Somewhat surprisingly, National have decided to bury the release of their transport policy for Auckland to a Saturday afternoon – with almost no fanfare. There are few surprises in the policy, with pretty much nothing mentioned that we haven’t heard before – a lot of focus on current projects and very little on what will happen after that.
Their list of achievements is quite interesting:
• Boosted funding for state highways and fast-tracked construction on two of the Roads of National Significance in the region – the Victoria Park Tunnel and the Western Ring Route.
• Completed train station upgrades and double-tracking of the Western Line, and started the $500 million upgrade and electrification of Auckland’s rail network.
• Provided $590 million in loan and grant funding to Auckland Transport so they can purchase 50 per cent more electric trains.
• Cancelled Labour’s Auckland regional fuel tax.
• Opened big motorway projects early:
− Manukau Harbour Crossing.
− State Highway 20 to State Highway 1 link.
− Hobsonville Motorway.
− Victoria Park Tunnel.• Reduced traffic congestion at key motorway bottlenecks on the Northern and Southern Motorways, and the Western Ring Route.
• Increased patronage on public transport.
• We will begin construction on the Waterview connection and complete the Western Ring Route.
I find it somewhat amusing, although on the other hand I suppose quite heartening, that National is taking some credit for increased public transport patronage. You can’t quite imagine previous National governments trumpeting public transport achievements (even if their contribution to them is somewhat debatable), so I guess that’s a step in the right direction.
In terms of whether congestion has been released over the past few years – that’s a somewhat debatable issue. Here’s what NZTA State Highways Manager Tommy Parker said in a recent letter to Auckland Council:
Congestion may be up and down at various times of the day (note the focus on “morning peak” in the document) but overall it seems that congestion has been increasing, not decreasing, over the past few years.
On the key issue of improving access to Auckland’s CBD, we see no real advance on the position we already knew about: that we’re unlikely to see any support for the City Rail Link project:
It would be nice to have some timeframe around this “further work” with Auckland Council to evaluate the best multi-modal access solutions to the Auckland CBD. It is obvious, with the Council and Government still taking such different positions on whether the project is worth the expenditure (and ongoing debates over the methodology of assessment), that more discussion and analysis is needed. But we don’t want that to drag on forever, and it would be good to see how National might fund the project by 2021 if it stacks up. Without a funding plan, one can imagine that the Government’s going to have a huge incentive to make the project’s assessment not stack up.
Overall, I guess I understand why National buried the policy announcement on a Saturday afternoon with no fanfare – because there’s really nothing to it. Nothing new, just a trumpeting of the huge amount of money they’ve been spending on motorways and some lies about the impact of that expenditure on congestion. A bit of a disappointment really – no vision for Auckland’s future.
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I did not see one project listed above that was not started by Labour, not one.
Except for Puhoi-Wellsford, but that’s not saying much.
You’re judging success on the basis of inputs rather than results… Public transport use in Auckland is at an all time high. The graph here (http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2011/05/07/getting-more-from-our-pt-subsidies/) shows Auckland public transport journeys peaking in 2003, stagnating under the remaining years of the Labour government, and growing steadily since 2008. Getting away from Auckland, heavy state highway traffic grew 50% while Labour were in government, but has reduced over the last few years.
As for the low key announcement… I’m expecting Labour to announce tolling and congestion charging tomorrow. That’ll be about as popular as banning beer or summer holidays. National just need voters to know that they’re not planning those things.
Well, Obi, thankfully you were wrong and Labour are not proposing complicated and dubious methods for funding what AK needs, but the obvious and much much better idea, often promoted on this site, of scrapping the crazy Puford highway and instead funding half the CRL and the much cheaper and quicker improvements to SH1 north of Puhoi, including a Warkworth bypass. Fantastic. Nothing like getting voted out to get a party to listen- perhaps we should just keep switching them to get more attentiveness….?
Obi I agree that we should measure by results, but I’m not sure how much credit National can take for growing PT patronage – they seem like they want to do everything to halt that increase (farebox recovery policy, low PT infrastructure funding in GPS, lowering funding assistance ratios for PT etc.) Also, in terms of roading results we’ve seen a huge amount of money spend on state highways, lower traffic but still increased congestion. That sounds like a failure to me.
The congestion graph explains the congestion increase as being due to VP Tunnel construction, Newmarket Viaduct replacement, and Greenlane widening. IMHO they’re all worthwhile projects and so the medium-term congestion can’t be avoided. Also… the congestion is a percentage of all trips rather than an absolute number. It is possible that less essential off-peak trips have reduced leaving the same number of essential peak-hour trips to be congested.
I don’t disagree Obi, I’m just saying that National said congestion has gone down but that’s not necessarily what the data shows.
what is kind of mysterious is why they released it at all. To be fair, I don’t actually think Labour “started” a lot of these motorway projects either – instead the plans were juts knocking around in a drawer at the NZTA headquarters as part of their master plan to pave other all of the Auckland urban region. And when National got in they decided to fund them. and, not to be rude or anything, but Labour did have 9 years in government and they didn’t actually pay for the new EMUs for Auckland either. They passed legislation (at the very end of their last term) enabling the Auckland Council to levy a reigonal fuel tax to pay for them. But that’s a bit different.
Labour did indeed start all the motorway projects. CMJ1, CMJ2, CMJ3, Mercer, Ohinewai, Greenhithe, Upper Harbour, Manukau, Mt Roskill and Hobsonville were all Labour projects. Same with all the expressways built elsewhere in NZ in recent years, such as the various routes around Tauranga, Hamilton and Napier-Hastings.
The only major motorway project National has come up with is Waterview, and even that is a scaled-down version of what Labour planned.
Labour is very much “the motorway party”, not National.
9 years ago Britomart had just opened. Also, if National hadn’t thrown it out in the mid 70’s, we would have had the entire light rail project built years ago. Robbie and the Labour govt’s hard work ruined to save some money.
Geoff, while Labour might be “the motorway party”, they did only focus on the ones that were vaguely affordable and justifyable (excepting their scheme for Waterview, that was gold plated).
On the other hand National are the “Roads of National Significance Party”, where they take all the dream freeways that couldn’t attract funding under any reasonable economic evaluation and said “stuff it, we’ll build the buggers anyway no matter what the cost”.
All of those motorway projects date from when Labour was in government. All except SH20 waterview were funded while Labour was in government. National fast tracked one that was already underway as part of the recession stimulus. SH20 waterview was planned and replanned throughout Labour’s last 3 terms. Labours previous election pledge was to build the route as $2B fully bored tunnels. Labour was also responsible for other motorway projects, SH20 Mt Roskill, SH20 Manakau, SH1 Orewa-Puhoi. Motorway construction like this hadn’t been seen in Auckland since the 60’s
Visionless on transport, using the BCR numbers from one study that were at odds from another study, which is cherry picking made-up numbers.
They’re going to fund tax cuts for the rich by asset sales to the rich. They’re thieves. Visionless thieves.
We’re going to be further locked into vehicular poverty, and soon with falling real incomes, and increasing fuel costs, congestion will be a thing of the past. Soon no one will be able to afford to use the gilded motorways and the 2nd rate PT system won’t be able to keep up with demand.
With rising PT usage and falling numbers driving, aren’t we already beginning to see this?
A little tangental to this, but did anyone else notice the gap in thinking by the Port CEO Tony Gibson in the Herald last week. he says:
1. The truth is that port traffic makes up less than 2 per cent of overall truck traffic around Auckland and a 2009 study by Beca consultancy found that there was less port-related traffic on local roads than in 2002. In addition, more than a third of port-related container truck moves are off-peak.
but earlier
2. The primary rationale for the upgrade of Grafton Gully, on which port traffic makes up 4 to 5 per cent, is to stimulate economic growth via the redevelopment of the Strand and the Quay Park area, and benefit the local community through improved amenities.
This is a vast flyover pegged at 1 billion, very hard to see how that can be cost effective or, indeed, improve the area, especially he then says:
3. The amount of port freight carried by rail has increased significantly since the establishment of the Wiri Inland Port in 2010. With substantial spare rail capacity remaining (some six times current throughput) we are looking to encourage greater use of rail.
All looks like an argument to insist that all growth in port activity is restricted to Rail to the inland port, that a third and even forth line on the Eastern is at the very least protected. Not a strong argument that expensive motorway projects are vital for the port’s viability at all: ‘less than 2% of freight traffic’.
Patrick, and that’s even before you look at moving trucks off-peak, and building the third rail line. The first costs very little, and the second will be necessary anyway and cost a fraction of a flyover. The Port CEO does what’s best for his company. That doesn’t mean he has the best interests of Auckland at heart.