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By admin, on November 1st, 2011 On November 1st last year Auckland Council came into being and we saw the seven former councils plus the Regional Council disbanded. It is interesting to note what I said on October 31st last year, looking ahead towards what this new era for Auckland would bring:
Overall, thanks in large part to the results of the election a few weeks back, I now feel confident and hopeful that the local government amalgamation will turn out to be a good thing for Auckland. I hope that it will provide us with a ‘fresh start’ of sorts – a chance to finally tackle regional issues in an integrated manner, to finally take on central government and get a better deal for the city and a chance to generally speak with one voice. Of course I still have many reservations: who will play the environmental watchdog role that the ARC has importantly done in the past 20 years? Will the Auckland Transport CCO be an open, accountable and transparent organisation – or will it operate in secret and be dominated by 1960s-mentality road engineers? How will we be able to integrate our land-use and transport thinking when they’re now located in two completely separate agencies? How much staff knowledge and expertise will be lost in the transition process? And so on.
However, I’m hopeful that things will be better with this new structure because, quite frankly, the old structure didn’t work very well at all. The city councils were too big to be local, but too small to speak with much weight to central government and think regionally. The ARC was hamstrung by efforts in the 1980s and 1990s to destroy it (ARC Chairman Mike Lee has written an excellent history of the ARC here by the way). In transport matters, the councils rarely agreed with each other, or with the ARC, or with ARTA or with NZTA on what their priorities were – with the result being that generally not much got done outside state highway upgrades (because NZTA could just get on and do them without having to worry about what the councils were doing). ARTA was rarely able to improve the cost-effectiveness of its bus services through extending bus priority measures – because they weren’t responsible for those: that was up to the city councils. The city councils couldn’t really see the direct benefits of bus lanes, just the noise made by those moaning about them, so were (and remain) incredibly reluctant to expand them.
So, apart from the oversight provided by the ARC on planning and environmental matters, I don’t actually think I will miss much at all when it comes to the old local government system. But the big question remains about the new system: while it might be difficult for it to be much worse than what we had, is it likely to be any better?
On transport matters, the signs are promising. Auckland’s new mayor and council seem highly willing to take their transport vision to the government and demand to be heard. It would even seem as though the government has got the message – and is making the most positive noises towards rail transport heard since it took office. But it’s not just the big expensive rail projects where I’m hopeful the new system can deliver better outcomes – it’s also the small stuff. It’s things like Auckland Transport having an incentive and the ability to improve bus priority measures because enabling buses to go faster will increase patronage, lower operating costs and improve their bottom line that will make a huge difference. While the early signs aren’t great, I’m confident that Auckland Transport will (eventually) become a pretty open and transparent agency: plus having all transport aspects thrown together into the one organisation will hopefully mean better consideration of public transport in all transport projects.
But these improvements aren’t just going to happen magically. There will undoubtedly be internal upheavals within the council’s structure for a few years yet, there will be the incredibly difficult process of working out how to fairly pay for all these grand ideas without pushing rates through the roof, there will be attempts by staff to establish opaque fiefdoms and much much more. If the new Council wants to achieve its very very admirable transport goals, then it will need to be on the ball and keep pushing things along every step of the way. I think it should have very detailed and well thought out plans for what it wants achieved by the end of 2011, 2012 and 2013: both in terms of taking steps towards the “big three” rail projects, but also in terms of maximising the benefits of integrated ticketing, electrification and ensuring we have a number of good “quick wins” along the way.
In a general sense, I have probably been somewhat pleasantly surprised by the way the Council has worked over the past year. The ‘big picture vision’ for Auckland has been turned into something fairly concrete – by way of the Auckland Spatial Plan. For transport, we’ve seen something of a mixed bag but it comes out slightly on the side of positive. In terms of ‘day to day’ activities, by most accounts things have transitioned fairly smoothly – although much of the most difficult work is yet to come with contentious issues like rating and the long-term plan.
If we focus on transport, there have been a number of really great positives:
- The ongoing strong support of the Council for the City Rail Link as the key transformational transport project for Auckland. The Council confirmed this project as the top priority transport project for Auckland and continues to push for it as strongly as possible.
- Auckland Transport has generally been surprisingly responsive and willing to engage with the public. They opened up their meetings, they publish their board agendas (an increasing amount of which isn’t in confidential), they have engaged via social media like Twitter and so forth.
- In key plans like the City Centre Master Plan we can see a more nuanced approach to transport, as a key balancing act between shifting people while not destroying the quality of space, than I’ve ever come across before.
- Thanks to the hard work of Auckland Transport (and other involved agencies) we have ended up with the fantastic surprise of ending up with far more electric trains than we’d originally envisaged.
- Setting aside the disastrous opening night of the Rugby World Cup, the transport planning seemed pretty good – especially on the last weekend highlighting that key lessons (such as closing Queen Street to cars) had been learned.
Of course there have been a few low-lights:
- The short-comings in the original business case for the City Rail Link which gave the government leverage to criticise the project and shed doubt on its cost-effectiveness. Lots of hard work has happened since then, but we’ve been playing catch up over the past year.
- The failure of Auckland Council to make more tough decisions in the Auckland Spatial Plan over which projects are priorities and which ones aren’t. This can still be remedied as the Plan is only in draft form.
- The disastrous opening night of Rugby World Cup, which seemed largely due to extremely poor communication and co-operation between some of Auckland Council’s CCOs and the lack of a “Plan B” when things started to go wrong.
It will be an interesting next year. We’ll have a finalised Auckland Plan, we should start making real progress in getting consents for the City Rail Link and resolving remaining areas of difference with the government (assuming the government doesn’t change) about its funding, we’ll be getting pretty close to completing the infrastructure side of electrification, we’ll see integrated ticketing implemented fully and we’ll hopefully see more comprehensive improvements to the bus network.
How do you think Auckland Council’s first year has gone? What have been the successes? What have been the failures? And what do you hope to see from the Council over the next year?
By admin, on August 14th, 2011 There’s a fairly long and quite rambling opinion piece in today’s NZ Herald, about transport in Auckland and particularly about the relatively poor quality of the city’s public transport system. There’s nothing particularly surprising about this, and the article’s look back at Auckland’s transport history – in particular the tale of Mayor Dove-Myer Robinson’s rapid rail proposal – is a useful reminder about how efforts to improve Auckland’s rail system have generally found huge public support.
But there are a couple of paragraphs in the article that stood out as being a bit weird:
Mayoral hopeful John Banks’ master plan focused on an improved rail service, including an inner-city loop and airport link. He wanted to see central city stations and an integrated ticketing system.Increased ferry connections and improved cycleways were also part of the plan. Many Aucklanders, including Banks, attribute his failure to land the Supercity top spot to the ambitious plan.
“The people kicked my arse right out of the mayoralty,” he said this week but declined to discuss it further. “I spent two mayoralties building transport infrastructure around Auckland. I think I’ll leave it to the new mayoralty.”
Uhhh… really?
My recollection of the super city mayoralty race was that both John Banks and Len Brown came across as fairly pro public transport for most of the campaign, except that by the end of it Banks was starting to declare war on South Auckland and back-tracking a bit on his public transport aspirations. Len Brown ended up winning, and has made improving Auckland’s public transport system his top priority. Hardly consistent with the idea that Banks lost because he promised to focus too much on improving our transport system.
There are a few weird other things in the article, like “Electric trains are expected to be running within the next three years, including an inner-city link” (what inner city rail link? Or are we talking about buses now?)
I’m not sure whether Abby Gillies, who wrote the piece, just isn’t that well informed – or whether John Banks put together the story to come across as less pro public transport as part of his campaign to win Epsom for Act, who have generally not been the most public transport friendly party around.
By admin, on December 24th, 2010 As the year draws to a close I have been having a few discussions with friends about whether 2010 has been a good year for public transport or not. There are probably arguments either way.
On the bright side first
- Perhaps the biggest boost was the results of the Auckland Council local government election, and in particular the election of Mayor Len Brown on a very strong public transport platform. As well as the final result of the Super City election, I was also heartened by the emphasis we saw throughout the election period on the necessity to improve Auckland’s public transport system. For example, we saw survey results in the NZ Herald showing rail to the airport was the project most people thought we should prioritise.
- We’ve also seen the CBD Rail Tunnel business case released, showing an excellent cost-benefit ratio of 3.5 – once you include employment-related wider economic benefits (which, contrary to what Steven Joyce says, are also included in all the BCR calculations of the roads of national significance).
- We saw a number of railway stations open: including Newmarket, Grafton, New Lynn and perhaps most satisfyingly, Onehunga. 2009 was a bit of a ‘hard slog year’ when it came to PT: much work done but not many results to show for it. In 2010 we saw the results of that hard work, which has been great.
- The ARC came up with the 2010 Regional Land Transport Strategy, just before they disappeared. This is probably the best transport strategy Auckland has had in 60 years – although it remains to be seen to what extent it’s implemented.
- Patronage continued to boom: particularly on the rail network and on the Northern Busway. It’s only a matter of time before we achieve a million rail trips a month: perhaps in March next year, perhaps in September or October when the world cup is on.
Of course not everything has been great. On the down side:
- Steven Joyce’s reaction to the CBD tunnel business case was disappointing and exceptionally hypocritical considering his illogical support of the Puhoi-Wellsford “holiday highway”.
- The relentless pursuit of the Puhoi-Wellsford “holiday highway” has been disappointing, especially considering its cost-effectiveness seems to become worse and worse the more it’s analysed.
- The farebox recovery policy didn’t get much news, but over the long term could prove to be exceptionally destructive to public transport in New Zealand. Once again, it seems that this was an arbitrary decision from Steven Joyce to impose a 50% requirement with absolutely no supporting research.
- The emergence of a $30 million rail funding gap – entirely caused by the policies of (you guessed it) Steven Joyce.
- The whole bus lane ticketing saga. While Auckland City was certainly acting a bit daft, the Herald’s general crusade against bus lanes may end up being particularly damaging to the cheapest and fastest way of dramatically improving public transport in Auckland – extending the bus lane system.
On balance, I do think we’re in a better place than we were this time last year. Electrification is about to kick into its next phase and become visible, integrated ticketing (despite its many flaws) looks like it’s going ahead. We have a Mayor and Council who are willing to take the fight to the government’s transport policies if need be, and who appear to be strong PT advocates. This year could have a been a whole heap worse, that’s for sure.
By admin, on October 31st, 2010 And so, a year and a half after the Royal Commission into Auckland’s local government reported back its findings, the Super City begins. It’s goodbye to Auckland City, Manukau City, North Shore City, Waitakere City, Rodney District, Papakura District, Franklin Districts and (perhaps the only one I’ll be sad to see go) the Auckland Regional Council – and hello to the new Auckland Council. Over the past 18 months I have taken an intense interest in how this whole process has panned out. From my initial thoughts on the Royal Commission’s report, to concerns I had about uneven ward sizes and my fluctuating opinions on the creation of the Auckland Transport CCO (first I thought it was a good idea, then a bad idea, now I’m back to thinking that it’s probably OK) it has been interesting to closely follow this process in Auckland’s history.
Overall, thanks in large part to the results of the election a few weeks back, I now feel confident and hopeful that the local government amalgamation will turn out to be a good thing for Auckland. I hope that it will provide us with a ‘fresh start’ of sorts – a chance to finally tackle regional issues in an integrated manner, to finally take on central government and get a better deal for the city and a chance to generally speak with one voice. Of course I still have many reservations: who will play the environmental watchdog role that the ARC has importantly done in the past 20 years? Will the Auckland Transport CCO be an open, accountable and transparent organisation – or will it operate in secret and be dominated by 1960s-mentality road engineers? How will we be able to integrate our land-use and transport thinking when they’re now located in two completely separate agencies? How much staff knowledge and expertise will be lost in the transition process? And so on.
However, I’m hopeful that things will be better with this new structure because, quite frankly, the old structure didn’t work very well at all. The city councils were too big to be local, but too small to speak with much weight to central government and think regionally. The ARC was hamstrung by efforts in the 1980s and 1990s to destroy it (ARC Chairman Mike Lee has written an excellent history of the ARC here by the way). In transport matters, the councils rarely agreed with each other, or with the ARC, or with ARTA or with NZTA on what their priorities were – with the result being that generally not much got done outside state highway upgrades (because NZTA could just get on and do them without having to worry about what the councils were doing). ARTA was rarely able to improve the cost-effectiveness of its bus services through extending bus priority measures – because they weren’t responsible for those: that was up to the city councils. The city councils couldn’t really see the direct benefits of bus lanes, just the noise made by those moaning about them, so were (and remain) incredibly reluctant to expand them.
So, apart from the oversight provided by the ARC on planning and environmental matters, I don’t actually think I will miss much at all when it comes to the old local government system. But the big question remains about the new system: while it might be difficult for it to be much worse than what we had, is it likely to be any better?
On transport matters, the signs are promising. Auckland’s new mayor and council seem highly willing to take their transport vision to the government and demand to be heard. It would even seem as though the government has got the message – and is making the most positive noises towards rail transport heard since it took office. But it’s not just the big expensive rail projects where I’m hopeful the new system can deliver better outcomes – it’s also the small stuff. It’s things like Auckland Transport having an incentive and the ability to improve bus priority measures because enabling buses to go faster will increase patronage, lower operating costs and improve their bottom line that will make a huge difference. While the early signs aren’t great, I’m confident that Auckland Transport will (eventually) become a pretty open and transparent agency: plus having all transport aspects thrown together into the one organisation will hopefully mean better consideration of public transport in all transport projects.
But these improvements aren’t just going to happen magically. There will undoubtedly be internal upheavals within the council’s structure for a few years yet, there will be the incredibly difficult process of working out how to fairly pay for all these grand ideas without pushing rates through the roof, there will be attempts by staff to establish opaque fiefdoms and much much more. If the new Council wants to achieve its very very admirable transport goals, then it will need to be on the ball and keep pushing things along every step of the way. I think it should have very detailed and well thought out plans for what it wants achieved by the end of 2011, 2012 and 2013: both in terms of taking steps towards the “big three” rail projects, but also in terms of maximising the benefits of integrated ticketing, electrification and ensuring we have a number of good “quick wins” along the way.
I do think we have the opportunity to make a fresh start on Auckland, to give the city a better and brighter future – not just transport wise, but generally. It’s going to be interesting, that’s for sure.
By admin, on October 29th, 2010 One of my biggest gripes with the decision to hand transport matters in Auckland over to a semi-independent “Council Controlled Organisation” as part of establishing the Super City was whether that agency would end up doing most of its work in secret. At the moment (well, until Monday when the new Council is formally established) there’s quite a bit of information available on what transport stuff the various councils are up to. One of my best resources has been the agenda and minutes of the ARC’s Transport and Urban Development Committee, as well as what the Regional Transport Committee got up to over the last couple of years as it stitched together the RLTS. Information from the Transport Committee of Auckland City Council, and other committees from the various other councils often proved fertile ground for gathering information on the latest happenings in Auckland related to transport.
In contrast, ARTA have acted pretty secretly, with the only information they’ve shared being the Monthly Business Reports. While these reports are certainly very interesting, particularly in updating us on patronage statistics, by in large we’ve been left in the dark as to what else ARTA has been up to. For example, how’s progress going on integrated ticketing? Nobody really knows as we haven’t been able to read up on the various reports from ARTA staff to their board that I am sure must have been written over the past year since ARTA signed the contract with Thales to implement that system. How’s progress going on completing the CBD Rail Loop study that was meant to be finished in September? Once again, nobody knows because of ARTA’s secrecy.
So will Auckland Transport turn into a much larger version of the highly secretive ARTA, or will it turn into an open agency much like the transport committees of the various councils that exist at the moment? The final details of the legislation surrounding the establishment of Auckland Transport suggested that because the CCO will be doing so much work that was previously undertaken by Councils, it would need to be more transparent and accountable. But how will this actually translate into reality? Who knows?
In part there is some selfishness behind this concern, in that a lot of my potential blog posts over the next few years will depend on knowing what Auckland Transport is up to – if they make it difficult to find out what decisions are being made and what is happening, then that will make it difficult for me to keep ‘up to date’ with what’s going on. But there’s also a more fundamental reason why they should be open – transport will account for over half of Council’s spending and it’s arguably Auckland’s number one issue. We need to know what Auckland Transport’s up to because we’re trusting them with a huge amount of money and trusting them to help improve Auckland’s biggest problem: its transport situation.
Early signs are not necessarily that promising. Over the past week or so the websites for Auckland Council and Auckland Transport have emerged and progressively been updated and populated with information from the old websites of ARTA and the various Councils. As I noted in yesterday’s post about St Lukes, the Council website already has been populated with agenda items for the first meeting of the new Council next week. It’s obvious on the website where further information will go, and now we know what the structure of the Council will be I imagine we will see the establishment of various places where meeting agenda and minutes will be uploaded to.
By contrast, while the Auckland Transport website is fairly comprehensive in what it says about various transport projects happening around Auckland, there seem no obvious place where we will be able to find out what their board is up to and what decisions are being made. Perhaps it might be added over the next few weeks when the Transport CCO board has their first meetings, I certainly hope so.
Ultimately, I think it is critical that Auckland Transport is as open and transparent as possible about what it gets up to. Over half the Council’s spending is likely to be on transport matters. While the Council’s transport committee will certainly play an important role in setting the big picture strategies, goals and plans the Council wants Auckland Transport to implement, many of the important decisions in terms of implementing these strategies will be left to the Board of the CCO. It’s important we know what they’re doing with such a significant amount of public funds. It’s important we know what progress they’re making on implementing the Council’s vision for transport. It’s important we know the reasoning behind decisions they make, so that those decisions can be analysed and critiqued.
It’s extremely important that Auckland Transport does not become a secretive agency. We have a right to know what they’re up to without having to go through the long-winded process of making official requests for information. I look forward to seeing Auckland Transport being an open, transparent and accountable agency.
By admin, on October 28th, 2010 The make up of the new Auckland Council was announced today by Mayor Len Brown. The structure of the council, and the chair of each of the committees, sub-committees and other forums are outlined below:
Structure and appointments:
Committees of the Whole
Strategy & Finance Committee – Penny Webster
Accountability & Performance Committee – Richard Northey
- CCO Strategy and Appointments Sub-Committee – His Worship the Mayor
- CEO Review Sub-Committee – His Worship the Mayor
- Tenders & Procurement Panel – Jami-Lee Ross
Regional Development & Operations Committee – Ann Hartley
- Social & Community Forum – Cathy Casey
- Culture, Arts & Events Forum – Alf Filipaina
- Economic Forum – Arthur Anae
- Community Safety Forum – George Wood
- Environment & Sustainability Forum – Wayne Walker
- Parks & Heritage Forum – Sandra Coney
- District Plan & Urban Design Forum – Cameron Brewer
Auckland Future Vision Committee – His Worship the Mayor / Deputy Mayor
- Transport Committee – Mike Lee
Standing Committees
- Hearings Committee – Noelene Rafills
- Regulatory & Bylaws Committee – Des Morrison
- Audit & Risk Committee – Sharon Stewart
- Civil Defence & Emergency Management Group – Michael Goudie
Advisory Panels
- Maori Statutory Board – Alf Filipaina
- Pacific Peoples Advisory Panel – Arthur Anae
- Ethnic Advisory Panel – Mike Lee
- Business Advisory Panel – Cameron Brewer
- Rural Advisory Panel – Des Morrison
- Youth Advisory Panel – Michael Goudie
- Social Policy Forum – Calum Penrose
No real surprise to see that Mike Lee has been appointed chair of the Transport Committee. It will be interesting to see the split between work done by the transport committee and work done by the board of Auckland Transport.
The structure is summarised in the diagram below: In planning terms, it seems as though Ann Hartley and Cameron Brewer will be the key councillors in ensuring that Auckland gets its planning documents right over the next three years.
By admin, on October 25th, 2010 One of my biggest hopes from the changes to Auckland’s local government currently underway is that we will have a stronger voice at the “bargaining table” with central government. I think there’s a reason why central governments have – over the past 150 years or so – avoided creating a strong and unified local government for Auckland, that reason being the risk that Auckland would become too powerful. So we have seen a “divide and rule” attitude towards New Zealand’s biggest city, with battles between the councils weakening Auckland’s negotiating position with central government for the funding that it needs – particularly the funding that it needs for infrastructure.
A figure that often gets bandied about is that Auckland pays far more in petrol taxes than it receives in transport spending – with the figure being in the many billions of dollars over the past 20-30 years. This trend has been stopped in the past five or so years – mainly through the insane amount of motorway building that has occurred, but also through the first real investment in the rail network for around 80 years. Auckland has finally received – at least on a per capita level – the funding that it deserves.
But is ‘per capita’ really the best way to measure what could be called “transport infrastructure need”? In parts of the country where the population is static, growing very slowly or even declining, will the transport infrastructure need be particularly great? I tend to think not. Invercargill is unlikely to need any new motorways any time soon, and while certainly we need to ensure there is adequate maintenance of transport facilities in areas with stable populations – I just doubt there will be much need for significant new infrastructure in these places.
Looking at population data – both historical and projected – from Statistics New Zealand provides a really interesting insight into the extent to which Auckland truly dominates New Zealand’s population growth. Firstly, let’s look at historical data over the last three censuses – showing how Auckland’s population growth between 1996 and 2006 compared to the country’s growth as a whole: This shows that in the 1996-2006 decade Auckland’s population growth absolutely dwarfed growth in the other big cities: Wellington and Christchurch, and also contributed to more than half of New Zealand’s population growth. Auckland’s population increased by more than 256,000 whereas the entire remainder of the country only increased its population by slightly more than 196,000.
Because Auckland is the primarily settlement area for immigrants, and because Auckland’s population is much younger than the rest of the country (people come here to study, work and have families – people move to the rest of the country to retire) in the future this trend continues and becomes even more exaggerated: During these 25 years (four of which have already happened, it will be interesting to see the data that comes out of the 2011 census) Auckland’s population increase of 573,700 is significantly more than the increase experienced by the rest of NZ – of 390,300. For every one new resident in the Wellington region, Auckland adds 7.6; for every new resident in the Canterbury region Auckland adds more than five. Auckland’s population will grow by three times the number of Wellington and Canterbury combined.
Push the dates out to 2050 and, as we might expect, the trend becomes even more significant. By this stage the rest of the country’s population is declining – due to its aged demographics. However, because of Auckland’s high level of immigration and its youthful population – we’re still growing: from 1.9 million in 2031 to over 2.3 million by 2051. ARTA pointed this out in a recent presentation they made to the NZTA board: If we take 2006-2051 as a whole, we see that Auckland’s population is set to grow by around a million, while throughout the entire remainder of the country there’s only anticipated to be a population increase of around 330,000. These are quite staggering numbers: both in terms of how dramatically Auckland’s population will grow, but also how little the population of the rest of NZ will grow during this time.
So what does this all mean? Well in terms of transport investment it provides a damn strong argument for why Auckland will need significant transport investment – particularly in rail projects as we really have just about built all the motorways we could ever hope to construct. It is an excellent argument for why Auckland deserves a far better deal when it comes to ‘new transport infrastructure’ investment, that even receiving equal ‘per capita’ funding with the rest of the country is inevitably going to leave us with a massive infrastructure deficit in the future.
This information really shows how much of a raw deal Auckland has got over the past few decades when it comes to transport investment. Let’s hope that the new Super City puts an all-time end to this and Auckland finally gets the investment focus that we need.
By admin, on October 17th, 2010 One of the most exciting results in the Super City election was the makeup of the Waitemata Local Board. Those elected were Shale Chambers, Pippa Coom, Jesse Chalmers, Tricia Read, Christopher Dempsey, Rob Thomas and Greg Moyle. To summarise, there are five City Vision board members, one independent (Mr Thomas) and one Citizens & Ratepayers (Mr Moyle). Waitemata Local Board covers a critical part of central Auckland: the inner suburbs and the CBD. While it’s yet to be known exactly how much power will be given to the board, one would think that – along with the excellent Mike Lee as councillor – the elected representatives for the area will have a pretty strong say in what happens in this part of central Auckland.
And this is quite exciting, as a number of the board members are known cycling advocates and really do understand the benefits of making inner-cities more vibrant and interesting places. It seems highly likely that they would strongly support the expansion of the current shared streets programme while other exciting ideas – like pedestrianising parts of Quay Street (or even parts of Queen Street) may also have the local board’s strong support.
Next year’s Rugby World Cup provides a fantastic opportunity to trial options to “humanise the CBD” a bit more. I’ve often thought that it would be a great idea to close Queen Street off to traffic on weekend days, so why not trial something like that during the Rugby World Cup? With two main fan-zones being Queens Wharf and Aotea Square – wouldn’t it make good sense to link the two via a pedestrianised street that itself represented a giant fan zone: filled with stalls, markets, entertainers and the like. Similarly, with Queens Wharf being ‘Party Central’, it would be stupid to cut the place off from the rest of the city with a four-lane highway known as Quay Street.
The beauty of using the RWC as a trial for things like this is that people will have the opportunity to see how awesome Auckland will be with pedestrianised areas, but at the same time businesses aren’t freaked out that the changes will be permanent. A trial will give businesses the opportunity to see that they actually make money from pedestrians walking into their shops – rather than from cars that drive past. If for some amazingly unknown reason the concept doesn’t work, then it was just a trial after all and things can go back to normal – though I very much doubt that would be the case.
Settings aside the Rugby World Cup, my mind simply boggles at the possibilities of what we could achieve with this local board, and with Mike Lee as councillor for the area. There are so many opportunities to humanise the CBD, to make it a far more attractive place for the vast majority of people who walk and use public transport – even if that comes at a cost to the minority of people who do silly things like drive the length of Queen Street. So what are some ideas for humanising the CBD?
- As I noted above, the shared streets programme should prove to be a huge success, and the momentum that brings should be extended to more and more streets. High Street seems like such an obvious candidate to become a shared street, as the vast majority of its users are pedestrians and not motorists.
- We should take some inspiration from what New York City has done in Times Square, with a bit of what I call “fast and cheap pedestrianisation”. You don’t need to repave roads, you just put up some barriers, paint the asphalt an interesting colour and dump a heap of tables and chairs all over the road. Even if we did this to one block of Queen Street (between Shortland Street and Customs Street perhaps) it would liven the place up spectacularly. Buses could be rerouted to Albert Street without too many problems, or could be allowed through the area at slow speeds as the only vehicles.
- The CBD is currently a nightmare for cyclists. We could take inspriation from what Montreal has done with its cycle lanes – creating a dedicated path along a street like Hobson Street for cyclists, shielded from traffic and allowing two way flow.
- We could look at rehabilitating the entire western part of the CBD by turning our two defacto motorways: Hobson Street and Nelson Street, into two-way boulevards with planted medians. The aforementioned cyclelanes could even travel down the middle of the planted medians.
In my recent North American travels it was fascinating to note how many cities were taking steps to humanise their city centres. There seems to be a growing realisation that encouraging cars to your CBD by building hugely wide roads causes far more harm than it achieves good. Turning roadspace into ‘human space’ achieves two huge objectives: making the city centre a far nicer place to live, work and play (and generating all the economic benefits that accompanies such improvements) while also discouraging vehicle use in the CBD and therefore reducing all the noise, pollution and congestion they bring.
We have a fantastic opportunity to make Auckland’s CBD a great place, a fantastic opportunity to humanise it in ways that encourage people to visit, hang out and have a great time. I hope our new local board, and the new Council in general, makes the most of that opportunity.
By admin, on October 11th, 2010 As I noted in yesterday’s blog post, there are some significant differences between the transport policies and priorities of central government and those of the new Super City – particularly those of new Super City mayor Len Brown. Some of these differences are so fundamental – in terms of whether the bulk of transport spending goes on motorways or railway lines – that I simply don’t think there’s a particularly easy “middle ground” to be found between the two positions. So there will be a very interesting power struggle between Auckland’s local government and central government when it comes to setting these priorities.
Promisingly, it seems as though the government is coming to the realisation that simply saying “go away and pay for those rail projects yourself” probably isn’t going to cut it – particularly in terms of the government’s popularity with a city that has unequivocally said “we want rail improvements!” Here are some extracts from an NZ Herald article entitled “Govt will work with council on Auckland’s transport“:
The Government will work in partnership with the new Auckland council to improve the city’s transport systems, Prime Minister John Key says.
He said today the Government shared Mayor Len Brown’s vision of getting Auckland moving and it was a government priority as well.
“The Government will work in partnership with the new Auckland City Council on what comes next, and contribute its fair share to the continuing goal of improving transport,” Mr Key said at his post-cabinet press conference.
“The next step for the new mayor is to meet his council and discuss priorities and work out how much ratepayers are prepared to contribute to accelerating new projects.”
Mr Key, who expects to meet Mr Brown on Thursday, said the Government already had a $5 billion investment programme for Auckland’s transport systems.
“I believe this investment will make it much easier to get around Auckland, but there’s always more to do,” he said.
I hope he’s not counting the $1.5 billion that is proposed to be wasted on the Puhoi-Wellsford motorway in that $5 billion. That’s unlikely to do much good for Auckland’s economy.
Another article in today’s NZ Herald also points towards the government recognising that they can’t just ignore rail projects beyond Project DART (mostly funded by the previous government) and electrification (which Auckland might up end paying for in the long run anyway). Some further extracts:
Len Brown wasted no time yesterday in telling the Government that the huge mandate he has as mayor-elect of the Super City will be focused on three rail projects in Auckland…
…After his big win over John Banks on Saturday, Mr Brown said yesterday that his total focus was on uniting Auckland and advancing the three rail projects with “real pace”.
Mr Brown wants to build a $1.5 billion inner-city rail loop within five to seven years, a rail link to the airport within 10 years and a line to the North Shore via a new harbour crossing within 15 years.
Mr Key said politicians had to have a vision and a dream to get elected, but there was also the issue of practicality.
The Government did not have an open chequebook.
It had spent about $1.5 billion on double-tracking, electrification and new rolling stock for rail in Auckland, “but what happens beyond there is something we will have to sit down and have a discussion about”.
“But we need to get Auckland moving more quickly because we know from all the research that if your major city is powering ahead and doing well it lifts your national economic growth exponentially.”
It really does feel as though we now have our best opportunity in 35 years to really improve and develop a proper rail system for Auckland. The money is there, we just need to redirect spending away from motorway projects that don’t stack up.
I just hope that we really take advantage of this situation and it doesn’t end up being squandered, like has happened so many times in the past. Making sure that we finally do build Auckland a world class rail system, and a top class public transport system in general, will depend on a lot of things going right. But I’m pretty confident that if we ever had the chance for it to work – that chance is now.
By admin, on October 10th, 2010 As I noted yesterday, the Super City election results are pretty good for public transport advocates like myself. We have a new Mayor who talks great vision when it comes to improving the rail network and seems highly determined to turn that vision into a reality. He’s also backed up by a number of councillors – most notably Mike Lee, but also including Christine Fletcher (who we have to thank for Britomart railway station remember) – who are likely to support this vision. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the way forward will be easy, in terms of turning this vision into a reality. All of the big rail projects – aside from electrification and integrated ticketing – are currently unfunded and are generally at an early stage of their planning and design. Neither the CBD Rail Tunnel or the Airport Line even have a designated route protected for them.
Further to that, the new council will have the difficulty of battling with a government whose transport policy is decidedly roads-focused. As NZTA recently pointed out, there is a massive gap between the funding plans of central government (which is roads-focused to an extreme extent) and the more balanced Regional Land Transport Strategy. Yet the RLTS doesn’t envisage building many of the big rail projects that form part of Len Brown’s transport vision for another 20 or so years. So I would say there’s now an even bigger divide between the government’s transport plans and what Auckland has so clearly voted for in the Super City elections. Here’s the particularly relevant bit of what NZTA said: Solving this problem will be critical in terms of making the rail projects that Auckland has voted for becoming a reality. In the end I foresee a giant battle of wills between the government and Auckland Council over transport priorities – although with the public seemingly on the side of rail improvements, I don’t know whether it’s an argument the government will particularly want to have.
In my opinion, the first thing that is needed to make the transport vision a reality is to allow rail projects access to NZTA’s funding pool. I have explained before why roading income should help pay for rail improvements (because it hugely benefits road users). If all transport projects had equal access to a transport funding pool, then I’m sure we would end up with better quality funding decisions being made. Is there any reason why the Puhoi-Wellsford holiday highway shouldn’t have to compete against the CBD Rail Tunnel for its $1.5 billion of funding? I certainly don’t see any reason for that to be the case – both projects have similar cost, they both have similar construction timeframes, there’s probably only enough money in the next 10 years to fund one of them – why not have them compete against each other for the money, with the project that provides the greatest benefits winning?
Getting a better deal out of central government should be a big gain from the shift to a Super City. Successive governments have specifically avoided doing this, so that they could continue to divide and rule over Auckland, so it will be interesting to see what happens now with a much more powerful voice representing all of Auckland.
There are other transport matters that the Super City will need to turn its attention to very quickly. By the end of next year it is expected that Auckland Council will produce a “Spatial Plan” – an integrated document driving how Auckland is intended to grow and develop over the next few decades, with the infrastructure projects that will be necessary to support that growth being tied in. Getting the Spatial Plan right will be critical to Auckland’s future – both in terms of land-use planning and transport policy. It is the opportunity to truly integrate planning and transport, so that hopefully we will no longer see them effectively working against each other like what has happened over the past 10 years (when we’ve planned for intensification but developed transport infrastructure to support sprawl).
If Len Brown wants to make his transport vision a reality, it needs to be front and centre of this Spatial Plan – as the core of Auckland’s future urban development. Rail improvements naturally support intensification around growth nodes, and the CBD rail tunnel will naturally support a re-centralisation of economic activity in Auckland, something that I think is necessary to drive economic growth in a world economy that increasingly relies on innovation and creative thinking. Decentralisation versus recentralisation of employment, sprawl versus intensification of residential growth, how to improve housing affordability, how to align growth with infrastructure investment… these are all questions that the Spatial Plan will need to answer, and are all questions which revolve around the issue of transportation. The new Auckland Council will need to get a running start on ensuring that the Spatial Plan fulfils their vision for Auckland.
In the next while we will also find out who become Deputy Mayor, which two councillors find their way onto the board of the Transport CCO (let’s hope Mike Lee is one of them), what committees the council has, who heads those committees and generally how this is all going to work over the next three years. It is all very exciting, and feels like a once in a generation opportunity to really get things right for Auckland.
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