by frog
Wellingtonista quickly summarises the protest this morning about the City Council’s plans to go on a massively expensive road building spree from Ngauranga to Wellington airport. The plans include a Basin Reserve flyover and further car tunnels under Mount Victoria and The Terrace (just as we enter a financial crisis, peak oil and the need to reduce our greenhouse gases):
Of course, the GWRC transport plans (PDF) are well worth protesting about: more roads, no light rail? Despite the hundreds (and the great majority) of submissions asking for the opposite?
As Wellington City Councillor and Greens’ spokesperson Iona Pannett points out…
The Plan ignores Wellingtonians’ huge support for more public transport, their opposition to new tunnels and Wellington City’s commitment to carbon neutrality … Over 4,500 people made submissions on the study the Plan is based on, with 3,750 people supporting light rail, more buses and walking and cycling options whilst opposing the two tunnels and flyover. In contrast only 480 people submitted that the tunnels should be built. So, by a ratio of nearly 8 to 1 there was huge support for public transport and opposition to roads…
Quite.
But, what really caught the eye was the many protesters’ placards. Not so much the front of them, but the back. It was heartening to see the Greens and their allies recycling (presumably) discarded Real Estate signage upon which to display their protest slogans. Nice.
I suspect that recycling was as much to do with economy as it was environmentalism, but we’ll take the praise thanks.
Published in Environment & Resource Management | Justice & Democracy by frog on Fri, October 31st, 2008
Tags: Basin Reserve, cars, iona pannett, Mt Victoria, ngauranga, transport, Tunnel, wellington
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
yah. Provide your reasons please. One would think...
“The plans include a Basin Reserve flyover and further car tunnels under Mount Victoria and The Terrace (just as we enter a financial crisis, peak oil and the need to reduce our greenhouse gases):”
Great news! Will provide employment, a cash injection, and much needed roads for Wellington.
Got my vote…
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Oh dear, Annette King is about to launch a PPP for completing SH20 in Auckland.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/vote08/4745675a28477.html
Not a good week for the Green’s public transport innitiative.
Wonder how much the Labour party wuill take notice of the Greens if and when they win an election.
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Ahhh, Jeanette as Transport Minister. Bring it on.
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Peak oil??? OPEC is struggling to keep the price above $50/barrel and you are talking peak oil
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Jeanette as transport minister. Great idea, three years of that and the Green Party would disappear under the weight of voter opprobrium.
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I’d be embarrassed to show such ignorance Bryan
Peak oil is all about supply, not price. Price is determined by supply and demand (and speculation) – and global demand is down.
BTW, this leaked from the upcoming IEA World Energy Outlook
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Gerrit, old mate :
“Wonder how much the Labour party will take notice of the Greens if and when they win an election.”
If it takes Labour plus Greens to form a majority in parliament, then the answer to that is “a great deal”.
If Labour doesn’t need the Greens to have a majority then the answer is “see 2005-2008″ (i.e. hardly at all.)
Primary school maths.
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A cash injection and creation of employment is certainly a good thing, but it does not have to be to make even more roads. It could be used to make a state of the art public transport system.
I have just returned from 3 days in Auckland, having not been there for a while. Every time I visit, the roading system is better, but the traffic is worse. When will people realise that more roads is not the way to solve traffic congestion.
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I sometimes wonder why New Zealanders bother to go abroad or have our great OE, because when we come home, we do everything much as we did before. When we go to continental Europe in particular, not the UK though, most of the large and small cities have a public transport infrastructure that puts ours in the shade, pedestrianised streets in much of the city and cycle ways and quiet places of repose. But here we are still stuck in the 1960′s – this road proposal is nothing more than the completion of the motorway network envisaged at the time, the plans now over forty years old, are anachronistic and are completely oblivious to the problem of oil depletion and global warming and now a collapsing world economy.
That we are seriously considering spending literally billions of dollars on this outmoded and destructive and unsustainable and unaffordable form of transport is nothing short of crazy. Out society’s attachment to the private motor vehicle is a pathologic addiction that is ruining our cities, our economy and our planet and constructing yet more roads, and accommodating yet more traffic, is the transport equivalent of giving a junky another fix, when we desperately be getting the patient off his self-destructive habit.
Every transport planner should be required to write a thousand times, or as long as necessary for the message to eventually get through:
Cars are not the solution to our transport problems, they are the problem.
Cars are not the solution to our transport problems, they are the problem.
Cars are not the solution to our transport problems, they are the problem.
Cars are not the solution to our transport problems, they are the problem. etc.
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When we go to continental Europe in particular most of the large and small cities have people squashed into tiny apartments. But here we are still stuck in the 1960’s – living in 1/4 acre suburbs.
What’s crazy about spending billions of dollars of roading revenue on more roads?
I thought LRT had been given the boot so I can’t quite see the relevance of the statement “That we are seriously considering spending literally billions of dollars on this outmoded and destructive and unsustainable and unaffordable form of transport is nothing short of crazy.”
If we added a dollar to the price of a litre of petrol to subsidise trains, just like they do in Europe then maybe we too could have 8% of travel by train and only 79% by car. The other 13% is accounted for by all other modes including planes.
To the extent that taking away cars takes away transportation, the message makes sense. To the extent that single use zoning emasculates every other mode the message makes no sense.
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jockmoron,
unfortunately due to the demographics (population densities, work flow patterns, distribution points, etc. of New Zealand and in particular Auckland.
So unless you can persuade the local councils to allow subdivision of the quater acre section, install the sewerage, water, electricity, transposr, etc infastructure to service the high density cities you so desire, private and individual transport will always be the best option.
Be it cars or horses.
A public transport system like they have in Europe is not an option. Just on capital cost alone you could not put it in, let alone generate the patronage to pay for maintenenance.
New Zealand is too sparsely populated, too far flung in development, too diverse in individual transport needs, to fund a fully intergrated public transport system.
As I challenge the Greens on any number of accasions, do the sums, set a budget and see what effect this will have on the economy.
When your worst case scenario
becomes true, even public transport will grind to a halt as we wont have the income to sustain it.
In your senario, spending money on roads or public tranport, if your scenario comes true, are both futile.
So best we do nothing.
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Despite the hundreds (and the great majority) of submissions asking for the opposite?
Out of a city of tens of thousands, you have hundreds of submissions! Worth some investigation, which was done back in 1995 when the Permissions Process at Wellington City Council was redesigned. The survey of residents and ratepayers included a question that asked “under what circumstances would you consider making a submission on an application for a resource consent?” The winning option, by a country mile, was “when I disagree with what is being proposed”. Next was ‘when it concerns my immediate neighborhood or street’, last was ‘when I am aware submissions can be made’. What this indicates to me, is that the fewer submission that are received, the more people agree with what is being proposed, making the ‘hundreds’ a catastrophic minority for the greens’ position on this matter!
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Wouw thanks nice artc.
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