One more week to submit on Auckland’s future

Submissions on the Auckland Spatial Plan, the City Centre Master Plan and the Waterfront Plan close this time next week. If you ask me, I think it’s pretty stupid of Auckland Council to consult on all three plans at the same time, let alone do so when Auckland is severely distracted by the Rugby World Cup. And it seems that, somewhat unsurprisingly, very few submissions have been received so far – this is detailed further in an NZ Herald article today:

Barely any Aucklanders have contributed their views on the 30-year city blueprint with just a week left to go before submissions close.

Auckland Council chief planning officer Dr Roger Blakeley told Orakei ward councillor Cameron Brewer in correspondence that the council had received 143 submissions to the draft Auckland Plan by yesterday.

Now it is very true that you’ll typically have a mad rush of submissions on the last day or two, especially with there being so much on at the moment I think everyone’s going to need all the time they can get to put together their submissions on these very important documents. In particular, the Auckland spatial Plan will outline how the city grows over the next 20-30 years, what the priority infrastructure projects will be and what the Council considers as its priorities for the future. In terms of Auckland’s future shape, this is a really critical diagram: While a lot has been said about the Auckland Plan focusing on intensification rather than urban sprawl, that is slightly misleading as 25% of development will be outside the current urban limits, not outside the current urban area. There are still fairly large tracts of land inside the urban limits that haven’t been developed, so more realistically we’re probably looking at a two-thirds/one-third split in favour of intensification. This is relatively similar to the split between expansion and intensification in many Australian cities. Around 100,000 dwellings are proposed outside the current urban limits, which compares to there being around 95,000 dwellings in all of Manukau City in 2006 – so the Plan certainly proposes quite a lot of sprawl to go with its intensification!

Some key questions I think need to be raised in relation to the Plan’s land-use vision for Auckland are:

• What is the logic for some of the centres classification? Why is Sylvia Park a metropolitan centre while Onehunga is just a town centre? Why have Westgate as the metropolitan centre rather than Henderson? Why does the Plan highlight Newmarket as a metropolitan centre (justifiably) but then say nearly nothing about it?
• What does being a “satellite centre” actually entail? Are we anticipating a town like Warkworth doubling in size, tripling in size, or more? What is the justification for Warkworth being a priority satellite centre, compared to somewhere like Kumeu/Huapai – which has better transport linkages to the rest of the region?
• What do the red development areas actually mean? Are we expecting a doubling of the density within these areas? What proportion of growth is expected to be in the broader red areas as opposed to the smaller (in physical size) town/metropolitan centres?
• Is development in the priority areas actually going to happen, or are many of these areas simply not attractive enough to get developers to invest in them?
• What does the City Fringe classification mean, and how might it impact on the character of these distinctive parts of Auckland?
• How likely is it that we’ll be able to fit 100,000 more dwellings within the red box areas, and what happens if we can’t?

So quite a few matters that really need a bit of further detail. See more on my thoughts here and here.

Turning to transport, we once again have a pretty map showing all the projects that have ended up on the Council wish-list. It’s a pretty busy map because it includes just about every transport project we’ve ever thought up – not exactly much prioritising going on here I suspect: It would seem that the Council is taking the position of not choosing between expanding our public transport system or our road system, either of which could be achieved within existing transport budgets – but rather to vastly expand the capacity of both systems – which therefore requires a lot more funding. Where might that funding come from? Well that’s where things get interesting:

Critical infrastructure projects, such as the City Rail Link and new Waitemata Harbour Crossing, are essential investments to enable Auckland to grow and be economically successful, but they will not be feasible using existing funding sources.

To enable Aucklanders to reap the transformational benefits of these investments, they will also have to bear a significant part of the costs of these planned improvements to the transport system.

Over the 30-year period, new funding mechanisms will be required to help finance approximately $10-15 billion total funding shortfall for transport infrastructure projects (such as the City Rail Link, additional Waitemata Harbour Crossing, rail to airport, AMETI and Avondale – Southdown rail). In addition to current funding mechanisms (rates, fuel taxes, road user charges and development contributions), additional mechanisms will have to be considered. The following funding mechanisms will be further investigated (see Chapter 12):

• tolls (of new and potential infrastructure)
• road pricing (network or congestion charges)
• increases in parking charges and/or parking levies
• increases in passenger fares that reflect service quality and reliability improvements.

Transport improvements over the 30-year period must be agreed by Auckland Council and central government, and must benefit users and those who contribute funding. It is likely that a different mix of funding mechanisms will be used for different projects. This work will be done jointly by the various planning and delivery agencies. Again, council and central government will have to agree to any such new funding packages. The transport direction set out in this Plan is informed by funding currently available, and potentially available from new funding mechanisms.

These funding mechanisms could result in additional costs for people who use the transport system, but the improvements they fund will ultimately lead to a better transport system for everyone.

These mechanisms should also help manage the level of congestion on the road network, which will make journey times more reliable. However, there may be unintended impacts on communities that will have to be managed and mitigated.

The most appropriate target date for introducing a new form of transport revenue, for example road network pricing, will be when Auckland’s new electric train services (2014/15) and Waterview are opened. (2016/17). This means Aucklanders and central government must undertake the feasibility work between 2012 and 2015, with a proposal for implementation ready around 2016.

This creates an interesting fundamental question in my mind. Does Auckland really need to spend far more of its money on transport in general, or does Auckland just need to spend its transport money smarter and differently? I have generally argued the latter over the lifetime of this blog, because I don’t necessarily see the advantages of Auckland have much more transport infrastructure in general outweighing the disadvantages – both in terms of cost and in terms of urban impact.

Many of the transport elements of the Auckland Plan are a bit hard to make sense out of – because of their inconsistencies.  Spending $11 billion on more motorways (beyond what has already had its funding approved, so excluding Waterview/Newmarket Viaduct etc.) also doesn’t really seem like a helpful way to achieve environmental goals of reduced CO2 emissions, or increasing the modeshare of public transport use as dramatically as the Council wants. One wonders why so many roading projects made it in there – was it politics to appease councillors in that area, or an effort to appease a roads-obsessed government? Or an effort to get lobby groups like the NZ Council for Infrastructure Development onside? To me those aren’t particularly sensible reasons, but I see no real other justification.

Most probably the many inconsistencies and contradictions throughout the Auckland Plan have arisen from its incredibly short lifespan, effectively being pulled together from scratch in under a year. The problem is that this plan will be hugely influential in guiding future projects, plans and council funding decisions. If you really want something to happen but it’s not in the Auckland Plan – then your chances of getting it to happen any time soon are fairly remote. Similarly, if you really don’t want something to happen (like Puhoi-Wellsford or another road-based harbour crossing, for example), but it ends up in the Auckland Plan your job of opposing it is going to become incredibly difficult.

All of this is I suppose a long way of saying that the Auckland Spatial Plan is incredibly important, but at the moment has quite a few flaws – so it needs your submission to help improve it! You can guarantee that sprawl and motorway lobbyists will make submissions, so help ensure their voices aren’t the only ones heard. I’ll be putting up my submission on the Auckland Plan in the next few days to help provide some further ideas.

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