Economists who study firm performance or countries’ economic development know that the best way to get ahead is often to adapt or adopt proven ideas from elsewhere. Technology transfer has always been a crucial part of innovation.
What’s true for firms is also true for cities. Cities in New Zealand can and should benefit from adopting proven ideas from all around the world. There are a lot of things that we could easily do that would make us much happier and wealthier, including:
- Investing in the City Rail Link to provide metro-style train frequencies throughout much of Auckland
- Building more rapid transit to underserved areas such as northwest and southeast Auckland – busways are a proven and cost-effective solution for congestion-free mobility
- Reclaiming some of our overbuilt road corridors for the movement and use of more people – which means painting more bus lanes, putting in protected cycle lanes everywhere, and fixing our many hazardous and unwalkable intersections.
Fortunately, the evidence shows that we can adopt good urban ideas when we put our minds to it. In a post last December, I reviewed some of the progress that we’ve recently made in public transport network design and delivery in NZ cities. I found, much to my surprise, that Auckland and other big cities are swiftly progressing towards international best practice.
Time for an anecdote: I had a couple of American friends staying with me over the holidays. On their first day here, I got them a pair of HOP cards and explained how to get to the city centre and a couple of other destinations on the Mount Eden bus route and the Outer Link. With the aid of Google Maps, it was easy for them to travel to all sorts of places via PT – city centre, War Memorial Museum, Devonport, Balmoral for dumplings, even Takapuna for dinner one night. After a few days, they were praising the usefulness of Auckland’s PT system. That’s real progress.
So: Are there any other innovative policies that we should also be adopting?
A recent London School of Economics report entitled “Accessibility in Cities: Transport and Urban Form” (pdf) highlights the rapid growth of sustainable transport systems in recent decades. It finds that “several sustainable mobility concepts may be at a tipping point globally, as more and more cities are adopting these solutions to enhance their efficiency, competitiveness, social equity and quality of life.”
The following graph, from page 30 of the report, illustrates the rise of innovative new transport policies throughout the world:
It displays several important trends that New Zealand cities need to partake in:
- First, as I observed when looking at historical changes in Kiwis’ consumption of transport goods and services, vehicle technologies have not changed very much. We still get around on foot or on rubber or steel wheels, powered by fossil fuels, electricity, or the food we eat. We cannot expect that to change.
- Second, urban passenger rail systems continue to be useful 150 years after they were introduced in London. Cities are still building metro systems for a good reason: they are the most space-efficient way to move lots of people. However, bus rapid transit (BRT), which was pioneered in Brazil in the 1970s, is now almost as popular, due to both its cost-effectiveness and the fact that it can “address the crucial challenge of lock-in presented by urban motorways by converting them to high capacity public transport corridors”.
- Third, while vehicle technologies haven’t changed, the way we interact with them is changing. In particular, smart cards for paying PT fares and PT web apps are making integrated PT networks much more legible and usable – as my American friends found when visiting Auckland. These innovations will drive growth in PT use, as they open up PT networks for more users and for many more types of trips.
- Fourth, innovations in street design recognise the need to put pedestrians, not cars, first. This is crucial for a number of reasons. By building roads that are inhospitable to walking or cycling, we have created an entirely preventable public health crisis – diabetes, heart disease, obesity, etc. By failing to recognise that people, not cars, buy things, work, and develop and exchange ideas, we have undermined our economic performance. That’s one of the reason that complete streets and car-free zones are two of the most popular policies on the list.
Lastly, the LSE report finds that policy changes, not new technologies, are key to developing efficient and productive urban transport systems. For one thing, the availability of new technology does not guarantee consumer uptake – as I found when looking at the slow rate at which people are buying hybrid and electric cars.
By contrast, local and central governments can achieve change much more rapidly by implementing policies or making investments that have been successful elsewhere. This can clearly be seen in the rapid pace at which cities have bought into many sustainable transport innovations. If our transport policies are going to meet our need for better, more prosperous cities, they must be outward-looking and forward-looking. We can’t just double down on 1950s-era ideas that have failed us time and time again.
Do you think that New Zealand can raise the pace at which it adopts good ideas?
Processing...
Sure thing. New Zealand used to be well known as an early adapter. If anywhere can, we can.
Only problem is you guys don’t use the innovation which has been developed he in NZ .Take a look at Rockbind it found the faults in systems used from overseas and went about sorting them and we are just pushed away as a joke sad kiwis do this
Do you think that New Zealand can raise the pace at which it adopts good ideas?
Yes we can
Good find Peter, fascinating chart…. Can’t see the jetpack or flying car? It clearly is best to base policy on real technology rather than technologism.
Operating a vehicle in three dimensions is vastly riskier and more difficult than in two dimensions. I’m sure, though that google is working on the pilotless plane.
Excellent post Peter. Hard to argue about any of it. I think we can and should adapt faster for our own sake. Apart from the obvious investment in CRL, Skypath ,we need to change the layout of our arterial roads super fast. And we could with roadmarking and then adding physical separation for cycles. Paint the dream with the width we have don’t build around the elephant in the room, excessive car mode to choking point. Get the buses under flexible central control so you can make changes and take full advantage of a priority network at least to Class B standard even if fleet private contracted, not ideal. The part of the network that should be class A add extra buses for a faster frequency.
This is all road maintenance no widening reqd apart from the Class A upgrades on the core network which with AMETI is already happening for South East. For North West don’t believe width an issue or even was before, get some barriers do the interchanges. We need to be bold not phasing in something at a lower rate than car lane addition, let’s go for ‘Full Network Effect’. The sooner we do it the less disruption and less cost and probably less width for the class a network, not to mention removing traffic from the grid, and getting us instantly up to where we should be.
It’s very probably going to need a change of government, but yes, I do believe we could have that kind of radical change (or a ramping up in applying innovations from elsewhere) without an emergency scenario such as the 1970s oil shocks.
Good post.
This American ex-pat has always thought that Auckland’s public transit system was pretty good, but the systems I used most in the US were not good at all. And highway congestion here is no big deal compared to a lot of cities.
It also seems like there are more forward-thinking people like the contributors to this blog than in the typical American city, and perhaps listened to better.
Can you say more about those dumplings?
Having grown up partly in the Californian suburbs, I definitely agree that NZ’s much better off than many American places. The government’s quite a bit more well-run down here…
Balmoral is, as you probably know, dumpling nirvana. A lot of people espouse Barilla dumplings, but I think their neighbour Bun Hut is tastier.
Great post Mr Nunns. And I’m glad that you’re talking about NZ as a whole rather than just Auckland; there’s plenty of potential for our other cities to make progress too.
I suspect we’ll be pretty chuffed looking back in another decade to see just how revolutionary the effects will be of the projects currently gathering momentum – new network, new equipment, integrated fares, escalating priority for buses and bikes; and of course the granddaddy of them all – CRL. The cumulative effect will change not only the way Aucklanders get around but the way they see themselves and the city: no longer an overgrown featureless suburban sprawl but an integrated and connected and beautiful city, unique with its harbours, maunga, forested ranges; and in its demographic/ethnic composition.
Pity about Tauranga though.