Like a gambling addict, Auckland fools itself into thinking it doesn’t have a problem. “Just one more bet or win and then I can finally quit.” “Just one more motorway will relieve congestion and then we can stop building them.” But one motorway leads to another, then another, until you’re building motorways to fix the problems caused by other motorways.

This is from Green MP Gareth Hughes’s excellent article on Auckland’s transport situation in Auckland University student magazine Craccum.

Mr Hughes is exactly right that our continuing focus on building motorways to fix congestion is like a gambling addiction – that although we know it didn’t work last time (or the time before that, or the time before that), we constantly hope that next time around we’ll hit the jackpot and congestion will be fixed once and for all. Steven Joyce talks about making a “step change” in fixing congestion in Auckland through the massive motorway investment, but what makes us think that building motorways will fix the problem this time, and not just shift it elsewhere like all previous motorway projects in Auckland?

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12 comments

  1. One qualifier here is worth making. You can build motorways to fix congestion, *as long as you are prepared to price directly their use and that of the road network as a whole*.

    Time-sensitive pricing encourages people to change when they travel, thus reducing both your demand for peak capacity and the use placed on it. This can be seen in just about every other part of the transport system; airfares, the Supergold concession (between 9am and 3pm, remember), ferry tickets, even intercity bus tickets.

    However, its extended use in roads is clearly in the politicians’ too-hard basket, despite the examples from eg. the London congestion charge and Singapore.

  2. You are right there Ross in that some disincentive is required to break the “induced demand” cycle. I am not 100% sure about my position on road-pricing. Will do a post soon on the issue to encourage further debate.

  3. Then it is certainly not the building motorways what can fix congestion but a rational use of whatever infrastructure you have.
    The point in Auckland is that much stronger because for large parts of the day the motorway network is actually free flowing which means that you can actually put more cars on the existing network without a single metre of new motorway.
    Now I know that forcing people to use the roads at midnight because they’re empty is nonsense but the case for congestion charging is so strong that even a right-wing party in Sweden saw the benefit of using quite a few million dollars just to TEST the idea! (and history will say that even though benefits were demonstrated on all metrics, the congestion charging in Stockholm stopped because it was an election campaign promise)

  4. Fundamental problem…trying to fix congestion. You never will. And you don’t need to. As Larry Beasley (former Director of Planning, Vancouver) said on his recent visit (and many other senior figures around the world are also saying), “Congestion is our friend”. Congestion changes peoples behaviour and consequently changes urban form. If we constantly seek to avoid congestion, nothing else will change and we will continue to develop our unsustainable, unhealthy, socially exclusive (sub)urban form. Once you (the powers that be) simply accept congestion is our friend, everything else falls into place. But so long as we continue to believe we can solve it, and keep attempting to tackle it, everything will always fail.
    How do we get the powers to be to realise this simple fact? Did Steven Joyce meet Larry Beasley on his recent visit?

  5. I agree Al, congestion is actually a pretty useful indicator that one shouldn’t be on that road at that time. Congestion is also a pretty powerful tool to shift people to more sustainable transport and to encourage more sustainable urban development patterns.

  6. Vancouvers transport plan from the 70s (or 90s can’t remember) actually encouraged congestion to reduce commute times, it worked in 2005 census the city was the only one in Canada whose commute times didn’t increase…

    On congestion charging, I think the results are mixed… It is much better to allow congestion of the existing roadspace and provide priority PT with out charging, road pricing in many ways favours the wealthy…

  7. I say stop spending money on Auckland roads and invest in other, better cities. Christchurch is a much better city than Auckland. Spend the money there. No one in the rest of the country cares/should pay for Aucklands road problems

  8. Ha ha J. The problem with that approach is that Auckland generally at least pays for itself. And also that 75% of population growth in NZ over the next 20 years is in the Auckland region. Between now and 2030 we will effectively add two Christchurches to Auckland’s population. Would you really not want to spend money on a city where that is happening?

    I think the more relevant question is what should the money be spent on?

  9. “I say stop spending money on Auckland roads and invest in other, better cities. Christchurch is a much better city than Auckland. Spend the money there. No one in the rest of the country cares/should pay for Aucklands road problems” – Are you 12?

  10. Agree with the Gareth Hughes, complete the current projects and then let’s move on. I often feel that a big problem with the national government’s approach to Auckland is more about getting goods and people through it as quickly as possible and that the city and it’s people are just a big inconvenient blockage that you have to deal with as best you can.

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