Councillor Brewer continues to play politics with the CRL as reported in this morning’s Herald; here. I guess this isn’t a surprise as he wants the mayor’s job and Brown’s mayoralty is identified with the CRL. Brewer has in the past made the now common National Party claims of ‘supporting’ public transport while going out of his way to attack any real steps towards meaningful change in this direction. Here is the wonderfully vague waffle on his website:
Promoting transport solutions
Gridlock traffic has long been the number one complaint about Auckland. With the roads only set to get busier, the Auckland Council will need to find sustainable transport solutions, while making sure our neighbourhoods are protected.
Cameron has worked effectively with the New Zealand Transport Authority, the Automobile Association, rail authorities, public transport providers and advocates. He is committed to leading the charge on addressing local transport issues.
This is after the article congratulating himself and other retrogrades like Ken Baguley for getting the bus lanes on Remuera Rd downgraded to uselessness.
But enough on political game playing; there really is nothing duller, the interesting point is not that Brewer is going to spend the next year painting the CRL as black as he can but rather that his current complaint exactly expresses the reverse of what I believe the Council ought to be doing with the CRL. Here is his big idea:
Orakei councillor Cameron Brewer yesterday said it was crazy to spend $112 million in the coming financial year on land purchases for the rail loop when it had no funding certainty.
Well of course buying property is a really exchanging one asset for another, so not really ‘crazy’ unless a particularly poor deal is made. And here’s the thing, transit stations transform land use and value positively, so the Council is in a strong position to make good deals through the purchases around the CRL. Two of the financially most successful transit systems in world, in Hong Kong and Tokyo achieve this success through the very act of investing in and developing property around subway stations. A recent article at Atlantic Cities on the Tokyo system begins with this observation:
Twice during my recent trip to Tokyo, once at Shibuya and again in a suburb to the west of the city, I exited a subway platform only to find myself swaddled in a massive department store. This was the Tokyu store.
Really innovative councillors, especially from the supposedly business savvy right, should be pointing out the investment opportunities for the Council Property CCO especially around Aotea station and at the Downtown Centre that the CRL offers. The article continues:
…the Tokyu Corporation. Established in 1922 as a regional development company, Tokyu today is a massive “rail-based conglomerate” of nearly 400 companies that employs 30,000 people, only a tenth of which work directly for the railway. Beginning in the 1930s Tokyu surrounded its hubs with commercial and retail buildings and sold land near its intermediate stations to universities at good prices, to create reliable residential (and thus passenger) corridors.
My compliant with the Council is not that it shouldn’t buy property where it intends to change that property’s value through transport initiatives but rather that the Property CCO seems rather lacklustre and lacking in sufficient energy to maximise these opportunities. I guess it doesn’t get any such lead from the Council itself.
No surprise as we certainly don’t seem to be blessed with much quality from the C&R ticket. I am most disappointed with Councillor Fletcher, to whom all Aucklanders owe a debt of gratitude for the construction of Britomart, as she is reported as observing:
C&R leader Christine Fletcher said the time was not right for a big budget and a big spend-up.
Well Sydney built much of its metro in the Great Depression, and in many ways it is the perfect time, interest rates are low, especially for local authorities, the construction industry is largely idle, the city and country needs investment in game changing infrastructure, and property can be easily bought. And we are only talking about getting ready to start the real work later which gives a few years for things to change in Wellington.
Instead these local politicians seem to all be taking the lead from the visionaries currently in charge in Wellington; the big idea is to invest in nothing, construct nothing, change nothing, and hope that somehow through all this inaction that there’s a brighter day around the corner.
So my question to Mr Brewer, the man ‘committed toleading the charge on addressing local transport issues’ other than not investing in Auckland’s future, where is your charge heading? Gridlock I guess.
Auckland’s main bus operator could lose at least $70 million in annual operating subsidies if it fails by November to install machines capable of reading new electronic transport tickets.
Transport Minister Gerry Brownlee said last night that although there was no suggestion yet that NZ Bus would miss that deadline, the firm and its sister company, Snapper Services, would know the consequences of being in breach of contract by failing to meet it.
Asked what those consequences would be, he told the Herald: “They’re off the run.”
And from later in the article:
Mr Brownlee said he was “quite happy” there was a process in place to achieve integrated ticketing “and all the contracted parties just need to understand that we’re not backing away from that”.
Asked what would happen if NZ Bus refused to replace its existing machine readers with equipment compatible with the final system, he said: “They will be in breach of their contract and we will look at getting someone else to pick those contracts up.”
While this blog is often very critical of the government and it’s policies we are also prepared to give credit when it is due and in this case it is good to see Gerry publicly affirming the consequences if the latest deadlines aren’t met. Hopefully it is something that he will keep and eye on to ensure that everything happens as promised. There were also a few comments from Phil Twyford and Mike Lee about the issue:
Mr Brownlee said he could not confirm a claim by Labour transport spokesman Phil Twyford that National put Auckland in a difficult situation by pushing for Snapper’s card to be introduced to the NZ Bus fleet, as he was not minister at the time.
But Auckland Council transport chairman Mike Lee said Infratil lobbied the Government to change specifications to allow the card to be introduced ahead of the wider scheme.
He said that made it the Government’s responsibility to “hold the line” and ensure a successful roll-out of an integrated transport ticket.
I actually think there may be an element of trying to score political points here. As I mentioned in a comment on the post the other day, we do know that Snapper lobbied the government after they lost the tender but the outcome of it was that the issue was handed over to the NZTA to reinvestigate the options. The outcome of that investigation was that the NZTA not only agreed that Thales had the best offer but that they would modify the contract and set up the system so that it could be used nationally. I am also aware that the ticketing system that NZ Bus had before Snapper was falling apart very quickly as it was very old and getting harder and harder to maintain. It needed to be replaced and while I won’t rule out political interference, I kind of wonder if Phil and Mike are blurring some of the events to their own advantage.
There is of course now going to be a 6 month wait before we find out if Snapper has met their targets. Perhaps during that time AT could start working on getting integrated fares sorted out so we don’t have to wait so long for that to happen, it is after all critical for our new bus network.
A note to all readers, this post is not to become a place to continue on the arguments from the other day around about the merits or otherwise of Snapper. Please keep the discussion limited to the content of this post.
Julie Anne Genter was been back in action in parliament yesterday asking questions of the government, this time around what it plans to do about future shortfalls to transport funds that are being predicted by the Ministry of Transport. The answers are quite frankly shocking and reveal that the government really care about the future impact the current expenditure as long as they get the roads built. In essence it is a pretty clear case of doing what they feel like, with no evidence to themselves up and leaving it for future generations to have to sort out.
Transport makes a major impact in the lives of everyone and goes far deeper than how quick and easy it is to from A to B, it more than any other single thing impacts on how ‘liveable’ a city is. Transport is also the biggest single cost for the city accounting for about half of the expected capital costs and one third of the operational costs for the council in the draft long term plan. When the current structure for the city was set up by the government a year and a half ago one of the key bits was to set up Auckland transport as a single body to deal with all transport matters in the region and there was good reason for doing so. There had historically been a huge amount of bickering by local politicians who were so focused on only looking after their own patch that they couldn’t see the big picture. In fact this was one of the things that helped to kill off earlier incarnations of the CRL as the government of the day played the different borough councils off against each other to create disagreement over the project from within the region.
The current structure centralises almost all of these decisions in one place and allows for decisions to be made at a more regional which should also help to provide a lot more consistency across the region but it seems trouble is stirring. The local boards are getting upset with this and are appear to be trying to wrestle to get more control in how our transport dollars are spent in their areas along with a greater say in regional project. I guess this shouldn’t really be a surprise, most politicians throughout history have always want to increase the level of control they have, especially when big sums of money is involved. What I am worried that we could be starting to head back to the old days where disagreement at a local level could create big impacts for the whole region and I’m even more worried that the current government could use this disagreement to stall projects it doesn’t like, projects like the CRL.
This issue was highlighted once again the other day with an interesting piece in The Aucklander which looked at the views of some of the local boards on transport spending. Most were pretty standard and didn’t through up many surprises but perhaps the most interesting and concerning response was from the Orakei board.
We want to engage directly with Auckland Transport to develop our own long-term vision for transport in the Orakei area to influence region-wide transport planning. We support new and improved infrastructure for local projects, including the Tamaki Drive corridor and Ellerslie/Panmure Highway – as well as the promotion of travel choices, including walking and cycling. We would like to see train station to service Selwyn College and provide a more convenient connection for people living close to the Poerewa Valley. Funding of major projects will have to be achieved without increasing rates by more than the council’s rate of inflation. We advocate planning for a third rail line to be added to the South Eastern rail link. We do not support a rail link to the airport. Until passenger numbers reach 35 million per annum, it will be unaffordable. If it is contemplated it should be connected via Wiri, not Onehunga so it will pass close by suburbs to the east of the CBD. We support continued planning for a second harbour crossing, but do not support rail to Orewa. We would like to see a budget allocated to trial feeder bus services to rail. We listed motorway tolling as the fourth priority for addressing the shortfall. We don’t know what number could come out of each option and we believe it is not a question of motorway tolling or rates or getting value out of assets that Auckland Council own. The Government already fund about 50 per cent of approved roading and public transport projects so we believe that this level of funding should continue. Rail related projects are a special case but we feel Aucklanders should receive the same comparative funding as Wellingtonians. We believe all funding options other than rates must be explored in partnership with the Government.
What I am most concerned about is that the board want to develop their own transport plan for the area to ‘influence region-wide transport planning’. My concern stems from the risk that what is good for Orakei is not always good for the whole region, as an example one of their listed projects is a train station at Selwyn College. At first glance it seems to make sense, allowing more people to access and make use of the rail network sounds like a good thing but as soon as you look at things a bit more then the decision isn’t so clear cut. Here is an idea of where the proposed station would be:
The station is in a gulley with no easy access options, this would require either expensive property acquisition and/or and expensive road link from down from Kohimarama Rd. This would also make it difficult to serve with feeder buses which would limit it’s catchment to those within walking distance as park n ride would be even more expensive. There would also be issues for things like security and maintenance. Probably the biggest issue though would be impact it would have on travel times for everyone south of the station. The vast majority of the patronage comes from south of the proposed station and even with our new EMUs, stopping at the station would add at least a minute, probably more due to it’s close proximity to Meadowbank, to the timetable. This is unlikely to be of any concern to the Orakei board who are only focused on their own area but the impacts are something that need to be carefully weighed up before any decision is made, something only a regional body can really do.
A Selwyn Train station is only one specific issue and these types of requests aren’t limited just to the Orakei board but it is something I am really worried about. I can see that if the Orakei board is allowed their own transport plan then each of the other local boards will want the same which could very easily lead us to making the same mistakes as in the past. When it comes to how much say local boards have on transport matters, my view is they should be able to lobby for specific improvements in their area but developing their transport plans should not be allowed. These are of course only my views but I’m keen to hear what you think.
A Ministry-commissioned report last year by consulting firm The Institute of Economic Research found 21 of 60 pieces of advice to the transport minister and the Cabinet were communicated in a borderline or poor way.
While it noted the Ministry’s comprehensive technical knowledge, it said there had been lapses of judgement.
The Ministry is required to save almost $1 million a year and since the 2010/11 financial year the number of policy staff has dropped from 107 full time equivalent employees to 90.
Ministry spokesperson Gareth Chaplin says despite this they can improve their policy advice by working together.
The report cited one paper that seemed intent on embarrassing the transport minister by reminding him of officials’ advice from the distant past and his comments from two years ago. The report said this type of telling off makes officials look churlish.
Other reviewed papers were deemed pointless.
The Ministry’s ignorance of the impact of higher oil prices, their willful disregard for a seven year trend of near flat traffic volumes and the hatchet job they did on the City Rail Link business case make me very unsurprised to hear that there are concerns about the quality of MoT’s work.
You can listen to the accompanying radio piece here.
The madness of our current transport spending priorities have been highlighted a lot in recent weeks, even getting a pretty good airing on the National Party aligned Kiwiblog, thanks to a superb Guest Post by Green Party transport spokesperson Julie-Anne Genter. Behind the scenes, Labour Party transport spokesperson Phil Twyford has also been digging up a whole pile of interesting information through written questions to Minister of Transport Gerry Brownlee. In particular, a series of questions compare the amount of money NZTA is spending on new and improved state highways in Auckland, Wellington and Canterbury with the amount of money being spent on public transport infrastructure in each of those three cities.
I think it’s good to focus on NZ’s three biggest cities, as obviously that’s where the need for public transport infrastructure is always going to be most concentrated. The numbers are, shall we say, mind-bogglingly lop-sided: While it’s important to remember that rail track infrastructure is not included in PT infrastructure spending – for some strange reason – there’s a huge imbalance here. The public transport infrastructure funding pool is used for things like integrated ticketing, bus priority projects, ferry terminal upgrades, rail station improvements and similar projects. Let’s put the difference between the two funding totals in another format: Even I am surprised to see how unbalanced the spending is between these two funding pools.
Green Party transport spokesperson Julie-Anne Genter braved Kiwiblog to post a Guest Post recently:
Let me just start with what this post is NOT saying: I am not saying that people should not, or will not, continue to use cars for many trips. I am not saying that all existing roads should be turned into dirt tracks for carts and horses. I am not saying we should ban anything, or eliminate all car parking. I am not saying that you should give up your car, if it doesn’t suit you.
When we get past the straw man arguments, there is something you and I (and all New Zealanders) can be very concerned about: The Government is planning to spend $14 billion over this next decade — which is more than this year’s deficit and 75% of all new transport infrastructure spending — on a few new state highways with very poor business cases.
Most of that is on 6 projects it calls the ‘Roads of National Significance’. (The 7th, Victoria Park Tunnel, the project with the highest benefit cost ratio, has already been completed.)
It is truly extraordinary that the Government considers the RoNS to be a key plank in their economic strategy, because there is actually no evidence to suggest the additional motorways will have a positive impact on the economy.
A compilation of the benefit-cost ratios carried out by the Parliamentary Library show that, in total, they are projected to return just $1.40 for every $1 invested (if you excluded Vic Park, it would be less). Several of the individual projects will cost more than their benefits, most notably Puhoi to Wellsford and Transmission Gully, which cost nearly a billion dollars more than the benefits they would create.
Moreover, the Government’s numbers are too optimistic. The traditional traffic engineering approach tends to overstate the benefits and understate the costs (PDF) of motorway projects. One of the basic assumptions in the modelling is that traffic volumes will always rise — irrespective of fuel prices and the economy. The RoNS business cases are no exception: Puhoi to Wellsford assumed 4% annual traffic growth from 2006-2026, though NZTA data now shows that didn’t eventuate from 2006-2011. Traffic and freight volumes on state highways aren’t growing because of the impacts of high oil prices and low economic growth—in fact, they’re back to 2004 levels.
We all know petrol prices are at record levels — up 50% in the past five years — and are likely to go much higher this decade. This is a very strong case for deferring the RoNS in favour of more cost-effective projects that also reduce the oil-dependence of the transport sector.
Road users, ratepayers, and the economy will benefit from projects that will move the most people and goods for the lowest cost in the coming decades. And we need to be realistic about the increasing cost of fuel to cars and trucks.
There are better alternatives: Making it easier and safer for kids to cycle and walk to school is one of the cheapest ways to reduce peak hour congestion. By adding capacity to train and bus routes that are already experiencing huge (10-15%) annual patronage growth in Auckland, we can ease congestion on the roads, reduce household petrol bills, and improve the cost effectiveness of public transport. Freight priority (think truck lanes) can be cheaply implemented on key routes at extremely low cost.
Even if you drive everywhere, you benefit when we make it easier for others to leave the car at home, because it’s a cheaper way to reduce congestion (plus it’ll be easier for you to find parking…).
Resources are limited, so we must make choices. Expanding the existing state highway programme is expensive for little gain – but it also means that every other transport category will be squeezed for the next decade: including road policing, local road maintenance, walking, cycling and public transport. So it will be harder for people to get where they need to go. That’s going to mean more congestion, or more lost money in high petrol bills.
If we choose to invest in modern, smart transport solutions, we can spend less on petrol, reduce our international debt, and have a transport system that is better for our economy and better for our people. But, first, we need the Government to honestly re-evaluate its transport priorities.
If you can ignore the bile from the usual suspects in the comments, the debate continues there (particularly towards the end of the comments thread) with Julie giving quite lengthy responses to some of the commenters with enough brain cells to look past her being a Green MP and actually read what she has to say.
If, at the next election, the Green Party have sufficient numbers to become a major player in the formation of the next government, it would be fantastic to see Julie become transport minister. Imagine that, a transport minister who actually knew their portfolio? What a revolutionary concept.
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.
It has been really refreshing to see transport discussed so much in parliament this week – with the results of the exchanges spilling into the media, as evidenced by the interviews on Breakfast TV a couple of days back.
What seems to have really kicked this off are numbers coming out of the Ministry of Transport, and in a series of answers to written questions, highlighting the ever-increasing dominance of our transport budget by projects that have very low cost-benefit ratios. This was first highlighted in the Ministry of Transport’s briefing to the incoming minister – which included this graph: A series of written questions from Phil Twyford to Gerry Brownlee has dug up some further detail on the numbers that sit behind the graph above (at least for the last couple of years) and also updated it with 2010/2011 data. I’ve put together the answers to a series of written questions into the table below – first by dollar amount and then by percentage: Finally, a couple of questions asked by Mr Twyford look at the proportion of the state highway spend on projects with low cost-benefit ratios that are related to Roads of National Significance projects. The answers highlight that in 2009/2010, $527 million of the $587 million spent on projects with low cost-benefit ratios related to RoNS project (just under 90%). In 2010/2011, $468 million of the $583 million spent on projects with low BCRs related to RoNS projects (just over 80%).
Now let’s put them all together into a graph showing what’s happened since 2005/2006 – effectively adding the 2010/2011 data to the earlier graph in this post:
Geez what happened from 2008/2009 onwards that triggered such a dramatic lowering in the cost-effectiveness of our state highway spending? Oh that’s right, the current government came to power and introduced the RoNS projects.
Gerry’s answers seem to be getting worse and worse. Now he seems to be saying that the party that sold itself as having sensible solutions to solve the economy shouldn’t get hung up on how well a project stacks up economically. He also seems to be saying that it isn’t them that chose the RoNs but that it came from the regions. That is interesting for a few reasons,
It indicates that the government didn’t do anything to check the wish list of the regions was a good idea
The Auckland council has now repeatedly named the CRL as their top transport project but the government ignores it (Gerry even claims that the CRL has an appalling BCR, I guess he only read the deeply flawed hatchet job the MOT did)
Everything else that the government is doing seems to be about taking power away from the regions and centralising it so this would go against that.
And Labours transport spokeperson has got in on the act focusing his efforts on Bill English
A series of written questions from Phil Twyford to Gerry Brownlee has dug up some further detail on the numbers that sit behind the graph above (at least for the last couple of years) and also updated it with 2010/2011 data. I’ve put together the answers to a series of written questions into the table below – first by dollar amount and then by percentage:
Recent Comments