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By Patrick Reynolds, on April 26th, 2012 Pronouncements on Auckland by Unitec’s Dushko Bogunovich’s are consistently curious to say the least, not many urban designers seem so anti urbanist. Generally they are best puzzled over then ignored, but his latest effort, dutifully reported by Anne Gibson in the Herald, deserves a brief response. The baffling outburst is here. Basically he is trying to claim that by repurposing an office block into apartments in Vincent St nothing is being gained. Because there won’t, he argues, be a net gain of humans in the inner city. Here is his math:
“Does he not realise that the conversion leaves the physical density the same as before and keeps roughly the same number of bodies in the CBD as before, only the bodies were there eight hours during day?
Where to start? Well there clearly will be an increase in residents in the inner city through this move, and they may or may not also all work in in the CBD, this can’t be known, although it is not a long stretch to assume that some or even most will, as it would be probably be a little odd to decide to live right in town but commute to, say, Takanini. Odd but not impossible, and just fine if that’s what occurs. This is of no consequence. What really matters is that a whole block of commercial space will be withdrawn from that market and because of this will help to encourage demand for new construction elsewhere in town. And at the same time a bunch of new grocery-buying, theatre-going, who-knows-what doing people will be moving in. Now as we are told in the original article that BECA, the current tenants of this block, are moving up the road to the old ARC building and not out to the suburbs, we can safely conclude that this will indeed increase net amount of ‘bodies’ in the city.
Beca staff will soon leave the block which is still their international headquarters even though only a handful of staff remain, after divisions gradually shifted to the former Auckland Regional Council headquarters on Pitt St.
So the complete reverse of Bogunovich’s next claim:
“Now they will be there eight hours at night. And that this is yet another sign significant businesses are decentralising rather than compacting in the city?”
This development is clearly putting a small squeeze on the availability of commercial space in the CBD, removing an older lower value block from the market and giving it a new use. Bringing construction and new residents into town which will support new and existing businesses there. Put it this way: If every current office block in the CBD was converted to apartments then demand for new office space would clearly grow, stimulating construction as well as increasing the economic life of the CBD as the needs and desires of these new residents are met.
So of course this is an encouraging move and exactly the kind of thing the Council wants to see. Churn in existing buildings is a sign of economic activity and dynamism in a market. And this sort of repurposing is exactly what we’ed expect to see as a start of vitality returning to the CBD residential market. Is this what so angers the anti-intensivist Bogunovich? Roger Blakeley in the earlier Anne Gibson article here:
“This is music to our ears as we look to quality residential development in the city centre and other centres as part of the quality compact city in the Auckland Plan.”
Quite. But also this but also from the developer:
“Three Malaysian and Singaporean investors have bought apartments.
“They are very impressed with the growth in Auckland City amenities, for example the Auckland Art Gallery, Wynyard Quarter, Britomart and the strategic plan for Auckland City.”
Vincent St is a great location for apartments, so handy to all those amenities. They could also have mentioned just how close these new apartments will be to not only the new Aotea station but especially to the K’rd one on the City Rail Link…. especially useful for when these new city residents wish to visit the rest of the isthmus, including Takanini.
 Vincent St and Greys Ave Public housing on Greys Ave and other residential on the Myers Park side. The sheds at the lower end currently used for that most valuable of resources; parking, are surely due development. The building in question ‘A’. Just out of shot on the left is the building that BECA are moving to; bit of a stretch to call this decentralisation. Both streets ennobled by London Planes, arguably the greatest of street trees. It would be lovely to see the gaps on these streets planted.
By Peter M, on April 24th, 2012 Those promoting a transport and urban outcome based around smart growth, a compact city, a more balanced transport policy and more investment in public transport, walking and cycling – instead of on road capacity – have long based their arguments on the need for change. This had some logic to it as the general trend the world was heading seemed to be towards more urban sprawl and more car dependency – which has some serious negative consequences for the economy, society and the environment. The paradigm could be summarised as follows:
The market is delivering more sprawl and more car dependency, which is collectively a bad thing, so we must intervene in the market for the common good
Pretty much everything is couched on this world-view: from both sides of the argument actually. On the side of smart growth and a balanced transport policy we still hear much about the need to “change behaviour”, the need to “curb urban sprawl”, the need to “get people out of their cars” and so on. On the ‘other side’ of the argument, we hear a lot of criticism about planners engaging in “social engineering”, about public transport advocates wanting to “force people” out of their cars. Essentially both sides of the debate are making the same assumption: that the market (being the aggregated wants and needs of the population) wants to deliver car-based urban sprawl. They only differ in whether this outcome should be allowed or discouraged.
One of the key things that various posts on this site over the past month or two have tried to emphasise is that this paradigm has changed. Increasingly, the evidence is pointing towards the market making a pretty radical departure from its general trends of most of the last century, with a new and thoroughly different paradigm emerging – the market actually wants less sprawl and less car dependency. People actually want to catch public transport because it makes sense for them. People want to live in central parts of the city, not on the urban periphery. People are smart enough to realise that what Auckland needs is not a whole pile more roads, but a world-class public transport system to complement our existing roading network. In short, those promoting this new paradigm no longer need to couch their arguments in terms of the need for change or the need for intervention, increasingly they can simply focus on allowing and enabling this shift to happen.
There are two key pieces of evidence in relation to this paradigm shift: traffic volumes compared to public transport patronage growth being the first and the location of housing demand (highlighted most clearly through house prices) being the other. Let’s start with traffic volumes compared to PT patronage.
Stu’s two posts a few weeks back really highlighted that the current ‘flat-lining’ of traffic growth is not only a pretty dramatic shift from constant increases over much of the last century, but also that this flat-lining has been going on now for quite a long time: seven whole years. Furthermore, a ‘de-coupling’ of traffic growth and economic growth has been going on for around 14 years now, meaning that for the first time we’re able to grow the economy without a similar level of growth in traffic volumes. And in more recent years we’ve been growing the population quite significantly but once again without a commensurate increase in traffic volumes:
The idea that traffic volumes won’t continue to increase, or at least that they might increase at a slower rate than population growth (as each person travels less) is a complete anathema to the “old paradigm”. Under that old paradigm volumes always increase by around 3-4% a year and always would. With most roading projects justified by forecasts of increasing traffic in the future (and the horrors if a road is not widened or added to cope with that increase), the huge dip in per capita travel over the past five years is utterly devastating to the business case for pretty much every new roading project. If our system for assessing such projects actually recognised this fundamental shift, which it doesn’t.
In contrast, public transport patronage in Auckland most particularly has grown in leaps and bounds over this same period – up by around a third since 2006: Comparing the trends of traffic growth and PT patronage growth, the way to structure arguments for a shift in funding becomes clear: it’s not about what modes we should spend the money on for broader reasons (although those arguments are still valid), but a much simpler “people are using PT a lot more, people are driving less, we need to reflect that in our funding balance”. By the way, the current government funding plan spends about $27 on state highways for every dollar spent on PT infrastructure – about as ignorant of these trends as practically possible.
The second paradigm shift relates to that vexed issue of “how should Auckland grow?” The common assumption is that “the market” wants to grow through urban expansion or sprawl, and that planning intervention is required to encourage/force people to live more intensively and ‘save’ the rural hinterland. Yet again, both sides of the debate accept the paradigm that everyone wants to live on the urban edge, in a “quarter acre paradise”. However, a series of posts – this time mainly by Patrick – have highlighted that the reality these days is actually quite different.
Patrick has noted a series of articles in the NZ Herald and other overseas publications over the past few months which consistently say the same thing: house prices in the inner suburbs are soaring while (especially in the USA) they are still falling on the urban periphery. There are a wide variety of reasons given for this phenomenon, things like higher fuel prices, changing demographics, smaller household sizes, cultural shifts and so forth – all of which are interestingly similar to many of the causes that might be behind the stagnation in traffic volumes over the past seven years.
So the paradigm of “allowing sprawl or forcing/encouraging intensification” really may not be valid anymore, just like the “providing for vehicle growth or encouraging/forcing people onto public transport” is now outdated. People are changing their habits already. The trick now is to ensure that policy decisions, especially when it comes to decisions over where transport money is spent, reflect this new reality. We plan for the future, both in land-use decisions (whether to expand urban boundaries or make intensification easier) and in transport decisions (whether to spend money on holiday highways or city rail links) – let’s ensure that our decisions reflect the new reality of what people actually are doing and what people want. Not an outdated, old paradigm, version of that.
We don’t have to force change anymore, let’s allow it to happen.
By Peter M, on April 20th, 2012 A few days ago there was an interesting piece on Radio NZ’s “Morning Report” programme, which highlighted the funding shortfall in the transport budget over the next decade – largely arising from the proposed $10 billion spend-up on the Roads of National Significance. The shortfall, which could be up to $2.5 billion over that timeframe, may need to come out of other projects being deferred or not happening at all.
So nothing particularly new here. Greens and Labour transport spokespeople then raised some fairly legitimate concerns – is this a good use of a huge chunk of the transport budget? Are we putting all our eggs in one basket? Do the projects stack up? Brownlee’s response to this (from about 1.30 onwards) is just bizarre. He says:
I find them [Phil Twyford's comments] most disturbing because they’re very light on factual information. But I’m not even sure I know what the Greens are on about. If people want to go back to an age where we have dirt roads and the horse and cart and we want to persist with the idea that if you take a square wheel and you run it fast enough it will get you there, then you follow their policy.
Ummmm… what?
I never thought I’d say this, but I might miss having Steven Joyce as transport minister – at least he had a brain.
By Peter M, on April 16th, 2012 Fare rises are inevitable, but never particularly welcome. Auckland Transport has just announced that most rail fares and some bus and ferry fares and to increase from April 29th. Here are some of the details:
Auckland Transport said today it has completed its annual review of bus, ferry and train fares.
The review is based primarily on recovery of cost increases including fuel and labour, and equalising the cost of travel for bus and train users.
Auckland Transport’s Manager, Public Transport Operations, Mark Lambert says, “In general fares have not kept pace with cost increases over time.
“As a result of this year’s review, some bus and ferry fares and most rail fares will increase between 10 cents and 90 cents but many fares remain the same.
“For a number of years train users have enjoyed significantly lower fares than bus users. We now have 2,000 train services a week, the rail network and facilities have been substantially upgraded including the first phase of the Manukau train station which opened for service yesterday.
“This year’s increase in rail fares removes that inequity with bus and simplifies the fare structure prior to the full introduction of HOP near the end of this year.
“In the ferry sector many fares will remain unchanged and fares for similar journey lengths on different routes will be closer aligned.
“In the tertiary sector, the 40% discount currently in place is not sustainable for operators or the ratepayer. This is being reduced to 38% which remains significantly greater than the 20% that was in place in 2008”.
Mr Lambert says, “Public transport fares remain heavily subsidised through Auckland Transport and government agencies such as NZTA. Public transport continues to offer good value for money against petrol prices and the full cost of car ownership”.
Details of the new fares are here. The way in which fares have been increased is quite interesting, with the biggest change being the alignment of bus fares with rail fares for non-monthly passes. With the shift to integrated ticketing this was inevitable, and also has a lot of logic: why would rail fares be different to bus fares for roughly the same journey?
However, while that’s a sensible and logical change, a less logical part of the fare increase is that once again it seems that monthly pass users are being unduly picked on – they’re just about the only ones who see their bus fares go up, for example: So most monthly pass holders suffer 7-8% fare increases while cash fares for single trips don’t change. That’s not exactly rewarding our best customers is it?
As Matt’s recent post outlined, we need to get a lot smarter about how we structure our fare system – not just keep increasing the complex myriad of fare products by a certain illogical percentage every once in a while. Yet again, this fare review is a missed opportunity to do just that.
By Patrick Reynolds, on April 16th, 2012 An Anne Gibson penned front pager with a screaming headline in Friday’s Herald declared: Auckland House Values Soar
Of course this is based on average figures lumping together all suburbs and all price brackets. But really the data is very patchy, and only Auckland, in fact only parts of Auckland, have values returned to pre-2008 levels. I guess the editors’ desire for a catchy headline doesn’t bother with such detail. The article goes on to focus in on the best performing sector with this report from an auction house:
Last-night, the buoyant inner-city Auckland housing market continued its run of high prices…
and then Gibson quotes a QV valuer:
“Quality properties in good school zones and near the city centre remain in high demand,” said Ms Whitehead “However, there are insufficient properties coming onto the market to meet this demand,”
“In central areas, where zoning will allow, we are starting to to see infill housing sites being created, with seemingly good demand for these for these vacant sections either from spec builders or potential owner/occupiers.” she said.
My emphasis. There are two points I want to raise here represented by each one:
1. It is clear that if there is a boom it is not city wide but quite focused on the closer in suburbs. And none of the usual commentators seem to be asking why.
2. As a result and if this continues the Council can win its argument about how the city should grow by simply getting its own house in order, with regulations and zoning rules to facilitate brownfields development, and let the market do the rest.
First let’s look a little closer at the ‘boom’.
On March 5th the Herald helpfully published a round up of dwelling sales data for the whole region and beyond. What is particularly useful about this doc is that it not only separates suburbs out but also allows a longer view: giving a percentage change from Nov 2007 as well as short periods. There is some commentary as well with interviews with economists, agents, and valuers.
The more interesting numbers are the longer term ‘change from Nov 2007′ because it enables looking past short term noise, but also it shows if values have recovered back to their pre-crash level or not.
Back in Feb Bernard Hickey from interest.co.nz noted that the biggest rises have been at the top end and are largely the result of the main recipients of Key’s tax cuts bidding up each other’s flash houses: 
But the growth hasn’t been consistent across the top end, the North Shore in particular is missing from the figures. Although it hasn’t done as poorly as the true ex-urbia of Rodney and Papakura/Franklin or as the lower value areas as Manukau and Waitakere. Let alone the provincial towns like Hamilton, Whangarei, Tauranga- all still seriously down from 2007, despite the diary boom. But some Shore suburbs are still below the Nov 2007 figure, like Campbells Bay at -3.6%, Castor Bay -2.8%, and even the fabulous cliff top sites of Takapuna -2.4%. So there is no region or city wide boom.
Here is a list of suburbs with above or near double digit percentage growth since Nov 2007 [+9% or more]:
Epsom, Grey Lynn, Kingsland, Meadowbank, Mt Eden, Onehunga, Ponsonby, Pt Chev, Sandringham, Western Springs, Westmere.
All in the old Auckland City Council area. There are only two outliers; somewhere in Manukau called Burswood with +10.9%, and nearly in with +8.5%; Hillcrest on the North Shore. Otherwise nowhere in the rest of Auckland nor the regions are much above the 2007 price and most in fact are still way down. Pretty consistent numbers. So what’s going on?
Is Ms Whitehead’s thought about school zones right then? Economist Shamubeel Eaquab also mentions this in his interview: ‘In good school zones and other desirable postcodes, professionals…are still buying houses and paying spectacular prices.’ Well if it was all about school zones then you’d expect Kohi, Mission Bay, Orakei, Parnell, Remuera, St Heliers, and St John to be in there too wouldn’t you? No flash schools in any of the big movers above except Epsom and Mt Eden [only 2/11].
Isn’t a better explanation that the areas with the strong growth are the previously more affordable inner city areas being bid up by people for whom living closer to the centre is increasingly important? Ms Whitehead’s ‘near the city centre’ looks sharper to me as a unifying theme here than the old school zone story. It looks like urban is hip among property buyers, but why? Is it just the qualities of those inner suburbs on the old tram routes of Auckland? I think that’s part of it; they’re all leafier, more walkable, and more mixed in with other amenities like shops, cafes, and employment, than the newer more auto-dependent further out suburbs. [Here for an analysis of the difference]. But also perhaps the ever growing costs of car commuting and the poor transit options further out are also influencing this preference?
 Old 'tram built' suburbs of Auckland, from Mt Eden One odd thing about the Herald Property Report is that the CBD doesn’t seem to exist at all. Perhaps in the Herald’s view nobody lives there, or perhaps apartments are just too déclassé to be included; the Herald only sees ‘houses’ and not all kinds of dwellings? So there are no numbers for the inner city proper. But they do quote Simon Damerell of Ray Whites who says: “A good villa or bungalow or well constructed apartment in a good location will sell well”. And it seems that close to the centre is clearly an important condition, now, of a ‘good location’.
I’m calling this growing price spread between inner and outer living an indication of a big ‘Flight to the Centre’. The reversal of the 1960s and 70s ‘Flight to the Suburbs’. Even more boldly I’m calling that this is structural, a discontinuity from the last period, and important. Here is an earlier description of this as visible in Auckland. Why? Because it isn’t just in Auckland but is observable all over the world. It is looking like a real zeitgeist issue, like the decline in driving. Richard Florida of Atlantic Cities is good on this:
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/housing/2012/04/end-sprawl/1692/
Nathan Norris at Planetizen see a generational shift at work see here:
http://placeshakers.wordpress.com/2012/04/09/generation-ys-great-migration/
If this is correct the pro-sprawl agenda of ACT’s Productivity Commission is likely to end in tears. Remember Ms Whitehead saw a supply problem in a very specific market sector; the inner city. There is absolutely no chance that paving new bits of the countryside halfway to Whangarei will alter this supply, no matter how swish NZTA’s new motorways are, if few people want to live there. It seems that the agenda of this state funded lobby group is particularly backward looking, perhaps blind to the direction of the data by the groups whose interests they are serving. Or perhaps it’s that line of Steve Jobs that things ‘Have to be believed to be seen’. They, like the government, are no believers in change.
A very restrained commentary on the Prod Com’s report can be found here at architecturenow.co.nz.
The direction of the market will make sprawl developments even more dependent on state and city subsidy than usual and the salespeople will likely find themselves swimming against the tide. And of course, every auto-dependant new little nest of cul-de-sacs out on the fringes will make Aucklands Motorways clog up further. Which makes the Herald’s latest view on this issue even more confused; here in yesterday’s editorial. As a criticism of the Council’s aims what does this mean for example?:
Its overarching aim is to create “the world’s most liveable city”, an idea that commuters stuck in traffic might find bleakly amusing, particularly if they have visited Vienna, Vancouver or Copenhagen.
Huh? So trying to make Auckland less auto dependent, to give Aucklanders real effective options to driving and helping them to not have to live in spread out in uninteresting and poorly performing distant suburbs is somehow the cause of congestion? The really disappointing thing about the argument here is not so much that it is wrong but rather that it insists on generalising one perspective and claiming that it is universal or at least in such ascendance that other ideas about the city must be crushed. It is a fearful view from the suburbs and worse, wants some kind of dictatorship based on this view all in the name of good taste.
And any sober person who ventures into the Queen St valley after 10pm is either brave or foolhardy; stepping around puddles of body fluids and avoiding assault has become standard practice. If this is a vision of the high-density future, most Aucklanders would say you can keep it.
This editorial with its mushy thinking, superficial apprehension of the issues and lazy appeal to unsupported claims [Kiwis all dream of the suburbs, apparently] has the clumsy big paw prints of John Roughan all over it. Regardless of its author and that it contradicts, without evidence, the information from their own paper above, it should still act as a wake-up call for the Council. It does point out how badly things were done under the previous council:
Residential development in Auckland is already intense: cross-lease sections have proliferated, as have apartment buildings in the CBD and inner suburbs. A profusion of shoddy apartments – including, but not limited to, those in the leaky-building fiasco – has hammered public confidence in intensive residential development.
With the flow of the market on the side of their plans for growth within existing city boundaries the Council should be concentrating on making sure all the things within its control are facilitating the outcomes it wants to see. Changing regulations that inhibit brownfields development, like minimum parking regulations, building setbacks, zoning and height restrictions in those areas where it is appropriate. In particular identifying special development zones especially on transport corridors. And getting effective systems in place to encourage not just good urban design but also good architectural outcomes is also important. Look here for a model from Melbourne. And here for another Australian study that offers a counter analysis to ACT’s view. Because in direct contrast to the sprawl boosting Productivity Commission economist Dr Rodney Dickens has this to say in the Herald document:
“Our research shows there is no shortage of sections to build on in our national and regional markets.”
But clearly there is a supply squeeze where people really prefer to be: close to the centre. Time for the Council to out-smart its opponents by helping the market build that livable city for us all.
And there is even a glimmer of hope in part of the end of yesterday’s confused editorial. A complaint it needs to take to Wellington, to those very men who fixed it so the ACT party could live again on generous Taxpayer stipends as the Productivity Commission, who would not support this exhortation:
It’s fine for the council to have a vision, but it needs to accord with that of the people who live here. It should devote itself to making public transport work - as it works in Hulse’s “modern cities” – rather than trying to make Auckland into a dense urban jungle.
My emphasis. Clearly this author has no idea of either who controls the money in transport in NZ or the relationship between land use and movement systems, but still, he or she get’s it half right in the last sentence. Because it seems pretty clear that people are much more frightened of finding themselves lost in a suburban wasteland than they are of that cliché from the previous era: the urban jungle.
By Patrick Reynolds, on April 15th, 2012 Fantastic aerials of the the biggest urban motorway junction in Australasia under construction. From the Whites Aviation collection at the National Library:
 1968, Dominion Rd flyover in the foreground Auckland City used to just flow into its surrounding inner suburbs. Weirdly, as seen above they started with arguably the daftest part of the whole plan: The massively over engineered Dominion Rd/New North Rd flyover. Some engineer was allowed to get more that a little carried away that day. Ah: Brave New World.
 1966. Newton. George Courts on K'd on the Left Site clearance already beginning; anticipating SH1 being shoved right through town. You can see why K’Rd was such a successful shopping precinct; direct connection with its community. Plus of course being at the heart of the well used tram network.
 1967. Domion Rd flyovers, looking west Unusual view. Western Line on the left. Easy to see how out of scale the Dom Rd flyover is, and needlessly complicated. The scar of the pointless destruction of community that is to become dumb little mini-me motorway of Ian McKinnion Drive on the right.
 1969. Symonds St in centre. work starting on SH1 through the city Work begins. Check out the on-street parking. They’ve got to go somewhere if this is the mode you invest in. A big additional but uncalculated cost of the auto-dependent choice.
 Not sure of the date 1970s. The full CMJ sandpit. Fantastic print. Whites clearly invested in some better kit by this stage. A Hasselblad maybe; looks like it could be the great 40mm Distagon, or possibly the 38mm Biogon on the SWC, developed by Zeiss and Hasselblad as an aerial reconnaissance camera for the Luftwaffe in the 1940s! [A fact you don't see in their advertising]. And still great. Happy to be corrected, if anyone knows. Forgive me for indulging my inner camera nerd.
 CMJ, with gardening Severance at its best; no way across to K’rd now, hey guess what?, it’s never recovered commercially.
 CMJ_lost street pattern  1950s "Master Transport Focal Point" And how they sold it. Doesn’t look like much does it? A few little lines, nothing that’ll totally cut the CBD from its inner suburbs and nearly kill it for example. The text talks of tunnels. Yeah well that would have been much better, human life could have continued so much better if the surface hadn’t been reduced to a few car dominated bridges.
A fine monument to central planning. South Seas Soviet style. This whole effort was planned and built by government apparatchiks in Wellington immune to any input from the locals, including the local elected officials.
Well there you go: How modern Auckland was made by a city engineer with the phrase: “It’s a technical matter”. Never let the pricks get away with that one again.
Edit: Just added the accreditation for the photos
- Auckland motorways, Dominion Road interchange. Whites Aviation Ltd : Photographs. Ref: WA-67442-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. http://beta.natlib.govt.nz/records/23121284
- Newton, Auckland with motorway construction on right of Grafton Bridge. Whites Aviation Ltd : Photographs. Ref: WA-66170-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. http://beta.natlib.govt.nz/records/23119567
- Auckland City, including Southern Motorway and Eden Crescent. Whites Aviation Ltd : Photographs. Ref: WA-67026-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. http://beta.natlib.govt.nz/records/22595451
- Motorway junction, Symonds Street, Auckland. Whites Aviation Ltd : Photographs. Ref: WA-68574-G. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. http://beta.natlib.govt.nz/records/22792353
- Auckland motorway construction, Newton, with ‘spaghetti junction’ roads. Whites Aviation Ltd : Photographs. Ref: WA-74702-F. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. http://beta.natlib.govt.nz/records/22722332
By Patrick Reynolds, on April 11th, 2012 Tuesday’s Herald had a lot of good coverage of transport issues. No fewer than four good reports by Mathew Dearnaley. Rudman on the Remuera buslane rebellion, covered here on this site. And even a piece on the transformation of LA back towards being a transit town.
There was also really good coverage of this site’s founder, Josh Arbury, in his new role as Transport Strategist at the Council on value for money in Auckland’s PT; here. A piece on design of the new trains, here. And coverage of ways to raise infrastructure investment funds via proposed road pricing here. This issue deserves its own post and will get future coverage on this site. All this follows earlier an report on fewer road deaths here, and a really encouraging report on Shared Spaces with not only Alex Swney of Heart Of The City saying really good things about the improvements they bring but even the AA’s Simon Lambourne managing to not see the world ending at the removal of parking spaces; here, although still demanding more parking buildings.
But the one I want to look at in detail is about a seemingly insignificant little road with a boring name; who was/is Ian Mckinnon? Dearnaley’s article is here.
I have always hated this road. I hate driving on it. I certainly hate cycling on it. I hate the detail of its design. I hate its programme of speeding vehicles up briefly in the middle of the city. I hate the way it turns its back on its surrounding sites. I hate the way it cuts off Eden Terrace. I hate the way it spreads the quality of a motorway a little further into the surrounding area. And now it turns out to be so bad that it kills its users too….. In short the whole thing is a disaster. Why? Well first let’s look at its reported problems.
Although the road was built almost to motorway standard for the 30,000 vehicles that use it daily, and includes long downhill sections in both directions, it lacks a median barrier and has become notorious for crashes on its main bend.
So the idea of building a road ‘almost to motorway standard’ to link ordinary streets in the middle of the city has led to bad outcomes. Surprise me. And despite a road design that encourages speed it is now expected that declaring a lower speed limit will fix the situation, although police concede that this is unlikely.
But although the police intend monitoring the new limit, they are expected to “exercise discretion” until drivers get used to it, with prompting from electronic message signs over the next two weeks.
Hopeless really, it should have the physical characteristics of a city road; in particular it would be best to reduce it to one lane each way to help slow drivers. This would also provide the opportunity to add a real cycle lane here on the resultant spare tarmac. Something urgently needed because the NorthWestern cycleway stops at the Newton Road overbridge and this annoying little road could provide a way to link the cycleway up to K and Queen, to Symonds Street and therefore the Universities and the hospital, through to the Domain and so forth. A low cost way to get a great deal of cycling connection and some traffic calming thrown in for free! Like this:
 Ian McKinnon Drive as a way to extend the NW cycleway to Upper Queen St and beyond Now let’s go back a bit further and look at what else is so bad about this road. Here’s a wider view from above:
 Dom Rd/New North Rd flyovers bottom. Ian McKinnon Dr top. Ian McKinnon Drive is a relatively new road [anyone got a date?] inserted through a much older street pattern and a sorry consequence of the terribly over-engineered and land gobbling monument to post-war planning that is the Dominion Road/New North rd interchange. Originally designed to be part of the Dominion Rd Motorway, yes!, this interchange clearly needed somewhere to head to once the motorway was thankfully abandoned, so Ian Makinnon was rammed through. Here is how it was:
 Dominion Rd + New North Rd with rail line pre interchange Ok you can see the problem; both Dominion Rd and New North Rd converging into one road city bound. You can also see what’s good about this intricate and interwoven neighbourhood street pattern; housing and employment mixed together, walkable and interconected streets; a modern urbanist’s dream. But to allow [or force] a car based transport model on a city like this can only mean getting out the wreckers ball. It also means, of course, choosing to prioritise those living further out and wanting/needing to drive in over the value of the land and buildings and the community already existing in this inner area. New outer suburbs over older inner ones. Spirit of the times. Here is work by Kent Lundberg showing what value was directly destroyed by putting this road in [Twitter: @kentslundberg]:
Interesting to see just how much of old inner Auckland has been lost to expanding the roadspace to accommodate our imbalanced car focussed system, especially in the light of how valuable this kind of inner city property has become. What great rating income if nothing else has been abandoned by choosing this kind of city. Lost wealth. But that isn’t all, this demolishing and severance, as well as the presence of more and more vehicles rushing past has kept the remaining odd parcels of property low value, underdeveloped, and underperforming. Auto-dependency waving yet again its magic wand of anti-agglomeration. In the top left you can see a stretch of Newton Gully which has also, of course, been sacrificed to auto infrastructure. Making complete the separation of the remaining housing of Eden Terrace into a strangely stranded island. And one that few walk to and from as Ian McKinnon and motorway form such barriers to pedestrians.
You can also see there is a rail line running through these pictures. Had the earlier versions of the City Rail Link been built and a real Auckland passenger service been invested in so many of the commuters that these interventions were designed for could have still got to the CBD efficiently. Then could the costly destruction of so much of this neighbourhood have been avoided? It would have had to have been considered valuable for that to happen or at least there would have had to have been the ability for local view to have been heard and considered instead of distant decisions being forced down from City Hall and Wellington. We could still do much to improve this area, undo a lot of the damage, but we’ll never get the old street pattern back. The good news is that reducing the road space will become more and more viable as we build effective alternatives car commuting and as it would release a fair of land for productive use such rehab work might pay for itself. Here is an earlier post about this by Josh Arbury.
Let’s also remember the wider lesson from this story, we must balance place value and movement benefit more sensibly than was done here. Motorways and other invasive insertions are always more likely to happen in areas of low value but are those values permanent? How much have we already lost? Grafton Gully, for example, is a terrible loss to the city and clumsy separation of the city and the Domain, and put through in an age when we valued wild places a little less. Is it any surprise that the road lobby are now proposing to complete the total separation of Onehunga from its harbour by motorway; a lot easier to get its payday among the poorer and less connected of South Auckland after getting a bloody nose in the eastern suburbs.
So we can see in this one example how the auto-dependent model is considered the least productive and most wasteful system of movement for a city; it is a costly destroyer of place value. But we’ve always known that:
 De Leuw Cather report 1965, detail
By Peter M, on April 7th, 2012 From “The Limits to Travel“:
The Department of Transport published last January, with no publicity, its latest National Road Traffic Forecasts. This is an output of the National Transport Model. Although traffic levels have levelled off in recent years, the projection is for a 44% increase by 2035, even though population growth is assumed to be only 18%.
Car traffic in London is projected to grow by 36% by 2035, even though the number of car trips (driver and passenger) has held constant at about 10m a day since 1993, according to data from Transport for London. This finding suggests that road capacity is limiting car use, taking account of the impact of parking restrictions, bus lanes, traffic signals and the congestion charging zone. So it is hard to see how the DfT projected traffic growth could be fitted in.
My view is that DfT, having built a national transport model at considerable effort, are reluctant to question the behavioural assumptions underlying the inputs and the face validity of the outputs. Doubtless it suites the Department to project substantial traffic growth when bidding for funding from the Treasury.
The last sentence is critical. I’m yet to work out whether this whole denial of stalled traffic volumes in both the UK and New Zealand is simply institutional inertia or whether it’s something far more sinister.
By Peter M, on April 3rd, 2012 Last Friday saw what seemed like a belated announcement – that the Public Transport Operating Model (PTOM) had acquired all its necessary approvals and will be implemented in the relatively near future. PTOM is the system under which bus and ferry services will be contracted by regional councils (or Auckland Transport). The announcement was welcomed by Auckland Transport and NZTA, although questioned by the Green Party as missing the big transport questions faced at the moment: booming public transport use and stagnating traffic volumes (while funding priorities are the complete opposite to these trends).
The contracting of bus and ferry services has been an ongoing argument in New Zealand for pretty much the last 20 years. The current/previous system effectively prohibited the logical planning of public transport networks, by splitting individual services into either commercial (run without a subsidy and over which the transport agency had almost no control) or contracted (operated with a subsidy and therefore much more control). The cabinet paper on PTOM describes the problem with this system:
At the moment, public transport services are delivered through a mixture of commercial and contracted services. It is up to operators to identify what services they wish to provide on a commercial basis (ie without public subsidy). A commercial service can be a single timetabled service running from one point to another (for example the 10.48 am from Smithville to the city). Regional councils then determine what other services are necessary to the urban public transport network. These services are then ‘contracted around’ the commercial services to fill service gaps.
The practice of registering single timetabled services as commercial has hampered regional councils’ ability to provide an integrated public transport network and achieve network efficiencies, as these services are not under contract with the regional council and do not have to conform to service standards or fare standards. The presence of commercial registrations has also arguably contributed to poor tender outcomes (on average just over one bid per tender in Auckland and Wellington) and higher prices than in regions where competition is more robust. This has led to increased tensions between regional councils and operators.
The 2008 Public Transport Management Act (PTMA) sought to resolve this problem, but the operators moaned and the new government reviewed the legislation before it could even be given effect to. The result of the review is PTOM – which is described in quite a bit of detail in this earlier blog post.
From reading through the most recent cabinet paper on PTOM many of the most important gains from the PTMA seem like they’ve been retained, although there are a few little nasty parts of PTOM which may hold back our ability to truly achieve the kind of improvement to our public transport system that is so desperately needed. Before I get into those details, let’s start with outlining what we really need from the contracting system:
- The ability to plan an integrated network (therefore, the ability of the public transport agency to define the routes and timetables of every single service)
- The ability to implement integrated ticketing and integrated fares (therefore, the ability to ensure operators accept the integrated ticket and fare system)
- The ability to share risks and rewards from higher or lower patronage between the public transport agency and the private operator. This provides an incentive for both parties to grow patronage while also ensuring an ability for ‘cross-subsidy’ from the more commercial to the less commercial routes and means no more ‘cherry picking’ of the most commercial routes by operators.
- The ability to measure performance standards and include matters like punctuality (measured properly, not this rubbish) in contracts.
So what’s the good news about PTOM in achieving these goals? Well a few paragraphs from the executive summary of the PTOM cabinet paper answer a few of the questions above:
The introduction of PTOM represents a fundamental shift in the delivery of urban bus and ferry services. Under PTOM public transport services, that form part of the region’s urban public transport network, will be grouped together into units and provided under contract with the regional council to enable stronger network co-ordination and a basis for joint investment. This replaces the existing practice ofoperators being able to register single timetabled services on a route as commercial, and regional councils having to ‘contract around’ these services with subsidised services — a practice that led to poor tender outcomes and network development.
Units will be operated on an exclusive basis for the duration of their contract, and where appropriate procured through a mixture of competitive tendering and direct negotiation based on unit performance. Sufficient units will have to be put out to tender to ensure confidence in costs. Operators will still be able to set up new public transport services outside of the existing urban public transport network. These services will be exempt from contract and will not have exclusive operating rights (ie other operators will be able to set up competing services).
Both legislative and administrative changes will be required to implement PTOM. PTOM encompasses a range of planning, funding and procuring tools that have been developed with the needs of the three largest public transport markets (Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch) in mind. Many of these tools may be utilised by smaller markets, but not all will be mandated through legislation. I recommend that amendments to legislation be kept simple and limited essentially to the introduction of the unit concept and the requirement for all public transport services to be under contract with the regional council unless exempt.
Properly implemented, PTOM will introduce competition to the system by incentivising operators to compete for exclusive operating rights and directly negotiated contracts. Contractual arrangements allow regional councils to prevent exploitation of these provisions through regulating fare setting and use of cost benchmarking.
The rest of the cabinet paper further answers the questions I set earlier in the post. By combining all services along a particular route (or group of routes) into a single unit, it’s possible to plan a logical network (at least within units), the ‘cherry picking’ issue is resolved, units will be operated on a risk/reward sharing basis – giving all parties an incentive to generate more patronage. All units (except exempt services, which I will get onto soon) will be contracted – meaning that even commercial units will need to provide for the timetable and route structure decided upon by the public transport agency. All units (once again, except for exempt services) will need to accept integrated ticketing and be included in integrated fares networks – should the PT agency want them to be.
So that’s the good news, and largely ticks all the boxes above. Units will be incentivised to become more commercial, by having fares cover an increasing proportion of their operating costs, because the more commercial a unit is, the more likely it will be contracted through direct negotiation rather than by open tender. Operators dislike open tenders because it introduces significant risk of losing the tender for that area.
Theoretically, the system sets up a framework to get better value for money from our spend on public transport services. Now I have little doubt the government has done this because they want to reduce spending on public transport, so it’s possible to throw even more money at their pointless and stupid Roads of National (Party) Significance – but improving cost-effectiveness of PT services by enabling better network planning has significant benefits regardless of this. With patronage increasing so fast in Auckland, a most cost-effective contracting system means that for any additional funding (and PT funding will not decrease in Auckland while patronage is growing so quickly) we should be able to get more extra service for the same amount of money. All we need is a different government in 2014 (something that’s looking increasingly likely) to boost funding for public transport and we have the ability to create a vastly better system.
That’s the good news, so what are the catches? Well as PTOM is meant to be a giant compromise between all parties, there are a couple catches to be aware of.
- Exempt services. A number of PT services will be exempt from PTOM and while some of these are rational (like inter-city services) others make less sense, except as part of a fairly messy compromise. Bus routes that are currently fully commercial at all times will be exempt (this includes the Airbus in Auckland), while perhaps more significantly ferry services that are fully commercial will similarly be fully exempt. This includes the Waiheke Ferry – which means that there will continue to be little, if any, control over how that ferry operates in terms of its fares. It may also include the Devonport Ferry, if that runs on a fully commercial basis at the moment.
- An aspect of the transitional arrangements which seems to allow for a proportion of units to be rolled over to the existing operator for an incredibly long 12 year contract without open tendering. This is seen as a concession to reflect the existing investment in commercial services – but sounds pretty bizarre. I just hope the roll-over of these contracts allows for full network planning to occur and also allows for some assurance that a competitive price is achieved.
Overall, it seems like PTOM is a step in the right direction – although that will largely be dependent upon whether we really do achieve the efficiencies the system is designed to achieve, how the units are structured in terms of their interaction with one another, whether the ‘catches’ listed above turn out to be particularly problematic and whether any of the efficiencies gained are spent on further improving the system to reflect rapidly increasing patronage, or whether they are siphoned off to be flushed down the toilet on another pointless RoNS project. So to an extent, we will have to wait and see.
By Stu Donovan, on April 2nd, 2012 In my last post I suggested NZ is at a transport cross-roads: Evidence shows people are driving less and that they have been doing so for some time. Along the way I could not help but poke fun at the NZTA and MoT for resolutely sticking to the line that “traffic volumes are growing”, when they quite clearly are not and have not been for sometime (either in NZ or overseas).
My main idea (which is not particularly original) was that a combination of demographic, socio-economic, and technological factors are reducing per capita demand for vehicle travel. For this reason I suggested NZTA/MoT should consider deferring (at least for now) major investments in state highways.
After last week’s post I have done some further digging and analysis. The first thing I did was to check whether the decline in demand for vehicle travel is evident in other data sets.
And indeed it is: data from the MoT’s household travel survey shows that total vehicle kilometres travelled have fallen by approximately 3.2% in the last five years, while per capita vehicle travel has fallen by 7.8%. The rate of decline even seems to have accelerated over the last two years, as shown below.
The second thing I wanted to check was the relationship between state highway travel and economic activity. The chart below plots vehicle kilometres travelled on the state highway network versus (real) GDP (both per capita). It shows that vehicle travel has started to fall, whereas GDP continues to grow. This trend is consistent with evidence found in a number of other countries and implies that New Zealand’s economic growth is not dependent on growth in vehicle travel.
The “decoupling” between economic growth and state highway travel is further highlighted if you divide the total kilometres travelled on New Zealand’s state highway network by the real GDP recorded in each year. When you do you get a graph that looks similar to that shown below. The y-axis in this graph measures the number of vehicle kilometres that is undertaken on the state highway network in order to produce one dollar of GDP.
Maybe I’m a nerd but this graph makes me sit up and take notice; if MoT/NZTA weren’t nervous before then they certainly should be now.
The graph suggests that, since 1998, NZ’s economic growth has increasingly outpaced the growth in state highway traffic – a decoupling that continues unabated to the present day. During this period, the number of vehicle kilometres travelled per $ of GDP produced declined by 25-30%. Ultimately this suggests NZ’s economy has, during the last 14 years, been able to develop in ways that do not depend on (or subsequently cause) growth in state highway travel.
But wait there’s more. Analysis by the OECD actually suggests that New Zealand’s historical investment in state highways (“motorways”) has had negative impacts on macro-economic performance. The impacts of highways are particularly bad when compared to positive benefits found for other types of transport investment, such as roads (in general) and rail.
** NB: I’m not completely sure but there seems to be a slight methodological issue with the OECD analysis, in that the investment in “roads” category appears to include investment in “highways”, while the latter is also included separately in the regression. So if Roads = Local Roads plus Highways, then the effects of Local Roads on its own would be calculated as Roads – Highways, or 1.85 – (-0.34) = 2.19. But that’s a econometric detail that would not change the key result …
You may be sitting there wondering why investment in highways would negatively impact macro-economic performance?
One possible explanation is that highways are very, very expensive. Thus investment in highways creates the need for the government to raise additional taxes, which in turn has negative macro-economic impacts. Another possible explanation is that NZ’s investment in highways simply caused our cities and towns to disperse, which in turn undermined potential agglomeration economies (i.e. external benefits of density).
Irrespective of the rhyme or reason for the negative macroeconomic season, all this empirical evidence casts serious doubts over the wider economic benefits of the Roads of National Significance” (RoNS). It also raises questions over why National has increased funding for state highways at the expense of other categories of transport investment, such as local roads and rail, which seem to have more positive macro-economic impacts.
So where does this leave us? Well, my original suggestion was that kiwi’s were driving less and loving it. We now know that not only are kiwis driving less, but we are also growing our economy at the same. And all this evidence is directly at odds with the claims of the National Government, and the bureaucrats at the MoT/NZTA. Honestly, what gives?
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