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ARC Chairman Mike Lee has started a blog, in the run up to the Super City elections where he’s standing in the Waitemata and Gulf Ward for the Auckland Council. The blog has backdated some interesting posts, and also has a great little piece on why Steven Joyce is a bit of a hypocrite asking for local politicians to be more cautious with their rail promises – while he goes and blows a billion and a half dollars on a holiday highway. In recent times I have been very pleased to see that all the main mayoral candidates for the Auckland Super City appear to support significant investment in upgrading public transport in Auckland, most particularly in the widespread enthusiasm for big ticket projects like the CBD Rail Tunnel and rail to the Airport (although I have noted that a North Shore Line might be a step too far at the moment). An article in the NZ Herald today, which reports on a mayoral debate at Auckland University last night, suggests that perhaps John Banks is going to break away from his previous commitments to rail projects. There are a few relevant extracts, starting with this:
While I certainly agree that we need to ensure the rail projects being proposed are realistic and cost-effective, there is potentially plenty of money available for projects such as the CBD rail tunnel: we just need to have it redirected away from projects that are a waste of money. The Herald makes a link between Banks’s “change of heart” on large-scale public transport projects and comments made last week by Transport Minister Steven Joyce:
It would be really sad if there is a link between Joyce’s comments and Banks’s “about-turn”. In my opinion one of the biggest advantages of the Super City will be giving Auckland a stronger voice when it comes to negotiations with the government. It’s fairly common knowledge that Auckland has chipped a lot more into general government coffers than it has got in return over the years, and while some of that is justified, with much of New Zealand’s future population growth occurring in Auckland, I think we have a pretty good argument to get a pretty massive chunk of new infrastructure spending. Having a mayor who’s going to argue Auckland’s case, not one that buckles to the wishes of central government, is essential in my opinion. Now I’m not saying that this is the reason why Banks seems to have gone cold on public transport all of a sudden, but it does seem like an interesting coincidence. The article goes on:
Oh dear, not the old fallacy that building motorways reduces pollution. Building roads encourages more people to drive, which encourages more pollution. Congested traffic might emit more per car per kilometre, but generally if you have free flowing traffic you end up with more cars and more kilometres. If Banks really does no longer support advancing these big public transport projects it would be really disappointing. On the TV programme Q+A this morning there was a debate between the three main candidates for the job of being mayor of the Auckland Super City. You can watch the debate here, or read through the whole transcript of it here. What I found particularly interesting is the discussion on the CBD rail tunnel, and I have included the parts of the debate relevant to that topic below. For reference, Paul is interviewer Paul Holmes, John is Auckland City mayor John Banks, Andrew is North Shore City mayor Andrew Williams and Len is Manukau City mayor Len Brown:
There are a few interesting issues raised above, but perhaps the most crucial thing to note is that all three seem to agree that this project is desperately needed – which is a fantastic step forward. Of course it’s all very easy to support a project when you don’t need to pay for it, but as John Roughan noted in a Herald article yesterday, the Super City mayor is going to be a very very important person, not someone that the government can simply ignore when it comes to their transport demands. The big question still remains though – who’s going to pay for this? Or more precisely, how will it be paid for, as $1.5 billion is a lot of money. The idea of infrastructure bonds, which both Len Brown and John Banks appear to endorse, it not necessarily a bad idea – as it takes central government somewhat out of the picture – but in the end those bonds are council debt. Furthermore, as it is likely a large chunk of the benefits of the CBD rail tunnel will be to road users, in the form of reduced congestion (at least in terms of how NZTA calculates project benefits) so therefore it seems logical to me that road users, through NZTA, should pay for a big chunk of the project’s cost. Perhaps one of the best lines in politics though is “talk is cheap”. It’s easy for politicians to promise rail to the airport and rail to the North Shore (even though the Shore has a pretty brand new busway, go figure) when they expect the government to foot the bill. But what would actually be more insightful is finding out which politicians will oppose the holiday highway because it’s poor value for money (and the money saved on that project could construct the CBD rail tunnel), which politicians would support the expansion of bus lanes (well sign-posted of course) to improve public transport cheaply and quickly for the 80% of PT users who catch the bus? Which politicians will have the guts to say “hey, the North Shore has a decent busway, the southeast of the city doesn’t have anything” and prioritise a southeast RTN rather than a North Shore railway line (which the RLTS didn’t think was needed until 2040)? Which politicians will put a stake in the ground and guarantee that the Waterview Connection is the last motorway ever built in Auckland? That’s what I’d be interested in finding out. I’m pretty sure it isn’t John Banks, especially on the holiday highway issue. Tonight at 7.30pm the annual general meeting of the Campaign for Better Transport is being held at the Grey Lynn Community Centre, 510 Richmond Rd. The CBT is a politically neutral lobby-group for transport issues in Auckland and elsewhere in NZ, and has had many successes, like the Onehunga Line, rail electrification and so forth. Before the AGM, Auckland City Mayor John Banks will be giving a talk and answering some questions about transport issues. The meeting is open to all CBT members, although you can join on the night for a $20 yearly membership fee. An interesting question time today in parliament discussing the implication of farebox recovery ratios, the emissions trading scheme and so forth. The transcript is available to read here. Did Joyce really say that forcing people from public transport into their cars will decrease transport emissions?
Crikey I didn’t mishear it. I think Gareth Hughes wondered if it was a clip of the tongue from Joyce, but seemingly not:
Oh goodness not the good old “electric cars will save us” argument. Green MP Gareth Hughes’s speech on the 2010 budget: This bit is particularly good:
This guy is really onto it. With all the hoopla surrounding the various piece of legislation that are leading to the creation of the Super City in Auckland, it’s easy to forget that the election is only a few months away now, and in less than six months we’ll be living in the “brave new world” of a single-council Super City. While my general political persuasions are centre-left, I am keeping a relatively open mind about who I plan to vote for in the upcoming elections, largely because aside from the mayoral candidates I don’t really know who my options will be. Turning to the mayoral candidates, it is interesting to read Len Brown’s (current Manukau City mayor) reaction to the select committee’s report on the Auckland Law Reform Bill, and how he plans to hold the CCOs accountable. Here’s his statement on the matter:
Clearly, he has cottoned on to the fact that it will be up to the Auckland Council to require the CCOs to operate in public, rather than that being set by the legislation. I like the plans he has for ensuring accountability and transparency of Auckland Transport in particular, although I would add a suggestion that the Auckland Council retain a number of transport qualified staff so that there can be better land-use planning and transport integration. I also like the idea of reviewing how effectively Auckland Transport is working after two years, and if it’s found to not be working, putting together a Bill to parliament to ‘bring it in-house’. Reviewing whether such a big change has actually had good results or bad results is a sound idea. While in the past I have somewhat egged on the council to completely fire the board of Auckland Transport on day one of the council, now that it would seem the mayors will have a role in helping to choose these directors, I think that it’s sensible for Len Brown to state that it would be a bit silly to fire the lot on day one. However, if the directors do end up being “Steven Joyce lap dogs” (which is a bit of a worry I have) then I would absolutely expect the council to get rid of them so that Auckland Transport actually does what Auckland Council, not the Minister of Transport, wants. A lot of people have commented that while Len Brown seems like a great guy, they’re not so sure there’s the experience, deep knowledge of how things work and ultimate toughness for him to take on the job of “super-Mayor”. The way he plans to hold the CCOs to account indicates that he may well have what’s necessary for the job. I wonder what John Banks’ plan for the CCOs is. While the Supercity is shaping up as a anti-democracy nightmare, one side effect is we may see the back of some of the transport dinosaurs who spread misinformation about Auckland’s transport system, such as Rodney Mayor Penny Webster who made the news earlier this week moaning about opposition to the “Holiday Highway”. So I dug back into Penny’s past and found her speech to the ACT conference in 2001 and want to deal with some of the, ahem, inaccuracies she clearly believes.
What crap. The point so easily lost on Penny and others of her ilk is this; 1 car per family: an economic miracle, 4 car per family: an economic disaster, give people no other option, or a far poorer option, and they are effectively forced to have a car and drive, which leads to my second point. How can consigning (by design) everyone to travel the same way, via automobile, be a position a so called “freedom loving” politican supports when it may not be the best option for them or their family (or affordable)? What about the elderly, those too young to drive, the disabled and those living in poverty, should they be consigned to transport irrelevance?
I almost went cross-eyed at this one, the infrastructure costs of low-density housing are much higher, the evidence for this is overwhelming, in fact Joshua (admin) did his thesis in part on this very phenomenon. Makes sense doesn’t? Lots of long thin water pipes are more expensive than shorter wider ones, ditto electrical grids, roads, footpaths, etc. And this person is a Mayor? I feel sorry for Rodney residents.
I actually agree with what she says here if not the sentiment, because guess what, an unsatisfactory plan leads to an unsatisfactory outcome. She might like to read the CBD rail tunnel based proposal of a year earlier which was less than 1/4 the price.
Oh dear, only an ACT politician could call less than 20% of monies going into the PT system “heavy investment”.
This I want to deal with as it is one of the big whoppers regularly told about Auckland’s transport. Auckland developed around the tram and the railway, not the car. The oldest and most desirable parts of the city today are those that developed close to train station or on both sides of a tram route. Saying we can’t even aim for 20% PT mode share is crazy considering that up until 1954 over 66% of trips in the Auckland region were taken by public transport, walking or cycling. The active destruction of the PT system after 1955 is the reason our CBD collapsed (surrounding it with the biggest motorway junction in Australasia didn’t hurt) and investment in the separate corridors of PT she talks about is the only way it will regenerate and become a fantastic place for people and businesses again. Remember Melbourne has been able to double its CBD job share in 10 years. Finally Penny needs to accept that unless you have a PT system that caters for the majority of trips, you are going to have congestion during peak times, cars are flexible, sure, but inefficient at moving large numbers of people in peak times. An effective public transport system is hard, it takes good political organisation and great planning, responsible budgeting and investment but when it works well it is worth it’s weight in gold.
This is simply not true, the London tube and Auckland roads have a similiar number of trips taken on them per year (just over a billion), while the tube has approximately 4 deaths a year and Auckland’s road’s 80.
The Northern Busway really proves her point here, doesn’t it? And talking about dropping figures in the 80s and 90s despite enticements? My word what enticements were these? Abandoning public ownership, fair fares, planning, integration, frequencies and investment? I really could go on all day. As a right wing commentor said to me another blog, “It doesn’t seem to pass the common sense test”, I agree and hopefully one positive side effect of the Supercity reforms is we may see the back of leaders such as Penny who lack common sense. If she stands for the Rodney Council seat don’t vote for her if you ever want to see an effective transport system in Auckland. Her full speech is here. I advise you to read it sitting down and it might make more sense if you drink heavily first. The Local Government Commission has today released its finalised findings for what the details of the boundary of Auckland’s Super City should be, the boundaries for the various wards and the boundaries of the various local boards. Back in November their draft plans got absolutely panned for being unfair, unrepresentative and – at worst – appeared like blatant gerrymandering. The main cause of all this angst was that the Local Government Commission were meant to ensure that no ward boundary was over or under represented by any more than 10%. This means that in determining the make-up of the future Auckland Council, whether my vote living in one part of the city was worth approximately the same as someone’s vote living elsewhere in the city. At their first crack, the LGC did a shocking job, and a huge number of the wards were vastly over or under represented. Submissions hammered them for this, as they acknowledge themselves:
But have they really made things that much better? I don’t think so, and if you have a look at the table which details how under of over-represented each place is, there are still a large number of areas that fall outside that 10% threshold. March 2010 final version:
The important column to look at is the one on the right, showing the deviation from the average population per councillor. Out of the 13 wards to be created, no fewer than six have a deviation of greater than 10%. That’s almost half of them. The table below shows the November proposal, and you can see that there have been some improvements, but really it’s still outrageous that 80,000 people in the Waitemata and Gulf Ward are only represented to the same extent that 54,000 people in the Rodney Ward are. That’s not fair democracy. November 2009 draft version:
However, in general I still think the LGC have done an incredibly lousy job here. How hard can it be to ensure equal and fair representation across the different wards? What’s stopping them from shifting another 5,000 people from Manukau into Manurewa-Papakura to even up those two wards? What’s stopping them shifting more of Waitakere into Albany (some has been shifted) to ensure that those match up more evenly. I realise that some effort has gone into ensuring that the boundaries match “communities of interest”, but I actually think that’s far more important for the local boards than for the wards. The ward boundaries are about democratic equality, and the way they’ve been established is not fair. Furthermore, if you look at the areas that are over-represented and under-represented it would seem there’s quite a political bias (Orakei excepted). Which is very worrying and suspicious. Auckland’s Super City is being established through three different pieces of legislation. Two of those – the Local Government (Tamaki Makaurau Reorganisation) Act and the Local Government (Auckland Council) Act – have already been passed into law. The third piece of legislation, the Local Government (Auckland Law Reform) Bill, is currently open for submissions, until February 12th. Making a submission is actually really easy, as you can now do it online. I’m not sure whether I will end up making a submission, but I do certainly have a few issues with the legislation as it currently stands – particularly in terms of the details about how it establishes the “Auckland Transport Agency”, which will be the successor to ARTA and the transport departments of the various current councils. Part 4 of the Bill creates the Auckland Transport Agency as the “Council Controlled Organisation” (CCO) that will manage quite a lot of the transport system within the Auckland Region, once the Super City is established in October this year. Perhaps the key statement there is “quite a lot” of the transport system, rather than “all of it”. As I explained in a previous post, there’s actually quite a lot that the Auckland Transport Agency will NOT manage. This is outlined in section 37 of the Bill:
I suppose that the obvious result of creating the Auckland Transport Agency is that they are doing this job rather than the Council. To ensure that Council can’t get involved in transport matters, we have section 43:
The Green Party appears particularly suspicious about what this decision to put transport into a “CCO”, rather than leaving it in the hands of the Auckland Council means, with Sue Kedgley making the following comments in her original speech on the Auckland Law Reform Bill:
I guess it’s worthwhile to point out that the rail electrification project isn’t actually something that would be under the auspices of the Auckland Transport Agency, but rather KiwiRail/Ontrack – as it’s a government project. However, much of the rest of what Sue Kedgley says is very true – that there is going to be such a divide between the Auckland Council and the Auckland Transport Agency that even though future members of the Council, including the quite powerful mayor, are likely to want to “do something about transport” as a matter of urgency, it seems fairly likely that they will struggle to do so. The main way in which the Auckland Council will be able to affect what the Auckland Transport Agency does is through the fact that the Council is the sole shareholder of the Transport Agency, and has the ability to appoint all its voting directors. The board of the Auckland Transport Agency is supposed to make all the important decisions the Agency will have to make, as outlined in section 45 of the Act: Another aspects of this bill that I find concerning is the fact that it completely repeals the 2004 Local Government (Auckland) Amendment Act, known as the LGAAA. While a large part of this Act was dedicated to the establishment of ARTA – so therefore kind of has to be repealed, the LGAAA also is very important in providing some legal “teeth” to the 1999 Auckland Regional Growth Strategy, by requiring that council plans be consistent with this strategy. It seems as though repealing those aspects of the LGAAA have been simply designed to undermine the Growth Strategy, and in particular the metropolitan urban limits that it created. Perhaps the plan is for the Regional Growth Strategy to be effectively replaced by what Part 6 of the Auckland Law Reform Bill focuses on – the spatial plan for Auckland. This is definitely one part of the legislation that I wholeheartedly support, although it is definitely necessary that we get this plan right, as it seems as though it will be fairly powerful in guiding Auckland’s future development. Here’s what the legislation requires of this “Spatial Plan”:
In terms of what others are saying about this legislation, ARC Councillor Joel Cayford has made a couple of excellent posts on it here and here. He points out a few of the more difficult to find consequences of the legislation. The Green Party have also put together a guide for submitting on the bill, which is quite useful once again in terms of digging into some of the potentially hard to understand bits of it. Overall, I am really starting to think that this whole “Auckland Transport Agency” concept is potentially a big mistake. Originally I had supported it, because I figured it would largely be an “empowered ARTA”, and ARTA seems to have done a reasonable job over the past 5 years. Yet as time has gone on, and I have seen more of the details about the Auckland Transport Agency, it really seems as though we’d probably be better off with transport simply being a part of the Auckland Council. Transport is a big political issue in Auckland, with local politicians just about always putting transport matters at the top of their priority lists. Given the level of discontent with Auckland’s current transport system, it seems very silly to effectively “lock away” transport into an agency that is really only very indirectly accountable to the people of Auckland for the decisions it makes. So while you submit ways in which the Auckland Transport Agency could be improved (which I think it most definitely can be), I do think it might also be worthwhile mentioning that, ideally, transport shouldn’t be locked away from the Auckland Council. |
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Some of the other changes that have been made make some sense. Orakei has been split off from Tamaki-Maungakiekie, and thankfully the central Auckland ward has been renamed from Mangawhau to Waitemata and Gulf. It seemed insane for it to be called Mangawhau (Mt Eden), when Mt Eden wasn’t even in it!
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