The third piece of legislation required to form the Auckland super city was introduced to parliament earlier this week, and interestingly it creates the body that will be known as “Auckland Transport”. I referred to the establishment of the Auckland Transport Agency in a post a few months back, but I think the name of it has been changed as the acronym “ATA” is somewhat taken by the Auckland Transition Agency. In any case, this is the agency that will effectively be ARTA plus all the transport departments of the different councils thrown together into one agency.
There is an interesting debate to have between whether Auckland would be better served by having a separate entity running transport matters (as proposed) or whether it would be better for transport to simply be a part of the future Auckland Council. I guess on the side of splitting transport off into an “Auckland Transport” entity is the reasonable success of ARTA since it was established in 2004. On the other side of that debate, there is a reasonably strong argument that to ensure accountability to ‘the people of Auckland’ of decisions made on transport matters, there shouldn’t be a separate entity for transport – but rather it should just be part of Council. I can see some merit in that side of the argument too.
The Ministry of Transport has undertaken a Regulatory Impact Statement on the proposal, which makes for quite fascinating reading actually. It shows that five different options were considered for managing Auckland’s transport system:
Options three and four seem a bit silly, as splitting up transport into different bits seems a bit pointless to me. Option one is the options of simply leaving transport to the council directly, while option 2 is what the government has ended up going with.
However, what I find interesting is option 5. Under this option we could actually see full integration of transport matters within the Auckland region into one agency – a “join venture” between the government and the future Auckland Council. This would mean far better integration between state highways and local roads, or railway lines and the rest of the public transport system. It would also potentially mean that all transport projects – no matter what their type – would have access to the same transport funds, which I think is essential in the future (most transport plans and strategies put out by transport agencies in Auckland over the past years or so have bemoaned the lack of a single fund for transport). The Royal Commission into Auckland’s local governance also recommended something quite similar to option 5.
Here’s a bit more information on how this “option 5” could work:
So what does that Ministry of Transport say about this option?
Much of the remainder of the regulatory impact statement appears to suggest that it would be an effective proposition – as it would be the most effective for integration, it would potentially be the most effective for retaining expertise within the transport sector and it also states that “Regional strategic planning and operational planning would be easiest to align under the Auckland Council and JVA approaches“. However, it really seems as though they’ve backed away from this option not because it isn’t the best one to go with – but rather because it’s “too hard”.
What a missed opportunity.
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I think an e-mail to certain Labour MPs is in order… We should definitely try to make amendment to option 5 in future Labour party policy…
Not “too hard” rather it makes Auckland very powerful!
What if the JVA cancelled the Waterview Connection and the Holiday Highway upgrade?
Good point Chris R. I think any government will be reluctant to relinquish that much power, even though the “integration benefits” would be huge.
Some sort of Joint Venture board certinaly needs to be established to ensure co-ordination between the priorities of the NZTA and AT. Maybe a high level advisory board could work. Just something that ensure the agencies met regularly and weren’t working at cross purposes. Would be silly if you have a council that wants to transfer investment into PT, when NZTA is mucking everything by adding heaps of extra road capacity, and inducing demand onto the local roads.
I do certainly think AT needs a good degree of control over the State Highway network in Auckland.
Indeed Luke, and that is the big problem in Auckland at the moment. The government and NZTA want to focus on roading, while the Regional Council, ARTA and (to some extent at least) the local councils want to focus on public transport. It will be interesting to see whether Auckland Transport can become a strong voice for public transport, or whether its structure will lead to an overly significant focus on roads.