About a month ago I had a look at the work the Auckland Regional Council’s Regional Transport Committee is doing in developing a new Regional Land Transport Strategy (RLTS). In particular, at the way in which their direction potentially represented a “quantum shift” in the future of Auckland’s transportation – just what is needed. To refresh the memories, the Transport Committee were looking at four options for the strategic direction the RLTS should be taking:
- Strategic Option 1 – Demand Management: Heavy use of factors which push people away from motor vehicle use (including road pricing) towards use of public transport (PT), walking and cycling. This would need to be supported by improvements to PT and walking and cycling to accommodate the diverted demand.
- Strategic Option 2 – Mixed Investment: Continuation of the current strategy of improvement in all modes, with some shift away from road investment.
- Strategic Option 3 – Change led by Public Transport (PT) Improvements: Heavy investment in PT infrastructure and services in order to ‘pull’ people from cars to PT, but some investment in roading.
- Strategic Option 4 – Quantum Shift: A combination of the “push” factors from Strategic Option 1 (congestion pricing and parking measures) with the “pull” factors of Strategic Option 3 together with a “what if” land use designed to maximise the opportunities for public transport, walking and cycling.
The Transport Committee’s June agenda follows up on the progress in deciding upon a prefered strategic direction (as well as detailing in the most user-unfriendly language possible other advances being made to the RLTS). The agenda states: “At its meeting of May 2009, the Regional Transport Committee (RTC) considered the evaluation of the four strategic options for development of the Auckland transport system previously agreed. The conclusion of that evaluation was that while each of the options would make progress towards at least some of the targets, none is likely to achieve all of the targets on its own.” It then outlines the proposed aspects of the prefered strategic direction:
Now this is quite an interesting position for the Transport Committee to take, in that it’s a bit of everything really. We have some aspects of option 1, which focused on demand management, some of option two in terms of adding road network improvements, a commitment to some of the Metro network proposed by Parsons Brinkerhoff which made up option 3 and therefore some sort of commitment to the quantum shift outlined in option 4.
Some level of public consultation on this matter is set down by the Transport Committee to happen in July, so it will be interesting to see what information gets released – to let people form their opinions on what the best strategic direction would be. I’m a tad worried myself that my prefered “quantum shift” approach is being watered down by the ARC committing to funding additional roading capacity that I think just isn’t necessary. It’s also worrying what effect the revised Government Policy Statement for transport funding will have on the very public transport focused RLTS. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
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Hi Josh,
How about option 3/4, big pull, small push. Majority investment in public transport and public-transport friendly land use, minimal road expansion and a range of ‘soft’ push factors (increased fuel tax, area parking levies, maximum parking standards rather than minimum, and restrictions on jap imports over 5 years old).
Yeah that’s what I’d be most keen on Nick. That seems to be what the ARC is leaning towards, although I wonder how there will be enough money to fund the public transport improvements in option 3 AND the roading improvements in option 2 (in their prefered choice).
I would shift away from the road improvements of option 2.
Yeah, I would be in favour of limiting road expansion, basically rather than making the network significantly bigger or more capacious simply work on the inefficiencies and safety issues (mostly intersection improvements and the like).
Meanwhile the cash saved from not doing large roadworks (most of AMETI?) and not developing a large road pricing system can be spent on public transport projects (say the worthwhile parts of AMETI) while the cheap ‘soft’ push factors do their thing.
To not undermine this process you would have to limit significant expansion of the state highways within the urban area by the central government (i.e. no more motorways after Waterview and *maybe* a harbour road tunnel), and probably get a lot more central government funding for core PT projects like the CBD tunnel, airport line et al.
I have read several of regional transport plans, and they all tend to lean towards increasing the levels of passenger transport. Not such a bad idea to invest in public transport and promote enhancement through these policies. However these policies are only policies, they mean well, but we are not held accountable to them. In New Zealand these policies seem to be a fantasy, and do not reflect our transport budgets, as all the money goes towards building more urban motorways. Its hard to increase PT usage when there is little investment going into these services.
We can develop all the policies we want, but till the New Zealand retric changes towards funding transport, we will still follow the mistakes of the past and fail to look to the future.
That’s something I have bemoaned a lot Brent, and certainly an issue that I brought up when speaking to ARTA at the Auckland Transport Plan hearing a month or two ago. There’s all the rhetoric for a “quantum shift” and the policy documents state that “business as usual cannot continue” yet you still see tonnes more money being thrown at motorways and roads than you do at railways and bus services.
I guess if we look on the bright side at least we’ve got half the job done – in changing the rhetoric. Now we need to work on the other half: getting the powers to be to put their money where their mouth is. This is why the Government Policy Statement is so tragic – it takes away money from public transport and feeds it into unnecessary additional state highways.