by frog
I’ve blogged before about the gap between what Steven Joyce wants for Auckland (more roads) and what the average Aucklander wants (more public transport).
It’s nice to see the Herald agrees with me (for a change). They rate Joyce’s performance as a Minister 6 out of 10 – not because he isn’t an effective Minister – he clearly is. But because they think his policies ignore both the looming fuel crunch and the strong groundswell of support for public transport in Auckland among local government politicians and citizens.
The disjunct between central and local government policy on transport was particularly clear in Auckland’s Regional Land Transport Strategy which came out last Friday.
The new Regional Land Transport Strategy looks ahead 30 years. It has a strong resemblance to the Green Party’s transport plan for Auckland, recommending more investment in rail and dedicated busways out to South and West Auckland.
It also wants to give just 13% of Auckland’s transport budget to state highways over the next 30 years. In contrast, the national plan for Auckland allocates 53% of the total transport budget to state highways.
Clearly, something has to give soon to reconcile the gap between local and national aspirations for transport in Auckland. We’re working to encourage Steven Joyce to shift first…
Published in Environment & Resource Management by frog on Fri, November 6th, 2009
Tags: Auckland, public transport, steven joyce, transport, transport funding
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
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this about sums it up, he argues “his first duty was to the 84 per cent of New Zealanders travelling to work in private vehicles”
But the reality is “he has scant faith in the ability of public transport to clear enough road space for freight and other priority users.”
And once again the policy is based on ideology rather than facts and evidence. If anyone has access to the latest TRAFINZ newslettrer regarding their recent conference where Joyce spoke, there is a very clear example of His idology vs the the evidence – embraced by trafinz, and where they want to go – but dismissed by Joyce.
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“far too much is invested in roading networks for “governments much larger than ours” to let private mobility be sacrificed by not investing in technological advances to beat any looming fuel squeeze.”
Yet they dropped the working group on electric vehicles!
Probably because it doesn’t look like individually owned private vehicles are the way of the future – you would’nt want a working group comming up with something that goes against your ideology!
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McTap you say: “policy is based on ideology rather than facts and evidence” and then “it doesn’t look like individually owned private vehicles are the way of the future”
Oh well, time for Toyota, Honda, Ford etc to just start winding down because demand for cars is slowing down so obviously. Oops funny that.
McTap maybe you need to look in the mirror, your ideology is blinding you to the nonstop trend since the car was invented for car ownership to increase, and it will continue to do so. It isn’t ideology, it’s evidence. This trend only slowed during times of high oil prices, never reversed.
Public transport always has a role in cities, but it has been proven for decades now to be grossly inadequate in relieving traffic congestion. It does nothing for freight, and in new world cities can only really be an alternative for high density destinations, for trips that don’t have multiple purposes. In other words, commutes to CBDs can be attractive by public transport, most other commutes are not.
For example, 84% may go by car, but half of the difference go by foot or bike, again individual transport.
The fundamental problem is roads are poorly priced in cities at peak times, it’s an economic fact, but politically unpopular, which is probably why the Greens don’t embrace congestion pricing loudly.
If road users pay for precious road space at times of high demand, then freight will pay when it is worth doing so, and a significant number will choose to either mode shift, time shift or suppress the trip (that’s the evidence of road pricing in Singapore, London and Stockholm).
The work done by the Auckland Joint Officials Group under the last government said Auckland’s transport problems required three sets of solutions – complete key road links (Victoria Park Tunnel and Western Ring Route), upgrade the rail and bus systems and congestion pricing.
The first is supported by all, but the Greens. The second is supported by all (the issue is a matter of scale) and the third? Labour did a study then shelved it, the Nats have ignored it. The Greens are as ideological on transport as it comes.
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Green’s may be as “ideological as it comes” – but they are the one party supporting Auckland Joint Officials Group on as many as two of its three solutions.
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Not sure how thoroughly that’s been “proven” given the truly gross inadequacy of most public transport networks in most cities actually served by them. I have experienced a lot of them first hand. Most were not “designed” at all apparently, they just grew along the lines of existing traffic.
That’s not too bad but it follows a pattern rather than imposing one. It provides the most efficient pattern possible (it is generally “market” driven design) in terms of current dollars and traffic when the lines were built, and it provides almost no transport in directions or modes that would provide for more general growth of the city. It tends to abandon loops that provide suburb-to-suburb transport to fairly crude hub-and-spoke designs that are inefficient as the city grows.
I have seen only one system that did NOT do that. Rotterdam, Bremen, London, New York, Washington, Boston, Tampa, LA, Sydney, Auckland, Melbourne, Perth, San Francisco, Rome, Athens, Naples… all examples of “it just growed” and Moscow, where someone actually put some damned thought into it. Moscow worked for multiple-purpose trips. It worked for going ANYWHERE in that city cheaply, efficiently, faster than you could go by car and in comparative comfort.
Not a scientific sampling to be sure, but it argues against the notion that public transport can’t help as a “proven” fact. It certainly is normally true in a lot of places, but I submit that the notion that it cannot help is an artifact of the manner of its implementation in most places.
the nonstop trend since the car was invented for car ownership to increase, and it will continue to do so. It isn’t ideology, it’s evidence. This trend only slowed during times of high oil prices
Just because something has not yet happened, that does not mean it cannot happen. You know that as well as anyone Liberty. I might point out that my family USED to own two cars, we now have one. In 20 years time who knows? The automobile arrived at the beginning of the oil age. Now we have peak-oil and we are unlikely to ever again see cheap oil in quantity. We may however, have different sorts of cars.
However, this is about economic growth IMHO, as everyone wants to have that individually owned private car for transportation. Those who can afford them have gotten them and the world economy, for all its shuddering to a stop, has not reversed as much as it eventually must. So congestion in terms of the number of private cars on the road has increased as though there is no tomorrow… and if it continues to increase as it has, there WILL be no tomorrow.
Whether a car is powered by electricity or petrol is not the issue. The issue is being able to build and buy replacements faster than clunkers become lawn ornaments. People haven’t YET been forced to make the choices that are coming soon… and we’re not going to be happy with having to make those choices, but we are going to be a lot less happy if we haven’t spent some time planning for them, when they finally arrive.
I’m not going to argue against the premise that we Greens don’t sometimes take a blinkered approach to roads… I happen to agree with you about that.
We’d be happy enough to see “congestion pricing” except for the fact that it is a heavy added burden of inequality for the poorer people in the city to bear… which is something to which we DO take exception. This is already one of the least egalitarian societies in the OECD, and making that worse is an excellent way to make EVERYTHING worse.
From my point of view?
1. The economic downturn associated with fractional-reserve insanity, the effects of peak oil (peak energy), destruction of the fisheries and AGW, is going to ultimately force US consumers (and Australian and New Zealand consumers) to accept a LOWER standard of living. Lots of folks to the right think we “want” this result. That’s an error. We expect it. We predict it. Population overshoot is an ugly thing.
2. The result is that there will be “less” of a lot of things. People will seek to economize. They will seek alternatives and congestion will finally decrease as a result. This isn’t tomorrow, this is up to 30 years out. It looks to the future not to the past.
The implications are that “more roads” won’t help us 30 years from now. We won’t be putting all those extra cars on the road. We don’t build them ourselves (we should), and they aren’t easy to build. What we will need is better public transit. Unlike many Greens I am OK with some road building… roads are often within meters of mean high water after all. Is it ideological if it is reasoned Liberty? I think not.
Doesn’t say much about the congestion pricing, but I can’t see allowing wealth to provide an advantage in mobility leading to greater wealth being acceptable to me under any conditions. Get around that point and I’m happy to have it. That could be regarded as ideological, but I am at least reducing it to a point of difference, not just opposing it without reasoning.
respectfully
BJ
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My point was that every city with substantial public transport systems still has heavy traffic congestion, which indicates that it absorbs and allows some growth, but doesn’t actually relieve them. Certainly most New World cities see little difference from it except for CBD focused trips.
My key point is heavy state spending on public transport doesn’t deliver for what is paid for it, certainly compared to road pricing. Road pricing ought to be a shift from how roads are paid for now, so that those travelling off peak in less congested locations (typically less likely to be employed) pay less than now. At the moment everyone pays the same, through fuel tax. Pricing can ensure those using most congested roads (e.g. trips to CBDs) face marginal costs of doing so, which will typically mean there are likely alternatives. Nobody is concerned about food prices varying according to demand, so why not road space, especially when the Greens are so ideologically opposed to private motoring (yes, I’ve heard a Green spokesman say anyone owning a car above 1.3 litre is fundamentally morally wrong).
The fundamental urban transport problem is an economic one. Large numbers of people travelling at the same time in one direction demands enormous amounts of capacity on networks, that is grossly underutilised the rest of the day. On roads this means never being able to build your way out of that congestion, on public transport it means subsidies to pay for that unused capacity.
Notice how intercity travel doesn’t need subsidies for any modes, because demand is more evenly spread. The long term solution is to encourage as much business as possible to spread commuting demand, either by time shifting starts and finishes or telecommuting. It also means diversifying workplace locations, so there are not concentrations of people demanding precious space on networks at set times that is unnecessary all the rest of the time.
For example, you’d never need to build any more motorway capacity in Auckland if 20% of current demand was eliminated or time shifted, and similarly, to the dismay of rail enthusiasts, you wouldn’t need an underground rail loop because rail demand could be spread across the day.
Most people want to own a car for flexibility, to carry shopping and to travel more widely to more remote places. They always will, but they can use them in smarter ways. When demand is high they will have to value travel time over the price to pay to use their cars.
Public transport should not be much different. It is an absurd waste and unreasonable for ratepayers (people paying to not use transport) and road users (many of whom get nothing from it) to pay for two thirds of the rail and bus fleets to sit around all day doing nothing except for a couple of spurts of activity largely in one direction.
Naturally I am loathe to put money from non-transport users into transport, as I don’t think transport should be subsidised by activities that don’t include it, but I agree with much of what you say BJ.
The average Aucklander likes owning a car, and prefers to drive and is unwilling to pay for the alternatives, either directly through fares or indirectly through rates. Surveys tell little, when Aucklanders consistently vote for local government that wont take an extravagant view of their rates.
The biggest gaps in Auckland transport are actually the poor state of the local road network (which has many bottlenecks) and poor pricing at peak times.
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