The Green Party has just released its transport policy for Auckland – unsurprisingly the policy is excellent and a model for the kind of transport policy that Auckland desperately needs a supportive central government to provide. Here are some highlights: With Labour committing $1.2 billion to constructing the City Rail Link and the Greens committing $1.4 billion, we now have two of the three biggest parties in parliament having come up with some serious cash for this project. But aside from that headline move, I’m also really happy to see a commitment to improvement busways in the southeast and the northwest (support for the NW busway is really growing). Finally, it’s also good to see a real commitment to improving the funding of walking and cycling projects, which seem to struggle for funding as “add-ons” to roading projects at the moment, rather than an important part of the transport mix themselves.

Recent polling suggests has the Green Party at between 10 and 12%, which suggests a pretty large increase on their current 9 MPs is likely. What would be interesting is a scenario where National require some level of support from the Greens to form a government (not an entirely impossible situation) – one wonders whether transport might be a useful bargaining chip in such negotiations. Could the Green Party somehow get some funds out of National for important public transport projects in return for something like abstaining on confidence and supply?

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21 comments

  1. $30 million per year for Auckland for cycleways and footpaths is still on the too little side. But it is heaps more than currently being spent.

    And it’s good to see the Avondale to Onehunga line in their plans, presumably for passenger service too.

    1. Matt, the current level of DEDICATED walking and cycling funding in Auckland is (very hard to calculate) but around 12 million. So a tripling sounds pretty good to me. I know literally dozens of stalled projects that could be revived that way.

  2. Even $500 million for those mentioned bus projects is a bit light over 10 years

    The NW busway is estimated at around $400 million, including the whau bridge,
    Extending the dedicated busway from constellation to Albany would probably easily soak up $100 million
    leaving basically nothing for the SE…..

  3. $30 million a year on new cycling/walking infrastructure is quite a lot. The NW cycleway cost less than 30 million, and the Waterview cycleway has been budgeted at about $1 million a kilometre.

    For that sort of money the end of the decade we could have several hundred km of new shared cycleway, i.e over the bridge and along the northern motorway to Albany, along southern motorway, the south-western, along the upper harbour and beside the eastern rail line. Cycleways along existing transport corridors are cheap, $300 million would cover the region in a web of them.

    Good stuff!

  4. Here’s my suggestion for the NWM widening. Widden the North Western and then down the middle run light rail to westgate. In other words, keep to 3 or is that 4? existing lanes and add rail (light)
    You would need transit points at Partiki, Te Atatu, Lincoln, Massey? and Westgate and would want parking ah la the Northern Busway but i would rather have something like this than just motorway.

  5. Running light rail in a motorway makes for awful light rail. They do that on the yellow line in Pasadena, California. Waiting at a station in the middle of the freeway is god awful. The noise and fumes were overwhelming.

  6. It’s a good balanced plan till 2120…. then NS rail 2120+ as the city seriously chokes under the weight of all those buses, and SE rail after that.

    Big battle will be to prevent crazy road harbour crossing…. unaffordable and unnecessary, better to allow bridge ‘bottleneck’ [such as it is] to lead uptake of alternative routes and modes and stimulate intensification of the Shore, as happened in Sydney. All road crossing plans I have seen are a total disaster for the city; flooding the place with vast numbers of extra vehicles in an impossible way.

  7. All very nice, but i’d prefer it if national government politicians just said “we will support whatever Auckland Council decides on”

  8. In a development that I consider to be very significant, The Herald has used the term “rail link” in a headline and maintained it in the article body. Getting away from the “loop” term is a big deal, because it pushes the message to the public that this isn’t just a way to have trains running in circles.

    1. The Herald also courageously said “stuff it” to the latest roads-centric idea of tolling ALL transport (including PT, not just roads) for a rail link. I consider THAT even more important. The Granny seems to be having an attack of sense 😉

  9. I would think It would make sense for the greens to push the CBD link if they were to form a coalition with national. Many of their policies have significant opposition amongst the public, but most people ( at least in Auckland) are big supporters of the link, so the greens may be able to gain a lot of support for successfully pushing this through , as well as improving their image amongst the part of the population who. Generally see them as always pushing extremist policies.

  10. So it’s actually only ACT supporting road pricing now. For shame the Greens have decided to abandon their most rational transport policy presumably to avoid scaring the punters. Nothing on parking either.

    Nothing Green about a policy characterised by enormous capital expenditure on motorised transport, whilst doing nothing to deal with the chronic excessive demand on the road network (and indeed public transport at peak times).

    Looks like a blatant piece of electoral bribery that just mirrors the Nats, no serious attempt to addresss causes, just pouring steel and concrete instead of just concrete. There is no acknowledgement that massive capital expenditure on underpriced public transport means significant expenditure on subsidies as well.

    At least the insane policy of cutting the NLTP spending on roads so much that it would have halved maintenance expenditure (as was the policy in 2008) has gone, and the $1 for roads for $1 on public transport is on NEW spending, which even if I disagree, is at least manageable.

    1. Just balancing the playing field, Scott. Road users have had their free ride for so long that it’s now structural. A change to that would be a massive undertaking. It’s easier to redistribute funding than to try and follow the paths of your heroes, especially since there are no countries that do wholesale road pricing and precious few cities that even try.

      1. There was a time, Matt, when NZ thought nothing of leading the world in economic and social reform. From Kate Sheppard to Michael Joseph Savage to Roger Douglas.

        Are we leaders no more?

        Thats a shame.

      2. Yet Australian is engaging in a massive tax inquiry which includes considering congestion charging, the USA is awash with states considering a long term shift from fuel tax to distances based charging.

        It wouldn’t be a massive undertaking to simply support congestion charging in downtown Auckland and Wellington, it is perfectly feasible, but I suspect the environment is playing second fiddle to politics here. The same applies to the Greens on shipping, as the pro-union xenophobia about foreign shipping crews would mean the Greens would happily let overseas ships go from port to port on the New Zealand coast unable to carry freight domestically – even though the trips would happen anyway, so the marginal CO2 impact is negligible.

        The Greens have long abandoned objective consideration of environmental impacts in favour of the agenda of the politicians involved, which is to use a high profile brand to engage in heavy handed Marxism inspired economics.

    2. “whilst doing nothing to deal with the chronic excessive demand on the road network”

      Contrary to you, I see their three top policies doing just that. You can have your “purist” “road pricing or bust” approach, but remember that the only really pure policy gets done during revolutions (until people get tired of guillotines) – in real life, achieving political goals means compromise. The Greens know that, while retaining their integrity, and that is why they are doing so well at the moment.

  11. Undoubtedly, road pricing probably is one of the best tools to manage demand. But Libertyscott, before we start financially forcing people out of cars and into PT I think that there a) has to be adequate PT coverage for people and b) the system has to have the CAPACITY to take on these extra people.

    If we price then out of cars when there is no alternative, then our economy will be truly stuck. Which would be simply politically unacceptable and result in (most likely) massive public backlash to all things PT. Therefore, to sort things out and get efficient, effective transport options to Aucklanders, politically we need to take baby steps and warm them to the idea that PT is a good thing.

    Besides, congestion charging is the ACT parties baby, they probably understand balancing the different economic levers better. What I would love to see is the ACT and Greeens come to some sort of agreement on transport and really try to move the big parties into doing better.

  12. Yes. In this case, supply has to proceed demand, otherwise you’ll have a huge fight which you cannot win. Upgrade public transport, and they’ll come anyway.

  13. Phil you are right, if there were real quality alternatives to driving more than half the problem would be solved. We know this because whenever there are improvements, especially to the direct RTN network, uptake immediately responds. As ever though the neolibs with their obsession with how things are paid for have the cart before the horse. In the real world the way forward is clear and achievable: cease expanding the highway network at enormous cost to provide ever more capacity, use the available funds to build the complimentary RTN network and feeder local routes. Boom! Along the way start to introduce price signals in areas where there are current distortions, like parking. I have no objections to novel charging systems but they must be appropriately matched to the available options. To introduce charging on the motorways now in AK would simply flood the local road network, a system already under stress from the over-investment in those very motorways. This in turn would also hamper the current bus system as it has insufficient independence from general traffic, create resentment, and because of the time lag before the projects are built, basically cause revolt.

    Above all else do not let the business community run the investment agenda.

    On one level the Greens and ACT are not as far apart as it seems, pricing water for example. But the neolibs in ACT [as elsewhere] are not who they like to think they are, ie are not impartial rationalists at all, but freight a whole lot of nasty right wing bunk as well. Including an irrational loathing of public transport. So, again, in practice it is unlikely to work.

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