PT-washing: not just an Auckland disease
Reading through NZTA’s completely mental motorway plans the other day got me thinking about a phrase that often comes to mind when dealing with NZTA: and that is “Public Transport-wash”, or PT-wash. It’s a phrase that I think I came up with last year – playing off the term “greenwash” – to describe the process by which NZTA (or other agencies) emphasises the minuscule public transport aspects of a largely roading project, or a transport policy document, in order for it to gain wider support.…
5 Comments NZTA finally speaking some sense
There’s an interesting NZTA board paper passed on to me by Jon C of AKT, which discusses NZTA’s role in funding public transport – most particularly their role in helping to fund rail projects. This board paper came about as part of a solution to the $30 million rail funding gap that Steven Joyce has created.…
The next Government Policy Statement
The Government Policy Statement (GPS) for transport is a very important high-level document outlining what the government wants to achieve from investment in the transport network over the next three years. The current GPS was released in May 2009 – and unfortunately was a document stuck in the 1960s when it came to much of its thinking about transport investment.…
Exploring the mystery $300 million
I noted in a post last week the weird mysteries in Auckland Council’s draft annual plan when it comes to what they’re going to be spending the transport money on. To refresh memories, here’s a table showing the council’s proposed capital expenditure on transport for the 2011/2012 financial year: The big mystery is the $307 million proposed to be spent on the “road network” in the 2011/2012 financial year.…
Where’s the money going Auckland Council?
An early draft of the 2011/2012 Annual Plan was discussed at last week’s meeting of the Strategy and Finance Committee of Auckland Council. A lot of media focus has gone into the $3.4 million allocated (or maybe not) to the Maori Statutory Board – an interesting debate but not one that’s particularly relevant to this blog.…
PT investment creates more jobs
At a time when unemployment in NZ is stubbornly high (at least compared to levels in recent years) and investment in infrastructure has been touted as a major way of keeping people in work, it might be a useful idea to consider the relative effectiveness of different types of infrastructure investment in generating jobs.…
Why not just buy them a dishwasher?
Most transport projects, particularly when it comes to widening motorways or building new ones, derive the vast majority of their estimated ‘benefits’ from the travel time that they will supposedly generate. These “time savings benefits” form the core of most transport cost-benefit analyses that are undertaken – even for public transport projects, where it would seem the biggest apparent benefits of investing money in public transport is to free up traffic movement on the roads.…
Transport in Auckland: 2011-2016
As I briefly noted in my previous post, I helped make a presentation on behalf of the Campaign for Better Transport at today’s meeting of the Auckland Council Transport Committee. The presentation can be read in its entirety here, and a powerpoint presentation of what I showed the Transport Committee (which is a summary) can be read here.…
$300m on new roads in eight months?
As I noted in my post on the papers from Auckland Transport’s first board meeting, there was included a very basic eight month budget for what that organisation will be doing between now and June 30, 2011. Transport is the biggest item on the spending list for the Auckland Council – as the budget below shows that over $440 million of Auckland Council funding will be required for the activities undertaken by Auckland Transport between November 1 this year and 30 June next year.…
Martin Gummer’s Opinion Piece
Martin Gummer. the former head of transport funding agency Transfund, wrote an excellent opinion piece in today’s Herald on some of the transport decisions being made at the moment. Here are some key segments.
Recent political comment about two big transport proposals – the Puhoi to Wellsford Highway, and the CBD rail loop – are starting to frame them in polarised terms.…
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