they are roads, not because of their relative value. Could it be that that Mr Barnett’s Forum and the lobby group NZ for Council Infrastructure Development that he quotes are really more interested in us funding everything on their lists for the sake of their members’ balance sheets than objectively having the city’s and the nation’s best interests at heart?
So yes it is time to fill in the missing gaps in this growing city’s infrastructure, but those gaps are not road shaped. For example, if we need more connection across the Waitemata Harbour it must be by the modes not currently supported by the infrastructure. We need to be able to walk and cycle. But most importantly this missing link in the RTN network does need filling and happily this means saving billions of dollars compared to building yet more car lanes across the water. See this analysis and do the math Mr Barnett: next Harbour Crossing. Because surely your members can build other things than just motorways?
By Patrick Reynolds, on January 30th, 2012 A plainly daft piece on the proposed Auckland Plan by Bill Ralston recently appeared in the NZ Listener. In it he claims, completely without any reason, that the plan sets out to demolish where he lives, as well as every other desirable part of Auckland in the name of instensification. This is simply untrue. It is true that the Plan hopes to encourage Auckland to continue to become a more intensive city, but not by demolishing the very best bits, or even very much of it at all. In fact it is decidedly half-hearted about containing the spread outwards, even proposing 140,000 new detached houses be built in the next 30 years under one scenario. All on what is currently productive and attractive distant countryside, and all to be served by endlessly and expensively rolling out new services: From the current 385,000 detached houses to 526,000! Did you actually read the thing, Bill?
In any case, intensification is clearly a matter of degree and the areas proposed for the kind of high density high rise growth that so alarms dear old Bill [but of course not everyone], is all carefully allotted to currently empty or underused commercial ‘brownfields’ sites on transport corridors in areas like the CBD, Glen Innes, and New Lynn. Not Bill’s neck of the woods. Other areas are intended to be encouraged to move from low to medium density. Bill’s place isn’t on this list either.
Ironically, in light of this reaction, the type of intensification that would go a long way to both accommodating Auckland’s growth and greatly improving our quality of life is about trying to help more of Auckland more closely resemble Bill’s very own suburb. His suburb is, in fact, a role model for how much of Auckland ideally could be. But that isn’t by repeating the thing that Bill thinks his ‘burb is all about, the appearance of the buildings, but rather about how they are organised. Not architectural design, but urban design. Really, how?
Freemans Bay is, along with St Mary’s Bay, Herne Bay, Parnell, Devonport, Northcote, Ponsonby, Grey Lynn, and Mt Eden, a highly sought after and therefore expensive bit of old Auckland. So it is worth asking what is so good about it?
Well most of the buildings are old. That’s it isn’t it? Most people love old houses, with their mature trees, and in Auckland that means Victorian and Edwardian houses, usually detached wooden dwellings. Unlike Sydney, Auckland isn’t old enough to have Georgian buildings and also unlike Sydney or Dunedin there wasn’t the resource of stone or even much brick to compete with the pillage of the native forests that our forebears felt so entitled to use so completely. Furthermore, in a reversal of the trend of the second half of the last century we have recently been rediscovering the advantages of these close-in old suburbs. So instead of looking on these areas as slums and bulldozing them wholesale in order to build motorways as we did from the 1960s we have recently been turning houses like this one: More and more into houses like this one:
But that isn’t the whole story is it? Properly understood three factors make Freemans Bay such a great place to live, and only one of them is the irreplaceable age of the structures. And this is important because while we can’t time-travel and build real Victorian houses again we can take the best urban design features from these areas to improve what we build next, and even fix other parts of the existing city with these ideas too. The three essential features, in no particular order, that make Freemans Bay so desirable are:
1. Physical Heritage
2. Proximity to the centre
3. Population density
All the things that you may like about Freemans Bay flow from these; for example, great cafés and shops? They are a function of the quantity of people around and the desirability of the place, which in turn is because of the density of the housing and the proximity to the centre of town. Retail businesses need enough customers, and specialised ones need an even higher number going by because their appeal is, by definition, narrow.
But hang on, waddaymean population density?, this is just a suburb with detached houses and some shops isn’t it?, same as Dannemora or Botany? Well it isn’t high density but it is medium density and is considerably higher than most more recent suburbs. And here’s how: As this post by Admin shows, when looked at in detail you can see that the narrow streets and painted shiplap conceal a clever spatial order that maximises private space yet retains public charm. It is in fact this spatial order, and its resultant density of population that sustains the local businesses and other amenities all at close proximity.
Of course old buildings add texture and charm, but it is important urban design features and not architectural ones that make the real structural differences. Let’s look at Bill’s favourite café, mentioned in his article: Agnes Curran. Yes it is in a building pleasingly made of plastered brick and the door to the rooms above are surrounded by Georgian style decoration, lovely. But let’s look at everything else that makes this a really successful streetscape and business. The café occupies a tiny space about the size of two car parks, it is right up to the generous footpath, a footpath separated from the traffic by mature Plane trees [with a new one recently added on the right], the trees also accommodate a limited number of on-street car parks. A small apartment building to the left of the shot is smack up the boundary with the cafe and the footpath, and there are other levels of accommodation above retail spaces on the main road. Thus there is an extremely tight integration of the residential and commercial functions of this neighbourhood; so everyone walks, no need to drive when your destination is already right there. Here it is from above: The cafe is in the alley between the grey and reddish rooves at bottom left. Occupying the space that would have to be given over to off-street parking were this a new building- by current council regulation. Note that the houses are closer than is currently allowed in new subdivisions, and that their garden space is all together in one piece at the rear of each house. Small, but all usable, and private. And Ponsonby Rd is, by Auckland standards, relatively well served by public transport, especially in the form of the frequent new Inner Link bus service, connecting this place to the CBD, the universities, the hospital, everything really. It is easy to see that this is quite an intensely built place, but also pleasantly leafy, and is in fact at the intersection of two pretty busy roads; Ponsonby and Franklin. How can it be of such density but still be so pleasant, it must be the design of the buildings? Well that is of course important, but how much they appeal to you is really a matter of personal taste, no, it has much more to do with what is not visible in this picture. To show what that is lets have a look at a cafe in a more recent part of town: Dunkin Donuts at Botany Downs courtesy of Google [sorry but I'm not going there]. And from above: Well in fact there’s a whole lot of food outlets on in this image, a KFC, a seafood place, as well as Dunkin Donuts. And yup they are all pretty nasty new buildings, built to a price and without any conviction that they mean to stay. But also note there are no houses or apartments of any kind here and no one walking. But there is the one amenity that is almost entirely absent from the earlier scene. This is a place rich in carparking. Viewed from above or from street level it is clear that this is a place entirely made for the movement and storage of cars. Yes you can argue that that what most distinguishes the natures of these two places is the age and design of the structures, but it is also clear that the spatial organisation is at least as important a difference. Put simply the first is designed for people and the second for cars. The first has a higher density of humans and the second of machines. The first, of course, commands much higher values and is where Bill wants to live. And the first, while more expensive to buy into, is actually cheaper to live in, because the intensity of the place means the costs of movement are much lower. It is a place that you can easily function without a car at all for example [As local resident, Bill, says in this article].
But of course the people living Freemans Bay do still use cars, but unlike those that live in the these new areas, they don’t have to use them just to get to their local café or other common local amenity, like schools, workplaces, or bars. They walk more and they use public transport more. Why? not because they are cleverer than the people in Dannemora but because their area was designed for those choices to be the most obvious, most productive, and most enjoyable things to do. And we can spread more of this simple genius to other parts of our city, even Botany, if can just reverse the insane auto-centric planning priorities of the last fifty years. This means putting people at the centre of the spatial organisation of places. It means repealing the rules that insist that the car must be catered for first. And it means for many of our primarily residential areas mixing the living and working and playing in the kind of intense proximity that Bill enjoys in Freemans Bay.
And it also means that we must provide systems of movement that do not devalue the very places they are meant to serve. Which of course means fast, frequent, smart, public transit. Something lacking in the newer suburb.
Furthermore, if we can get those planning settings right and are able to encourage the kind of spatial organisation that Bill enjoys so unconsciously in Freemans Bay, it is highly likely that we will see the design of the individual buildings in these places improve significantly, because increased intensity of humans also means increased intensity of economic activity. And, of course, because it involves unlocking the land and the resources currently tied up so unproductively in providing so much amenity for vehicles.
We can have Freemans Bay’s qualities of urban design in other places with contemporary design and technologies, after all Freemans Bay isn’t all old buildings and is all the better for it. It isn’t a museum. Here are two quite different and award winning recent detached houses there, The first by Marsh Cook: And the second by Malcolm Walker: Freemans Bay also has contemporary buildings by Mitchell + Stout, Stevens Lawson, Fearon Hay, Andrew Patterson, and more. Along with council pensioner flats, town houses, and apartment buildings.
And remember, while The Plan doesn’t envisage the core of Freemans Bay changing much at all, it does for some other underperforming areas of Auckland. And as the picture below of Freemans Bay in 1877 shows change is always possible, and can be a very good thing indeed……… Anyway, why shouldn’t more Aucklanders get the chance to enjoy their neighbourhood as much as our friend Bill Ralston enjoys his?
By Patrick Reynolds, on January 27th, 2012 It’s hard not to get the feeling that for some in the Auckland Plan debate the answer is simply that they just need to get out more. Yes I’m thinking of you Dick Quax. But also Bill Ralston, whose advancing years seem to have settled upon him as a sort of domestic panic; a fear that some one will take his villa away. And the always unreadable and wrong Jim Hopkins. Plus all the other forces that appear to to be running a coordinated campaign against the plan, like the National Party’s pollster David Farrar, who enjoys apartment living himself but whose politics means he has to twist into a funny shape to conjure up bogus arguments against city life, he claims for example that to live in an apartment you can’t have a pet or a family, and imagines Ak turning into East Berlin. So in order to help those who seem to have absolutely no conception that life in Auckland is possible, for some even preferable, outside of a detached suburban 3 bedder I have dipped into my archives. These are simply random examples of the rich variety of lives lived by different people with different interests and different resources already enjoying the ‘absolutely gobsmacking‘ life that so terrifies the good councillor Quax.
I would also add that one area that the recent analysis of the Auckland Plan by Studio D4 and Jasmax did not look at was the inner city itself. There is clearly a great deal of opportunity for increased living in the city as the people pictured below already are. New supermarkets are opening in the city now and of course there is still room for further infrastructure to support and improve living, working and playing in the CBD. But of course I am not, and nor is the Plan, arguing that high or even medium density is to everyones’ taste, but that when given the chance there are many you do seek it. And that these include the young and the old, families with kids, groups of flatmates and people living alone, rich and poor, renters and owners, and every kind of race and outlook, pet owners, new agers and right wingers, strugglers, idlers, and toilers- in short, every kind of person.
First up, meet my mother. Her apartment is in a re-purposed commercial building from the early 20th century. Pretty special and very well placed for public transit as you can see [she can no longer drive]. Also ideal for a single elderly person, extremely secure, all on one level, the building has a concierge and is incredibly handy to both necessities and distractions. The only thing that hasn’t worked well is interaction with health agencies who insist on driving, often just from the hospital, and then of course, parking. They then want reimbursement for these costs although the services are free. Naturally they will happily drive to Albany or Cockle Bay and those costs are clearly buried somewhere in the health budget. Doh! Small problem, but indicative of how deeply imbedded auto-dependency is in our institutions.
The Bolletta family on a very grey evening, for them an apartment offers an affordable way for the young family to live centrally.
The Urale family. OK this is a detached house, but a new one on a tiny Freemans Bay site with no off street parking. Designed for the family by Malcolm Walker Architects, and therefore qualifies as both medium density and urban renewal.
Also a new building, but higher density. Fashion and publishing personality Paula Ryan in her waterfront apartment.
Again High-D, but different location, Newton, and different value. Complete with art loving cat.
 The loveliest of Auckland’s far-too-few Heritage apartments: Courtville flatmates.
 A return to the original use: Living above the business. Gallerist Michael Lett in his modernised flat over his old gallery space on K’Rd. The first occupants of this Victorian or Edwardian building doubtless did the same. But with as much style?
Another residential conversion. Compact apartment in the old George Courts Building ideal for young couple.
Inner city living is also for the young at heart: Peter Bromhead in his crisp apartment that will soon be looking down on the new Parnell Train Station.
Those genuinely concerned about housing affordability need to understand that even sweeping views of the CMJ is no barrier to successful rental or ownership for many if the price is right. Very serious students with a very relaxed cat included.
I could go on but the post would get too long…
By Guest Post, on January 22nd, 2012 This is a Guest Post by Matt. (Yes a lot of Matts comment on this blog, this is by “handlebars Matt”).
Human Transit is Jarrett Walker’s blog, which he calls the professional blog of a public transit planning consultant. Human Transit – How Clearer Thinking about Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives is his book distilling his blog, and the essence of his philosophy of public transport planning. The book, and his views are based on where he’s lived and worked (Portland, Sydney, Vancouver amongst them) and his examples are from West Coast North America and Australasia, and therefore will not be so remote from readers in Auckland and Wellington. He even acknowledges that some people call it public transport, and in some cities they even drive on the left. He’s worked in various cities and hints at some of the arguments and debates that he’s witnessed over the years. Whatever his frustrations may have been, he wished that everyone was arguing from the same place with the same language and the same understanding of the basics. This is a book about those basics.
It’s a short book, and an easy read (which I finished today, appropriately on a train). You’ll not struggle with convoluted language. It uses simple and clear prose. This is a bit of a blessing since this is essentially a book about the geometry of transit, a topic which could be as dry as Weeties in a milk drought, but here it isn’t. I think anyone could read this. And I think a lot of people should. It would be nice if more people understood the trade-offs that a city makes when they plan and fund their network. You’d hope this was known like the backs of hands by people who do the actual planning. One look at the average city map (like Maxx’s Southern Suburbs map) shows that there is a lot of room for taking on more of the book’s key messages.
Some of his topics will be familiar to readers of his blog – legibility of maps, and frequent network maps is important, and the ease of making connections (with a short spiel on smartcards and integrated ticketing) facilitating a grid of rapid services which give the rider the freedom of personal mobility to move around their city. Coverage in a network can be given by local, meandering services, but ridership is increased by frequent connected services linking the major nodes of the city in a grid. In a flat city with many nodes of activity this would be a rectangular grid, but in a city like Auckland with a strong CBD, and it’s unique topography, a spider’s web network of rapid services would fit (that’s my observation and not one from the book). It is making the same point as Paul Mees in his book A Very Public Solution (and more recently, Transport for Suburbia); a network of frequent interlinked services is possible in dispersed cities (like Australian, US, Canadian and NZ cities) even with low overall density if the local density around the stops is higher.
Like his blog the book is technology neutral. He doesn’t care whether trains are better than buses. He cares about whether they have their own right of way, whether their crossings are at grade or not, the frequency of service, and the span of those services. He talks about planning for all day products, and not necessarily concentrating on the peaks. The book does ignore technology, but there are aspects of technology that are relevant in regards to capacity, e.g. passengers per hour (train lines can carry more passengers than a dedicated bus lane perhaps) and in some ways technologies aren’t solving the same problems. Replacing the Wellington Cable Car with a bus for instance isn’t possible as some technologies have different capabilities. Somehow, interesting as they are, I think those kind of discussions would have got in the way of the lessons that are in the book.
Another thing missing perhaps was much talk of the stations and stops themselves, other than to say they must respect the passengers, and be safe and pleasant places. There was only passing mention of bicycle and car park and rides and kiss ‘n rides. Again maybe this is my bugbear and is a detail left for elsewhere.
Frequent readers of Human Transit, or other urban transit blogs may think they know it all already. You probably do, but still read this book. Seeing the rules of transit planning distilled down to simple heuristics, and understanding that some things (like coverage and ridership) are tradeoffs, all in the one place may be useful to you. Lessons learned for me are the language of describing the different delays that a service may encounter and the “be on the way” rule. If you’re planning a passenger generator (like a university) don’t build it on a cul-de-sac or on top of a hill. (He mentions the currently in the news Simon Fraser University in Vancouver in regards to this). Another example of his “be on the way” rule was the dreams unfulfilled of Peter Calthorpe designed Laguna West south of Sacramento. It had me breaking out Calthorpe’s The Next American Metropolis and checking it out on Google Maps. His example of Fresno, California left me scratching my head though. 6-8 lane boulevards are just not the New Zealand experience.
All up this book is a practical vision, working inside political realities, where a city can intensify development opportunities, by choosing the geometry and frequency of its services, that result in more efficient public transport opportunities that give people true freedom to have the mobility of their own cities. It is a very human philosophy and should enable us to share a language to ask for what we want.
For Auckland if the political reality is a central government that is not going to come to the party on rail improvements then what lessons could we learn from this book about how we could have a frequent grid? For all NZ cities how do we get bus priority and, where useful, buses in their own dedicated lanes? We often accuse the central government of “being dumb”, but how, faced with that reality, could we be smarter? This book should help.
By Guest Post, on January 19th, 2012 This is a Guest Post by Louis Mayo and follows on from this previous post.
My previous post proposed a system which streamlined all the different fare products into a 2 hour and Daily pass with options over three zones. In addition to the cash fare system that I described in my previous post, there would also be a smart card system as well. The smart card option would be best for regular users of the public transport network. Cards would be available as follows:
- Adult
- Senior Citizen (concession fare during peak, free off peak)
- Child (under 18)
- Tertiary student
- As proposed in the previous post there would also be a card for people on benefits, etc.
For concession smart cards, each card would require a photograph and the cards would be named and would purchase concession fares by default. As per the current Snapper- HOP system you could buy additional fares e.g a family on an adult card,etc and still get the discount but you would need to tell the bus driver (or use a ticket machine if your using a train) before tagging on.
Each card would hold a value that could be topped up at stores, train stations and by internet. I would also like to see automatic topping up from a credit card or bank account to allow even more convenience, i.e if your card approaches $0 than $20 would be automatically topped up onto your card, which saves the stress of worrying whether or not you will be able to pay for your trip.
The same zone system would be used (the zones system is the same as in the previous post although some have suggested adding additional zones. Paying with HOP would offer a fixed 20% discount on cash fares. As you would be paying electronically there would be no need for fares to be in 50 cent multiples. The discount is higher than the 10% or so that is currently offered for paying with HOP (only 5% on the Ritchies Fast Pass).
The system would rely “tagging on” and “tagging off.” While I understand the concerns that have been raised by tagging off, I think people will learn to tag off quicker and I don’t really see how this issue can be worked around. Failing to tag off would result in a default fare being charged (I prefer the term ‘default fare’ rather than ‘penalty fare’).
Having said that if we use the three zone that I have suggested in the previous post, and we rationalise most of our buses so that they operate within one zone only and leave the RTN (Rail) system to carry most of the longer distance trips. Then there would be no need to tag off on many routes as they would only be going one zone anyway.
To make this system even better value there would also be weekly and monthly ‘caps’ offered. Once these caps have been reached travel for the rest of the week or month would be free of charge, so you wouldn’t have to commit to paying a large amount of money for a weekly or monthly pass at the beginning of the week / month and then realise that they have wasted money because they didn’t use it as often as they were expecting to.
The system would work something like this (I am not a software programmer!)
- Card tags on at station or onboard bus
- System works out what zone the tag on was recorded
- Cards tag off, system works out what zone tag off was recorded in
- The amount that a 2 hour pass for the required amount of zones is then deducted from the account
- Travel over these zones is then free until 2 hours after the initial tag on was recorded
- If travel is made to a new zone then the difference between the amount paid and the amount of higher fare will be charged and the pass will be ‘upgraded’ to include the extra zone/s
- If more travel is made after the 2 hour time period has finished then another fare is deducted from the card and travel is free for the rest of the day
- Once the quota for the weekly cap (which would be daily pass x 4.5) then travel for the remainder of the calendar week is free (i.e until Midnight Sunday of that week)
- When the monthly cap is reached (weekly x 3)
These tables show proposed fare prices.
2 hour and Daily fares are calculated from cash fare x 0.8.
Weekly fare = Daily x 4.5
Monthly fare = Weekly x 3
As the fares are deducted electronically there is no need for a 50 cent rounding system.
 The savings rack up quite significantly, for example a three zone monthly would cost $172.80 compared to paying 40 (based a trip to and from work every week day for 4 weeks) return 2 hour cash fares would cost $320. That’s a saving of around 46%, which would amount to over $1500 in a year, this should be a fairly compelling reason to switch to smart card.
Chris R will also be paying less (see comments of part I post) – only $129.60 for his trip compared to the $180 that he pays for a rail monthly currently. On top of that he’ll now get to use buses and ferries in addition to just trains.
By admin, on January 17th, 2012 I noted a few posts back that I’m reading the book “Edge Cities: life on the new frontier” by Joel Garreau, at the moment. The book is broken up into chapters that focus on a particular place, although within each chapter is a wide variety of information about how edge cities function, why they exist and details on particular examples of them.
Of particular interest in the chapter on Detroit is an explanation of how key a role parking plays in the structure and shape of edge cities. In fact, parking seems to be the driver for pretty much everything about how the Edge City is shaped and how it functions – interesting to note when you consider how planning generally ignores parking to a large degree (aside from making stupid rules that are backed by little logic).
The developer’s rule of thumb is that in Edge City, there must be one parking space per every worker. Because one employee uses about 250 square feet of work space and each car requires four hundred square feet to be parked, there has to be about one and a half times as much space to park the cars as there is to nurture the drivers.
If the developer does not provide that much parking, he will have grave difficulty getting bank financing. His project will not be judged commercially viable. In fact, in many Edge City jurisdictions, the developer is required by law to provide that much parking. The lawmakers don’t’ want people to park on streets and lawns, either. Their experience, too, has led them to believe that one worker will equal one parking space.
Essentially, with the ‘everyone will drive to work and therefore everyone needs a parking space’ motto that defines the Edge City (and Auckland’s parking policies) we find ourselves in the rather bizarre situation of providing 50% more space to the storage of vehicles than we provide for the actual undertaking of economic activity which occurs within these places. The ratios seem to hold true in recently developed commercial centres in Auckland, like Manukau, Botany Town Centre and Albany. In these places, parking is the dominant urban feature – presumably because both our planning rules have required it to be and there is the feeling that each worker must be provided with a parking space (for retail areas, I’m guessing this is translated into each shopper).
Given the assumptions above, if we provide parking through multi-level structures or underground, we can increase our densities – but this comes at a pretty high cost. Auckland Transport is effectively trying out this approach in Manukau, by building parking structures to encourage the freeing up of surface parking for development – at an enormous cost.
The book continues:
…the cheapest option a developer has is this. Build a one-story building. Let it cover 40 percent of the ground. That leaves 60 percent of the land to be covered with a simple parking lot. No grass or trees or sidewalks. But the right ratios at the least expense. Which explains why an awful lot of cheap development looks the way it does.
This kind of construction guarantees that all buildings and people will be about as far away from each other as physically possible, surrounded by fields of asphalt. This in turn guarantees that the area so built will be an aesthetic and functional sump.
Places like Westgate, Smales Farm, Apollo Drive (near Constellation Drive) as well as the usual suspects listed above come to mind when you read out this description. The developers have simply followed the parking requirements and created what makes most financial sense. All other planning rules have become effectively irrelevant and you end up with this:
But not every Edge City follows this simple formula – cheapest isn’t always best:
That level of development is only the cheapest kind, not necessarily the most profitable. Buildings laid out like that do not command much rent. If the land in that Edge City is expensive, and the developer puts a small, cheap building on it, he will go bankrupt.
So he may decide he needs to bring in more revenue. To do that, he would want to build more office space on the land. This would require him to make his building wider or taller or both.
This sounds easy, but it present a serious problem. More building kicks all his cost calculations into a new orbit. He needs more parking to match the increased amount of office space. But he has run out of land. Therefore, he must build a multilevel parking “structure”. That will cost more than twice as much per parking space as his initial calculations. That levitates his cost, which requires that he build his building larger still – in order to break even. This, in turn, requires more parking, and so the spiral goes.
What all of this means is that to get a floor-area-ratio (FAR) of more than 0.4 (which, in urban areas and particularly town centres, is very low) life gets really tricky for developers if they are reliant on providing every single person who travels to the area with a dedicated parking space. Look at most of the new retail and office areas of Auckland and you can see the effect of this: more space dedicated to storing cars than to actual buildings. Relatively low employment densities. Poor agglomeration economics. And so forth.
The book doesn’t make this conclusion, but I think that the numbers above highlight the importance of improving public transport – so we can grow our employment numbers and density without ending up in the ugly spiral of parking costs and building size. If we can get more and more people to town centres via ways other than driving, perhaps the biggest benefit we create is through the freeing up of land for more productive uses than car storage. Of course our parking rules need to change as well, because even now we generally force an over-provision of parking (partly by requiring each individual use to provide for its own parking requirement and not allowing the sharing of facilities).
I wonder if the economic benefit of reduced land requirement for parking is measured in the cost-benefit analysis of public transport projects? Similarly, one wonders whether the economic disbenefit of roading projects which encourage more people to drive to an area and park in it, are captured. With parking at the crossroads between land-use and transport policies, it seems to be utterly critical in shaping our urban form.
By Patrick Reynolds, on January 17th, 2012 There was a report in the Herald today of Councillor Dick Quax’s ‘gobsmacked’ and ‘horrified’ reaction to a recent study on possible models of intensification in Auckland [by Patrick Fontein of Studio D4 and Tim Robinson and Alistair Ray of Jasmax]. The report itself is very detailed and asks for a more thorough analysis than I can give it quickly. However even a brief look it does seem that it emphasizes more how the existing council regulations will need to change in order to achieve greater intensification than to be an attack on the proposed plan itself. It also seems to be arguing for a very developer friendly model with very light regulation. Is Patrick Fontein the previously bankrupted property developer of Kensington Properties? [Or another Patrick Fontein?- my apologies if this is not the case, and nor does this previous role mean that he has nothing to offer but it may be a sign of a particular point of view]. Here is a sample of the executive summary:
This report finds the intensification projections in the current draft Auckland Plan unworkable without substantial amendments.
• Without major re-zoning SD4 believes only 45-60,000 extra dwellings can be provided in intensified form in the areas highlighted in the current draft Auckland Plan (this compares with the Plans projections of 300,000).
• With major rezoning and sticking to town centres (as current draft Auckland Plan), an additional 90-120,000 extra dwellings could be provided (compared to projections of 300,000).
• Substantial upzoning in almost the entire isthmus of Auckland, in coastal areas and areas with good outlook is needed, to achieve anything close to the draft Auckland Plan’s additional intensification dwelling targets (300,000).
• If there was major rezoning in most urban areas of Auckland (requiring HUGE political resilience), this could provide an additional 200-270,000 dwellings. Images are provided in sample neighbourhoods by Jasmax Architecture, which highlight the level of intensification that would be achieved with an extra 200-270,000 intensified dwellings.
Interestingly among the authors Key Findings are the view that our town centres are ‘already substantially improved’ and that ‘there’s no sales demand to live on transport corridors’. The former is a very strange position, virtually every town centre I can think of has plenty of scope for improvement and intensification, except a few like the Remuera shops perhaps. And some say like Takapuna, New Lynn, and Mt Albert offer a great deal of opportunity for going up- as in fact the report then goes on to conclude. But then maybe the authors consider oceans of carparking an intense use, and current building height an ideal? The second claim is interesting as at no point did I find any view on how the provision of transport amenity may influence property value or utility. It makes no attempt to tease out an ‘accessibility quotient’ in any area’s particular value. It seems to me that this report is blind to the role of transport in land use. So there is no thought given to how investment by AC, AT, and NZTA, might stimulate demand on corridors, or the isolation of new distant suburbs and increased traffic pressure may negatively effect land values. But then the authors seem to have a firm idea that the council has no role outside of helping private developers: ‘Direct Council intervention to develop in areas not market attractive is not needed’. Like all economic analysis there are a lot of assumptions dressed up as conclusions.
The body of the report looks at 14 different neighbourhoods around Auckland where the Auckland Plan proposes some level of intensification, then undertakes a ‘fine-grained analysis’ to test the level of intensification that’s been assumed against what the authors consider to be realistic. Here are the results: In some areas (Glen Eden, Oratia, Manurewa and Parnell) the report suggests that the Draft Plan has over-estimated the number of dwellings possible, while in other areas like Birkenhead/Highbury, Mt Albert and Te Atatu Peninsula the report suggests that the Draft Plan has under-estimated the extent of intensification possible. Overall, the difference is around 6,000 dwellings across the 14 study areas taken as a ‘representative sample’.
Some of the critiques make good sense, like that of Farm Cove as an intensification area – which makes little sense as the area has been developed quite recently and doesn’t have the potential for much to be added unless you were to wholesale demolish the area (which would be silly as the houses are relatively new): Other critiques make less obvious sense, such as that of Onehunga – which seems to have more potential for intensification in the short-term than the fine-grain analysis gives it credit for:
A lot of the focus is on a few of the diagrams at the back of the report, which give some indication of what the areas in question may look like post-redevelopment, if redevelopment was to happen to the extent envisioned by the study. The Herald article picks up on Birkenhead (presumably because that’s where community opposition may be strongest), but ignores New Lynn and Tamaki for some strange reason:  Not exactly ‘forcibly cramming everyone into Victorian slum conditions’ like Councillor Quax’s words would have you believe? Also note that the intensification in both of these examples are focussed around the rail corridors. No awareness of how the improvements in this network can influence property development viability. Especially if supported by other incentives. In this sense the report imagines a more intense Auckland of structures but not of movement: clearly the two will have to grow together.
Here are the authors’ recommended answers, to help implement intensification to a greater degree than has been done before, something critical to achieving the goals of the Auckland Plan:
10. TOOLS AND LEVERS
10.1 Community Consultation
• Council have to take responsibility for community consultation and providing the planning regime that encourages quality development.
• Council needs to provide a very substantial communication programme promoting the community benefits of high quality urban intensification.
• Council will need to deal with the legal / RMA issues of the substantial upzoning
• If the developer is providing what the Council desires, minimise developer community consultation requirements. Fast track approval for quality projects
10.2 Reducing Council barriers inhibiting good quality intensification
• Update planning rules that provide rule “bonuses” for good urban design. It’s so simple: incentivise good urban design: all developers will provide to the level
• A fast track development consent processing scheme, for high quality projects
• Provide Council Case Managers for good quality projects
• Say NO to bad design: developers will very quickly understand and adjust!
10.3 Providing incentives to encourage developers to develop in target areas
• Reducing or eliminating development levies and rates in target growth areas for the first “x” properties. This was very successful in the CBD in the 1990’s
• “Council Project teams” that encourage and nurture early stage development in target areas. Eg Wynyard Quarter. Need development savvy members in team
• Develop community facilities, parks and reserves etc ahead of development.
• Encourage development: Council not to intervene where the market will not go!
Reduction or elimination of parking minimums would be top of my list, which would both lower building costs and increase the opportunity for better building design. Not to mention contribute to reducing the auto-strangulation of the city. But also there are opportunities for flexibility in regulation, say additional height being allowed in exchange for public amenity- yes ‘incentivise good urban design’. ‘Develop community amenities’…Yes. Like providing world class public transit. I am surprised that the study doesn’t talk about that.
I am very enthusiastic about the demand for good design, but no mechanism is suggested for achieving this, outside of ‘incentivising it’. There are models for design quality control in action overseas that should be looked at. In fact in general I think there are quite a few models for how Auckland could grow in the bigger cities across the Tasman, but that will have to be the subject of another post.
By admin, on January 16th, 2012 An article in today’s NZ Herald confirms that HOP cards will need to be changed over later this year to the new Thales system, enabling them to work on all buses, trains and ferries.
Auckland’s “integrated” public transport cards, introduced in May with a $1 million marketing budget from the public purse, will have to be replaced because they are not compatible with a new system for trains, ferries and some bus companies.
More than 93,000 electronic Hop cards, supplied by Snapper, are in use – but they work only on NZ Bus services.
NZ Bus and Snapper – which was beaten in 2009 by French electronics and military technology giant Thales to an $87 million supply and operating contract for an Auckland region-wide integrated ticketing scheme – are owned by Wellington-based investment company Infratil.
From the middle of this year, the Hop cards will have to be replaced at an undisclosed cost to Auckland Transport by upgraded versions suitable for all forms of public transport using the Thales system.
These include trains, ferries and bus services such as Northern Express operator Ritchies Transport, Howick and Eastern, Birkenhead Transport, Urban Express and Bayes Coachlines.
This issue has been brewing for almost a year now, since HOP was first launched, and is the result of a pretty complex number of factors – stretching back a number of additional years and related to Snapper’s role in the whole integrated ticketing project. Effectively, when Thales won the contract to provide the integrated ticketing system for Auckland, Snapper were pretty grumpy about the whole thing and as their owner (Infratil) also owned NZ Bus, a deal between the two was stitched up that would introduce the Snapper Card onto NZ Bus services in advance of Thales’s system being rolled out.
The charitable side of me notes that NZ Bus’s old ticketing machinery was no longer supported, and the machines were breaking down on a very regular basis. The cynical side of me thinks that the whole process was just Snapper trying to ‘throw a spanner in the works’. In any case, a compromise deal was struck whereby Auckland would see Snapper Cards introduced on NZ Bus services, but rebranded to look like HOP cards. I think all parties hoped that the technology would evolve to enable those HOP/Snapper Cards to be useable on the Thales system once that was up and running – thereby avoiding the need for a card-swap – but that hasn’t happened.
I think it’s a bit mean to beat up Auckland Transport for their role in all of this. When NZ Bus decided to go with Snapper, this put AT in an incredibly challenging situation of having another card launch a few months in advance of something they’d been working on for years, stealing their thunder and really muddying the waters when it came to brand recognition of the card. So I can understand why AT went down the path they did last year, launching the HOP brand as soon as they could, even if technically it was on a Snapper Card rather than a “proper” HOP card. I have spoken to those involved in the technical side of things and there was (and remains to an extent) a belief that the Snapper Card “could” become compatible with the Thales system to the required extent to make it work. But it’s just taking too long and AT have understandably decided they can’t wait any longer and will go with the card swap option instead.
Theoretically, the ‘swap you HOP’ process should be pretty painless. Unlike the switch-over from GO Rider to HOP, it seems likely that there will be a period when the machines on the bus accept both HOP/Snapper and real HOP cards – enabling the simple swapover of cards when your HOP/Snapper card runs out of credit. I think it’d be a good idea for the cards to look different too (and not just through the removal of the Snapper logo) to avoid confusion.
In the end, it seems that the only real loser out of this becomes Snapper. While it remains to be seen whether people get to keep their HOP/Snapper cards and still get a new “proper HOP” card for free, Snapper is getting squeezed out of both things it does: Thales kicking it out of the public transport side of their business (aside from the card readers on the bus) and a new generation of bank/credit cards with contactless operation starting to squeeze them out of the retail side of the business.
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