As many of you will be aware, Auckland is the the middle of sorting out it's 10 year budget and as part of this they are trying to encourage the people of Auckland to take a bold step and pay a little better so that we can start to improve transport in Auckland.
Being the councils transport body, Auckland Transport (AT) has a fair idea of what Auckland transport issues are and they also have a good idea as to how the city is going to grow in the future and hence what new transport issues arise.
This is why we are presented with two separate transport plans as follows.
- Basic Transport Network @ $6.9 billion
- Advanced Transport Programme @ $10.3 billion
Although AT and the Auckland Council have been working away on these plans for some time, the anti-road brigade over at GenerationZero have noted that some improvements to the road network have been proposed and so the next campaign has started to stop improving Auckland's road transport in the name of the "Essential Transport Budget" (ETB).
As an overview, the ETB is the Basic Transport Network with a few key road upgrades being removed, they then and in a bunch of new bus/rail interchanges which are all part of the new bus network. It also includes about $100 million for improved walking and cycling.
Background:
Based on the ETB Report, the Basic Transport Network will result in "serious delays to major transport projects", but other than that they don't identify any issues and are not at all concerned with increasing congestion or allowing Auckland to grow.
The ETB is said to "priorities the desired step change in transport choice in Auckland" which I assume means making the roads so congested people have little choice but the take a train.
The rational is that apparently for the past 50 years Auckland has invested in nothing but motorways. However if you read through my Auckland's Transport History series you will note that Auckland actually has a long history of investing in nothing. It was back in the 50 & 60's that the New Zealand government built some rural expressways outside of Auckland, the only real urban motorways that were built in Auckland were again built by the government with that being the CMJ which was built very slowly over a 40 year period. Most of the urban motorways you know of today are due to Auckland growing and engulfing the rural expressways.
In terms of what Auckland has done for itself, it has only built residential streets and a few 4 lane arterial roads. In reality, Auckland is where it is today due to the council doing nothing but the bare minimum for the past 70 years, waiting for the government to step in and do something. It has only been in the last decade that Auckland Council has started to do something with their first steps being turning the rail network into an effect Rapid Transit Network (RTN).
The repeated trend of Auckland in the past of doing as little as possible is what has resulted in a congested and unpleasant road network. Roads that were meant to be arterial were built as residential streets meaning they had very little capacity and no space to be upgraded. This in turn made them progressively less desirable to walk or cycle along as additional space for traffic was squeezed in.
One of the repeated chants from the anti-road brigade is that traffic volumes aren't growing and more people are using PT, which although true it is due to a simple and obvious reason. If the roads are congested people are going to look for other ways to perform their trip. In addition to this, rail usage has shot up due to the bus network being revised so that existing bus users are now required to transfer to a train.
To show the level of trust you can put in their document, they make the claim that passenger volumes on the Auckland rail network have been increasing by 20% per annum. However if you view the following image you can see that this is not the case; although its very clear that rail patronage has been increasing, it actually declined sharply only 2 years ago and has generally been growing at just over 10% per annum.
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| Transportblog - 2015 |
On a similar tune, GenerationZero have made the claim that we reached peak traffic in mid 2000's and will never reach such levels again, this is despite the fact we have reached those levels again, passed them, and have been continuing to grow at around 2.5% per annum when you look places like the southern, northern, northwestern and upper harbour motorways.
Pro PT
In terms of the projects that are in the ETB, I don't actually have an issue with any of them however I don't see them as going far enough.
In true to anti-road campaigner fashion, GenerationZero has removed a number of road projects where the primary benefactors are bus users. This is similar case to a previous post I did where the blind hatred of roads can lead folks to campaigning against projects not knowing that the main benefactors are the PT users.
An example of this is the Lincoln Road Upgrade, currently this road has two lanes each way with no cycling and poor walking provisions. The planned upgrade leaves the same number of general traffic lanes but adds a buslane each way along with new cycle lanes, and footpaths with improved safety along the route.
Similar targets are:
- Te Atatu Road upgrade, which is being done to improve buses, walking and cycling along Te Atatu Road.
- Local road Upgrades for the East West Connections Project, which is essentially bus improvements.
- Long Bay Southern Corridor, which provides benefits for all users.
- Dominion Road Upgrade
Growing Auckland:
The other obvious assumption in the ETB is that Auckland is only going to grow upwards and not outwards with their scrapping of the Mill Road upgrade.
Although this area is expected to have an additional:
- 22,000 homes
- 6,000 jobs
- 80,000 more people
The ETB assumes these people will be more than happy to take the bus along a narrow and congested two-lane road to the nearest train station regardless of where they want to go.
Effects of the Essential Transport Budget:
The aim of the ETB is clear in that they want to improve public transport along with walking and cycling. Unfortunately they have fallen for the all to common mistake of assuming anything with the word "road" in the title is bad and therefore must be stopped.
To this extent the ETB will roll out a suite of new train station and bus interchanges however, these buses will be stuck driving along congested local roads as they have removed all of the projects that were going to upgrade these roads to provide the fast and frequent bus services. The end result of the ETB is that we get to spend more money but have a slower and more congested transport network for everyone.
Funding:
I always enjoy reading the funding cases from anyone who is anti-road as they are always campaigning to stop road projects yet they insist that the people who are on the road should pay for their pet project.
We pretty much have the same situation here where they are pretty content with fuel tax but in a rare case of generosity they have actually supported increasing rates. Normally rates are completely off the cards as this means they will need to pay some money but they seem happy in this case as they have reduced the amount they would need to be to $15.73 per annum.
Fuel Levy:
We are told the fuel levy "affects everyone relatively fairly", well I guess this would be the case if we all drove relatively similar vehicles, relatively the same distance at relatively the same number of times a year. However in reality the person it effects the most is the person who needs to travel for work who doesn't have a company car. With a 7c/l tax that somewhat average person pays about $140 a year on tax towards the new transport network, however another equally average person who takes the train (that the guy driving paid for) to work pays nothing what so ever. And so this levy is in no way shape or form fair unless the person paying the $140 in tax is getting some sort of a benefit out of this additional money they are paying, which in the case of the ETB they get less than what they would get in the Basic Transport Network package.
A case of pay more and get less for road users.
Motorway Toll:
Strangely the motorway toll doesn't get the biggest round of applause because there is some concern that some parts of the city have poor PT provision. We are told places like Te Atatu and Messey, the ones who are getting brand new bus lanes built as we speak, have no choice but to take the motorway despite their express bus services. It is only once these places have greatly improved PT that we can toll them.
Without having to read too hard between the lines it's rather clear that a few of the contributors to the ETB live in these places and are probably not to impressed with their current PT service which is required to mix with motorway traffic due to the upgrades that are being built for them. It will be for this simple reason that they currently drive along here that they don't want a motorway toll, as it does add up to a bit at the end the year.
Similar to the fuel levy, if you make 2 trips a day you are looking at spending about $450 a year on motorway tolls, which once the motorway upgrade is finished in 2017 will reduce to nothing as you can start taking the bus again.
The interesting part for these folk is that the ETB does nothing for them. Once the motorway upgrade is complete buses will be able to drive along the motorway should free of congestion, however the ETB has cancelled the local road upgrades and so once they get off the motorway they will be stuck in congestion rather then using the nice bus lanes they were going to get in the Basic Transport Network.
Government Cash:
By far the most preferred source of funding for any project is from the central government. The general call is that PT projects should be funded in the same way as motorways are, from a big pot of money the government has.
The issue here is that the big pot of money gets its money from fuel tax and various other charges paid my motorists. So if you say you want PT to be funded in the same way motorways are then you are really saying you want to remove all subsidies from PT and have it entirely run as a users pays system.
Of course this isn't what they want, but rather they want road users to pay for PT. Currently about 57c in the litre gets paid towards the land transport fund and so for the average driver that's about $800 a year. The preference from the anti-road campaigner is that this $800 should be directed towards the train user and the road user should be rewarded with more congestion for their efforts.
Conclusion:
In the end of the day, the Essential Transport Budget is trying to push the Congestion Free Network into the 10 year plan. Although it's all well and good to campaign for better public transport, in this case it seems they have picked a battle that isn't really needed.
In it's goal of being cheaper the ETB has shot itself in the foot and removed many of the essential roading projects that are needed to support the public transport network along with many of the walking and cycling upgrades. Roading projects have never been just about cars, and even motorway projects these days are doing more for walking and cycling than many most other projects.
The way I see it, if you want one or more of the following:
- Better Public Transport
- Better Walking Provisions
- Better Cycling Provisions
- Greater Choice
- Great Flexibility
- Reduced Congestion
Then the only option you need to chose is the Advanced Transport Programme.
