As part of the Long Term Plan the council received thousands of submissions however on the topic of transport, to ensure they also had a representative sample of the views of all Aucklanders – not just those interested enough to make a submission they conducted a phone survey. The survey canvassed the views of 5,022 people and was carried out by Colmar Brunton with the entire process was peer reviewed by the University of Auckland. Yesterday they released the results of that research. Overall they are interesting but I think they have some major flaws.
The survey had three main aims, to measure:
- Aucklanders’ support for increased investment in the Auckland Plan transport network (APTN)
- Which of the two proposed funding options Aucklanders prefer
- How perceptions differ by travel behaviour, local board, and key demographic groups
Overall results for the preferred transport plan and how to fund it are below.
Just over half of people preferred the Auckland Plan Transport Network which is about building everything regardless of whether it helps improve the transport situation or not. As you can also see support for that plan increases with income so those who earn the most want the most spent.
Now it’s not surprising that this is the result when the council only presented such binary options to people. Below is what the participants were asked.
“Auckland’s population growth means Auckland’s transport issues will get worse over time. There are two options to address this: a basic transport network and a more comprehensive transport network. I’ll explain each and then ask which one you support.
The basic transport network covers the completion of current projects, some priority new projects such as the City Rail Link, and also spending to maintain current roads and the current public transport network.
The more comprehensive transport network also includes the City Rail Link and everything else in the basic network, with many projects being completed earlier, plus a range of new projects. These include new roads, rail, ferries, busways, ‘park and rides’, and cycleways, as well as school and community travel plans and safety programmes.
Over the next 10 years, the comprehensive network will cost around $300 million more than the basic network each year. The additional funding needed each year would either come from a motorway user charge, or from higher fuel tax and annual rates increases.
So, in summary, the basic network will result in greater traffic congestion than the more comprehensive network, but will cost less. On the other hand, the more comprehensive network will result in less traffic congestion than the basic network, more public transport options, and greater economic benefits, but it will cost more.
Do you support the basic transport network or the more comprehensive transport network?”
While I don’t expect the council to consult on the likes of Generation Zero’s Essential Transport Budget, there’s no indication that effectively the council are only presenting the extreme ends of the spectrum. I think it’s inevitable that a more balanced middle ground will have to be found and as we learnt recently, it’s not just us that think that with both the AA and the NZCID also saying the same thing (although without specifying what exact projects they prefer).
When it comes to funding a similar percentage of respondents preferred the extra funding needed to come from motorway tolls and as you’d expect the more people used the motorway the less keen on this option they were.
The issue I have with the funding option is that I suspect most people vote for it thinking that they’ll be able to minimise their costs either though shifting their travel time (a good thing) or more likely finding alternative routes which will inevitably mean clogging up local roads and hampering any effort to make them better for active modes, PT and local connections.
The report breaks each of these results down by a number of measures and while there are some differences in the numbers across the different measures the overall trend is similar to the results above.
The final decision on what transport plan will be chosen and how the council would prefer to fund it won’t be decided by councillors till next month. However if they do go for an option that requires more funding they will have to go to the government who have so far not been keen on the idea. Today Transport Minister Simon Bridges is reaffirming that scepticism. He too seems to share the belief that the plans presented aren’t effective enough – something he’s said to us too.
Mr Bridges said, the question of funding tools did not arise until there was an effective transport programme.
Perhaps it’s time the council presented a middle ground version that delivers the benefits in the area’s Aucklanders say they want focus on i.e. PT and Active modes.
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‘Mr Bridges said, the question of funding tools did not arise until there was an effective transport programme.’
The Minister might well say that but his government has no record of an ‘effective transport programme’ for Auckland just as they have no record of an effective housing programme. A real willing attempt to help AC and AT deliver their goals would be actual partnership from central government.
The time to change to a policy of partnership is now.
yes, on the regional housing front all this Government has done recently is liken intensification to ebola and then walked away.
I will post this again as a refresher on what the Essentials Transport Budget can possibly face in the Budget Committee (where the Long Term Plan will be thrashed out):
Just a general observations from the Southern Auckland Long Term Plan Have Your Say Sessions I have picked up thus far.
It was around transport and the Development Auckland CCO.
When I mentioned the Gen0/Transport Blog Essentials Transport Budget, as I noted in my earlier comment it was received coolishly by the two Councillors and the Deputy Mayor present (it was not dismissed out of hand so let me be extremely clear there). So I got Franklin Ward Councillor Cashmore, and our Deputy Mayor to flesh their side of the argument out. Personally I knew where this was going but I was going to see if they could articulate their point to which they did.
Cr Cashmore I have respect for after he articulated a point about heavy industry last year when no other Councillor apart from Penrose could. But what was being articulated last night was that the Essentials Transport Budget (note from my end that the BTN and APTN is not any better) has a hole in it and that hole is in Southern Auckland. Now don’t shoot me here I am just reporting back a critique (I gave one back as well). Southern Auckland is tipped for large if not the largest amount of both residential and employment growth – even more so than the City Centre itself. Reason? The South houses four of the five Heavy Industrial Complexes and those complexes are experiencing both growth and are nearly out of land until Drury South and later Glenbrook come on stream. Coupled with the South housing 38% of the population of Auckland and all things considered with NIMBYism on the Isthmus growing to 45% by the end of the Auckland Plan you hit an acute situation at hand.
YES the South will still commute to the City Centre but as I just pinged Simon Wilson from Metro Magazine on:
Metro @MetroMagNZ
“It’s easier for people in the inner city to escape to the country than for people who live on outskirts to drag themselves into the centre”
Ben Ross @BenRoss_AKL
@MetroMagNZ if they “want” to go to the Centre
MoTransport report says the South “doesnt”
That Ministry of Transport report out last year strongly suggested Southern Auckland commutes within herself primarily and looking at future trends will continue to do so.
That report which I commented on in specific to the South can be seen here and here:
http://voakl.net/2014/08/21/aucklands-commuting-journeys-a-series-major-non-city-centre-employment-centres-overview/
http://voakl.net/2014/09/08/aucklands-commuting-journeys-a-series-concluding-remarks/
Now before Patrick pipes up everyone in that Have Your Say Session is aware of students and off peak leisure trips using the networks to go north from the South. That was beside the point. The point being and as Cashmore articulated and the session agreed with last night is that the South is growing and set to grow faster in housing and jobs (from her Industry). The South commutes within herself for the most part.
Transport investment coupled with integrated land use planning needs to realise this and this is where East West linking across the South, links like the Manukau South Link to be in position (Pasifika will prove that particular point this weekend), three new stations between Papakura and Pukekohe being needed all come into play.
NOW, whether the Council and Auckland Transport actually follow through and do the above is yet to be seen. However the rumblings coming from the Southern Councillors and with the Deputy Mayor nodding realise at the absolute minimum there is a massive hole in planning down here and it needs to be rectified and budgeted for soon.
http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2015/03/10/the-consultation-problem-who-submits-on-the-plan/
[Speaking of which with that link you guys still have not quite fulfilled what you said you would do]
Source and full wider post: http://voakl.net/2015/03/12/the-auckland-plan-and-the-sydney-plan-3-the-reality-facing-auckland-council/
Now irony would have it this ties into the Mill Road Corridor debate just kicking off as well. It is in the APTN as a gold plated solution the South does not want. It wants an upgrade sure but not at that scale. Wider factors also in play as well and something I will comment on in time at Talking Auckland
I’m sure Mr Bridges will soon be announcing an “effective transport programme” for Auckland, which will see every bridge in the region doubled in size. New bridges across the Waitemata and Manukau harbours will also be announced, as well as a new hop-scotch bridge stepping its way from Bucklands beach to Waiheke and onto the Coromandel Peninsula. Future extensions to Great Barrier Island to improve access for mining trucks are also being considered, but will only be announced in the event of a by-election.
Funding for Bridge’s bridge programme will come from public servant pixies who busily printing money at the bottom of the transport garden. This garden is apparently located close to Wellington’s Basin Reserve.
I am amazed at the negativity towards the democratically elected government we have. If everything National does is so darn evil by your and other’s views here then why are they running the country? They were voted in, that’s why. If people aren’t happy there’s an election coming up, so vote them out. In the mean time their and their representatives views are just as valid as yours, or perhaps more so as they were voted in.
National won on a lack of credible opposition. Oh, and running a smear campaign through paid off media.
No. You do not understand how democracy works. The public’s role doesn’t end at the ballot box. Democracy requires the continued involvement of civil society at all levels of government and at all times. Just because one side or the other has a majority in the house absolutely does not absolve them from criticism or encouragement. And which ever side is in power will be the ones that get the most attention because they are the ones that can do things or are or aren’t doing things that people like or don’t like.
I don’t care which colour is on the rosette of the any politician you does what I believe is the best thing, in this context, for Auckland, I will encourage them, and visa-versa. We meet politicians from all parties to encourage them to adopt better policies armed with all the evidence and information available. Criticism of poor actions, or non-action, is an important part of this process.
Matt and I have never been member of any political Party. I don’t care for club memberships and agreeing or disagreeing with policies just because one side or another proposes it.
I am optimistic that the current Minister is open minded and there is every chance that government policy with evolve into a more sophisticated one for our cities under him.
Well said.
Ricardo: I understand where you’re coming from. What you’re seeing here in many comments is ongoing frustration from those who see people voting for National without understanding what the consequences of that vote will mean. It’s like being in a lifeboat with three oars and two of them are busily propelling us along. Then some one gets a bright idea and says if we drill a hole in the bottom of the boat we can put the 3rd oar through it and go even faster. Sounds good. We take a vote and 47% vote for it.
Facepalm…..
That’s what you’re seeing here.
Has anyone done an analysis of which plan would reduce energy needs into the 21 century, one thing for sure, we are not at a time in history we can depend on ever increasing fuel supplies. cheap easy oil peaked in 2005 we are not able to grow if we waste energy in cars that can be put to better use in production. steel rails are always more energy efficient and less polluting than tarmac.
Manchester has 1,000,000 more population than Auckland on a tenth of the area, sprawl won’t work long term.
“The great burning” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YYAtSs8W5s we need to go back to the bike and dump the car, and if people choose a life stile that depends on the car more fool them, the rest of us should not have to help fund it.
Insanely the energetic dependency of various urban forms is never discussed. This is largely because the government’s attitude to energy supply and Climate Change is to ignore them as issues. This seems to set the tone. And it is a tragedy. We are long overdue a real discussion about the double down on driving and sprawl which is clearly unsustainable.
“Below is what the participants were asked….”
Yes, but that was just one of the many questions they asked. A Facebook friend was phoned for this survey and he had the presence of mind to record it and post it on FB. It was awful [and awfully funny]. Try reading that question down the phone to someone – it’s a minute of “blah blah blah” finishing with “Do you support the basic transport network or the more comprehensive transport network?”. I put it to you that most people will pick ‘comprehensive’ over ‘basic’, just as they will pick ‘more playgrounds’ over ‘no new playgrounds’.
And then there were a whole bunch more questions, all long winded and confusing. It sounded to me like they just read out the online survey and recorded the results. As an online survey the questions were fine – you could read slowly, comprehend the question, re-read it if you didn’t, and answer accordingly. But when you’ve got someone reading the question like an automaton down the phone and then asking for answer you tend to just say ‘yes’ and when asked what answer you said yes to you say ‘the first one’. This is well known in the polling industry and is used to achieve a desired outcome if one so wishes.
Which is not what I’m suggesting here, I’m just agreeing with you that survey was flawed. Deeply flawed.
IMO the funding should be by way of a petrol levy. Like GST it’s a catch all that few can avoid. To me it seems the best ‘user pays’ method to fund PT [putting aside the obvious: if you’re driving you’re not using PT].
User pays? Following your logic PT tickets should be increased, not fuel taxes. That is what user pays means.
Except that driving has had sixty ears of subsidies already……
Yes, but if you want people to catch PT they won’t do so if it costs them more than double what they pay now for a ticket. The funding model we use now for PT is to take around 50% of council residential rates and use that to subsidise PT. If it’s a given that we are going further ‘levy’ Aucklanders for an upgrade of PT then I would rather a fuel tax that ‘catches’ almost everyone, than an increase on those who happen to own a house or use the motorway.
Ricardo- PT tickets just went up 25%…
So anyone who mentioned a CFN option gets lumped in with the 12% of nutters who didn’t buy either of the two offered.
Interesting to see a breakdown of the 12%…
EDIT- should be after Sacha’s bit
User pays would mean that fuel taxes are increased to pay for all the maintenance of local roads which is 90% caused by private cars and trucks.
In cities like Auckland the lion share of this comes from rates and general taxation. The NLTF is tapped out to pay for all the motorways.
> Following your logic PT tickets should be increased
Existing PT users don’t get a benefit from capital spending that’s designed to increase PT capacity. The “users” in the user-pays sense are the people who are able to start catching PT once the projects are built. That is – people who are currently driving.
The primary beneficiaries of the boom in Transit use are drivers. So many people taking their cars off the roads and out of their way so they can drive at anytime with less delay, and park more easily and cheaply.
The decongestion benefits especially of the Rapid Transit Network (because it is on its own right of way) for drivers are enormous.
The survey was horribly flawed in that people were asked to choose one of two equally poor funding choices. There was a third option that AT cunningly chose to leave out – and that was that Council reappraise and reprioritize ALL expenditure within current budgets and then see what is or is not affordable. The funding ‘choices’ presented were Hobson choices – no choice really at all. A very poor and underhand way to run a survey of public opinion and Colmar Brunton should have responsibly challenged the brief. And to now quote the ‘results’ as somehow supporting one or other of the two ‘options’ is frankly dishonest and deceitful.
That was the basic network no?
“Colmar Brunton should have responsibly challenged the brief”
Yeah, and those Big International Bank auditors shouldn’t have signed off on the accounts prior to the GFC.
Big Client = Big Billings = Don’t Rock The Boat
Governments and political parties of all persuasions have used loaded surveys to back their plans since forever. Ditto for special interest groups turning out to stack public meetings. It’s the way of the world.
This council will also use Facebook ‘likes’ if it suits their purposes for validating what they want to do.
Council doesn’t waste vast sums of money. By any objective assessment, that’s a myth. Much is made of some thousands here or there but the reality is that even if none of that high profile (very subjectively assessed) ‘waste’ was spent rates wouldn’t change by more then $10 / year.
The Council doesn’t waste mountains of money. Go look at the accounts. See for yourself. Any strong opinion should be firmly grounded in real measures to be worth anything.
This is an interesting part of the question on basic vs comprehensive transport package (this is part of the question in the survey):
“So, in summary, the basic network will result in greater traffic congestion than the more comprehensive network, but
will cost less. On the other hand, the more comprehensive network will result in less traffic congestion than the basic
network, more public transport options, and greater economic benefits, but it will cost more.”
They are claiming one has greater economic benefits than the other. Is this justified? i.e. Do we know what the net benefits of each option really are? If not this is pretty misleading. If, on the other hand, they are talking about gross economic benefits (as one might read it), that is not even a rational concept I would have thought.
Here another interesting one (although I am being slight factious here):
“Option 1 is a motorway user charge of around $2 each time people enter Auckland’s motorway system. The charge
might vary by time of day, and trips at night would be free.”
So before sunrise after sunset it is free? Does that include the evening peak in the middle of winter?
“Night” is generally interpreted by the public as being “after the evening rush hour”.
So the answer is no, the evening rush hour is not free in Winter.
Night or nighttime is the period of time between the sunset and the sunrise when the Sun is below the horizon. This occurs after dusk. The opposite of night is day (or “daytime” to distinguish it from “day” as used for a 24-hour period). The start and end points of time of a night vary based on factors such as season, latitude, longitude and timezone.
The truth is that their ‘advanced’ network will result in the same level of congestion we have today, and the ‘basic’ network will produce even more of it.
Neither of them reduces congestion, unlike the option they never asked people about.
I hope they are aware that telephone surveys are not necessarily representative – younger people are less likely to have landlines etc.
Does the report of the survey include comment on how they ensured a representative sample or, if not, how that affects the robustness of the results?
The Council’s survey was a farce as it generally required you to choose from one of two options. I wasn’t able to say that I think that more of the funding for PT should come from fares or that if we are to tax vehicle usage it should be using smart tech so we tax them by distance, place and time not just the 19th century ideas of petrol tax or motorway tolls. I have fuel efficient vehicles and use the motorways very little so would largely escape both but that is hardly ‘fair’. What about encouraging Aucklanders to not go to the CBD? Wouldn’t it save a lot more if people lived and worked locally? I live and work centrally but what about all the people who live and work anywhere but centrally? Why in an era with fast reliable communications do companies build and occupy ivory towers in the city? If they really thought about it wouldn’t Fonterra be better south of the airport close to transport links and its owners rather than in Wynyard Quarter? The big accounting and law firms follow the crowd of companies but do the banks, insurance companies etc all really need to be in the CBD so they can talk to each other? They all used to feel the need to be in central Wellington close to government but have weaned themselves off that. Maybe we should tax people entering the CBD rather than vehicles to try and redirect the people somewhere else.
PT fares are increasingly covering more of PT costs and will continue to do so with the improvements underway/planned such as electrification, new network, PTOM etc. What’s more the best way to get cost recovery higher is to invest in the system. Investing in infrastructure can make existing operations more efficient while at the same time making services more desirable and therefore increasing revenue.
It’s all very well saying to live and work locally but that depends on how many and what jobs are local. Also seeing as in many families both adults are working it’s unlikely they will both be able to find work locally.
Why do companies locate in the city when there are communications to allow remote working? Simple, workers tend to be more productive and more imaginative when working in collaboration. See Stu’s recent post about Millwater talking about knowledge spillover etc.
http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2015/04/16/mill-road-economic-evaluation/
Taxing people just to enter the CBD is likely to lead to the CBD under performing and that’s bad for the entire region.
The centre of the city is also the place that is the shortest distance to everywhere else in the wider city. It is literally the centre of the circle. So while a business in Albany, say, is much closer for staff and customers on the Shore it is much further for others. The City Centre remains a preference globally for non- local business for this simple geometric fact.
It means they are ,ore available to a wider pool of talent from people living in the entire city.
We have had decades and billions spent in an attempt to disperse the dominance of the centre away. It hasnt worked, and furthermore is it is not desirable from an economic performance perspective. Strong centre: more productive city.