The response to my post on whether we should remove the Dominion Road and New North Road interchange was quite interesting, and illustrated what I think is an interestingly varied approach to the ultimate question that we all think about: “what is the goal” we’re trying to achieve through our involvement in Auckland transport issues? Often when I meet up with people, as a result of this blog, the question I most frequently get asked is why do I have such an interest in transport issues? What am I trying to achieve? What would be a “better” transport situation for Auckland and so forth. Ultimately, this all comes back to the question of “what’s the goal?”
As far as I can tell, people come at transport from different perspectives. Some have a economics interest – how can we make the transport system as economically efficient as possible? Some seem to have an engineering perspective – how to move people through space in the best way possible. Some from a planning perspective, how to best integrate our transport decisions with the kind of city we’re creating, and so forth.
I do think that each person comes at things slightly differently, so therefore they will have different goals. Some people might have the goal of promoting public transport patronage, with that as the “end goal”. Some might want to eliminate congestion, some might have the goal of Auckland having a transport system much less reliant on oil, some a transport system that is less polluting, some a transport system that keeps the trucking lobby happy (*cough* Steven Joyce *cough*) and so forth. For example, I think Len Brown’s transport goal is for Auckland to have a world class transport system (both road and rail) that we’re proud of and which can really put a dent in the level of congestion around the region. That’s not exactly the same transport goal as I have, but there are plenty of areas of overlap – so I’m generally supportive of his vision for Auckland’s transport system.
For me, my background as a planner – someone primarily interested in making an awesome city – is instructive in my ultimate goal. I was not always particularly interested in transport issues, for example my Master’s Thesis was written about the Auckland Regional Growth Strategy and the question of whether Auckland should (and could) grow mainly through intensification or sprawl. After a while observing how Auckland worked, along with a trip to Europe and watching the fantastic “City of Cars” videos, I came to the realisation that it was extremely difficult (if not impossible) to actually make Auckland a nicer place unless we really focused on sorting out its transport system – because, typically, it was transport decisions turning Auckland into a pretty horrible place.
Exhibit A:
In fact, it seemed to me as though there’s a pretty universal “urban law of physics” – an inverse relationship between ‘quality of place’ and ‘priority given to cars’. Something like this: 
Occasionally it’s possible to get around this rule. Many of the boulevards of Paris provide significant capacity for vehicles, while still being really nice urban spaces. But generally, I think the rule applies.
But we’re not Venice (somewhat unfortunately), so having an entire city of Vulcan Lanes and Fort Street shared spaces isn’t really going to work. We need to be able to travel around the city easily, plus we don’t have the space to create a huge number of Parisian boulevards, with central roadways and side alleys. Plus, of course, Paris only works the way it does because the Metro and RER systems shift a vast number of people underground.
So we need good public transport, for the sake of our city. To enable people to be able to get around in large numbers (and for long distances) in a way that provides an alternative to endless carparks and intersections like what we see in Botany – in the picture above. As an example, the Northern Busway helps get many people into central Auckland without the Northern Motorway having to be even wider (and billions wasted on another harbour crossing) and without even more of downtown Auckland being dedicated to parking buildings. So I’m a fan. But at the stage when there are so many bus trips that the city starts to suffer as a result, I would advocate for a rail option – even if it didn’t yet make sense from a pure cost-benefit perspective. It would be necessary, for the sake of the city.
Of course this is not the only reason why I think we need a better public transport system in Auckland. I am concerned about our unpreparedness for peak oil. I am concerned about the economic strain our auto-dependency places on families, I am concerned about the loss of productivity that results from traffic congestion – which generally exists because people must find it cheaper, faster and more convenient to sit in traffic than to take public transport.
But ultimately, my goal is for Auckland’s transport system to help make the city a better and nicer place to be in. So I can accept that messing with the Dominion/New North interchange would probably create a bit more congestion – because I think that cost would be outweighed by the urban benefits of the project: stitching back together a really interesting part of inner Auckland. I can understand why others question transport projects that won’t necessarily have transport benefits – but ultimately I think it’s generally quite well accepted that Auckland has focused too much on shifting people around the city in the past (particularly by car) at the expense of ensuring the city is a nice place to be.
What’s your transport goal?
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Indeed, it seems to me that economists faced with something that is hard to price simply ignore it. And quality of place is clearly hard to price. And you have to ask, what is all that efficiency of movement all about if it kills the very place you’re moving to and through?
Peter L Berger, US sociologist wrote that economists are, with a few exceptions: ‘as impervious as fundamentalist mullahs to any language other than the one allegedly revealed to them, and to them alone’.
Yes perhaps it will be my life achievement to get “impact on urban quality” included in all transport projects’ cost-benefit analyses.
But how would you measure that? If one cannot measure it well, then one is stuck with a measurement that is heavily politically influencable.
I am actually reasonably happy with the BCR system we have now – the thing to ensure, in my view is a) that the parameters are as “true” as we can make them (and seeing how the $$$ benefits of advantages and disadvantages have shifted over the years, one can see how difficult that alone is) and b) to make sure that all projects have to do the BCR analysis on a level playing field.
Lets not complicate an already overcomplicated system. Urban quality is and should be a “soft” measurement – we need our politicians to see those impacts on their own, not try to reduce it to an easily quantifiable figure. Otherwise, we will get teh transport system’s equivalent of zoning rules, and end up with the kind of rules for transport that admin decries for housing, where rules intended for “liveable cities” enforce sprawl.
I.e – the curse of unintended consequences that stricter and stricter rules create.
Max, exactly, you prove my point: It’s too hard so let’s look the other way. Ok, that’s fine, as I agree it is too hard. But that means we have to abandon economics as our main guide to these decisions. the dismal science indeed.
I’m not happy with the “travel time in minutes” BCR methodology at all! For one thing the predicted travel time savings never eventuate in the long term, but we haven’t learnt that because the BCR values are theorectical and are never checked post implementation to see if they are actually achieved.
I think the real value of transport projects in the long term are increased catchment and capacity, and these are the factors that should be modelled, along with other factors of value such as urban quality and reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.
Patrick, thanks for missing my point and insulting my intentions at the same time.
Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have posted that quickly, because on re-reading, maybe Patrick R wasn’t quite saying what I thought he was saying (but I now can’t respond to my response, or alter it, nor respond again). So I’d like to cancel the “missed my point and insulted my intentions” comment.
However, I emphatically did NOT say that urban quality should be ignored. I solely consider that conflating it with economic calculations is a very risky business, that can do more harm than good.
Easy enough to do; insist on viewing and measuring any changes through the lenses of an eight year old child, and an eighty year old citizen. Everyone in between will benefit regardless of age.
There has been some work done that measures property values in downtown Auckland. They are way higher in Vulcan Lane than on Quay/Customs St. That’s how you measure place value. From memory, this was in a presentation by Julie-Anne Genter at the Smart Transport conference last weekend; Admin mentions the same in 2009: http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2009/11/02/the-transport-balance/
The cost of the pure functionality of transport vs the effect on “by products” such as beautification of surrounding urban spaces is an interesting debate. Many transport planners ignore this as it cannot always be measure or quantified, but it should and is increasingly being factored into feasibility studies. Last year I was at an urban design symposium that had a speaker (from London) talk on just this issue. If we can be more vigilant about recording data around “before and after” scenarios we can start to argue economic justification for great urban spaces that are intrinsically linked but seen as peripheral by many to the actual transport issue. With a bit of luck Auckland council will have extracted at least say 2 yrs worth of tenant behaviour and sales turnover of shops/businesses fronting the soon to be completed various shared spaces – then continue to record same again for the next two years and hey presto the figures will speak for themselves and no shop owner is likely to argue he needs that car park outside his shop for fear of losing business.
We need more great urban space proposals couched in economic terms. The problem of course is that it gets a whole lot more complex when you have large projects such as the CBD rail link. This truly has the ability to make not just some great urban spaces but fundamentally turn this city around. One can speculate on the revenue generated by several downtown multistory car park buildings and yet what would these generate made over into fully tenanted businesses/shops etc.
That’s really interesting to know AdG. I do think that land values can be a reasonably proxy for urban quality – so measuring the impact of different transport projects on land values in particular relevant parts of the city could be interesting.
For me it is probably about having a transport system that makes it easy to get around and that is attractive for people of all ages and backgrounds to use. It want it to be something that Auckland and even the country are proud of rather than the being the thing that people always joke or cringe about. I can also see how it has the potential to improve the urban environment which is something we are finally waking up to. There are lots of other reasons as well but there are also things I don’t care so much about e.g. I’m not interested in peak oil or impacts on the climate etc.
‘I’m not interested in peak oil or impacts on the climate etc.’ You will be as they will impact you directly, either through the price of fuel [and therefor everything] or through the ruined economy that results, or more likely both. Look around.
That is exactly the kind of reaction that makes me even less interested in it. The whole point of Josh’s post is that not everyone has the same views or motivations for supporting better PT and for me those two things are at or near the bottom of the list. Tomorrow if we magically discovered some wonder liquid that we could put into our existing cars, that was unlimited had no impact on the environment we would still have the same level of congestion and impacts on our urban environment. If however we focus on providing a better PT system then we will benefit either way and the less reliance on fuel and less impact on the environment is just a bonus.
Deleted – Off topic. Find a relevant post.
I loved your post on Venice, I come from a small village close to Venice, and I think it’s the most beautiful city in the world. Just one thing: Per Rialto means “to Rialto”, the bridge is called just Rialto, the “per” is only in the “traffic” signs.
I think that what I look for in a better public transport is freedom and choice.
Cars alone don’t give freedom.
I would like to see for Botany more buses in bus lanes running for longer and closer frequencies. Linking all the way to Panmure rail station. Bus lanes along the Pakuranga Highway and Ti Rakau Drive with bus priority at traffic lights.
We could do way higher frequencies tomorrow at not a cent of cost if all those routes became feeders to Panmure & Ellerslie stations instead of duplicating the rail network all the way into town.
Quality of life. The ability to travel where and when I want to, quickly, cheaply, easily and safely, without regard for dying slowly in a traffic jam or quickly in a traffic accident… And finding a place when I get there that is pleasant and easy to inhabit, free of fumes, noise, desert-like carparks or 100km/h lumps of steel flying about, or indeed 0km/h lumps of steel lying about.
Someone once said “forget the cars, let us build cities for friends and lovers”. That leaves out the very real economic considerations of transport, but it’s on the right track.
Coming at this from an economist’s point of view, and having seen what happens when planners and economists end up talking at cross-purposes … the Bible says, “iron sharpens iron”. What we really need is to keep engaging with each other, so that we can learn from each other’s perpectives and insights.
My goal – placemaking.
Every day that I go for a walk or get on my bike I feel happy. Every day when I don’t go for a walk or get on my bike I feel frustrated that I didn’t. The city should be a place which encourages walking and cycling, and things that curtail them should be designed out. Walking along a busy road, or riding on an unsafe road, or a token cycle lane, instead of on separated infrastructure, degrades the experience.
The freedom of spontaneously getting on a bus or a train (without reference to a timetable) and pleasant neighbourhoods whenever the whim to disembark takes hold is real city mobility. Having a shared bike to jump on to move around on once you’re there is magical. And having neighbourhoods degraded by cigarette and wood smoke and diesel fumes is definitely a downer.
Or as Nick R said “Quality of Life”
“We could do way higher frequencies tomorrow at not a cent of cost if all those routes became feeders to Panmure & Ellerslie stations instead of duplicating the rail network all the way into town.”
mmmm, yes. But to achieve that we would probably have to nationalize (or at least local governmentalize) the bus service and accept that some things are just natural monopolies…now really – can you see that happening? Just imagine it though – KIWIBUS!
It would definitely require gross contracting and the PTMA.
As a cold-hearted engineer in training, I don’t particularly care about quality of life and building a great city. I think Auckland is a great city already (other than the traffic) and that as long as I don’t make it worse, I am happy. If we make it a better place to live, then thats great too, but as a goal, it is further down my list. I also don’t care much about climate change, we can’t really stop it and it is a 100 year issue.
I suppose my goal is about long term sustainability and the spectre of peak oil. Peak oil is a issue for today. I’m just glad the recession has bought us more time to prepare. Our entire (western) way of life is incredibly dependent on oil, but most people just don’t understand how much. Fuel, power, food, plastics,electronics, medicine, the list goes on of products dependent on oil. NZ as a small, distant location heavily vulnerable to the cost of transport for our exports and imports. Reduce our oil imports and develop power sources internally and we kill two birds with one stone.
We need to change our society as a whole and I see it as starting with transport. If most used public transport, then economies of scale would help to create a system that could pay for itself and be efficient. Maybe not as efficient as having a car today, but with rising fuel costs, eventually the scale will tip economically in favour of public transport. We cannot afford to wait until we cannot afford to drive a car. We need to develop our PT now, before we are forced to at greater cost. With the change in transport, there will come a change in the way we live,work,interact which will have untold benefits.
My goal is to extend the natural beauty of Auckland into the built environment. You could not have sited a city in a more beautiful location yet we so often f up our built enviroments (I’m looking at you Albany and you Botany). I want the CBD to become the heart of the city again and for people to enjoy coming here. When I was young and living in Devonport the best days were getting on the ferry and coming into town. Staring up at the tall buildings and going shopping at Farmers. I want my friends in the burbs to be able to come into town and have a beer with me without complaining about the cost of taxis/carparking. I want to destroy every shopping mall I can find and rebuild them as town centres where people experience being out. Not merely transiting between a series of boxes. Most of all though. I want Auckland to be the city that New Zealand deserves. I want Auckland to be known throughout the world as a tourist destination in itself and not merely as a gateway to ‘real NZ’.
My goal would be to have at least 50% of trips within the city by PT, cycling or walking within 10 years. With the CBD rail loop and an integrated ticketing system that is not punitive on transfers it can be achieved by initially using buses provided we have routes that look more like a grid and have higher frequencies on that grid.
The Regional Passenger Plan already has the basis mapped out. Implement the Rapid Transit Network with buses where rail does not exist and add more routes to the Quality Transit Network so it is more grid like and we would be well on the way.
Using Paul Mees example of Zurich if they can do it then there should be no reason why we cannot also.
Before I can answer “What’s your Transport Goal,” I think it would be best if I mentioned what I see the city as first.
I see Auckland like very complex, multi-cellular, multi faceted organism – with the CBD as the Heart and Brain, industry as the lungs, residential suburbia as the limbs and the physical environment the sustenance needed to survive . All (except the physical environment) are interdependent of each other and none can survive without the other. Further more, if one is damaged or in ill-health the rest of the organism suffers.
So if Auckland is the organism then the transport system is the vital blood network of the city/organism – very much needed to keep the city/organism alive and healthy.
And just to add a layer of extra complexity – the various modes of transport systems we have will have different effects to the organism (the city) both positive and negative. Each transport system is unique in sustaining the city/organism and have their places as part of the vital blood network to keep the city/organism alive. However while each transit mode has the potential to be positive and promote the health of the city, used wrongly (including overloading) will cause detriment to the health of the city.
SO then, ‘What is my Transport Goal.’ Simple answer to ensure, promote and/or repair the health of the city
How so? I could rattle off a whole Thesis on my answer – but in short I believe in the following:
Each transit mode Auckland has plus maybe two others no here yet (light rail and/or monorail) has their place in helping Auckland move – that be motorways, rail, bus, ferries.
Our transit system is far from finished both on roading and mass transit fronts in my honest opinion.
I acknowledge through my own experience and usage of most transit systems – that again each mode has its use and I see it pointless to hobble one in favour of the other
Through that statement above, when theorising mock ups of Auckland’s transit expansion (and some times I use that theorising in making submissions) I take the best of both worlds approach to helping moving Auckland (promoting health of the organism).
In the same regard – urban design needs to be very carefully thought out to help enhance the health of the city (as I said earlier, Auckland is an organism made of interdependent parts which none can survive on their own).
So again in short, My Transportation Goal is “to ensure, promote and/or repair the health of the city.” The points above you could say is my methodology in realising my goal.
Then again even though I work for a particular transport company, the closest I would ever come to Urban and Transport Planning and so called realising my goal per-se on a wide scale is this: http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p5/Palpatine001/SC4/Solaria-1314066649.png
Oh well 😀
“Carpooling can be a very simple and effective way of increasing vehicle occupancy rates and therefore reducing the number of cars that are required to shift people along a transport corridor. Carpooling is also apparently very efficient and potentially environmentally friendly – as you don’t end up with empty runs as can happen with buses and trains during lower demand periods.”
The goal is about getting all the benefits that would flow from there being fewer vehicles on the roads. The Ridesharing Institute has asked Auckland Council Transport Committee to support an applied research programme that will find out how to remove 100,000 vehicles from Auckland’s daily to-work traffic counts, by getting every driver to be a passenger in a car, van, or bus just one day in four.
Imagine what it would be like in Auckland if there were 100,000 fewer vehicles on the road! The traffic would move freely. The buses would run on time (after we stopped them running ahead of schedule). There would be no undue delay. Less energy would be used. The air would be cleaner. There would be much less demand for parking. Some parking at employment destinations could be repurposed to higher value uses such as classrooms, offices, or factories. There would be no more demand for expanded public transport infrastructure. Buses could run in the same lanes as cars without being delayed. There would be fewer accidents.
I started this post with a quote about carpooling (from http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2009/10/22/squeezing-more-out-of-our-motorways) but in reality our target is about all road-based ridesharing. Our focus is on filling the existing empty seats in cars, vans, and buses, especially during peak travel periods.
400,000 Aucklanders drive alone to work each day, taking 1.2 million empty seats with them. That is such an incredible amount of wasted capacity. And while you might think I mean the empty seats as wasted capacity, I am referring to the wasted road-space capacity as well.
It seems that in most places regardless of how good the public transport is, when you look at the people using the roads to get to work well over 75% of them are driving alone, and they use (or demand) well over 90% of the roadspace. Most traffic congestion occurs because they demand over 100% of the roadspace at peak.
Our applied research programme will set a target of 100,000 fewer vehicles and relentlessly pursue the target, seeking the combination of enabling solutions (such as solutions that make it easier to get into a shared ride), policies (favourable to ridesharing) and public engagement (for people to be willing rather than coerced) that delivers the desired result. We’ll then refine the interventions to achieve the best cost structure for ongoing success.
Economists refer to the ‘tragedy of the commons’ to explain congestion and call for road pricing. Councillor Mike Lee recently told me that many communities managed their commons very well, so not all were ‘tragic’. I’d like to know more about those successful ones, because I think in there might be the seed of what it will take to get everyone to take responsibility for better managing our transport system.
I think somehow we need to change the social contract for use of the roads: “Sure you can drive alone to work three days out of four, but one day out of four you must be a passenger”. Our research programme will find out how we do this.
I was going to draw attention to the parallel this has to recycling…but I have gone on long enough. If you would like to learn more or follow our work please visit our .
Getting back to Admin’s original post with my own musings, I do believe that there’s more to a transport system than pure transport modelling, whether you couch the benefits in terms of “transport throughput” or monetize them in $$$s.
What I do believe is that simply trying to monetize the benefits currently being ignored, we fall deeper and deeper into the trap of “if we can’t count it, then it doesn’t count”. Shall we assess pedestrian accessibility in $$$ terms? Then you need a whole model that creates $ benefits of pedestrian crossings. You then need to define whether (and by how much) a zebra crossing is better than a refuge crossing. Then someone might say “but traffic signalised pedestrian crossings are even better”, and assign an even higher benefit value. Soon you have a whole corpus of new rules, given weight by the might $$$ value, that ensures that where in doubt, we never ever build a zebra crossing again.
Not only does this turn the whole profession of building a great city, in an interdisciplinary way, into an accountants game (boring, predictive, resistant to change and resistant to any quirky new idea that doesn’t fit the rules)…
It would also turn it into a system that can be gamed extremely easily by the likes of Joyce and Co, because they will just tell the boffins to tweak some values, and presto, their preferred solutions still pop out at the bottom.
I therefore propose that we should REDUCE the factor of dollar calculations in our transport decisions. What is so wrong with a politican saying “Here’s what I want for this city! I want a rail link. This is what I consider will be its benefits*. Who’s with me?” Or even “I want a new motorway. Who’s with me?”. At the end of the day, that is how politics work anyway.
*”I even have some economic calculations – but they are not the end-all”
My transport goal would be; Faster more frequent public transport.
For my journey’s this would be;
1. Integrated ticketing like the zones in London and you can buy a week worth of unlimited travel across a zone or zones. Hop will eventually do this?
2. Better timed transfers. Buses, ferries and trains. Example a train pulls into Britomart and the Half Moon bay ferry has just left.
3. Bus lanes with bus priority traffic lights. Lets get buses moving.
4. Buses stops as close to train stations as possible. Greenlane / Panmure??????
5. More frequencies!
6. More ferry destinations and stopping at various places. Example the Half moon bay ferry stopping at the Bucklands Beach hard stand. (wouldn’t take much to build a pier) and also stopping at St Heliers with timed bus connections (a bit more costly, pier, dredging opposite Long Drive)
From their the big cost projects like the much much needed CBD rail link….
+ also a cycle lane beside the eastern line. Level, away from traffic, safe.
A dynamic inner city will provide a better urban environment and vibrancy, street life and community moreso than sprawl.
Auckland needs to work harder to win the battle for new jobs, especially high skill ones, to be located in the CBD. It’s too decentralised – even Melbourne with its outrageous sprawl has a very strong core supported by strong, upmarket inner city areas. Look at its skyline – it’s the houses which go out to the sticks, not the businesses. Wuold you rather Melbourne or LA?
Buses should be replaced by non-polluting light rail where possible (a northern arc from Mt Albert station – Pt Chev – Herne Bay – City – Tamaki Drive – St Helier – Glen Innes station) and medium distance travel should be on trains.
Incoming investors will go where the workforce are, so inner city density (high quality) should be a priority. CBD rail link obviously would be crucial for this.
Doubling the Onehunga line (with 4 platforms at Penrose) should be a first step towards rail to the airport too.
In relation to this post, Wellington are fighting hard (with out much of the Dominion Post) to stop the proposed elevated roadway. The same elevated roadway the NZTA are calling a bridge.
An interesting article was put on scoop which touches on this same matter: http://wellington.scoop.co.nz/?p=37757
From the article….
The Architectural Centre’s president Christine McCarthy is also to the point when she says:
“This isn’t just about transport. It’s about the design of nationally significant places, it’s about what we want the shape of our city to be, and it’s about the actively choosing the quality of the environment we live in.”
She has hit the nail in the coffin. It seems as though our government has a ‘build now, deal with problems later’ solution to fixing transport.