One of the recent plans that people have been able to submit on is the Regional Land Transport Planwhich is put out by Auckland Transport. They have published a the minutes of the hearings that were held, naturally there were a wide variety of submissions that cover all sorts of topics but I thought I would just post a couple that I found really interesting from different ends of the spectrum. The first is from Kiwi Income Property Trust who among other things are the owners of Sylvia Park and Lynnmall, here is the summary of their oral submission.
Kiwi Income Property Trust (Andrew Buckingham) (Douglas Allan) (Gerard Thompson)Andrew Buckingham Douglas Allan and Gerard Thompson on behalf of Kiwi Income Property Trust spoke to their written submission and in particular:
- Supports overall thrust of RLTP, and in particular supports provisions that address integrated management of land use and transportation planning; proposals to complete the motorway network whilst also strengthening Public Transport; and specific works including CRL, AMETI, works proposed in and around New Lynn, upgrading of Te Wero bridge.
- Seeks completion of a functioning isthmus rail loop connecting Britomart, southern line and NIMT by constructing a link between the two lines at Te Papapa/Southdown.
- Seeks implementation of Southdown-Avondale rail connection.
- Seeks additional emphasis on aspects of land use/transport integration, including the need for concentrated office/retail/education activities in identified nodes and Public Transport corridors.
- Seeks a consistent car parking policy to avoid discouraging intensification in identified nodes.
KIPT definitely seems to be a company that gets it as they wouldn’t use PT wash in a submission as the RLTP will have a big impact on how people access their property investments. They also manage to cover off many of the points we raise on this website so congratulations KIPT At pretty much the other end of the spectrium is the Upper Harbour local board which manages to be even worse than Orakei local board.
Upper Harbour Local Board (Brian Neeson)Brian Neeson on behalf of the Upper Harbour Local Board spoke to their written submission and in particular:
- Suggested that the Statement of Priorities is somewhat hollow and meaningless. Safety should be higher up the list.
- 32.4% funding split for Public Transport is misleading as assumes Government will contribute to CRL.
- Major projects: rail electrification: does Auckland have capacity to supply power?
- Strongly oppose the CRL, suggested that the timing is inappropriate and not affordable at this time.
- Stated that other major projects are acceptable or supported (AMETI acceptable with rephrasing).
- Include additional harbour crossing, Penlink and Puhoi to Wellsford motorway as major regional projects in this cycle.
- Major projects next cycle:
- remove CRL;
- shift out development of cycleways along SH corridors and SW airport multi-modal corridor, as not high priority;
- bring forward Puhoi-Wellsford motorway, additional Waitemata Harbour crossing (investigation), busway extension to Hibiscus Coast
- (designation), Penlink (commencement); and
- Other projects supported, except red light camera installation.
- Detailed comments on local projects listed in submission. Budget and timing generally supported, except:
- Rosedale/Greville busway station: more evidence required as to necessity;
- Requested that Auckland transport bring forward the: East Coast Bus priority, Albany SH17/Spencer Road intersection (brought forward and phased), Albany Lonely Track Road/Gills Road intersection; and
- Seeks assurance that agreement with NZTA to progress Coliseum Drive Link will be fulfilled.
- Requested that the intersection of SH17 and The Avenue in Albany be upgraded with urgency.
- Requested that parking in the Albany Village be looked into.
- Requests a left hand turn onto the motorway at en Pickering Drive.
To be honest I am pretty speechless that this would come out of a local board. There are of course plenty of other submissions, some I feel are good and others bad and I will do a post giving a more general coverage of the feedback shortly
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Brian Neeson! What a genius: Wants motorists to be able to run red lights with impunity and have the opportunity to hit as many cyclists as possible- just not fair if they’re on cycleways of their own. Imagines oil is limitless and local but electricity about to vanish. And naturally hopes to pave the entire Upper Harbour ward at the nation’s expense but ‘strongly opposes the CRL’ as ‘not affordable’. No need for bus stations…. bus passengers can just man up and throw themselves at passing buses; serves them right for not driving like all right thinking citizens. Wants to ‘look into’ parking at Albany Village. As Albany is almost nothing but one vast carpark that look will take a while….. surely there’s a position going in the motoring section of the Herald for such a farsighted goon…. or at the MoT. Wow.
To an extent it’s understandable that they don’t think the CRL will benefit Albany. In addition to the CRL, you’d have to build a harbour crossing for rail, convert the busway to rail, and extend it to Albany. Personally, I think that it would be worth the investment, but can understand why some people might balk at it. I think it might be a case of their not knowing anything else: given that the only public transport that exists at present on the North Shore comes in the form of overcrowded buses and the occasional ferry, I can understand their current skepticism. I’d like to know why they don’t support cycleways, though. Perhaps it’s the same thing; none of them cycle and thus they cannot see why anybody else might?
I think it’s funny that they don’t support red light cameras.
I’m not to concerned about the CRL comment on it’s own as I can understand that they might feel it won’t benefit them but taken in the context of the rest of the submission which seems to be anti anything that is not improvements for cars, it is quite concerning.
Yes Sean, and this kind of silo-ed localism was the justification for the Super City, it’s only a problem if these views are given more credence than they deserve. Unfortunately this crazy can confidently propose this list because it matches perfectly with the current government’s world view. And Nick says below it is also a sign of the very thing that beset AK local politics of old: Old farts obsessed with issues so local that they border on the personal unable to see let alone understand region wide issues getting themselves in positions of some power.
People still call it Albany Village with a straight face?
I think they are actually referring to the old Albany village. In any case that is getting a parking review as we speak, and by looking at the place I can assume there is excessive amounts of parking there already.
This points out one issue I have with the local boards, they are populated with old fogies that really aren’t experts or even informed on a huge range of urban matters, yet consider themselves empowered to make these sorts of calls.
Did you expect less from a local board on the Shore? Come on, the CRL doesn’t have tangible benefits for them, supposedly. A bunch of hypocrites really – never mind that they had a very well built rapid transit corridor built for them for high frequency public transport, at very little cost to them as ratepayers! Eyeballs should be rolling, seriously.
Actually some of the North Shore boards support the CRL, Devonport-Takapuna does and Kaipatiki does in principle. THe Northcote residents association has said they support it.
There are TWO North Shores.
The smart one, and the Upper Harbour one.
North Shore citizens should support the CRL as it allows the continued growth of the CBD and downtown areas, where many North Shore citizens are employed.
Interesting that he claims he supports improving PT
“Improve roading and increase public transport with better and more cost effective services and links.”
http://www.elections2010.co.nz/2010/candidates/brian-neeson
Don’t forget people that Mr Neeson was a National MP during the years of Bolger and Shipley and was the guy who National pinged from Helensville so a certain Mr Key could instead be the member of that seat.
Not really surprised at all as he’d be of the same school of thinking as Maurice Williamson.
I also note that he’s asking for more evidence for anything PT related, but anything which is just roading – go large!
Yes but he is representing the views of the entire board, it’s not just his personal views
“shift out development of cycleways along SH corridors and SW airport multi-modal corridor, as not high priority;”
Of course not. Seeing that you haven’t done jack for cycling during the last decades, why would it be priority now. People like to drive, lalala… all way over the cliff while we flog off our nation’s wealth to Saudi Arabia to buy oil for bigger and more cars. What a backwoods backward list.
Is he seriously asking if Auckland has the capacity to support the power for electrified rail? Surely you’d assume that such a thing would have been looked into before they started the project. It’s not like the various agencies would just build it, and then say “Oh, now we need to power this…” Also, the information on how much power electrified rail will require is easily available, with just a search on Google.
Looks like the UHLB decided to criticise public transport projects without doing even a little homework.
Power loading was OF COURSE closely calculated early in the project. Substations are being built, etc…. – from an electrical engineers meeting discussing electrification I think I remember them saying that the full load was something like 2% of Auckland’s power needs. Clearly a big, significant amount of power, but the power companies said they can handle it.
So yes, just a throw-away “lets stir some doubt” comment.
And of course their submission misses the much more important questions “will we have the petrol for all those road projects?” Can Auckland(ers) afford that / can we even import enough in 10 years? Talk about barking up the wrong tree.
I heard that the full power demand of the electrified system would be less than six months of general demand growth in Auckland. If we don’t have enough power for the trains then we’ve got much more serious power supply problems on our hands!
Good point about the petrol, power is something we can generate here fairly cheaply, petrol isn’t.
Cheaply and mostly renewably; 80% and rising. Do we have to wait for his generation to die out before we get real.
Remember: the best way to live in the 21st century is to stop living in the last one.
Is renewables rising again? I thought our renewables power percentage was still high, but dropping slowly…
Wind + geo are still being added because of previous gov’s instructions to SOE power COs (remember them?)
Also remember in NZ there are no subsidies for wind but it stacks up without them. Yes you’re right, this is a breezy place, but also because ofexisting hydro wind intermittency is easily managed. And the varied geography of long country means its usually blowing somewhere. NZ turbines have the best performance worldwide (land based).
Of course this requires a sophisticated grid and improvements are being made there, including more transmission capacity to AK. Electric rail is, of course, nothing but a great boon for the nation as a whole and the power COs in particular (interesting, eh?).
I really hope AT are negotiating a branding deal with electricity suppliers for the EMUs…. I sure hope to see a big power CO logo on the trains for a big bulk discount on the electrons!
I heard rumours that this genius gov were, have?, unwound the incentives or at least the clear desire sent to generators to invest in renewables….. Anyone know?
It’s this kind of thing that makes me loathe to give any local board any more influence than simply stating their opinions on regional transport matters; and, in this case I don’t think they’re fit even to decide local transport matters, but one hopes the locals knew what they were signing up for.
To give any weight whatsoever to such clearly parochial interests when regional decisions are made would be to throw us back to the worst parts of Auckland’s fragmented past. We cannot entrust these people with real influence, because they’ll use it to destroy any project that doesn’t fit their narrow world view.
Lots of comments about the local board but nothing about KIPT who are clearly much more forward thinking than the likes of Westfield.
I think we can take it as read that we all agree with KIPT and don’t have much to add except good work! And that it is all too easy to get enraged by the backward views of Neeeson and friends.
What I find interesting is the comment supporting Penlink. Personally I don’t think many Upper Harbour residents would use Penlink vey much and definitely not much at peak times.
So if they are not going to use it much and it is likely to increase car traffic on the Northern Motorway which a lot of Harbour residents use why are the Board in favour of it.
Their statements do raise issues of what is happening. I would not consider lobbying my board for transport issues outside my area. If others think this way who are they representing?