Transport CCO: set up to fail public transport?

While John Banks appears to be backing away from his previous grand promises to help deliver a world-class rail system for Auckland, should he be elected mayor, most other candidates: both for mayor and for the council, seem to be focusing a lot of their efforts on the need to improve Auckland’s public transport system. While of course we won’t know the final composition of the council until voting closes on October 9th, and we also won’t know who the mayor is until then, I am reasonably confident that all sides of the political spectrum in regional and local government (with a few exceptions) accept the need for Auckland to improve its public transport system.

So it seems reasonably likely that, come October, we will have a council that is quite friendly towards public transport. As all local transport money will be lumped together into one pool of funds there is the potential for more money than ever before being available at the local level (if only I had so much faith in central government) to improve public transport. This is all positive stuff.

However, the way in which the future Auckland Council does transport will be fundamentally different to the way that any council (perhaps with the possible exception of the ARC) manages transport at the moment. That is because all transport activities, right down to decisions relating to the width and paving-types for footpaths, will be made by the Auckland Transport council-controlled organisation. I have written a significant number of blog posts on Auckland Transport over the past year, and over time my opinion of the agency has varied and changed at fairly regular intervals: so I’m quite pragmatic and realistic about what its benefits could be, but also mindful of how it could go wrong. My most recent position on the Transport CCO has been one of full support – largely because I have felt that many of the current councils (particularly Auckland City Council) are doing such a terrible job when it comes to transport that surely the new agency couldn’t do worse.

While that may well be the case, and while I also accept that integrating all aspects of transport into one agency – an agency that will hopefully avoid stupid situations like the Dominion Road T2 debacle by being one step removed from direct politicking –  some things that I am hearing about the way in which Auckland Transport is being established bring back many of my original fears. My ultimate fear is basically this: while if Auckland Transport is doing a great job, then its independence will be very useful; however if Auckland Transport start doing a rubbish job – if the agency isn’t visionary for Auckland, if it doesn’t have a strong public transport focus, if it gets taken over by road engineers who think that we’ve done a marvellous job building places like Botany Town Centre (after all they must exist, as those really wide roads exist) – then we’re really really stuffed. We are stuffed because the politicians, who are somewhat forced to listen to the people, only have limited control over what Auckland Transport does. Furthermore, the separation of transport planning from all other types of policy and planning (that the Auckland Council will be doing) will place great strain on our ability to integrated land-use and transport. If we can’t make that connection work, then we’re really stuffed in trying to create a better city.

So a lot comes down to the quality of whoever will be driving the vision of Auckland Transport – which is why I must say I feel a tad underwhelmed by the lack of urban transport experience held by the agency’s new CEO. A lot will also come down to the structure of Auckland Transport: what prominence will be given to public transport? Will there be some level of integration with land-use planning? What role will urban designers play in the work done by this organisation? So many questions whose answers will be crucial in determining how transport gets done in the Super City. And it is in these respects that some worrying signs are emerging. Here is the structure of the top level of management within Auckland Transport: Only one third tier role directly mentions public transport, and that’s only within operations. There’s no mention of anyone who will be specifically guiding public transport policy at this level, or a public transport projects manager or anything of this type. Furthermore, a few rumours that I have heard from various people around Auckland who have greater access than I do the list of positions available within the organisation is a glaring lack of roles that directly relate to public transport. Many of the more general transport roles apparently involve some level of involvement on public transport projects, but that is not the same as having numerous rail experts or bus experts or whatever. On the other hand, if the rumours I have heard are true, when it comes to job descriptions for roading projects there are a huge number of roles and they are generally very specifically defined.

It’s as though those putting this structure in place don’t really have a clue about public transport. Very worrying indeed. There is also apparently an almost complete lack of integration with land-use planning or urban design within the Transport CCO. Perhaps the road engineers who have had their plans for massively wide highways stifled by annoying planners and urban designers during in-house discussions now feel free to go ahead with their preferences after all – and a clear effort is being made to allow them to do so. I suppose this sets things up for a huge number of environment court appeals between Auckland Transport and Auckland Council, although it would be nicer to see this avoided by having, for example, an urban design team within the Transport CCO.

Now things might not be as bad as what I’m putting together from snippets of information. Dr David Warburton – the agency’s interim CEO – may in fact have fantastic vision for transport in Auckland and may restructure the whole organisation to ensure it isn’t siloed, has sufficient public transport experts and integrates extremely well with planning and urban design. I’m not quite sure what my chances are of that hope being real though.

Share this