For an interesting Friday afternoon read, here‘s an article from Australia which may ring true for New Zealand as well – especially given the possibility that National is considering an absolutely daft idea, creating a second road-only Waitemata Harbour crossing. From The Age:
More than $20 billion a year of national road funding is being spent in a “hideously inefficient” manner, according to a leaked assessment by Australia’s independent infrastructure umpire.
The Infrastructure Australia report, obtained by Fairfax Media, has also delivered a scathing critique of “monopoly” state-run road entities such as VicRoads, claiming a culture of resisting reform has led to a situation in which political leaders are held “captive” to demands for more funding.
I don’t know about New Zealand’s current political leaders being held captive… unless perhaps it’s a case of Stockholm Syndrome?
The report was titled “Spend more, waste more, Australia’s roads in 2014: moving beyond gambling”, which seems like a fairly provocative title for a report. It seems fairly likely that someone will get a clip round the ear and a more mundane title (and report) released later this year. Reading on:
“The unhealthy focus of road agencies appears set on ‘getting, controlling and spending’ more taxpayer money, rather than questioning efficiency or value to the motorist and governments,” the report says.
The report, which claimed Australia has a “gambler’s addiction to roads”, said national road spending is now outstripping revenue raised through road-related taxes and charges, warning “Australia’s thirst for roads” would come at the expense of other services as the gap continues to widen. In the four years to June 30, 2012, road spending outstripped road revenue by $4.5 billion.
Of course, we’re in a similar position in New Zealand, with National now reaching beyond the NLTF to pay for its spending on roads.
It suggested there was little consideration of whether Australia’s demands for new roads should be satisfied, and argued that rail funding had missed out as a result.
“The current Australian system assumes that roads are an answer to most transport problems and seeks more and more funding to that end, with little consideration of alternatives that most other developed parts of the world enjoy, such as significant heavy intercontinental rail networks and dominant heavy mass transit systems.”
“[Road proposals seen by Infrastructure Australia] were almost universally poor, in that they lacked any cost-benefit rigour whatsoever,” it said. “The real problem is that road agencies and other road project proponents in industry and the community spend next to no effort examining what problems their projects and plans are trying to solve, other than the perceived problem that they do not have enough road funding.”
Overall, a fairly damning indictment of Australian transportation policy, and we’ll be eagerly waiting for the final (or at least, public) version of the report.
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“I don’t know about the current political leaders being held captive, unless perhaps it’s a case of Stockholm Syndrome?”
More likely it’s probably a “round of golf with the good ole boys at the country club”.
The lack of B/C rigour is alive and well at Auckland Transport. They have decided all developers should build 1.8m wide footpaths as part of subdivisions without any assessment of costs or benefits. It seems that they view the additional land and concrete to be free as it doesn’t cost them anything to demand it. Perhaps if they had to buy the infrastructure they might ask for what is necessary rather than current approach of gimme!
If you think 1.8m for a footpath is a waste, wait until you hear what they (and Auckland Council) insist on for the carriageway, on-street parking, berms, and building setbacks!
Imagine how much developers could save if they were permitted to build streets like this in new subdivisions:
http://goo.gl/maps/TZIV2
+1. Such a thing is, of course, unthinkable here. Oh, except that it isn’t and people will pay the better part of a million to live on a nice quiet human-scale street like that, even if it’s ultimately a glorified dead-end driveway. No-one seems to mind the additional 20 seconds of driving it might take before you’re on the main arterial road.
The real irony, from a government-waste point of view, is that you are allowed to build Really Narrow Streets like that – as long as they are privately owned. (I think the minimum ROW for private accessways is 5.5m?). But the council won’t take them off your hands and maintain them for you at ratepayers’ expense unless they are expensively overbuilt. Nice work, guys.
But now they won’t even let you do that. They limit you to front sites only in a lot of places to achieve their urban designers idea of how you should live.
> They limit you to front sites only in a lot of places to achieve their urban designers idea of how you should live.
District plans (including the UP) are big on having just a few standard types of house – the freehold detached house on ~500sqm, the unit-titled terraced houses, the suburban apartment building surrounded by landscaped setbacks. Anything that doesn’t fit the basic models seems to be either impossible, or only allowed by accident.
On the other hand, I’m a bit more optimistic that you’d get consent for something in a Japanese style if it were part of a larger subdivision of dozens or hundreds of houses, and you explained the overall vision for the thing. No-one’s tried it here, as far as I know. The rule does seem to be more aimed at the guy with half an acre who’s just chopping it up with a shared driveway. (Not that there’s anything really wrong with that, either).
Mfwic: I think you should clarify that the specific rule you are referring to only applies to sites of 1Ha or more.
Instead you get these sort of places out flatbush http://goo.gl/maps/HaaxC (Photos during constuction, but you get the idea). Fairly big houses completely fillign the sections on big wide streets. And situated an hour away from the CBD and no doubt costing well north of $500k
Well, of course you move to the outer suburbs so that you have a bit of land of your own, a bit of distance from the neighbours, somewhere outside the kids can play safely… oh.
I suggest you gentlemen get out of your Utes and try pushing a buggy/pram/wheelchair around whilst your mates are driving their utes around you…
And of course it’s endemic in the country that gave us freeway culture:
http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2014/7/24/some-perspective-on-the-gas-tax.html
Until recent years New Zealand managed to avoid the worst elements of pork barrel transport spending due to the strong independence of transport funding agencies. More and more the govt is undermining this through the RoNS, the accelerated package for Auckland and cherry picking regional roading projects.
The way we’re going it may only be a matter of time before we end up like Australia.
As always the supremely smart Jarrett Walker has the last word on models used to justify transport investments:
http://www.humantransit.org/2014/07/how-good-are-we-at-prediction.html
Narrow streets at Harold Park in Sydney
http://media.theage.com.au/news/national-news/a-flythrough-of-harold-park-5621738.html