With the world cup now out of the way, all eyes will begin to turn towards the general election – which is only a month away as of tomorrow. Obviously the lead up to the election will be of particular interest to the readers of this blog, and I hope that each party’s transport policy may play some part in helping decide who you end up voting for (even if I admit that’s relatively unlikely). With that in mind, it’s probably useful to start thinking about the issue of what would make for a good transport policy?
Obviously some aspects of transport policy will come down to political ideology – although I tend to think that transport policy should be a relatively non-partisan matter (as it was in the USA up until the last few years). Most political parties agree that transport infrastructure is important and that we want good value for money (at least theoretically). It seems to me that there’s also a general agreement among most parties that some lead-investment in transport infrastructure is useful in helping to get the country through the economic difficulties it faces: both in the short-term as an employer and in the longer-term as an enabler of economic activity. Where that investment should go is, inevitably, quite highly politicised.
I’m still in the process of forming what I think makes up good transport policy – in a non-ideological and non-projects based way. Of course I want as many political parties to back the City Rail Link and to oppose the Puhoi-Wellsford holiday highway as possible – but ultimately I take that position because of what those projects represent. At a broad brush level I think good transport policy should look address the following matters:
- Give more power to local government. When people vote in nationwide elections I think transport policy is close to the last thing on their minds, but when people vote in local government elections it’s very near the top of their mind. Yet in terms of funding, central government holds the majority of the purse-strings over which projects should and should not proceed. Giving more power to local governments in the process of deciding which projects they want petrol taxes (half of which are raised from travel on local roads) to fund seems to me as an important democratic step forwards in transport policy.
- Allowing projects to compete for funding across all funding classes. At the moment state highway projects only need to compete with other state highway projects for funding, the same goes for public transport projects, walking and cycling projects and so forth. This means that even if a cycleway (for example) has a much better argument for receiving funding than a new motorway, if there’s no money left in the cycleway budget then it won’t happen – but the motorway will if there’s enough money in its standalone budget.
- Allowing petrol taxes to fund rail projects. It’s completely obvious that road users benefit from rail projects that attract people onto trains who would otherwise be driving (and therefore clogging up the roads). While current government policy accepts this to some degree, by allowing fuel taxes to be used for rail subsidies, for some bizarre reason fuel taxes can’t be used to pay for rail capital projects – which need to come out of the general government fund and compete against tax cuts and the health budget, instead of against other transport projects, for money.
- Ensure urban impacts (positive and negative) are part of a cost-benefit analysis. Transport projects are generally measured in terms of their ability to speed cars up, but that’s not always going to be the best outcome for everyone. Faster traffic means a less inviting pedestrian environment and can mean significantly reduced land-values. Projects like two-waying Hobson and Nelson Streets may slow traffic down, but in this part of Auckland that is a very good thing – and the cost-benefit analysis process should recognise this as a gain, not just a loss.
- Plan for resilience and adaptability to change. The world is a changing place and our transport demands in 20-30 years could be very different to what they are today. Oil might become a luxury item in the future, with few people able to afford to burn it in their cars. Technological change may assist personal mobility, or may result in big advances in public transport operations. Long-term decisions should be assessed against risk profiles, particularly in relation to higher oil prices.
- Integration with desired land-use outcomes. Transport is really an enabler of the land-use outcomes we want, rather than and ends in itself. If we build motorways we will get sprawl, if we want intensification we need better public transport so it’s not necessary to dedicate so much of our towns and cities to cars (their movement and storage). A good transport policy would recognise this and ensure that a key factor in approving projects would become whether it contributes to, or undermines, desired land-use outcomes.
Feel free to add your thoughts in, or to debate/dispute/discuss what I’ve said so far. The key point being that hopefully a party of any political persuasion may be able to take up some of the policy ideas because they simply make good sense.
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A brief critique:
1. Why would you give local government more power, but not more responsibility? Local government only raises half of the money used to pay for roads and public transport, it cannot be expected to have more power unless it raises more of the money locally. Sure, give it power to introduce road pricing on its own roads. It already has powers to borrow, taxes property and raise money from fares. Why should central government politicians who are accountable for money their taxes raise, give local government politicians carte blanche to spend money that they are not democratically accountable for collecting?
Besides, why do you think local government is so good at decision making? For decades local government ran down local public transport monopolies, denying them capital, operating them according to partisan interests based on politics (businesses or unions depending which way it went). Local government elections get a shockingly low turnout, indicating a total lack of interest by most transport users in local government.
For example, a few years ago you might have seen Auckland get the South Eastern Expressway when John Banks was Mayor, if it was up to the council. If you believe in objectively determined decisions on allocating scarce resources, the last thing you need is politicians dictating how road usage taxes are paid.
Of course one alternative is simply bulk funding. Give local authorities the money raised from the use of their roads, tied first to maintenance and renewal of those networks (exactly what the users would demand), and then spend the rest as long as it is allocated through a central government audited appraisal system.
2. Completely agree. That was how it was before Labour replaced Transfund with Land Transport NZ (now NZTA). All funding competed across all output classes (but public transport and Alternatives to Roading categories were capped). Go back to that system, without the caps on PT/ATR.
3. Capital projects actually achieve nothing in and of themselves. Services are what move people and goods. It is right for any NLTF funds for rail to pay for services, because the capital should lie with the service provider and be factored into the service contract. The NLTF doesn’t pay for buses, so it shouldn’t pay for rolling stock.
4. These factors are up to councils to consider when putting forward their rates funded component. Road usage taxes are a proxy for what motorists are prepared to pay for roads as a service. Rates are a proxy for what property owners are prepared to pay for amenity values. If a council has a project that is about property amenity that disbenefits motorists, motorists shouldn’t have to pay for that. The “benefits” of slower traffic are presumably in safety, but this has to offset time, fuel and emission disbenefits.
5. This can go multiple ways. New technologies may make private motoring much cheaper, virtually eliminate local emissions from road transport and use ITS systems to allow buses to operate in convoys on dedicated roads cheaper than trains. Given you want the government to spend literally billions on century old inflexible bespoke technologies, then you might find this hurts rail. The one thing that can be done is to start getting ready to phase out fuel tax as a source of income for the NLTF. The first step in doing that is to modernise RUC so that it is effective at the light RUC end, and to extend it to dual fuel, LPG, CNG, electric and hybrid vehicles. Modernising RUC could also allow it to be allocated directly to authorities where road use occurs and for regional and local eRUC rates to be established over time. None of that is possible with fuel tax or RUC as it currently stands, and it would make a massive difference to how transport is managed, and of course facilitate congestion pricing. Outcomes matter, the means to get there matter less.
6. What people want differs. A lot of people don’t want intensification, as can be seen in the most democratic factor of all – what people are willing to pay for homes. If you price roads efficiently, then you’d deal to the negative issues around sprawl. However, there is nothing inherently good or bad about different land use patterns, what matters is that people have choices and pay for the consequences of those choices. A city with low traffic congestion, high standards of air quality and which has adequate scope for growth up or outwards according to market demands would deliver a great deal. Given the choice, most people want to live in a house with a section and a car, they don’t want to be priced by regulation into a high rise flat – especially in New Zealand.
Bulk funding local government to do what it likes (subject to a detailed process to ensure value for money etc.) with petrol tax raised from local roads is what I was thinking. Govt is pretty cheeky taking that money at the moment.
You’d have to assume RUC as well.
The government is no more cheeky taking petrol tax from local roads than local government is taking Local Authority Petroleum Tax from state highways (at 0.66/l for petrol and 0.33c/l for diesel). LAPT should be scrapped as it is a ridiculous anomaly if we are talking about serious reform.
However, bulk funding local government from the petrol tax/RUC collected on their roads will create a far bigger problem. Auckland City will do very well out of it, far better than it does now (Christchurch even better, except that the earthquake has shattered that) indeed probably enough to lift the Financial Assistance Rate to around 70-75% for local roads (any higher and you face real accountability problems with local government using revenue from taxes it does not have responsibility for). However, Far North District Council will go bankrupt. The unspoken truth is that traffic in cities and on state highways subsidises the local roads in rural areas. A Mayor of South Wairarapa District once said that he didn’t complain about Auckland getting major projects, because Aucklanders also help pay for his District’s extensive network.
In short, you actually need to reform road charging and governance at the same time. It means merging local authority road operations. At the other end of the country, you would need to combine local road governance for the entire South Island to make it work. One person I know who worked on this some years ago said Auckland would have to combine with all of the Northland local authority road operations so that Northland could function as a viable unit. Of course you could just say Northland should hike up rates significantly, or pay more (impossible without some form of geographical based road pricing), or just give up on the regions and let their roads crumble.
In other words, good in principle, but needs some serious work to avoid unintended consequences.
A city attractive to international workers and tourists has a heart. A city with a heart cannot have sprawl, plus low congestion, plus the quality of public transport to which you “aspire”. It’s not possible. To have the first two, the public transport quality must be outstanding. Without excellent, affordable public transport, sprawl leads to congestion which leads to low air quality. You despise public transport as an inefficient use of resources, and want it to be funded entirely by farebox recovery, but that prices it out of the reach of the majority of users, forcing them back into cars and leading to… congestion and low air quality.
You need to decide what you want, Scott, because right now your aims are so thoroughly confused that I actually cannot determine where you see Auckland going. Other than, of course, into the terminal spiral which is being inflicted on the US by the anti-regulation Republicans with their desire to gut all protections of the environment.
“A city with a heart cannot have sprawl, plus low congestion, plus the quality of public transport to which you “aspire”.”
Of course it can, what cities don’t have sprawl, unless they are stagnant. Paris and London sprawl enormously despite vast public transport networks, because attempts to constrain housing growth have failed because it priced distant options into being more affordable, and has escalated the cost of housing closer to the centre to exhorbitant levels to the degree that only the very wealthy and very poor can afford the live there (the latter because the state forces developers to provide highly subsidised housing – the middle get squeezed to the periphery). In fact London’s sprawl has been facilitated by long commuter rail links, and the entire underground network positively facilitated that as well. The result has been the ability to accommodate growth, but congestion remains chronic, because so much employment is not in the heart.
Sprawl isn’t a “bad” thing, as much as it has become an almost quasi-religious mantra for some, it simply means a city is growing and more people want to live there. The only problem is if you subsidise it by undercharging the networks for getting people around.
Let’s be clear, I do not “despise public transport”, public transport can be economically and financially viable. The key to facilitating that is not an obsession with rail based transit, which is hienously expensive and inflexible, but to price the roads properly.
Price the roads properly and you can avoid severe congestion, and make public transport economically viable. Air quality is becoming less of an issue because of improvements in fuel efficiency and emission standards to the extent that TfL reports in London that it will achieve a 33% reduction in emissions in 20 years by doing nothing.
By far the biggest waste is the continued obsession with peak time commuting to a CBD – the trend in the next 50 years will be less and less of that, because of telecommunications, because of changes in the economy, and because it is simply inefficient to tie up vast amounts of capital in transport infrastructure and vehicles just to service short periods of single direction travel, when that remains idle all day long. When you finally charge motorists and public transport users the true costs of their commutes, it will become obvious that travel patterns will and can change, with people living closer to where they work, people telecommuting and working staggered hours.
Now all of that is far better for the environment and far better for a city. To achieve this, people need to ditch the railevangelists who think it is the magic bullet, the anti-sprawl planners who think they know best how people should live, and get some economics behind them and confront the reason why urban passenger transport (not urban freight transport, not intercity passenger and freight transport), remains such a disaster area in terms of performance and the need for subsidies – it is all vastly underpriced at peak times.
So you think that all the complicated work that the UK has done on investigating wider economic benefits of rail projects that encourage the concentration of economic activity to produce agglomeration benefits and other WEBs is rubbish then?
Any balanced transport policy should recognise that walking and cycling are cheaper to provision for than buses, trains and private vehicle. Cycling and walking are also healthier options for us otherwise sedentary fatties. When buses, trains and roads are made they should make provisions for walking and cycling (footpaths, cyclepaths not adjacent to lanes of traffic, bike racks on buses, secure bike storage at stations and bus stops, bikeshare schemes, etc). They should never make walking and cycling more difficult, and degradation of walking and cycling environments should be mitigated against (such as by noise and particulates). Legislation needs to be revised around cycle helmets and upper limits on motor wattage for electric bicycles.
I also think integrated smart card ticketing needs to be a single national scheme, that works on buses, ferries, trains, trams, cycle hire, cycle lockers and the Intercity buses.
As for your points 1 through 6, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.
In practice “pricing roads efficiently” means pricing them at a level high enough to prevent peak hour congestion from occurring. If people are required to pay for the externalities of their driving in real money then “what people want” is likely to be a lot different from what they do now. Charge people a lot to drive at times and places that are convenient and a lot of them aren’t going to want to live in dispersed housing that results in longer and more frequent vehicle trips.
Kinda disingenuous to talk about what people are willing to pay for their homes in Auckland when the type, size and density of housing is incredibly regulated in almost all parts of the region. Barring the CBD and a handful of areas that have typically been done quite poorly, the fact is Aucklanders can’t live in intensive housing if they want to. Aucklanders make a price-choice to live in quality housing wherever they can, and that rules out the majority of existing medium and high density housing in this city (primarily the result of our planning scheme). I will point out that the minor proportion of quality intensive housing is very well subscribed and commands very high prices, be those the dense historic inner city suburbs or the handful of apartment buildings that have been completed to a high standard.
In a theoretical city without traffic congestion yet where car travel is easy and affordable, then I’m sure many people would want a quarter acre with two or three cars in the garage (I’m not one of them, hate mowing lawns, but I realise I may be the minority here). But in a real city where traffic congestion does exist, land rates must be paid and the cost of travel is high in time and money people would want intensification if the law didn’t effectively prevent it from being done well.
For one I find myself agreeing with Jeremy (Scott) on something, and that is what you fund local government for. The problem with bulk funding is that it certainly does create power without responsibility, for the funder as well as the recipient. Some examples from the Scottish devolved government come to mind.
1. As a recipient: the Government as a whole is funded by a massive ($NZ60 bn/year) “block grant” from the UK central government, and because the Scottish Ministers do not have to take hard decisions on how the money is raised, mean that they are free to go on about how unfair the arrangements are. The devolved government does have some independent fundraising powers, but chooses not to use them.
2. As a funder: Scottish local government is funded 80 percent or so by the devolved government, partly because local government is responsible for managing education. But what this allows central government to do is freeze the block grants, which is the environment at the moment, and then freeze Council tax as well. This means that the central Scottish government can walk away from making some politically very unpleasant decisions, and dump them on the local council instead.
So, the New Zealand arrangements in which half the cost of the local road network has to be raised locally, do remove at least some perverse incentives. In this area, I think the balance between central and local funding is about right. That said, “You want it, you pay for it” is not a measure that local government politicians *ever* want to hear. For example: in Wellington, Celia Wade-Brown is trying to raise interest in light rail, but the idea really is dead in the water without a commitment from central government (the regional council aren’t interested). And local politicians are not prepared to fund any more than they have to from rates.
Otherwise, I agree with Joshua on everything else. Not letting rail capital projects be funded from the NLTF was put in place to reduce the potential demands on the fund, not for any real economic reason. There are major reasons of practicality and scale for funding the big projects this way, instead of someone else owning the stock and being funded over time (Since the CRL will help, significantly, the operation of the State Highway network, it should be funded accordingly; and that’s why we funded the busway directly, rather than paying bus services to pay for the system itself – too clumsy by far).