Huge public support for City Rail Link

As I mentioned in this post recently, I feel that generally the public understands Auckland’s transport situation and wants better public transport. However, the big problem is that they generally only consider transport when voting in local elections (not national elections), whereas it’s central government that holds most of the transport purse strings. A poll undertaken by the NZ Herald – comparing the public’s attitude towards the City Rail Link and the Puhoi-Wellsford project – further highlights what became so clear in last year’s Auckland Council election results: that there is really strong support for improving the rail system:

Public backing for a central Auckland rail tunnel is more than twice as strong as for the Government’s proposed new “road of national significance” north from Puhoi.

Although a Herald-DigiPoll survey has found support for the tunnel strongest in Auckland, the $2.4 billion project is also enthusing other New Zealanders, who are taking an even dimmer view of the highway proposal than the city’s residents.

The 3.5km tunnel proposal between Britomart and Mt Eden won support from 63.3 per cent of Aucklanders, compared with the highway, which was backed by 24.8 per cent.

Although tunnel support weakened to 48.1 per cent among non-Aucklanders, only 19.2 per cent said they believed the highway should get higher priority. That compared with 27.5 per who did not know and just 5.2 per cent who did not back either project.

The support for the City Rail Link from people living outside Auckland is particularly interesting. I think perhaps there’s a general understanding of how critical the project is for helping Auckland to fulfil its economic potential, or perhaps people understand the need to shift away from such auto-dependent transport policies. In any case, it is a pretty big advantage for the City Rail Link over Puhoi-Wellsford – and a particularly low level of support for the ‘holiday highway’: especially from people outside Auckland.

Unsurprisingly, Auckland Council politicians are pretty pleased about this:

Auckland Mayor Len Brown said from France, where he is combining a holiday with his wife with inspections of public transport systems, that he was not surprised by the findings.

“Aucklanders know that the inner-city rail link will help unclog our roads, deliver economic transformation and means our region will be easier to move around by effectively doubling the capacity of rail lines to the west, east and south,” he said.

Council transport chairman Mike Lee said the poll revealed a “sea change” in public support for rail transport over roads.

“It seems the public are way ahead of the National Government on this issue, not just in Auckland but across New Zealand,” he said.

“And it seems to me that the Minister of Transport [Steven Joyce] in particular is still taking a very conservative roads-first, urban-sprawl approach which is out of step with the views of the average New Zealander.”

The great thing about where the City Rail Link project is at now, with Auckland Transport pushing on with the designation, is that the project can continue to gain momentum. Of course Steven Joyce doesn’t quite take the same position:

But Mr Joyce said there could be no valid comparison between the two projects and the results were “not a massive surprise.
Those surveyed will no doubt be looking for a solution for the city’s traffic problems,” he said.

“No one is pretending that Puhoi-Wellsford is a solution for Auckland’s traffic problems – it’s a link between Auckland and Northland.”

He said there was no single silver bullet for Auckland transport, and the Government was overseeing a huge range of work both through motorway developments and rail upgrades, including electrification.

“The CBD rail loop is potentially one part of the puzzle, but all the evidence says it’s a reasonably small part with a big price tag.”

I’d disagree with Joyce on two counts here: firstly the Puhoi-Wellsford project doesn’t even touch Northland, whose major population centres are still going to be a long way from connected with the motorway network even after the project’s completed. And secondly, the City Rail Link is a pretty massive piece in the puzzle of improving transport in Auckland – unless you believe (like the Ministry of Transport) that it’s feasible to run 200-300 buses an hour along most of our city centre’s streets.

I suppose what I find frustrating about Joyce’s approach is that we could easily have close to both these projects – or at least the vast majority of the benefits of Puhoi-Wellsford at around $300 million instead of $1.6 billion. Simply build a Warkworth bypass and do some serious safety upgrades of the existing road and you would have fixed most of its problems. Then flick around a billion over to help fund the City Rail Link and use what’s left to really assist Northland’s transport issues – perhaps by building the Marsden Point rail spur, perhaps to upgrade a number of its roads, you could give Northland the opportunity to make that decisions themselves.

Hopefully common sense will eventually prevail, as it’s starting to become pretty politically difficult for the government to keep opposing the City Rail Link so vigorously.

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