Two articles on employment and its relationship to urban form and transport investment turned up, rather fittingly, on Labour Day. They offer interesting international perspectives, but before we get to them here is a fascinating chart derived from Ministry of Transport Household Travel Survey data that puts the focus on journeys to work into an valuable perspective. Remember the New Zealand census question that generates the gross mode share data much loved by government ministers only asks the very narrow question about travel for work. In Australia at least they ask about travel ‘for work or education’. So here is Auckland’s travel for all purposes:
In particular look at that am rush hour [and, quaintly, it is pretty much just an hour] 8-9am. Journeys to work only make up just 22% of the trips that cause that morning congestion.Trips to education is the big one then. The afternoon is very different with a full three hours of workers and learners all coming home. A great shame that trips for education are not counted in the gross mode share question as that would help the real role of PT and Active modes in keeping this city moving from being so easily downplayed by politicians and others. I have seen elsewhere that Auckland University, for example, has a private car modeshare for its students somewhere in the rounding: 1-3% [if anyone has a data source for this please add it in the comments]. *Correction 8% is the best info we have, thanks to Thomas S; source.
I can’t top the title used by The Economist so have repeated it above, here’s the link. The article simply asks the question what role might geography have in unemployment? As it is concerned with cities the geography in question is urban form. So has 60 years of subsidising the dispersal and segregation of living and working in cities in the west made it harder to provide, find, keep, or change jobs? It surveys the research and concludes that western cities suffer from ‘spatial mismatch’ and ‘poor accessibility’ and that these conditions do indeed inversely affect employment effectiveness of these places. Basically the more dispersed, the greater the degree of separation of zones, and the less effective its Transit system the less efficiency there is in its employment market.
What’s to be done? Here is the concluding paragraph:
All this has big policy implications. Some suggest that governments should encourage companies to set up shop in areas with high unemployment. That is a tall order: firms that hire unskilled workers often need to be near customers or suppliers. A better approach would be to help workers either to move to areas with lots of jobs, or at least to commute to them. That would involve scrapping zoning laws that discourage cheaper housing, and improving public transport. The typical American city dweller can reach just 30% of jobs in their city within 90 minutes on public transport. That is a recipe for unemployment.
The second article is from the Brookings Institution and is called: Cars Remain King and barrier to Economic Opportunity
This uses a study based on commute data from the US 2013 census to focus on ‘zero-vehicle workers’:
The most recent 2013 Census numbers shed additional light on their commuting habits, showing how more than 6.3 million workers don’t have a private vehicle at their home. That’s equal to about 4.5 percent of all workers, compared to 4.2 percent in 2007.
Unsurprisingly decades of building and subsidising car amenity in the US has led to widespread structural auto-dependency for employment. This study also concludes that a shift in both urban form and transport infrastructure investment would deliver positive economic outcomes. And in particular that the focus by professionals, institutions, and policy makers needs to be on accessibility and not predominantly on vehicle speed:
To address this inequity, we need to shift how we plan transportation investments and urban development. Planners and engineers need to think less about mobility—how fast we move—and more about access—how many destinations we can reach. Grounded in the daily experience of commuters, this perspective can help meet the needs of workers and employers, better tying together regional economies.
One thing that would help is broadening the specialists in this field away from a focus on the LOS metric, as advocated by the Victoria Transport Policy Institute here.
Clearly a move away from monotonal places of only work [like how the City Centre used to be], or the pure dormitory suburbs of south east Auckland, are part of the solution here. The move to a greater spread of Mixed-Use suburbs with working and dwelling within easy and pleasant reach, especially by the Active modes or short Transit trips, is desirable. This is after all, along with proximity, one of the features of the inner pre-autodependent sprawl era suburbs that make them so successful and desirable: They were formed pre zoning rules, and can be lived in with minimal travel for work and indeed other needs for most.
Of course committed sprawlists will immediately claim that if only we flatted the centre city and spread all employment out across the city then people would all live right next to their workplace and joy! travel times, congestion, and all human misery would end. Well I’m sorry but the following chart firmly puts paid to that:
Above is that chart from 2013 census showing how those in newer further out suburbs have, on average, longer commutes, regardless of their place of work. It is important to underline that these commute lengths are not about just trips to the centre but to the actual real work trips taken by everyone as recorded in the 2013 census. There is just no way around it; the further out you live the longer, on average, your work journey will be. And if we keep extending the city out the worse this will get for these edge-city dwellers and everyone on aggregate. With the concomitant disbenefits that long commutes bring; higher cost, individually and collectively; plus all the negative health, pollution, and happiness outcomes.
And below the same data flipped to show it by destination. Look how inaccessible the employment around the airport is, despite all that road building. The $140m about to be spent on the Kirkbride Rd intersection will do nothing at all to improve this. Look too at Howick on the two charts, the small number of people that work there are mostly local, which is good, but most locals work much further away. Both charts also show the lack of local employment for people in West Auckland.
Which all goes to show that Auckland conforms to Bertaud’s ‘Composite’ urban form model below, which is of course the most common city type on the planet, and not the dispersalists’ largely imaginary centre-less model of the ‘Urban Village’ with everyone working adjacent to where they live and none working across town.
After all, even as Auckland gets longer [it can’t get wider!] the area most closely placed to everywhere is still the centre. This helps explain why the centre will only continue to grow and thrive despite increasing rents and other barriers, as it remains the most connected and accessible place to be, on average.
Trust you had a relaxing Labour Day.
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Good post Patrick! Just one note on the data you use in that first chart (which is from the Household Travel Survey, available at http://www.transport.govt.nz/research/travelsurvey/) – it classifies trip legs by destination. So if someone drops their kids off at school on the way to work, there are two trips counted – one with an “education” destination and one with a “work” destination. This methodology probably overstates the importance of education in terms of total travel and congestion. For most families, the local school is probably a lot closer than their workplace, and greater dispersal of schools means that there may be less congestion involved.
Also note that the census only asks about travel for people aged over 15, so even if “travel to education” were factored in, it would still be far fewer people being counted than the Household Travel Survey suggests.
John, thanks, will change the source note. And at least it would capture all those tertiary students; huge numbers of whom reply on PT and travel very long distances.
Furthermore, anecdotally, as the inner suburbs where I live have gentrified more and more of my neighbours now send their kids to Kings, St Cuths etc; there is a great deal of cross town quite long high school journeys as well as those ‘drop-offs on the way’ ones you mention.
Even those drop offs on the way cause congestion at peak time as invariably the AM peak and school start times are aligned.
How is that trip length to work statistic calculated?
Presumably its worked out by the distance by road between the two addresses (residence and work addresses) ala Google maps.
Or is simply by how far apart (by road or spatially) the source and destination mesh blocks or CAUs are from each other?
Would be interesting to see the work place travel distance per area as a frequency chart, suspect for many areas there are two or 3 peaks – one for the locals who live and work close by, the others for the long distance commuters. The problem with averages is that they hide a lot of detail.
Is trip length just what people self report in the census?
No it’s calculated from their residential address and their work address.
And the fact of Auckland’s composite model is why public transport is never going to live up to Auckland ratepayers’ aspirations. It’s impossible to provide good, reliable PT for many-to-many destinations. PT only works on many-to-one routes as a collector (which is how it evolved London into A). The only system that can deliver many-to-many node transport suitable for C is private transport. That is cars, or motorcycles or bicycles. The HTS shows bicycles already have higher mode share than rail. An 11.8km trip would take the average rider 30 minutes, and yet Auckland roads and culture is cycling unfriendly.
Peter really I don’t think you should be trying to use London as an example of a many-to-one route city. It is the poster child for a many-to-many system. Bank may be a busy tube station but is hardly so disproportionately, nor is any other. Auckland now is in fact much more focussed on Britomart than London is on any one station or destination. And of course it isn’t just the Underground, Overground, or rail system in London, the buses do a huge job of connecting even more places. London is really just a congealed bunch of villages.
I guess you must be thinking solely of the Commuter Rail network? The Stock Broker belt. Getting suits from Chipping Somewhere to the City and home again five times a week? Well that’s not the model for Auckland at all. Hence how the CRL transforms the rail network from a commuter in-and-out model to a through routed Metro: Into town, through town, across town, around town; from one sub-centre to another. Here: http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/our-proposals/congestion-free-network/why-a-congestion-free-network/
And yes driving and cycling are hugely important part of the mix, cycling especially as a great way to expand the reach of stations on the Rapid Transit network. All stations can all be within a 3km ride on safe on-street and off road protected cycleways for pretty much the entire urban region with a little effort.
Transit is booming in Auckland, driving is the mature fully supported mode that is not growing in uptake. The return on investing the missing modes is far greater. Question is where is the marginal uptake happening?
Given that the composite model is the reality for most of the worlds’ cities and PT works fine for most of these same cities right now, on what basis do you say that it can’t work here? Real world examples show that it can and does work.
The idea of using a single mode to complete all your journeys (i.e. a car) is a 20th century “ideal” that our and everyone else’s reality shows can not ever be achieved in practice.
While Bikes may have a higher share than Rail that is an historic comparison – in the next couple of years, rail will really start with the heavy lifting and will be the mode to carry the bulk of passengers who currently use the bus for long commutes. They will use the train for the long/slow middle leg of their journey for both speed and efficiency. Thats how PT works elsewhere and how it will work here. Buses runs local, to get people to from the Train station (or NEX stations on the shore), then the train gets them almost there where they can walk, bus or whatever to their destination.
But yes, walking, cycling and PT all need to be elevated above the car – if you ever want to have city that works well.
Its not just promoting buses, or trains or cycling, its promoting all 3 modes (walking, cycle and PT) equally so that they are all higher priority than cars that’s the key message that other successful cities are telling us they did to make it work for them and what also needs implementing here.
‘in the next couple of years, rail will really start with the heavy lifting’
It’s already well underway; 2 million more rail trips this year over last; from 10mil to 12mil. Bus use growing too, so these are all new riders switching from driving. It is growing well in advance of population growth [2.3%] too so it isn’t just new Aucklanders. The Boom has begun and we know it will continue as the new trains with higher frequencies continue to improve services, and the New Bus Network improves and connects it all into a integrated whole.
The problem is after 2016 we hit a wall; without starting the CRL soon capacity tops out, services can’t improve and AKL clogs up again.
Patrick,
Even if we started CRL tomorrow, we’d still hit that problem of too much demand for Britomart to handle.
And with PTOM that problem will get worse before it gets better.
Nice problem to have, but still a problem that needs management, and while CRL is the medium term solution to this problem, we are going to have to string together a bunch of interim measures in the meantime to cope.
More bus lanes in the main corridors without a doubt and longer trains – which also means we may actually need to buy some more EMUs (which is preferred to keeping the old dunger disels in operation – on the electrified portions anyway) to either make longer trains, or make some of them through trains that bypass Britomart.
I’m sure AT has got someone on the case working on these alternatives in case CRL start dates are delayed.
Peter King in a composite city model if each major and minor centre is well connected with PT and cycle-ways then in a family four. Say one partner uses a car. Another takes PT for either a local or cross city trip because the family chose the house location to fit this plan. One child uses safe cycle-ways to get to high school, university or polytechnic. The other child walks to school in a pedestrian friendly neighbourhood. So it is not a choice of cars or PT it is about improving all the transport systems
Compare this with a city that only facilitates the many to many journeys by car. Suddenly one journey becomes four. The family needs two cars. Sections and cities need to be bigger to accommodate all these cars. The roads are busier and less safe for walkers and cyclists. Distances are further.
Maybe some people prefer the second type of city but it seems the majority of kiwis prefer the first. Bertaud in his talks indicated he thought city density in some ways represented a cultural choice. I think kiwis are indicating they prefer a more European type density than a US style one.
Both types of cities can be provided with affordable housing as discussed in the comment section here http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2014/10/28/why-demographia-is-fundamentally-wrong/ but the methods of achieving that are slightly different.
+100 – some great points in there Brendan.
Important to emphasise that no-one is saying cars won’t be needed by the majority of Auckland residents. But there is a big gap between our current auto dependent city – where most of my neighbours NEVER leave the boundary of their property except in a car and have one car per adult – and some theoretical utopia where no-one needs a car.
In between there is a whole range of solutions and demographics that lessen (not eliminate) the circumstances where a car is a necessity. Let’s always keep in mind that the Netherlands has one of the highest car ownership rates in Europe – actually higher than the much more auto dependent UK.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_per_capita
However, the cars are used for trips where the car is the BEST (not only) option. Like driving long distances between cities. Despite having the highest cycling rates in the world – still only 10% of kms are done by bicycle because they are better suited to short trips (<7kms) – which NZers make just as many of as Dutch, only the mode of transport differs:
http://caa.org.nz/general-news/reaching-out-cycling-and-public-transport/
Hmm.
Doesn’t “The move to a greater spread of Mixed-Use suburbs with working and dwelling within easy and pleasant reach” directly contradict the value of (for example)
http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2014/07/30/guide-to-economic-evaluation-part-3-what-is-agglomeration/
“In 2006, the Auckland urban area was 36% more productive than the rest of the country”
and
“After adjusting for industry composition, the city centre was 72% more productive than the rest of the country”
Roger yes I know what you mean, but its a question of scale. I’m not proposing, unlike the city-loathing dispersalists, or the curious uber-planners who propose daftnesses like ‘a second CBD’ that there is no one centre. That high value centre of agglomeration that we do already have. But that it is surrounded by and attended to, if so like, many smaller centres that have there own mini agglomeration effects working. Efficiencies work at different scales. Anyway this is how most cities are shaped and so long as the access between these centres is really good and efficient they should have their own character and value and not subtract from the productivity of the main heart of econonmic activity.
I don’t think the 2% number is quite right. A survey in 2012 had private vehicle mode share at 13% = https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/about/the-university/how-university-works/sustainability-and-environment/se-whats-new_1/se-whats-new-2012/2012/05/29/A-snapshot-into-our-travel-behaviour.html
which I’m guessing includes passengers/car pooling.
Or another study: http://www.academia.edu/789510/Travel_Behaviour_of_Tertiary_Education_Students_A_Survey_of_Students_of_The_University_of_Auckland Which has students in a single occupant car at 8%.
Thanks! Good study, 8% it is then. Still tiny. Walking is very important too, those much decried micro-apartments do a great job in offering proximity for students and taking pressure off all forms of powered transport.
It is also interesting if you compare the survey to Vic (http://www.victoria.ac.nz/campusservices/docs/vic-uni-travel-plan-scope.pdf) and UC (http://www.sustain.canterbury.ac.nz/documents/2012_UC_Travel_Survey_Results_Final_updated_2014.pdf).
Of the three UoA has the lowest active mode share at only 18% (15% walking 3% cycling). Fewer students prefer or can afford to live in walking distance. Another big factor in this is that a large number of students at UoA live with their parents whereas with other Universities, a larger percentage of students live in a dormitory or flat.
UC with it’s suburban location and neighborhood parking has a PV share of over 40%, it also has the highest active mode share of ~45% (26% walking and 19% cycling).
Vic is similar to Auckland yet has a greater walking mode share with less students taking public transport (again probably related to students in halls of residence).
Worth considering the actual numbers, because ‘only’ 18% of the University of Auckland student roll is still some 6,000 people. That is a lot to have living within walking distance by any measure. However I wonder if it is simply that the UofA has such fantastic (relatively speaking) bus service that there isn’t as much pressure to deliver on/near campus housing. Back in my day those that didn’t live at home with the olds lived in Grey Lynn-Kingsland-Balmoral etc, only fifteen minutes bus away. The only people who lived in the halls or nearby were international students and first years from down country.
thanks. Interesting to see the cause of morning peak hour traffic is (i) people going to work (work) (ii) parents dropping off their kids at school (edu).
explains why there is a drop off in traffic when the school holidays are on
cheers
Owen thanks too to all those tertiary students on PT, eh?
And thats why the old ARC estimated 40% of the morning AM peak traffic was educational related – the above graph shows that clearly.
The key reason why it drops in school holidays no need to conjoin the trip to work with the trips to school (or uni).
So not only does the “edu” portion drop, its also allows the “work” portion to spread out over more of the AM peak time than just the 8am to 9am timeslot.
[and likely most of the AM peak for schools is concentrated in a single half hour of the AM peak (either from 8:00 to 8:330 or from 8:15 to 8:45), so the edu related spike is even more intense than it first looks].
Also one factor is a large proportion of the working population are effectively forced to take their own leave during the school holidays too, to either care for or holiday with their children. So effectively heaps of people don’t go to work for those six weeks of school holiday across the year, while very few take holidays in between.
Great report Patrick and I think a balanced sensible vision of how Auckland and I hope other cities like Christchurch will develop. I particularly like the idea of mobility being about access not speed and I hope this concept becomes a widespread measure. With todays technology -GPS and massive data crunching computers I would think it is possible to give real life modelling for how effective public and private transport systems work together to provide the best access for work and educational premises. Of course the other measure that Bertaud was keen on targeting was housing affordability. Unlike the poor betrayal on the recent Campbell Live show Bertaud really does care about planning. Believing in planning for objective targets like mobility/access and affordability not subjective mission creep stuff such as ‘liveability’.
Was “Betrayal” deliberate? Or did you mean “Portrayal”?
It was a typo. But a funny one ; )
Here is a video link for Alain Bertaud’s recent NZ talks.
If I didn’t work at home I would seriously consider renting an apartment in the CBD and owning a house at a beach somewhere well away from Auckland for the weekends. That way you would get proximity to work, amenity when you can actually use it and let some other sap worry about body corporate BS.
actually I’d probably flip that equation around: Look to own the apartment in the city (less capital, more certainty) and then rent a different beach/holiday places every weekend. With things like airbnb you can find very affordable holiday spots so, so easily.
“There is just no way around it; the further out you live the longer, on average, your work journey will be”
Putting aside the fact there are people in outer suburbs with shorter commute than someone living in say, the CBD, if this is what people choose, because they prefer the outer suburb lifestyle, then so be it. In fact it just goes to show how highly they value such location, that they are willing to commute more.
This blog likes to point out longer commute times, but always seems to avoid the fact that it’s by choice. Each and every Aucklander is responsible for their choice of home and work, and how they inter-relate.
Maybe people chose to live further out for lifestyle reasons. How many and the cost of that commute versus the choices available to them is what I think the question this post was posing.
I have friends who have chosen to buy land and build at Karaka, because they can afford to and it meets their other decision criteria. One commutes a short distance, the other travels longer (to Greenlane) daily. Would they have liked to buy elsewhere, probably, but availability will have had a role in their decision making process.
So if all we are producing is more of the same, whether it is transport options or housing options, the decisions may not be what we’d choose in other scenarios.
My theory is that people make the best decision they can with the data they have available, given their inherent bias. Part of the debate on this blog is to challenge the bias and point out other ways of solving the underlying issue.
“because they prefer the outer suburb lifestyle”
Given that on average the public are willing to pay twice as much to live on similar properties inPonsonby compared to say Torbay, we can state that on average more kiwis prefer the inner urban lifestyle than we can currently accomodate there.
If it were that simple Geoff, you’d actually be right. But it’s not.
The choices we make are not only a function of what people want, but also the relative prices of the options they are presented to them. In Auckland public policy has for many decades sought to:
1. Subsidise far-flung urban development (through charging extraordinary rates on central locations that are used to fund suburban activities); and
2. Made it easier to live a long way away by subsiding car-based mobility through ultra-cheap travel on relatively expensive highways; and
3. Thwarted/stymied more intensive urban development in central locations and required vast over-supply of car-parking to benefit suburbanites.
In an alternative future characterised by unfettered choice, you’d see many more people living much closer to the city centre than you do now. And far fewer people driving.