Rudman points out Auckland Plan’s hypocrisy

Brian Rudman’s Friday opinion piece in the NZ Herald hits the nail on the head when it comes to the problem with Auckland’s transport strategies, that we seem to ignore the low hanging fruit when it comes to making PT  better. It also seems like he’s been reading this blog, as he makes similar points to this post in particular: asking the question of whether we really need to be spending such a vast amount of money on transport projects over the next 30 years, compared to what might we achieve through rather smaller scale improvements like better bus lanes. Here’s what he says about the low hanging fruit:

Like why doesn’t Mayor Len Brown wave a wand and remove the few offending car parks that are holding up the completion of the short rush-hour bus lane past Les Mills Gym to the Victoria Park Markets.

This would instantly aid the highly successful Inner and Outer Link buses to do their job. While he’s at it, he could copy the Sydney traffic law which forces motorists to give way to buses pulling out from a stop.

Neither the above proposals are as grand as a $2.86 billion rail tunnel, or a $5.3 billion harbour tunnel, but they are both cheap and easy to achieve, and would instantly improve the flow of the city bus fleet. No doubt if the mayor were to consult my fellow public transport sufferers, they’d come up with other easily implementable, bright ideas.

I agree that many of these little things could make a huge difference although I would point out that it doesn’t mean that some of those grand projects are important in their own right. When it comes to these larger projects Rudman also notes the  imbalance between spending on roads and spending on public transport which is particularly surprising as Len Brown was elected mayor on a “public transport led” transport policy:

The most disappointing aspect of the transport section of the proposed Auckland Plan, is how steady-as-she-goes, be careful not to frighten the horse, this so-called “transformational” document is.

Certainly it talks the talk, when it comes to warning that Auckland is rapidly running out of space for more roads, and preaching the need to embrace public transport in our new compact, intensified, liveable city.

But wade through the figures and the reports and the spreadsheets, and the revolution is hard to spot. The plan seems to be to try to keep everyone happy, by offering up more roads to mollify the pro-road clique, while teasing the public transport supporters, with the promise of, but no funds available, such vital improvements as the city rail loop, the $1 billion Avondale-Onehunga-Southdown rail extension, the $600 million Northern Bus way extension and improved ferry services.

The roads-as-usual bias is highlighted in a breakdown of the proposed $63 billion wishlist. Over the next 30 years, building new roads and repairing the old, will cost $40.6 billion or around two-thirds of the total budget. Public transport spending will total $21.2 billion, of which only $7.6 billion is new capital expenditure.

When it comes to the funding gap, the shortfall for public transport is $5.8 billion or more than a quarter of the transport “need” list. The roads shortfall is a fraction less in money terms at $5.7 billion but only half as large as a fraction of the total roads budget.

The 2010 Regional Land Transport Strategy proposed a 50/50 funding split between roads and public transport over the next 30 years. The Auckland Plan, released just a couple of years after the RLTS and supposedly with a more public transport led approach than Auckland has seen before actually shifts the balance of funding away from PT and back onto more roads with a ratio of about 65/35. The numbers above certainly suggest that the Auckland Plan is really turning out to be a hypocritical mess when it comes to transport.

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