What does “multi-modal” actually mean?

Depending on how you read into Wellington City Council’s decision to support NZTA’s suggested recommendations at their meeting last night, they either folded under NZTA’s pressure or simply reaffirmed their commitment to working with NZTA on a multi-modal corridor plan between the Ngauranga Gorge and Wellington Airport.

Reading an article in today’s Dominion Post newspaper would suggest that the council, and in particular Mayor Celia Wade-Brown, folded:

It is the mother of all U-turns from Wellington Mayor Celia Wade-Brown, who not only voted for her council to support the Government’s $2.4 billion roading projects package but proposed the motion.

The retreat at last night’s extraordinary meeting of Wellington City Council ended weeks of speculation and confirmed the council’s support of the New Zealand Transport Agency’s roading plan.

Its proposal includes a possible flyover to the north of the Basin Reserve, duplicate Terrace and Mt Victoria tunnels, and four-laning Ruahine St and Wellington Rd.

Specific options for each project have yet to be released, but the council has now endorsed the agency’s overall plan.

Reading the council’s media release on the project suggests something a bit different though:

Wellington Mayor Celia Wade-Brown has welcomed tonight’s vote by the City Council confirming its support for the New Zealand Transport Agency’s Ngauranga to Wellington Airport Corridor Plan.

The Council tonight agreed to support the underlying premise that the transport issues within Wellington city can only be addressed by the implementation of a multi-modal package…

…The NZTA tonight issued a statement welcoming the Council’s support as “an important step towards progressing the multi-modal initiatives embraced in the plan.”

This term “multi-modal” seems to be the key point here. But what does it actually mean? The same term ended up being used in the study that’s meant to lead to a designation for rail to Auckland Airport: leading to the bizarre situation where nobody referred to the word “rail” in that project, even though everyone knows it’s about advancing the rail designation.

In my mind, multi-modal investigations are a pretty good idea. I tend to think that they involve looking at a corridor without any assumptions of what is the preferred option for improving transport, analysing current trends and demands, looking at environmental and engineering constraints, assessing different options based on what general transport goals there are in broad plans and strategies and then choosing your preferred way of improving transport. The outcome might be a mix of roading, public transport and walking/cycling improvements – or it might be some and not others. The point being that you assessed all the modal options without a preconceived idea of what the solution is, before coming up with your preferred option.

I’m not sure whether that’s what NZTA is meaning when it talks about multi-modal corridors – whether they’re talking about investigations or actually building one. I tend to think that it’s a very cynical phrase that NZTA uses to quell dissatisfaction with the public response to something that they’ve already decided upon the outcome – in Wellington’s case a four lane motorway (except in some areas that won’t be grade-separated) along the whole of this supposedly multi-modal corridor. They might throw in a half-hearted cycle lane here and there, plus a bus advance box somewhere along the route so that it has at least some benefit for public transport.

Generally though, I think use of the term ‘multi-modal corridor’ is another extremely cynical example of what I like to call “PT-wash” (or “transitwash”). It involves ploughing ahead with a large-scale roading project while spending around 1% of the budget on extremely insignificant benefits to public transport, walking and cycling. The Waterview Connection project is a classic example of this: NZTA continue to promote it as ‘enhancing modal choice’ – even though the only PT improvements they’ve created are pretty useless bus shoulder lanes (useless as the buses will keep on having to merge at each motorway ramp), plus NZTA continue to fight in every possible way to not have to provide a cycleway above the motorway tunnel.

So my advice would be to take an extremely cynical viewpoint whenever you hear the term “multi-modal”. Ask what that actually means, and to what extent the parties are really going into a multi-modal study with an open mind – or conversely whether the non-roading elements of the project are just another blatant example of PT-wash: designed to shut the public up with a few small scraps while ploughing ahead with massive roading projects.

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