Normally, I generally don’t encourage people to make form submissions on a topic but because the issue of land transport funding is pretty technical I wanted to make it as easy for people to participate in this process as possible.

The current GPS controls the allocation of $38 billion worth of funds and is incredibly unbalanced towards motorways, so I thought it was important to make New Zealanders aware of that.

I was pretty horrified at how few people made submissions on the 2009-2012 GPS, despite the fact that it affected the distribution of literally billions of dollars of New Zealand taxpayers money.

This time around over 420 people used my form to make submissions. Another 50 also made their own, independent submissions.

However, I was less impressed by reading the summary of submissions because it sounded as if the Minister virtually discarded all these form submissions. I can understand his point that a form submission is probably not as valuable as a unique one. But, I think they should still count for something.

And judging by the changes between the draft and final GPS (very few) he also seems to have disregarded almost every one of the 50 unique submissions that came from the public, or as he likes to call them, “non-stakeholders”.

So who were the stakeholders? They were the 44 businesses and organizations the Minister deemed important enough to consult.

The list of those consulted is revealing. It includes 17 councils, 11 organizations and companies that represent road users or have as a primary focus road construction, just 1 company to represent rail interests (Kiwirail), 1 organization to represent the bus companies (the Bus and Coach Association), and 3 organizations to represent walking and cycling interests.

Not one group that represented the interests of public transport users was included in the stakeholder list, even though the Campaign for Better Transport (which represents bus and train users in Auckland and Waikato) made an unsolicited submission.

This process shows clearly the the Minister’s disregard for public opinion and lack of interest in genuine consultation.

In fact, after a few years in Parliament I’ve begun to wonder why it is that the distribution of the fuel tax is left so much to the control of one Minister with virtually no scrutiny by Parliament or the public.

What do you think? Do you think that there should be more democratic control and oversight of the National Land Transport Fund? And, if so, what do you think is the best way of achieving that?

The Transport and Industrial Relations Select Committee was discussing my petition to fast-track the CBD rail link. The committee had already decided that both The Ministry of Transport (MOT) and the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) should be invited to submit on whether or not the government should fund this project based on their research.

However only asking information from MOT and NZTA gave the committee just one side of the story.

I put forward an unsuccessful motion that the Auckland Council should also be able to make a submission on funding for the CBD rail link. Its important to hear from them because they too have prepared an in-depth and internationally-peer reviewed report (unlike the MOT/NZTA’s ‘in-house’ one) and have started the designation process for the link. However, the National MPs on the committee voted to prevent this.

I found it particularly ironic that, of the MPs who voted against, 3 out of the 5 were Aucklanders themselves. Just what are Tau Henare, Jami-lee Ross and Jacqui Blue going to say to their constituents wanting the link? What’s National Party select committee chair David Bennett going to tell his Hamilton constituents who recently found out their rail link to Auckland would terminate at a station that closed ten years ago because Britomart station was at capacity without the rail link?

So why are the National MPs in Auckland so scared of hearing what the Auckland Council has to say? Is it because they know that the public sees the CBD rail loop as being more of a priority for Auckland than their uneconomic Puhoi to Wellsford Holiday Highway?

Why is the Transport Select Committee leaving it up to a Wellingtonian to advocate for Auckland’s voice to be heard?

Do they fear that the council could easily pick holes in the assumptions they made in their own, deeply biased and not internationally peer-reviewed review of the CBD rail link business case? What do you think?

But here’s a bit of a round up of the big transport stories of the last few weeks and my reaction.

More funds for rail upgrades in Wellington. The government has announced an additional $88.4 million of funding to renew the Wellington rail system. This is great and long overdue as the Wellington rail network has major reliability issues. A newer signalling system should help to resolve this.

Cuts to public transport subsidies. The Sunday Star Times picked up some research I did around the cuts to the rate of public transport subsidies the government has just bought in.

These cuts will have major negative impacts on the ability of councils like Hamilton and Auckland to provide quality services. Their only options really are to cut services, raise fares or raise rates. This is such short sighted thinking from the government – especially when public transport patronage is soaring and vehicle traffic on our state highways is dropping.

The release of the Government Policy Statement on Land Transport which allocated $36 billion of funds over the next 10 years. I’ll be writing several more blog posts about this because it’s so important. For now, let’s just say it puts a ridiculously large amount of money into uneconomic and unnecessary state highways and far too little into improving our public transport, walking and cycling infrastructure. You can see more of my reaction to the government’s tragically unbalanced transport funding policies in this  TVNZ interview.

Nikki Kaye comes out in support of trams for central Auckland. Despite various critical responses to this, I think it’s great to see a National MP supporting smarter transport solutions. However, like Jacinda Ardern, I am a little dubious about whether Nikki’s own government would pay for this proposal.

I’m also doubtful about whether it’s wise to call for a tram system without doing a proper cost-benefit analysis of whether it is the best option for this area. I’d like to see a study which compared the costs of a tram versus a better bus service.

It might be possible for us to get say 80% of the benefits of a tram service just from upgrading the bus service at one fifth of the cost. So I’d support Nikki in calling for a study to find out what the best solution for the area is. I’d also like the study to consider whether this should really be a transport priority for Auckland region. There may be other areas that are more in need.

The driving age has risen from 15 to 16 years old, a change that I support as it will mean safer roads for us all.

Finally, I’m co-hosting with Shane Jones the first ever Smart Transport for NZ conference in Parliament on the 19th of August. This should be awesome – I’m excited as we’ll be having some amazing keynote speakers like Dr. Paul Mees, a leading Australasian authority on smart transport. Register online if you’re interested.

An animated map of Auckland’s public transport network from Chris McDowall on Vimeo.

Watching it really highlights to me how radial the public transport network is. There are a lot of different public transport services (whether by rail, bus, or ferry) but most of them (with a few exceptions such as the Link) go into the center. They’re like the spokes on a wheel but there’s little to join them up.

In practise, having radial services translates for frustrating outcomes for Aucklanders who want to go from one side of the city to the other. It may not even be a particularly long trip but to get there you have to catch one bus into the CBD and then another out – thus more than doubling the time you have to travel and cost you have to pay.

You also often end up with services that follow very complex routes – trying to get every single person close to their house.

The New Zealand Transport Agency published a paper last year which said that having a grid like network is actually a lot more efficient than a radial or tailor made network. Having a grid means that you can run far fewer buses/trains but get more passengers a lot closer to their destination. Hopefully these diagrams help make that clearer.

However, to introduce a more grid like system in Auckland we’d have to restructure the fares as well because right now the fares effectively discourage people from transferring. For example, if you catch one bus for one stage and then another bus for two stages that’s pretty expensive – more so than just catching one bus for 3 stages. We need a fare system that makes transferring from one service or mode to another cheap.

The integrated ticketing project gives us a fantastic opportunity to look at restructuring the routes and fares of public transport services in Auckland to a more efficient grid like system and get more bang for our buck in terms of subsidies.

Sadly, so far what’s coming out of Auckland Transport doesn’t suggest the government is seizing that opportunity. But the Auckland Spatial Plan is a great opportunity to get these ideas out there.

What do you think when watching the video? Do you think Auckland needs a more grid like network? What other improvements could we make?

But before you go, if you live in Auckland, Rodney, Whangarei, or anywhere else and want smart transport decisions please take a few minutes to make a submission on the New Zealand Transport Agency’s latest proposal for the Holiday Highway – that is the huge and expensive upgrade of SH1 between Puhoi and Warkworth.

This motorway is the poster-child for bad 1950s transport planning. I’ve talked a lot before about this project and its drawbacks. It makes no economic sense; will cost us $1.7 billion; has massive environmental impacts; and will lead to more low density sprawl around Auckland, greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on imported oil.

When I visited the area last Friday and really saw, at first hand, the massive scale of the earthworks that NZTA are proposing and, also, the families who will be affected, I realized how urgent it is we stop this madness.

So, if you’d like to make a submission then check out the proposed route on NZTA’s website. You can then either fill out their online form or download our submission guide, add any of your own comments, and email it to puhoi-wellsford@nzta.govt.nz.

The New Zealand Transport Agency has admitted that they seriously under-estimated how much traffic their upgrades of State Highway 16 (SH16) to form the Western Ring Route would create.

Motorists are now experiencing delays of up to 40 minutes where the new part of SH16 joins State Highway 1 in South Auckland. NZTA’s solution? They want to widen SH1 between Manukau and Papakura to accomodate the extra traffic. They also want to widen SH1 up on the North Shore near Greenhithe at a cost of $160 million to take extra traffic coming off SH16.

Because, obviously, since widening motorways hasn’t worked before, it’s bound to fix congestion this time!

Meanwhile, the New Zealand Transport Agency’s application to spend roughly $800 million to widen State Highway 16 between Te Atatu and St Lukes from 6 lanes to 9 lanes grinds on yet the Auckland Council’s plans to build the CBD rail loop are stymied by a $30 million/year shortfall in funds

I wonder when the government will learn that building motorways to solve congestion is like trying to fix obesity through loosening your belt? To fix congestion we need to take drivers off the road by giving them attractive, alternatives like safe walking and cycling and affordable, convenient buses and trains.

In the meantime, what is the most useful thing you think the government could do with that $800 million to help put New Zealand on the right path to a clean, green, prosperous and smart economy?

The government has already made their position pretty clear – both through the release of their new document “Building Competitive Cities” and through Steven Joyce’s recent comments in the Sunday Star Times.

They want to see Auckland grow outwards as they believe that removing the Metropolitan Urban Limit and zoning more land on the urban fringe for development will lower housing prices.

Building Competitive Cities even suggests that councils should allow enough land for 20 years of urban growth on the outskirts of their cities. In Auckland’s case, that would involve providing enough land for about 600,000 people or 200,000 houses.

The Green Party is opposed to allowing further low density urban sprawl around Auckland or our other major cities. We’d like to see our cities grow outwards in a planned fashion along public transport links. There are a variety of reasons for that which I hope to cover in some blogs over the next few weeks.

But first, just to get you thinking here’s a map from the Auckland Regional Council’s State of the Auckland Region report which shows where the greatest growth of housing in Auckland was between 2001-2006.

This doesn’t quite fit with Joyce’s assertion that growth in housing density has mainly occured in coastal areas… Instead it looks more like most growth in housing has happened around the airport, in the CBD, and in other greenfield sites (e.g., Albany, Flat Bush) that were zoned for development.

Do you think that’s a sustainable pattern to continue for the future? If not, how would you like to see Auckland grow?

It was somewhat amusing that Labour pointed out – just before Steven Joyce’s speech – that the credit for building this station largely rests with Labour and Michael Cullen in particular. While I don’t think Labour did enough for public transport during their last 9 years in government there is certainly no denying that they funded 90% + of the government’s contribution to the New Lynn transport hub. Credit where credit is due.

After the formal part of the opening concluded, the deputy major, Penny Hulse headed outside to use a digger and take the first shot at demolishing the old New Lynn Bus Station. That might seem a little weird but if you compare the old, tatty wooden structure with it’s inadequate coverage to the new, shiny station which has good integration between cycling, trains and buses, you can understand why the locals are so keen to see the old station go.

As the Auckland Trains blog reports, as well as being a good example of integration between different transport modes New Lynn is also a good example of a transport orientated development. The old bus station will eventually turn into a shopping centre and apartment complex – meaning that hundreds of people will be living just 2 minutes from their local bus/train station.  Now that’s a good way to get cars off the road!

And, as well as the New Lynn opening, there is new hope for other desperately needed public transport projects in Auckland with the early results of the Super City elections showing that Len Brown is beating John Banks.

While both Mayoral candidates have supported more investment in public transport and, in particular, fast-tracking the CBD rail loop, Brown has been much more vocal in his support for rail than Banks.

I think that Brown will also be more willing to challenge the government on their crazy motorway-building agenda and ask them to put more funding into the kind of transport infrastructure Aucklanders actually want – that’s more rail, in case you’ve missed the results of recent surveys.

After a fiery meeting  Auckland City Council agreed it would be foolish to allow cars with 2 passengers into the busway. This is great news as this is one of the busiest and most successful busways in Auckland.

However, there’s obviously a strong case to be adding more busways around Auckland as some areas (like Te Atatu) are cut off from the railway and have few public transport options.

A great way to provide a busway that would give residents a fast and direct way into town would be to introduce one as part of the widening of SH16 which the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) will soon be undertaking. This project aims to widen SH16 between Te Atatu and St Lukes from 4-6 lanes to 6-9 lanes.

This is mainly to accomodate the increased traffic from the soon to be constructed Waterview connection without massive congestion.

This project will cost over $800 million and local and international experience suggests it will not solve congestion. Instead, widening the motorway will simply make this part of Auckland even more car-dependent and lead to even worse traffic jams – and that’s assuming we even finish this project before the price of oil rises to a point where most Aucklanders can’t really afford to drive to work at all!

NZTA is talking about providing bus-shoulders as part of the widening on some sections of the motorway but commuters deserve better than that. We need an adequate bus-way along this stretch of motorway – otherwise the buses will just get stuck in traffic.

NZTA should soon be consulting on this widening project and as a local resident I will be pushing for a better busway. I hope you’ll join me in that!

The sit-ins had huge support with over 250 people attending the event at Tuakau alone – pretty awesome for a small rural town.

I wish I could have sat with them but I wasn’t able to attend unfortunately as I had a prior engagement talking about sustainable transport to students on Waiheke Island. I was in Tuakau reccently talking about the need for a commuter rail link  and I support these local communities and hope they will soon be successful in their campaign for a commuter rail service.

Their campaign has been bolstered by the recent news that patronage on Kiwirail’s 3 long-distance passenger services have reached a record high. In particular, the Overlander has had phenomenal growth of 24% in one year. And yes, this is the same service that in 2006 the government wanted to shut down as it said it couldn’t be successful.

Similarly, Auckland has also seen record increases in public transport patronage this year – with over 60 million trips and an increase of almost 12% in rail patronage in just one year.

Rail in NZ is on a roll and it will take is a little more investment to improve our services to a point where many NZers have a viable alternative to cars.

I just hope that the government has enough sense to recognize that and put funds into important rail projects in future – like the Auckland-Waikato rail service and CBD rail loop – rather than more white elephant motorways. Do you think they will?

I’ve commented on this issue before so will be brief.  Auckland City Council is planning to redesign Dominion Road, one of the busier roads in central Auckland.

Their plans for redesign currently involve letting vehicles with 2 or more passengers use the bus lane. This is a bad idea as Dominion Road is one of the busiest buslanes in Auckland – letting cars into the lane will slow the buses down greatly. Also, if we make the buses a less attractive proposition fewer people will use them – thus leading to more cars on the road which will slow everybody down!

Right now the buslane does a great job in reducing congestion – carrying 50%+ of passengers on the road during peak hour. So please submit against this part of the proposal and ask the council to keep the bus lane just for buses.

The second part of their plan is to introduce an on-road cycle way that would separate cyclists from traffic using a little raised buffer (like a kerb). This is an awesome idea and such on-road cycle lanes have proved to be extremely successful in Copenhagen. Please submit in favour of this part of the council’s plan.

Once they have carried out this redesign the council probably won’t invest in another one for at least 20 years. So, if you live in Auckland then please, submit now! This could be a once in a lifetime chance for really decent bus/cycle facilities on a major road.

Luckily, Hamilton City Councillors quickly responded, pointing out that the actual cost of subsidizing a commuter rail service is hundreds of times lower than the $15,000/trip Joyce claimed.

However, it’s no surprise to find the government spreading this kind of misinformation about a passenger rail service. Earlier this year, David Bennett, the National MP for Hamilton East also claimed a diesel train service would be less fuel efficient than people driving in individual motor cars to Auckland.  However (based on Kiwirail’s figures for fuel consumption for a Silver Fern)  a rail service would be around 4  to 5 times more fuel efficient than if the passengers made the trip by car.

While it’s great to see the government investing a lot into making Kiwirail a more viable freight business, the government’s actions and Joyce’s responses to my Questions in the House have made it pretty clear that they are really not interested in improving passenger rail services in NZ.

Even though the electrification project in Auckland was about to go out to tender when National came into government Joyce still delayed it by 15 months, according to Mike Lee, while trying to decide whether or not to fund the purchase of the electric trains. Since then, the government has allowed virtually no money for future improvements to passenger rail in their transport budgets.

That’s why Keith and I have launched the Fast-Track the CBD Rail Loop campaign for Auckland – to get this crucial project built quickly. The CBD Rail Loop is needed (among other reasons) to increase the number of trains that can travel through Britomart per hour – which will mean we can run more commuter services from Waikato in future. You can show your support by signing our online petition.

It’s also great to see the residents of the Waikato are fighting back to get commuter rail between Auckland and Hamilton. The Campaign for Better Transport are holding a meeting in Tuakau next Monday night, 7.30 to 9 pm at the Tuakau Town Hall. I’ll be speaking so, if you’re in the area, come along and join me!

To summarise, right now a lot of people in Auckland are being ticketed for moving into a bus-lane more than 50 meters (the legally allowed maximum) before they need to turn left.

Personally, I think the solution is simple – the council should just put a marker at the 50 metre point on  roads where people are getting lots of tickets. The claim that there are already too many signs is not very compelling given that managing signage is often within the Council’s control. What do you think?

Save Dominion Road’s Bus-Lane

As far as I’m concerned (although I do have a vested interest since, for me, it’s close to home), a much more important issue is that right now John Banks’ Auckland City Council is consulting on a plan to turn the bus-lanes on Dominion Road into a T2 lane. That would mean that all cars carrying 2 or more passengers could use the bus-lane as well as buses.

This is clearly a crazy plan since right now the bus-lane works magnificently to relieve congestion and improve mobility. As the council themselves admit it carries more than 50% of the total passengers on the road during peak times.

Also, as Rudman reports, trials of turning a bus-lane into a T2 lane on Tamaki Drive have shown that doing so actually made travel times slower (on average) for all road users – including motorists!

So, if you live in Auckland I encourage you to make a submission on this plan, asking Auckland City Council to keep the bus-lane on Dominion Road for buses only.

And while you’re at it please encourage the good part of the Council’s plan – which is to redesign Dominion Road to include a separate cycle lane.

If you’re familiar with our transport history you’ll know that back in the 1950s Auckland had an extremely high rate of public transport use (for more info about changes in public transport use in Auckland see this interesting page on the Ministry of Economic Developments website). This was largely due to our excellent tram system which covered most of the isthmus area (see map below from 1950).

Source: the Campaign for Better Transport forums

But in the 1950s we believed that the private motor car would solve all our congestion and mobility problems. So we tore up our tram lines and replaced them with motorways and massive roads.

Oddly enough, building lots of infrastructure that encouraged people to drive and discouraged them from walking, cycling or using public transport didn’t really work to increase mobility. So now Auckland has the worst traffic congestion in New Zealand.

It also has one of the lowest rates of public transport patronage of most roughly comparable cities in Australia, the USA and NZ (as shown in this graph from the Auckland Regional Land Transport Strategy).

(NOTE – this graph also shows the GDP of each city. Isn’t it interesting to see that Auckland scores poorly on both public transport use and GDP?)

The good news is that a lot of the older roads in Auckland (like Dominion Road) could probably be adapted to carry trams again without too much work since that is what they were originally designed for.  So, it’s nice to see the ARC bringing back a tram to Auckland – even if it is only a heritage project which will just run around the waterfront at first.

What do you think? Is a tram for the Wynward Quarter a good idea? If you lived in Auckland (or came here for a visit) would you use it?

Basically it sets a different direction for transport in Auckland than that favoured by the National government. It prioritizes major sustainable transport projects like the CBD rail loop for funding and completion – rather than the motorways favoured by Steven Joyce.

Obviously, I think this is great as it’s right in line with Green transport policy. But the conflict between central and local government goals for transport in Auckland is going to cause some problems for the new Auckland Transport agency. This graph (taken from the ARLTS) sums the problem up nicely.

Basically, if the Auckland Transport agency tries to fulfil the Auckland Regional Land Transport Strategy (as it is meant to do) while relying on the government for funding then it will have too much money for state highways and not enough for passenger (that’s public) transport.

An obvious solution would be for National to listen to what local government in Auckland wants and then readjust it’s funding policies accordingly. Unfortunately, Vote Transport doesn’t suggest that will happen any time soon.

What do you think – will the government start putting more funding into sustainable transport in our major cities soon?