Yes, I know. That’s a pretty painful blog title for me to post – considering I have opposed the Transport CCO for quite some time now, and in a number of different blog posts. But there have been a number of factors over the past few weeks that have led to me changing my opinion of Auckland’s future transport CCO quite significantly, which I will go through shortly. This is not to say that I am completely unworried about the “brave new world” that awaits us in November this year, but rather that I am not pretty damn sure the positives will outweigh the negatives – by quite some margin.

Here is why I feel much better about the Transport CCO:

  • The changes made to the Auckland Law Reform Bill by the select committee, particularly as they relate to Auckland Transport, alleviate a lot of my fears that the agency will be unaccountable. It also appears near 100% certain that Auckland Transport’s meetings will be held in public, that they will have to publish agenda and minutes online, and they will be subject to the local government version of the Official Information Act.
  • One of my remaining fears – a lack of integration between land-use and transport planning has at least been partially offset by some of the staff announcements of senior positions within Auckland Transport and the Auckland Council. Seeing Ludo Campbell-Reid getting a job high up in the council gives me some hope that we will see more shared streets, for example.
  • The same staff announcements show that current senior ARTA managers will have important roles within Auckland Transport. Hopefully this will mean that public transport has a very central role in what Auckland Transport does.
  • Hopefully Auckland Transport will be a stronger voice that NZTA cannot ignore as easily as it seems to be able to ignore ARTA when making decisions. For example, Auckland Transport can hopefully argue strongly enough to ensure the Northern Busway doesn’t get ruined by allowing cars to run on it.

Another huge reason why I’m saying “bring on Auckland Transport CCO!” is that surely they can’t be worse than what we’re currently seeing around Auckland.

  • Complete and utter incompetency when it comes to the AMETI project. The single most important part of this project is working out a way to thread through a Rapid Transit Network (RTN) to serve southeast Auckland. But what do we end up seeing? A whole pile of new roads, overbridges and all – and absolutely no mention whatsoever of this RTN. Once again, I remind all involved: a bus lane does not constitute an RTN.
  • Auckland City Council uplifting long-held public transport related designations around the Dominion Road project. Whether or not those designations (which provide for buses to “duck behind” the Balmoral and Valley Road shops) are the right solution is irrelevant in my mind – I actually think it’s extremely reckless to remove such a designation when you know that you’re not going to exist in a few months time and the problem you create will be left to someone else to sort out.
  • ARTA coming up with a very nice sounding “Regional Public Transport Plan” that is great when it comes to nice fluffy talk but actually pretty damn hopeless when it comes to implementation – largely because they don’t have any real power to make their hierarchical RTN/QTN/LCN network happen. The Auckland Transport CCO will have much more power to actually implement this kind of plan.
  • Auckland City Council doing their best to ruin the Dominion Road bus lanes.
  • Even the ARC (who I usually agree with) choosing a very impractical and illogical preferred location for a future Parnell railway station (more info why it’s a poor location here).

I don’t want this to be seen as a negative post, as in fact I think there are now very good reasons to look forward to the upcoming changes in the way Auckland’s transport is governed, planned, implemented and managed. The failures of the current system are becoming increasingly obvious, and therefore I now strongly believe that the Transport CCO will be a huge step in the right direction – if for nothing else, surely it can’t be worse than what we’ve got now.

That’s not to say that we can rest on our laurels. I think that it’s particularly important to make sure the upcoming transition turns out to be a “step in the right direction” – and working out what Auckland Transport should focus on in the next five years is a pretty key part of that.

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13 comments

  1. Kicking the problem further down the road is it is a well known political tool. Politicians these days are more worried about votes and keeping on the gravy train to actually try and resolve issues (unless it is a pet project that may help them get re-elected). I really hope that Auckland Transport get onto some of the projects you mention and change them for the better. At least they will have some teeth to get this done.

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  3. It is a big call Jeremy. But I’m going to stick by it.

    Auckland Transport is only required by the law to hold two meetings a year, however there is provision in the legislation for Auckland Council to require them to hold monthly public meetings if they wanted, along with a whole range of other things that Auckland Council can require them to do. And I’m almost 100% certain that the council will do that.

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  5. ARTA has slammed the cars in the Dom Rd buslanes idea and seeing as they will make up a large amount of the staff at AT there is a little hope. It won’t stop politicians from trying to meddle though.

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  7. Auckland Transport and Auckland Council will have lots of really switched on staff and the mangement does look great on paper. The risk is that they will be paralysed by the ridiculous structure they have. Segregrating the CCO’s, the Local Boards and the council into parallel entities and bureaucracies is just inefficient and crazy.

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  8. I’m looking forward to a proper competition policy by he Transport CCO on the Waitemata Harbour ferry services. A Jetstar-equivalent ferry company is most welcome and long, long overdue. You can now fly for $25 to Wellington, lower than the return fare to Waiheke Island (whereas it used to be 10 times as expensive in the old aviation days, only a decade ago).
    Amazing what a dose of competition can do.

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  9. Uroskin, while I don’t really know the rules around competition in terms of ferry services, Auckland fery subsidies are at least very low, compared to international examples. That means they already have to be reasonably efficient, and I wouldn’t expect those prices to drop hugely even if there was more compeitition (and with ferries not nearly as well-controlled as planes, with more ferry competition you might also see more rickety ships as margins fall…)

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  10. No they’re not, Waiheke users are subsidising almost everything else… Fullers is acting very uncompetetively…

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  12. 0.84c from memory but if those low required subsidies (on average) come from grossly overcharging captive consumers (Waiheke patrons) why would anyone (except Fullers shareholders) ever support that..?

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