Auckland Transport has long been a easy punching bag for the public, politicians and media, sometimes deservedly so, other times not. That could all be about to change following an announcement yesterday by the Browns – Wayne and Simeon.
Greater Auckland is brought to you by a largely volunteer crew and made possible by generous donations from our readers and fans. If you’d like to support our work, you can join our circle of supporters here, or support us on Substack!
Just last week we were pondering the future of Auckland Transport, with Mayor Wayne Brown’s annual plan proposing to make some fairly significant changes to transport governance arrangements in Auckland. A big uncertainty in a lot of what he proposed came down to the fact that AT’s powers are mostly set out in legislation – meaning that central government will need to come to the party to make any changes.
Yesterday the government came through for Wayne Brown – and then some – by proposing what is certainly the biggest change to transport governance arrangements in Auckland since local government amalgamation in 2010. Here are the key details:
- Return regional transport policy and planning to Auckland Council: Transport policy and planning functions will move from Auckland Transport back to Auckland Council, aligning with how other regional councils operate across New Zealand.
- Establish a new Auckland Regional Transport Committee: A statutory committee will be formed to develop a 30-year Integrated Transport Plan for Auckland, to be agreed upon by both Cabinet and Auckland Council. This will ensure long-term strategic alignment between local and central government.
- Designate Auckland Council as the Road Controlling Authority: Auckland Council will assume the role of Road Controlling Authority. Decision-making will be shared between the Governing Body and Local Boards.
- Empower Auckland Council to give it control over its transport council-controlled organisation: Auckland Council will retain a transport council-controlled organisation focused solely on delivering transport projects and services. The council will have six months once legislation is passed to determine its specific functions.
As with any change of this magnitude there’s a mixed bag in there.
The Good
The first, second and fourth bullet points are exactly what the Mayor has been wanting for a long time now. To align transport policy and planning with the rest of the country by bringing it back to the Council, to give Auckland Council the ability to decide which powers it delegates to AT, and to have a statutory 30-year Integrated Transport Plan.
Overall, these are all good moves – largely for the reasons spelled out a week ago. Having a statutory 30-year Integrated Transport Plan (ITP) is also a great and long overdue move and effectively gives the Auckland Transport Alignment Project (ATAP) some teeth. ATAP was originally initiated by the last National government and through several iterations of it we saw some more sensible transport planning emerge from central government. However, as it wasn’t a statutory document it was ignored by agencies like Waka Kotahi who never delivered the levels of funding the government had promised and carried on their own planning independent of what ATAP said.
So this undoes the mess that Steven Joyce made of transport planning and governance back when he changed the LTMA and got rid of 30-year Regional Land Transport Strategies and hopefully means a lot less random stuff like the NZ Upgrade Programme, the later years of light rail, the Waitemata Harbour Connections debacle, and the Roads of National Significance.
The Bad
One big area of concern is the level of say the government will have over transport plans for the region. While having an ITP is good, a lot will depend on how much it’s based on evidence, as opposed to reckons like the current Government Policy Statement has. Also key will the level of detail it goes into: for example, will it give the government a veto over every individual cycleway proposal or just at a high level.
There’s also the issue of how often an ITP can be refreshed, as that could potentially lock Auckland’s transport future to the policies of this government and council.
The government will get more of a say in running of what remains of Auckland Transport as there will still be a board but the government will get to pick half of the board members.
The (potentially) Ugly
The one addition to Mayor Wayne’s proposal – making Auckland Council the Road Controlling Authority, and potentially splitting decision-making powers between the Governing Body and Local Boards – has certainly come more out of left field and wasn’t really mentioned at all in the Mayor’s proposal.
This change seems to have come from Simeon Brown’s weird belief that Auckland Transport was building safe streets and cycleways all over the city against public opinion – which is very odd given Auckland Transport has struggled to build many cycleways at all in recent years despite Auckland Council desperately pleading for them to do so. He said this in his press release about this particular change:
“Additionally, the Government will devolve specific transport functions to Local Boards, giving communities more say over transport issues such as parking policies, setting of speed limits, and approval of interventions on the roads such as cycleways and pedestrian crossings,” Simeon Brown says.
“This change ensures that transport policies have democratic legitimacy and democratic accountability —something that has been sorely lacking.”
The concern here is that some Local Boards are great on transport issues and others are less so, and so the risk is we end up with a bit of a post-code lottery on things like whether it’s safe for your child to be able to walk to school.
The changes do suggest that it should be easier for supportive Local Boards to build more cycleways and pedestrian crossings, although Simeon made it clear they’ll only be able to happen if communities fund these things themselves, saying:
Well look, that’s one of the things road controlling authorities can do but I’ll tell you what, it’s not going to be funded by the taxpayer. We’ve made that very clear in the Government Policy Statement on Transport and that’s been given effect to in the National Land Transport Programme. I can tell you under this government there’ll be no co-funding from the government for those things. If the council and local boards want to spend money on those types of things which frustrate motorists, they’ll be held accountable by the people in their communities.
The Road Controlling Authority status is also potentially a lot of extra work for Councillors and Local Board members. It’ll be interesting to see how this is managed effectively, and how Local Boards will be provided with sound technical support and advice to inform their decision-making in line with statutory responsibilities.
It’s perhaps too early to tell whether this means we will end up with a split of accountabilities – a bit more like option AT3 in the Mayor’s proposal rather than AT2 – or whether Auckland Council will decide that AT should retain a lot of their current roles and functions, with just the final legal decision-making sitting with the Council.
Overall, the changes really do mean the end of Auckland Transport in its current form – to a much greater extent than the Mayor and Council were proposing last week.
I guess it is an indictment on the leadership of that organisation over recent years that few people will be sad about this. It is also quite strange that we are quite happy to see Auckland Transport disappear in their current form for the opposite reason to Simeon Brown – in that we think AT has spent most of its existence undermining Council strategy that has been forward-thinking and progressive; whereas Simeon Brown thinks AT has been on an ideological rampage against the wishes of the city’s elected members.
Processing...
The last sentence is so true. Seemingly AT is working for no one but each side of the debate thinks that change will make it work better for them. Either one side of the transport debate will be bitterly disappointed or both sides will be. I can’t see a path that leads to all conflicts in strategic direction disappearing and everyone is happy.
The plan is to break the current system but based on no evidence of why it currently does not work and how the new system will make it better. So nil evidence, nil expert evidence or input and we have to trust the combined wisdom of the Browns.
Ideological structural change which will put a lot of power into central government with new committee half appointed by the Minister for Transport. And considering the Minister has significant defunded AT ($4B over 10 years with loss of regional fuel tax), and we have RONS and GPS which is the worst in living memory e.g. lets spend $20B on motorway Warkworth to Whangarei. Can anyone name a worse GPS?????
Welcome to our Brave New World aka BROWNTOWN.
I think this will end up being bad for Auckland. If you thought AT were bad at delivering, wait and see how bad elected officials are! I suspect it will be years of documents and plans and then an election and then years of new documents and plans with no actual outcomes.
The thing I find odd is that almost everyone hates AT for some reason, why would the council want that hate instead?
To be fair, and as Wayne Brown has said, it can’t get much worse regardless of what happens.
Aligning to the rest of the country, and lots of other countires is hardly a controversial move though but definitely think it will be a postcode lottery for improvements.
It can get so much worse. Compare AT to the transport mess of the late 90s early 2000s. We can absolutely go backward without the right leadership.
I remember how terrible it was when we had ARTA and they used to try and coordinate with the old councils. Now we will essentially have the same with delivery being coordinated by council, AT 2.0 and across the 21 local boards. What could go wrong?
At least we’ll be getting years of documents and plans from the council only. Not from both AT and council.
Saving trees, less paper wasted.
True that.
Can anyone honestly imagine Auckland Council delivering stuff like trains, new bus network, double deckers, HOP, cycleways, footpath renewal, AMETI, CRL, western busway, etc. Instead they will be wasting all their time talking about too many road cones, dynamic lanes, congestion charging, etc and producing nothing.
I just really see it as AT being absorbed by AC, ensuring outputs are in line with AC plans. I imagine many of the same people will remain, they’ll just be held more accountable.
” I imagine many of the same people will remain, they’ll just be held more accountable.’
OR they will just report to a new manager at Auckland Council
AT overseas many, many millions of dollars of public money. There is a basic issue of democratic accountability that Rodney Hide’s attempt to create a neoliberal and unaccountable CCO obfuscated in the name of “efficiency” through technocratic diktat. Well, how has that worked out? It did little more than empower a self-interested managerialist priesthood. Now at last the voters are having the last, and longest, laugh.
“Well, how has that worked out?’
Lets think; The Northern Busway, Electric Trains, 10 minute trains in peak time ( soon to be every 5 minutes ) a new Frequent Bus network, all new low emission air conditioned buses, late night buses on weekends, new bus stations, upgrades to train stations, additional bus shelters, integrated ticketing, upgraded ferry terminals, a new ferry fleet, reduced fare zones, company subsidised HOP cards, new Airport link shuttle buses, updated AT Mobile app, new Journey Planner, new on demand shuttle bus service….
Absoutely. I think we have forgotten how different public transport in Auckland was under the “ancien regime”. Though people who don’t atually use PT still complain that the reason they don’t use it is because it’s crap, that just shows that they haven’t used it lately. Kiwirail and the network rebuilding project aside, there’s a lot more to celebrate than to criticise.
That was pre super city though.
Auckland Council has taken the right approach AT has too many Senior Managers who need to be sacked. Drivers must be taught punctuality and not allow free travel on buses after all its a business not a free lunch
“Drivers must be taught punctuality” – Drivers are already trying to be punctual by running red lights and dragging cars. You want better punctuality, make more bus lanes.
As for not allowing free travel – Also easy. Put cops on every single bus. That or pay a megaton more to employ ex-SAS soldiers as drivers.
Bro, you’re out of touch.
your a bit tough on the free bus travel thing
Retired folks worked hard for that privileged.
I guess we needed to spend $1.3B on a ticketing system to let them not pay.
Or think about the cost effectiveness of having free PT. $1.3B could go toward it let alone the annual costs from having to run a ticketing system.
It is a transport system that by its very basic function (getting people from A to B) enables economic gains (from people getting to/from work, to/from activities where they spent/make money or just to/from places to recreate so they don’t burn out in their office job).
It does not have to make a profit by itself.
Precisely, a transport system does not need to make money as it’s providing utility and wider economic gains.
However, you can setup a transport system for profit (hi japan), but you cannot tell a system that’s setup as a utility and tell it, be profitable!
If you want a profitable system, fine, but create a business plan and set it up as such from the get-go if feasable.
” Drivers must be taught punctuality and not allow free travel on buses after all its a business not a free lunch’
SOLUTION
More bus lanes and less cars
A security guard equiped with a baton, on every bus ( paid for by ratepayers ), and you can then expect concerned mothers complaining that their teenage child was denied a free bus ride to the mall )
“Auckland Council has taken the right approach, AT has too many Senior Managers who need to be sacked’
How many is the “right” number to have within Auckland Council?. Which Snr Manager roles would you disestablish? How many of those roles would you need in the new policy, strategy and planning functions within Auckland Council, ( please be specific ) or will you be asking Librarians and Council Gardeners to do that work?
The half+half of the new Board is to me the most useful feature; it makes more overt the reconciliation of AT and NZTA capital and operations. We have needed statutory recognition of this for over a century.
I’m sure most of us have memory banks full of perpetual internicine wars between ARTA, local authorities, TRANZIT, MoT, and different government ministers as we all struggled to get something, anything committed to and done. What will statutory alignment look like in operation? Can’t wait.
Minister Brown is showing some democratising character as well as generating structural alignment that no party will disagree with.
The biggest concern from a implementation aspect is that all the same people will simply change hats and office and be employed by Auckland council, and bring all the worst workplace culture of AT with them. If that happens the culture clash within the council could be epic and crippling.
“The biggest concern from a implementation aspect is that all the same people will simply change hats and office and be employed by Auckland council, ”
All of the issues that create complaints from “concerned citizens” will now have to be made by local Board members. ie speed-humps, location of pedestrian crossings, speed limits on my street, parking restrictions etc. The local boards will need to employ more staff to resolve these issues and the Mayor can pass the buck to the local boards if there are complaints.
Putting aside the issue however, that there’s no clear indication that a half + half of the new Statutory body board is going to happen,
(it’s only noted that Auckland Council + Central Govt is going to approve the plan, not directly develop it)
the body’s appointees would all need to be vibe-checked by both the ‘respective Minister’ (aka Simeon) and approved by cabinet.
So given how well National + ACT have been in agreeing that higher speeds on all our roads is good for the economy, while screwing over safety and the environment, how well intentioned will this statutory board be?
“it’s only noted that Auckland Council + Central Govt is going to approve the plan, not directly develop it”
With the imminent loss of all of the experienced planners, these task will be subbed out to a consultancy company..staffed by the existing experts at AT.
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogc1ubezhcY
Whilst I can see many potential issues and flaws with this I am trying to remain optimistic. I think the last couple sentences sum it up perfectly, while some areas will be taken step backs I feel like in many this will be good. Especially the CBD I think it will add more input for example the currently cycleway along great south road I know many of my local board members support it being a proper cycleway however have been frustrated by AT for ages now. I really don’t see a way forward but I think it will give much more voice to our activism, now it won’t fall on deaf ears as much and we can hopefully make more meaningful change. I can also see another world where everything grinds to a halt with bitter infighting but I think in the whole more good will be done that bad.
Let Bikes on Buses ?
Why is this so hard to solve for a modern human species.
Let mopeds on next followed by cars?
My god, this Minister is so ideological its actually peverse.
He has an issue with local communities objecting to outsiders wanting to drive through their communities at unsafe speeds.
Yeah that really stood out for me and I hope some of the journalists ( and opposition parties) question him on this obvious flaw in his thinking.
We could find out where Mr Simeon lives, find some boy and girl racers to do zooming up and down his street, burnouts and car meet ups/hang outs. I’m sure that’d have him advocating for enforcement and speed humps.
unsafe speeds ? I believe he was referring to “unproductive speeds”
Spilting up the Road Controlling Authority powers between the council and local boards is the stupidest idea that Simpleton Beige has had since he decided to push all the speed limits up as high as he could just because he likes to make vrrrmm vrrmm noises when playing with his toy cars.
It will be an absolute nightmare leaving these decisions in the hands of elected officials. The biggest change will be that the overriding policy consideration for every decision will be which option attracts the most votes, rather than what makes the network safer and more efficient?
Listening to Simpleton claim that having the local boards make the decisions means people can vote them out if they don’t like them shows he either doesn’t understand how local government works or how transport works- actually it’s probably both. You only get for the local board where you live. Not the four your bus goes through on the way to your work or the other one that controls the parking at your favourite beach and the one near your mum’s house.
The inconsistency, lack of ability to form joined up networks and just incompetent meddling by people who think a driver licence means they are a traffic engineer and transport planner is just going to set us back to the whole point of having the amalgamation and a single RCA in the first place.
“It will be an absolute nightmare leaving these decisions in the hands of elected officials. The biggest change will be that the overriding policy consideration for every decision will be which option attracts the most votes, rather than what makes the network safer and more efficient?”
Local boards will now each have hire some transport and engineering staff, plus PR consultation teams, to cope with these new responsibilities, plus prepare for the hundreds of suggestions and complaints from concerned citizens who want ( or don’t want ) more raised crossings near their local wine shop or school.
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vu4lJYs_bs
Local Boards will be given no additional funding from this government to make us of experts. this government has zero interest in anything experts have to say. Look at this entire press release and announcement – at no point does the Minister or the Mayor refer to the the study they have commissioned that advised that this was the best approach to fix an articulated problem with the current system. This is all purely on their “feels”. And the irony of they talking about the big issue is that only 29% of people think AT listens to them and does the things that they want done is outrageous – this Government and this Mayor don’t give two hoots about what anyone thinks until just before they want to bribe voters with silly promises to fix everything by breaking the existing stuff.
Yes, even just the structure for Local Board decision-making could stymie transport progress for years ahead.
If I was a lawyer, I’d be looking at how easy it’ll be to undo that part of it.
Our current mayor was elected on “FIXING” our city. The present largest political party in governance in Wellington was “BACK ON TRACK”.
Linguistically this should mean TRAINS. Only trains run on tracks, heavy and light rail, and our mayor is a fan of heavy rail, so hopefully we have enough muscle in this new decision making process that mass transit can remain the focus of our only city, and with close to three quarters of our motu’s population living within the Tauranga, Hamilton Auckland “golden triangle”.
A functional passenger train network would take thousands of cars off our roads, and a functional freight train network would take thousands of trucks off our roads.
If we are serious about reducing our climate change contributions, and about the general health of our population, then electrically powered trains are the only logical way forward.
With Brown Senior and Brown Junior, this could be an interesting head to head, as Brown Senior is a resident of the city centre, a bikeist, and an extreme disliker of Orange Cones. Brown Junior is still young, and although youth should never discount a person, Brown Junior does seem more ideologically captured than Brown Senior.
We need progress, and efficient, fast public transport is progress. This can only occur by making it less fast to drive a private metallic bubble.
bah humbug
“then electrically powered trains are the only logical way forward.”
Auckland already has electrically powered commuter trains in Auckland
yes Auckland have an electric trains – correct but we need it between Auckland-Hamilton-Tauranga, especially a good fast one which will be awesome.
I have travelled on trains in Europe between main/minor cities centre which was awesome and wish to see the same thing in NZ.
Driving is not a good use of time, you could do lot of things on the trains like reading books, catching on works, watching movies, chatting with passengers/friends or relatives, relax, playing card games or looking out of the window watching the land goes by. There are so many thing you can do on trains whereas in car you are limited to do few things
“I have travelled on trains in Europe between main/minor cities centre which was awesome and wish to see the same thing in NZ”
What was the population of each of the cities in Europe that you travelled between?
Earlier this month, Transport Minister Simeon Brown told Morning Report the Hamilton to Auckland train service was one of the most heavily subsidised public transport services in the country.
The commuter train service cost $68.7 million to set up and has a running budget of $29.3m over five years.
NZTA figures show last financial year, each passenger trip was subsidised $84 from the transport agency and local councils.
I think you’ll find there are a lot of smaller cities in Europe and that have smaller populations than Auckland and Hamilton but have rail between them.
The minister is, as is sadly often the case currently, not being accurate. The subsidy for Te Huia is lower than the the national PT average. Farebox recovery is at 15%, whereas nationally it is 11%.
And on a per kilometre basis is 25% lower than the subsidy on the Auckland Pt system.
The capital cost is irrelevant to the operational subsidy, and anyway is vanishingly small for a whole new intercity service. If he defunds the operation that capital cost will have still been spent, and the stations and trains will still be there, just not being used.
But this is a government that struggles to understand value, while obsessing intensely on cost. Cost focus is good, and should always be there, but if not balanced by an equal understanding of value is unbalanced and likely to lead to the loss of valuable services.
Subsidy is not a bad thing, it is simply a transfer to unlock diffuse value. All transport modes are subsidised, especially driving.
source: https://www.waikatoregion.govt.nz/community/whats-happening/news/media-releases/two-year-review-shows-te-huia-on-track/
Accuracy doesn’t worry a populist government. The numbers are whatever they say they are.
The last thing that Auckland needs are for transport decisions to be in the hands of local boards.
Most of them are in the hands of moaning old boomers desperate for a free lift to their anti-nuclear knitting circles and, as a result, couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery.
Quite a few local boards are quite sensible once you take Howick out of the mix.
Take out Orakei as well.
I would disagree on that.
The Orakei Local Board has fought very hard for active transport, such as local connections (Gowing Drive and John Rymer Place) to the Glen Innes to Tamaki Drive shared path.
They’ve been hobbled by lack of budget and AT’s indifference, not by lack of will.
lol, it’s like no one remembers how poorly run the councils were before the super city, with politicians pushing their own pet projects regardless of merit. Many of the reasons Auckland has crap transport is because of those old councils lack of planning and lack of strategy. AT just continued that tradition will less interference from politicians.
Shifting some managers around won’t make much difference when the real problem will be politicians meddling in things they have no idea about. I think Wayne is generally pragmatic, but just imagine more Simeon Browns being elected as mayor. Does anyone think the projects will be delivered more quickly?
Having said that, with all the responsibility moving to AC, AT wont need to put up with the backlash, because they will just deliver the project, AC will have to deal with all now.
What I find it bizzare is changing the RCA. That has huge ramifications and could generate a lot of extra legal paperwork which neither AT nor AT seem equipped for.
RCA’s that cant allocate the space in the road corridor or set speed limits are not RCA’s.
Wayne is a passenger on Simeon’s takeover of Auckland’s transport future.
Mode shift to cars only is still mode shift.
Those who do not remember their history are destined to repeat it. It’s less than fifteen years since the city’s fragmented and uncoordinated transport decision making was ditched and transport decision making was taken out of the political realm for the most part. Accountability still did exist, through the Letter of Expectation/Statement of Intent process, and through the annual budget process. Council could have been very very specific about what it wanted AT to do through these processes, but for the most part it chose to wimp out, sit back and let AT take the political flak for decisions which it then felt free to jump on the populist bandwagon and criticise. Hypocrisy on a grand scale.
Now we will have twenty-one local boards making decisions on speed limits, pedestrian crossings and cycleways etc, and we run a serious risk that nothing will join up and that completely different policies for (say) parking will be applied across the region, to the complete confusion of road users. I doubt the local boards are anywhere near prepared for the avalanche of extra work and political infighting that lies ahead for them. We will see them and Council trying to micro-manage decisions which are technical in nature. These are EXACTLY the reasons why the old model was changed in 2010.
And that central government will no longer fund pedestrian crossings and cycleways because “they frustrate motorists” is the most breathtaking demonstration of bias against sustainable transport infrastructure I could imagine. I seriously thought that the Minister might be more subtle about it, but there it is, in black and white.
And as for the orange cones, don’t blame AT, Council or the contractors who do the work. Blame the relevant Code of Practice to which they are required to adhere. But remember also that road workers are doing one of the most statistcally dangerous jobs in the land, and tinkering with measures which are designed to protect them risks further danger to life and limb.
Well, well, well. Hopefully things turn out good. Lot’s more power to local boards interesting indeed. Could be we end up with one area having little or no speed bumps and another with more and cycle lanes.
I think people will have to take more notice of who they are voting for in local elections.
Simplification of long term plans is a welcome change.
Yes it is interesting the last paragraph of this post.
Went to both Stuff & Herald sites, neither seem to have a thing on the AT shake up on the front page, maybe was covered well yesterday but thought there would be follow up. Of course the content is customised for us based on cookies etc. RNZ has an article with comments from Matt.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/transport-minister-simeon-brown-and-auckland-mayor-wayne-brown-making-major-announcement/HLGLEGJ2LRF2ZGUAAPXDGRCXOQ/
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360508901/watch-live-auckland-mayor-and-transport-minister-make-announcement
Devolving a lot of decision-making to local boards is a mistake. This will lead to fragmentation and inconsistencies that will reduce the combined value of the transport network in Auckland. In addition the boards can be much more easily captured or influenced by noisy special interests than the full Council. The rest of the plan looks pretty good though.
Relax. Team Simeon talk localism but do the opposite.
The speed limit rules are defined, reset to pre Labour to go faster, and consult every business impacted on their thoughts on any changes if reducing. Local boards cant move this.
Zero GPS funding for walking and cycling activity class – so that’s fixed also.
Kids love to be taken to school in utes. Its the kiwi way.
You never know this may all backfire on Simeon when the next change of Government happens and all his non evidenced based nonsense is reversed. This could actually make it much easier to get stuff done in Auckland without the current hand brakes.
Devolving some decisions to local boards is a backwards step though… sometimes the greater good just needs to be served.
Agreed, this structure will make it easier for the next active transport friendly Government and Council to make cycleways, ped infra etc get built.
It’s been obvious that AT as an organisation was stalling on cycleways and the Council could not force change despite all the plans and statements of intent. Long term, this should be a positive change.
Re local boards, it depends how much authority is devolved. I suspect the Council’s centralising instincts will mean a lot of authority stays in the middle, but local boards will get a larger voice and discretionary budget. There could be a lot of positives in this change.