In response to the Auckland Regional Council finally coming up with a transport wishlist that is not dominated by roading projects, today’s Herald editorial has completely lost the plot. I had actually been quite happy with the Herald’s coverage of transport issues lately, with the general feeling coming across in the paper that the path we’ve headed down over the past year quite possibly isn’t the cleverest way to go, but I guess when it’s the “bigwigs” of the Herald who write the editorials we see that old habits die hard:
The council, though soon to be superseded by a single city, is letting its transport committee proceed to publish an updated strategy notable for its divergence from the Government’s plans.
Roads, the Government’s priority, rank behind rail projects on the list compiled by staff at Regional House. Their first desire is rail electrification, followed by a central Auckland rail tunnel and integrated public transport ticketing, in that order.
Their highest-ranked road, the western ring road, is fourth. A widened highway to Wellsford, one of the Government’s “roads of national significance”, is at the bottom of the region’s list.
Now I still haven’t actually found the document that this “list” of projects comes from, but from yesterday’s article it did seems as though the ranking of transport projects was done on impartial grounds – looking at what projects are most needed and what will lead to the best outcomes. Furthermore, one of the reasons the Puhoi-Wellsford project is so far down the ranking is that its cost-benefit analysis has yet to be undertaken (I’m guessing once it has been undertaken that project will probably slide even further down the list, but anyway). The editorial is incredibly wrong in saying that the current transport strategy reflects what the ARC has always been saying – promoting public transport to the detriment of a balanced transport system. In fact, generally most previous land transport strategies have been criticised for being far too roads-centric. Hell, I was criticising the timeframes of important projects in the current plan in my previous post.
The editorial then goes on to be almost hysterically implausible by its end, somehow seeming to claim that Auckland’s transport planners have given public transport far too much emphasis in recent decades, and how it’s such a good thing that the future Super City will put an end to this nonsense.
If the green thinking in Regional House was to survive in the Auckland Council, it is hard to see how the envisaged joint transport management would work. The divergence of principles and priorities was evident to Transport Minister Steven Joyce when he read the region’s latest draft strategy.
Since the Cabinet will hold the crucial purse-strings it is clear whose priorities will prevail. Auckland’s roads are of national interest in a way that its public transport is not.
Governments and their officials have been hard to convince of the value of commuter railways in Auckland. Environmental reasoning alone has not persuaded them.
The regional council should not be publishing another forlorn transport plan. Auckland can look forward now to more balanced leadership.
I’m sorry to burst the bubble of whoever wrote this nonsense, but when compared internationally Auckland’s transport thinking, planning and funding is incredibly roads-centric still. It is not only “green thinking” that promotes public transport, but the realisation that we generally simply can’t build any more motorways or widen our existing ones any further without generating even more traffic, and completely destroying communities (a lesson being learned at the moment in Waterview). I’m not quite sure what the Herald would prefer our transport system to look like – 16 lane wide motorways everywhere and no rail system or buses perhaps?
Finally, saying that a shift to more of a focus on roading to make things more ‘balanced’ is quite laughable really. Like letting the All Blacks have 20 players on the field when taking on Japan in a rugby match to ‘even things up’.
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It’s hard to believe anybody would generate that sort of drivel, but it’s even harder to believe that our country’s main newspaper would then go and print it.
Letters to the editor link here: http://dynamic.nzherald.co.nz/feedback/letters/index.cfm?
Let’s slam them!
“I’m sorry to burst the bubble of whoever wrote this nonsense, but when compared internationally Auckland’s transport thinking, planning and funding is incredibly roads-centric still. ”
I think that you’ve forgotten that the Herald is the official organ of the National party and they have NEVER been known to worry about how we rate internationally.
I have a theory that the Herald just wants to kick start a good debate on public transport vs private transport, which actually is a good thing in many ways as we need to have that debate more often. Hopefully we’ll see lots of letters to the editor slamming that editorial, and perhaps another editorial from a different perspective on the weekend? Generally the weekend Herald editorials are a bit more sensible than what we get during the week.
Mm, no letters printed in this morning’s Herald regarding yesterday’s appalling editorial; and, yes, I wrote one too. I rather think you are being too generous in your assessment of the paper’s intentions. I rather suspect that generating debate is the last thing the Herald wants to do at the moment. Rather, it’s probably more keen to ensure its position as the advertiser of choice for second hand car salesmen (APN’s current financial position is, apparently, a little worrisome) so a bit of pro-roading puff is a good commercial choice. Oh, and yes, there’s always the view that the Herald can be regarded as the house organ of the NZ National party.
Well I had heard a rumour that the Saturday herald will have a very pro PT editorial. I must say I was disappointed to see no letters on the matter in todays paper. Maybe tmrw?
Sounds like a Garth George special; surely if he is that desperate for new places to roll out his V8 perhaps he can just jump up onto the tracks and go out in a blaze of glory?
It is interesting no letters rebutting the editorial have been published. Perhaps if there are none in tommorow people should keep resubmitting them until they are published. This kind on nonsense cannot go unchallenged. Not sure if it is would Garth George he’s preoccupied with the moral decline of western civilisation from what he sees at it’s zenith – 1950’s New Zealand, i think he’s more concerned with getting all back into church, not so sure if he’s worried about how we get there. Probably more likely it’s John Roughan, he’s written a couple of anti rail articles along the same lines.
lol auckland
Oh yeah it’s definitely by Roughan. I don’t think that even the NZ Herald would be dumb enough to let Garth George loose on an editorial.
Any mention of the 7% PT usage increase in the editorial? Is road use increasing by this much?
Nope… I think the word is pronounced… Declining… But roads are a great idea when serious emission sanctions are on the way, not..!
Road use declined significantly from 2007-2008. So far in 2009 we have seen a bit of a “bounce-back” from the dramatic 2008 falls, but generally we’re still below 2007 levels from what I’ve seen.
Of course the increases in public transport weren’t mentioned!
I read that editorial and after a bit of thought decided it was almost certsainly written by Fran O’Sullivan. All her themes of recent times are present, such as her incessant demands that central government ignore democracy and impose hard line solutions that suit a coterie of hardline, radical right wing businessmen. The editorial was almost 100% pure 1980’s ACT in philosophy, another marker of O’Sullivan who has of late become increasingly hectoring and extremist in her demands for national to re-start the Rogernomic revolution. Her editorial isn’t about roads – it is about showing people who is boss and about relentlessly smashing an ideological square peg through a round hole rather than admit a round peg would do the job better.
The reason I reckon it was Roughan was the comment saying Auckland should sprawl as that is what the people want. He made an identical comment in an artical back in 2005. The reason I remember it so well is because I quoted it in my thesis.
Well there are letters there today including the usual ranting from Penny Webster.
She’s in line for a $3 bill road past her farm in Warkworth- isn’t that reason enough to support the editorial.
Yes very interesting no counter arguments have been printed by the Herald regarding the Editorial this is a response I sent them; the editorial objects to the ARC’s new “green” transportation plan, with its “green” strategies of increase rail use and integrated ticketing, as opposed to central government’s strategies favouring motorway construction as a way of alleviating Auckland’s transport problems; which the Herald’s seems to blame on Auckland’s terrain and Aucklanders desire to live by the seaside.
As pointed out by Australian planning experts Mees and Dodson (2001 & 2006), that since 1950 there has been a greater policy bias towards the private car usage in Auckland than cities in Australia, Canada or the USA, and per capita Auckland’s use of public transport is lower than even Los Angeles. When compared to similar sized Australian, Canadian and American cities, Auckland has an extensive motorway network. Their findings make a clear correlation between Auckland’s urban sprawl and Auckland’s policy decisions which have for nearly 60 years favoured motorway construction and private car use.
Auckland is a sprawling city, but returning back to a car-dominated policy based on 1950s planning logic, will only fuel further low density sprawl within the Auckland region and will not improve Auckland’s transport situation. – Apologies for the long post.
Those papers by Mees and Dodson certainly make for interesting if depressing reading. I should dig them up some time for a few relevant blog posts.
TopCat, good point. However I bet she’ll be the first to complain about excess noise from her pet road.
Also the other depressing one was from some bloke who didn’t see the reason for the CBD tunnel.
The CBD tunnel is a hard sell on the public stage, I’d say the general public would see it as just a billion dollar project to make a couple of new stations for people who are ‘too lazy to walk up from Britomart’.
Shame on NZherald.
Car dominated city will only increase traffic problems.
Modern people prefer public transport, cycling and walking to solve traffic problem and also because it is greener.