I have just returned from Seatlle which has a major motorway expansion programme underway and it runs through six cities and one of those cities was formed to deal with its impact. It is progressing rapidly and will soon be complete. This is a local highway and must be approved by each city. They started planning seven years ago and it is nearly complete.

There is a parallel highway running through downtown Seattle which is the responsibility of the State and the FEds and the governors office is in charge. They started planning nine years ago and work has not even begun. The reason it that the central decision making is driven by politics and earmarking and is caught up in all the pro transit stuff and “no more roads” campaigns.

The local highway (a bigger project) has a different means of operation. The planning manager is local and has a staff of 24 to plan all these highways for the state of Washington. 24 not 2,400!
Their management diagram put the public at the top of the tree and the transport spending must serve the public – not pressure groups.
They also agreed in advance that the consensus would be driven by the data.
The models showed that rail would do nothing to solve the congestion problem –it would take most of its passengers from buses not from cars. Rail would cost over $85 for each additional passenger mile.
The expanded road programme which would solve congestion and serve for a further twenty years cost just over $10 per additional passenger mile.

The data won the day.

Sure, there will be KiwiRail, NZTA and the new Regional Transport Agency managing transport across the whole region. But three is still way better than….. oh god I don’t even want to try to count how many we have now. KiwiRail, Ontrack, ARTA, one for each district/city council, one for the ARC (separate but kind of linked to ARTA). What’s that… 11?

That is hilarious in itself, and quite wrong to suggest the mega council will mean one transport authority, or any substantive change, it wont because it means neither of those things.

1) There is NOT going to be one regional transport agency, there will be three. The NZTA will still look after state highways, and Ontrack the rail network. Clearly the government doesn’t trust a single Auckland local authority to look after nationally owned strategic corridors competently! I don’t blame it, neither would I. Much like the UK government didn’t trust Transport for London to look after motorways in London.

2) There is currently one entity responsible for public transport and for putting together a single bid for local roads in Auckland – ARTA. I should know since I helped set the damned thing up. ARTA contracts all public transport, and was meant to ensure local road funding bids to NZTA were integrated. However ARTA has little interest in roads, because the ARC is so focused on public transport. The new mega council will face the same pressure. It is far more interesting playing with trains rather than minor projects on the disparate Auckland local road network.

So there will be little substantive change. The new ARTA will blame central government for not giving it money for pet public transport projects, it wont pursue more new local road projects (desperately needed) because it points the blame for congestion on the state highway network (which works better than most local arterials), and it wont dare suggest road pricing to replace rates funding for roads because of the politics around it.

Roads have never been competently managed by local government in Auckland, there is no reason to believe that will change. The clearest evidence is the debacle over the Waterview section of SH20. The only reason this is being debated is because previous Auckland councils removed the land designation for the motorway beyond the Mt Roskill section currently being built – they gave it up in 1974 so the potential routes got built on. How stupid was that in planning? Retaining a protected route from Manukau to Mt Roskill at a dead end. Another example is the cheap and nasty south east Arterial that links Penrose to the Pakuranga motorway bridge, substandard with traffic lights on an otherwise motorway type road – an Auckland City Council special built in the 1980s.

Far better to take all but residential cul-de-sacs and access streets into a new SOE type Auckland Roads company that has as its objective access and mobility, which seeks to maintain and develop the network.

I always thought political debate was a “good thing”?

Although, in saying that, we’d almost have integrated ticketing being rolled out now if the government hadn’t squashed it a month or so back. I shall go back to bashing my head against a brick wall whilst I wait for integrated ticketing.

I see no evidence for that statement. There have been numerous specialist umbrella bodies devoted to Auckland’s roading and transport management and there is no rational reason to believe that a bunch of newly-elected super city prima donnas will do anything but further muddy the waters.

Give us an objective test so that we can judge in two year’s time whether this change has succeeded or failed.

Go Banksie!!

http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/content/mad-mayor-goes-wild-waitakere

Harvey wrote a letter to the Herald describing the Auckland Regional Council as “dorking democracy”.

Mind you, Harvey is the most long serving politician in the region, so that counts as some “elder statesman” gravitas on local government I guess.