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It's failing because it's not being implemented. Auckland's growth strategy was designed in 1999. Based on successful cities like Vancouver: compact and liveable city and town centres, sprawl limited, good passenger transport. It remains a sound strategy, but its implementation is still delayed and frustrated by greedy city councils, voracious developers, endless road-widening for cars, and a reluctant and underpowered Auckland Regional Council.. There's some progress. The Government has been persuaded to support public transport, the growth strategy is now recognised in legislation, and regional planning documents (like the Regional Policy Statement and Transport Strategy) are more binding on City Councils. Things are happening: Queen Street has finally stopped being a motorway for cars - but it's still a long way from being pedestrian friendly or attractive; the New Lynn Transit Oriented Design for that town centre is funded and underway; and Panmure and Glen Innes are town centres on the edge of being redeveloped. But traffic engineers and cars are still king - their needs are the priority. The much vaunted and anticipated "One Plan" is a reluctant, impotent damp squib of a thing. All things to all people - without really being specific about any particular infrastructure project. And no mention of a timetable for rezoning for brown field redevelopment. Very disappointing. Until the property crash, investors were buying up land at the edge of Auckland, anticipating huge windfall profits when the ARC caves in to calls for more greenfield land to be released for urban development. The crash may provide a window of opportunity. Compact development exemplars are needed. The proposed Orakei Point development has potential.. But the present direction of sprawling development won't change unless the ARC get really serious about implementation - which means much more serious engagement with the development industry and its funding institutions; city councils being refused funding applications for road widening projects; and developers not getting resource consent for urban projects in rural land. 30th July 2008.
Afew months ago POAL released a "Future Development of Auckland Ports" document. I have only recently seen it after it was referred to in NZ Herald. Yet ARC's CEO hadn't even seen it as late as last week. Talk about being a law unto itself - POAL I mean. But it's because ARC leadership are letting POAL do its own thing without appropriate governance. And that's not all. ARC's standing decision is to pack Tank Farm land with enough commercial and residential development to earn itself close to $40 million each year in rents and licences. It has charged Sea & City with that responsibility, and has pretty much left it to its own devices - bank-rolled by ARH. (I am informed ARH has paid 7 figures for consultant and legal expert evidence presented at the recent Plan Change hearing for Western Rec.) This ARC decision is absolutely commercial - a million miles from maximising or even optimising public amenity at the waterfront. How many other ARC parks have development on this scale? Unhappily, this ARC decision has not been properly put to the public for its feedback. Most ratepayers have no idea what is proposed because they have not been meaningfully consulted. Decisions like this are autocratic and give local government a bad name. They may even put the council at risk. Still, it's never too late to do the right thing. When Bob Carr, the Premier of NSW, released Sydney's East Darling Harbour waterfront land from port activity, for redevelopment, he required that the whole project be fiscally neutral - in order to maximise public amenity. Check here for detail of NSW's Property Council's submission on this project. 30th July 2008.
Transit has done some good work this year - in concert with ARC, ACC, NSCC and ARTA - on the work to investigate a preferred route, with a view to protecting it. Two main options go under Westhaven, and under Western Reclamation. Options also separate the tunnels needed for public transport - presumed to be rail - and roading. The roading SH option meets SH1 at Victoria Park Bridge and the suggestion is that the tunnel would become the new SH1, while the road over the existing harbour bridge would be relegated in the SH hierarchy. There is some residula doubt in my mind as to whether we should assume rail for this PT corridor - or whether it would make more sense to retain a bus-based infrastructure for North Shore, connecting through Britomart to Newmarket and beyond - running along the soon to be completed CTC (Central Transit Connector). There has been some support expressed for the 2nd HXing to connect with Auckland CBD at or around Mechanics Bay - but this option (protecting that route) would impose enormous constraints on what could or can happen in that area of Auckland CBD. July 30th 2008. I think it's going from strength to strength. In the past few months it has progressed with a new found independence and confidence - more in terms of the legislation - when it comes to public transport. ARTA has engaged very constructively with the tricky AMETI project, but of greater import has been the South-West sector study - basically investigating the PT networks connecting AIAL to Manukau and to Auckland. ARC leadership has been pushing very hard for rail at all costs from Auckland CBD to airport. While this project has a nice public appeal about it - it comes with a big price tag. ARTA has managed the politics nicely to recommend a PT/rail loop including AIAL and Manukau CBD - running on through to Panmure in the longer term. ARTA is to be congratulated on biting off that particular issue like that, and also to underline that airport rail cannot happen until the CBD loop is in place (because Britomart constraint would render airport rail investment by itself of little effect). And of considerable personal satisfaction is the recent announcement of the direct/commuter bus services from downtown ferry/britomart to airport. This service takes 35 to 40 minutes and costs $22 return. It's a 15 minute frequency service and I recommend it. 30th July 2008 Depends how you measure it. If your measure is the percentage of container traffic in and out of there by rail - rather than trucks which clog SH1 and endanger local traffic - you'd have to say there's room for improvement. If your concern is how strong the Port Company is in keeping control of its land and resisting reverse sensitivity pressures - you'd have to say it's been successful there too. "Light-handed" would be a good description of ARC and ARH governance of POAL (Ports of Auckland Ltd). POAL gets what it wants. Could we have Pikes Point to store more Jap Imports? As good as done. (Then ARC finds out POAL have tried to get the place used as a heli-port. Ironic when the micro-lite club and modelairplane people were told it was inappropriate for aviation...) POAL is 100% owned by ARC now. When I was a North Shore Councillor we were told: you can't expect POAL to do the right thing for the public because it's 20% privately owned. It's commercial. So I agreed to ARC buying that 20%. And what difference did that make? Not a lot. I have suggested POAL be charged rent for the land it uses - to incentivise a bit of commercial discipline. Free up more land. But nothing came of that either. POAL governance is problematic to say the least. A couple of years ago POAL earned over $70 million. But current forecasts suggest that will plummet to not much over $20 million annually. Wonder what the shares would be worth today based on that shrinking performance? Some say this is because of the crazy cut-price deal done with Maersk - the big container ship operator. POAL made Auckland more attractive than Tauranga. Practically bought the contract. Had to spend over a $100 million on new cranes, and now hardly makes a buck on the deal. So who's been successful? Now their latest plan shows they want even more reclamation. I'd like them to take back the ferry wharves. I'd like POAL to be less limited in its responsibilities. In fact I think there's a need for an Auckland Harbour Authority which takes a more holistic and integrated approach to Auckland Ports. 30 July 2008. In August 2007, Mr Shand, Mr Horsley and Ms Cheyne, put their names to the Local Government Rates Inquiry report, and its 96 recommendations. The report makes an interesting read, but it is hard to escape the opinion of a number of submitters that the terms of reference needed also to examine the functions and efficiency of local government. Examining funding by itself is a hard ask. The resulting report is idiosyncratic:
This port of Auckland has been allowed to get away with environmental murder for too long. Take a look at its Annual accounts and you'll see a massive contribution to the bottom line from its car-parking business. The most expensive car parks in Auckland - or the most expensive taxi ride you'll ever take. An extortionate transport rort that rips off the public. Auckland and Manukau City Councils say their interest in Airport Shares is "strategic". I'll believe that when they strong-arm the airport into building its end of a decent public transport service connecting Manukau and Auckland CBDs into the airport. Till now it's all soft talk. Unhappily, it appears the single most polluting thing you can do is step on a plane these days. Fly halfway round the world and you are responsible for 6 tonnes of greenhouse gases dumped in the atmosphere. Why 6 tonnes you ask? Because it's injected into the atmosphere 10 kilometres above the ground it's generally agreed to be 2.7x more damaging than the same emission at ground level. (Tube Station Advert in London: Picture a Fjiord. Low hanging mist. Blue seas. Mountains clad in dark green bush. The caption? "Norway - Closer than New Zealand"). But apparently New Zealanders are all flying more, as jet flight gets more efficient, and we largely ignore our wider climate change responsibilities. That's why Auckland Airport wants another runway. It's one of the reasons I wonder about the wisdom of prioritising an electric rail service to the airport: (a) do we want to further subsidise jet travel? (b) Air NZ has already announced it is reducing capacity on some services - is that a good time to build increased PT capacity?. Jet fuel costs are increasing sharply - amounting to around 50% of the costs of flying a passenger service. Maybe the public shareholders in Air New Zealand should haul some capital out and build a Japan style electric rail link between Wellington and Auckland. While the going's good. Because those jet fuel prices just keep on going up. 30th July 2008 Frankly - I'm disappointed. Maybe it's fear of the Royal Commission. Maybe it's favour for existing Government as an election approaches. Or fear of rocking the boat. Whatever. The ARC has not taken a leadership position on critical issues of growth management (land use matters especially), nor on climate change, nor on energy. And it's "One Plan" initiative looks weak and ineffective. All we seem to do well and regularly is buy more parkland far away from where most ratepayers live. Time to wake up and take up our responsibilities. 30th July 2008. |
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It sure does. Have a look at my submission on my Home Page. 4th July 2008. Puketutu is a 140 hectare volcanic island in the Manukau harbour, currently owned by the Kelliher Trust. Most of its volcanic cones have been mined away for aggregate. Now there are proposals to fill the quarries with Auckland's sewage solids from the Watercare sewage treatment plant. Volcanic cones restored as poo cones. There is some support for this dangerous idea by the ARC, because it has been offered the rest of the Island as a Regional Park! What a joke. But Watercare does have a waste problem which must be solved. Each day hundreds of tonnes of wet biosolids are dumped in sanitary trenches at the edge of the Manukau. These consented biosolid dumps will be filled in a few years. Wellington did compost all of its biosolids with green waste at Moa Point, and the resulting product was used for soil conditioner. This has become problematic recently mainly because of Mercury from the dental industry. Levels in sewage stream too high. Needs sorting. Sydney still does the same, as do many other cities around the world. But sadly, Auckland's sewage is contaminated with heavy metals from trade wastes which industry is permitted to dump into our sewers. Makes it toxic. Sydney had the same problem 15 years ago, and now heavily controls toxic waste dumping into its sewers. So its sewage waste can be recycled back to land. Auckland could clean up its act and do the same. A park on Puketutu's not worth having, if it's filled with contaminated crap, which could leach into the very harbour we've spent millions cleaning up. The environmental price is too high. What's clean and green about that? Better to do learn from what Wellington did, and improve on that. Biosolids and garden conditioner could be barged across the Manukau - don't truck it through city streets, or risk dumping it in the Manukau. I support a combined greenwaste/biosolids plant in a corner of a Puketutu Quarry. We need to get real about sustainability. The ARC shows limited leadership in waste management if it can be paid off with a slice of park. 2nd February 2008. Thanks to Government support the Auckland rail project is full steam ahead. But where will it go first? What are the priorities? How will priorities be set? Who will call the shots? Well we now have a 96 minute service to and from Helensville. And there's talk of rail to the airport; rail to Hamilton; - even a rail tunnel to North Shore. These are all good projects in good time. But what about the basic core network package described in ARTA's "Step Change" proposal used to win over Treasury skeptics and Cullen? In there, the arguments were all about cost-benefit and economic benefit and agglomeration benefits. The emphasis was about delivering the compact city, about city centre economic development, about economic transformation, and about congestion reduction. ARTA's recommendation was for the modernisation of the "core network" as the highest priority. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand why this is. Rail is expensive. And it's expensive to increase service frequency and carrying capacity, and especially expensive to extend the network. But rail only becomes really useful in an urban environment when it is frequent. When it is really useful - ie attractive and heavily used - then it begins to shape town centre development. We don't see much evidence of this yet in Auckland - because service frequency and reliability is low. Basically the core network needs to connect Auckland's high population centres - not every centre - but certainly the high population centres. These centres are: Auckland CBD, Panmure, Otahuhu to Papakura, and Newmarket through to Henderson. And the rail corridors between those centres must be separated from road networks - otherwise high frequency services won't be possible. No more rail crossings.  Typical grade separation. Low density part of Hamburg. Electric rail.  Rail crossing in Onehunga. Typical throughout Auckland.  Another problematic example at Avondale. Grade separation means viaducts or undergrounding throughout the core network where conflict effects with road transport would be severe, and it means land use redevelopment at stations - often at crossings - on the core network to make the most out of the rail investment. This requires massive and coordinated investment - from central and local government, and from the private sector. This must be planned before electrification, and priority grade separation works completed. Question: Who's doing the coordinating? Public transport users beyond the core rail network will use feeder services to access the core network: by walking, biking, park'n ride, buses and ferries. Auckland can barely afford the basic core network expansion - even with a fuel tax. So - first things first. Fund and build the core first. Get it working at 18,000/hour each way. Then build service extensions. 30th July 2008.
Not! Apparently countries need a major urban disaster first. The USA had a hurricane through New Orleans and fires through the entire west coast. Australian cities have experienced droughts like never before and farmers have committed suicide rather than walk off their land. And England watched their TVs agape at the effects of flooding through established towns following exceptional rainstorms. Until a NZ city is savaged by unprecedented weather, Auckland authorities will sleep blissfully. Huge storms in rural areas and coastal villages flooded by raging rivers don’t seem to wake us to the fact that climate change is here now. I’m not talking about the disaster movies we see on TV. But there are ominous signs. When did you last read your household insurance policy? Is your house insured against flood, or coastal storm-surge? Probably not. When did you last check the flood plain maps in your city’s District Plan? North Shore has added a new contour to its previous flood plain maps. Half a metre higher and deeper is a new line – “flood sensitive areas”. Wasn’t there before. Check it's stormwater GIS system. Might your home or business be trapped by this new risk? It’s caused by two things: more development upstream (more impervious surface area); and changed weather patterns (more high intensity rainstorms – like what happened in England). But even if you’re above the new flood plain, perched on a sandstone cliff with a view – you have a new problem. Even small increases in sea level – we’re talking centimetres – significantly increase the rate of coastal erosion. Who will take responsibility for this? In England coastal villages have given up fighting losing battles against coastal erosion increase. They’ve packed up and shifted inland. Check out Dunwich. Imagine that on North Shore. It's called "planned retreat". And there’s unabated fossil fuel energy use. Like there's no tomorrow. Of all the Councils, only Waitakere City Council is seriously engaged with energy conservation: it’s practicing what it preaches and providing useful information to developers and homeowners. Room for improvement elsewhere across Auckland. 2nd February 2008. Thinking about the real-estate sob stories bemoaning fire sales of CBD apartments in the NZ Herald of late, you could be forgiven for wondering why we need to build more. Sure there will always be millionaires wanting the best view of our harbour and Rangitoto. But does that pricey desire have to be met at the expense of providing fun and amenity and attractions for all Aucklanders at our CBD waterfront? I don't think so. And it saddens me that the ARC is still pushing a plan for commercialisation of big hunks of Tank Farm - including high rise and office space - to generate revenue to fund public transport. Because that's the current plan: sell options to developers who will profit from waterfront development opportunities, while ARC in clipping the ticket, hopes to collect $40 million or so each year in rents and licences, to spend on trains and buses. Like: Sell the waterfront and use the money building public transport to get there. But why would you want to? Hello! You only have to spend an afternoon exploring Wellington's waterfront to get a taste of what might be possible for Auckland. The excuse for long term strategic thinking and creative planning that's gone into TankFarm and the waterfront might suit a private developer doing greenfield at the edge of Auckland Region. Sure there's a wind-swept park proposed at the end, but given the once in a lifetime opportunity - the whole thing's an embarrassment. Not even a decent design competition! Auckland is a laughing stock internationally, while our public swallow a sugar coated pill. Consultation over the Waterfront would have embarrassed Goebbels. All those artistic pictures with people everywhere. But what would make them want to visit? "Tell them it'll be lovely often enough - they'll eventually believe you." Sea & City are doing a good job selling this limited vision, acting on behalf of the ARC, turning Tank Farm into a cash cow for transport. Could be so much better. This is regional land. The ARC needs to be shamed into revisiting its policy of profiting so much from waterfront development. 2 February 2008. Depends who you ask. Some say electrification. Many want rail to the airport. Others argue for an integrated ticket first. Bus users would love their service to be more reliable - and get them door to door. Bayswater ferry users have been calling for a decent terminal and bus interchange for almost a decade now. And South Auckland is screaming for any public transport at all. Because it's a public transport desert there. So - who sets the priorities? It should be ARTA, according to a transparent set of criteria and principles. The problem Auckland has is we are starting from such a low base. Public transport has been largely ignored for decades. It's only in the last few years there's been serious thinking and serious money. If you ask me, here's what I think the priorities are:
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