GAEL BALDOCK: AUCKLAND’S TRANSPORT NETWORK VISION

An integrated transport network starts with a detailed ‘vision’ of the built solution. Amazingly, Auckland only has a vague ‘2050’ doodling on a map, and we build components in a ‘try-it-and-see’ approach.

Many of these components will be removed as we wander to a solution without a 100 year ‘Auckland Transport Network Plan’ designed by experts.

Plans are ‘drawn lines on paper’, they're easier to erase and change than anything built. During ‘vision’ detailing, first ideas may be surpassed before construction commences so new ‘lines’ are drawn.

We need to know what our integrated network might look like when it is completed, to place the big ‘building blocks’ where they can be integrated into a coherent network in stages. Instead, we’re wasting money building orphan components that will be obstacles to a functional network.

Once big components of the network are in place, minor mobility routes (cycleways, etc) for travelling that last mile (3km) from home to the transport hubs, can be created alongside the network. We’ve been building them first instead of last. Bad design starts with bad briefs – prioritising cyclists' wishes before sensible movement of traffic, especially freight, emergency vehicles and buses. This impedes commuters on our main arterial routes where ease of flow, not congestion, is needed while we add public transport options.

The proof of properly designed public transport is that commuters wish to use it without needing NZTA and AT to create artificial congestion and restrictions to traffic flow, or removing car parking.

Once we have a complementary public transport network, ‘bus lanes’ at peak times will eventually become busways. All these humps and bumps along the route will need to be removed. Building them now at a quarter of million dollars each is ludicrous!

Consultation is not making people more accepting of predetermined outcomes, it is about getting improved outcomes. This starts with healthy conversation about best solutions:

· Why consult non-experts (voters) on four harbour crossing options?

· Is Light Rail the best solution for Auckland or a political fantasy?

· How and where would Light Rail and the harbour crossing integrate with existing rail, bus and ferry services and motorways?

· Is the best solution Light Rail or enhancing existing rail integrated with Bus Rapid Transport?

While the CRL tunnel has ‘gone-off-the-rails’ to be the world’s most expensive train tunnel project per km, it is the needed rail network ‘missing link’ between Britomart and Mt Eden.

Tunnelled Light Rail down Dominion Road, is “the project Auckland doesn’t want and the rest of the country doesn’t want to pay for,” if I may quote Liam Venter, an urban transit enthusiast.

Typically, tunnelling is 10 times more expensive than onground infrastructure.

CRL has already cost $5.5b (wildly over original $1b budget). The Light Rail tunnel is four times as long (4 x $5.5b).

CRL project had two new stations. Light Rail needs 18 new stations (plus land purchase).

CLR history shows that Light Rail will overrun its $14.6b estimate (or Treasury’s $14.6b risk calculation), for ONE route.

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) would be a more flexible, cheaper and faster to roll-out option. Unlike rail, which can’t be used until that entire route is built, BRT doesn’t require tracks or overhead electrical wiring end to end. Over 200 cities around the world have shunned Light Rail projects in favour of the faster trip times and more fault-resilience BRT networks provide.

Our Northern Busway works well, and Auckland Transport is building a $1.3b Eastern Busway. There are only two more points of the compass, southern and western.

These fully designed, seamless networks need travel mode interchange hubs.

The Downtown Carpark building is the perfect location for an interconnection. It’s already a regionally significant strategic asset for people across the isthmus and gulf to access the ferry terminal, Britomart train station, the CBD for business and Civic Centre for entertainment and retail purposes.

The short-sighted previous council’s asset sale, ‘isn’t done yet, as the cheque isn’t in the bank’, so...

Sign the petition to protect Auckland’s future interchange hub. www.change.org/p/stop-the-sale-demolishing-ofdowntown-carpark (GAEL BALDOCK)  PN

GaelB@xtra.co.nz

WAYNE BROWN: MAYOR OF AUCKLAND

There are a lot of things I would like to write about this month, like storm repairs, dynamic bus lanes, ferries, red cones and so on but everything is being dominated right now by the need for council to agree a balanced budget, one which will deal with the dreadful $395 million budget hole bequeathed to me by the current Ambassador to England.

I was elected on five policies, being Stop Wasting Money, Get control of the CCOs, Speed up our Traffic, Finish the Big Projects and Shift the Port and although there has been a fair bit of progress on these, the time spent on consultation over the budget is getting in the way.

The deal with the monstrous budget hole made worse by storm damage, proposed a range of unpalatable levers, including increased rates, severe cuts to services, increased debt and sale of the airport shares.

The Government doesn’t bother with consultation on their budget, but councils are forced to waste time and money over theirs. We spent a whole day listening to Local Boards deliver their views, most of which bore no relation to what the public consultation suggested.

Ponsonby News readers will be pleased to note that our local Waitematā Board joined Franklin, Orakei, Rodney and most of the northern local boards by offering up a balanced budget made up of a version of the four levers. However, most of the others, especially in the Southern suburbs arrived with demands for no cuts to anything, small rate rises, no sale of the airport shares and no suggestions as to how to balance the budget as the law requires.

Indeed, the poorer the boards claimed to be, the stronger their opposition to the easiest solution which is to sell the airport shares. Unfortunately, your local councillor Mike Lee from Waiheke, who has many good attributes remains stuck in the Trotskyesque past and refuses to sell the airport shares.

As far as wasting money goes, owning the airport shares tops them all. Council has borrowed to own them and currently pay $100m in interest per year to own them in return for no dividends at all for the past three years and the prospect of very small ones in years to come as the airport attempts to fund another runway that will cost around $4bn.

The sale of these shares will allow for a softening of the proposed cuts to services but cuts to the operation of council and its CCOs are needed and will proceed.

As far as debt goes, council has borrowed its way into this mess by taking debt on when it was cheap, but as mortgage holders know debt is now expensive and getting more so, meaning this is not a good time at all to reach for the debt lever, especially as we face big bills for cost overruns in the City Rail Link and repairs to flood damaged council assets.

Hopefully by the time you read this I will have found sufficient councillors who understand enough about money to have got the budget over the line without ruinous rate rises.

(WAYNE BROWN)  PN

www.facebook.com/WayneBrown4Auckland

KEN RING: WEATHER BY THE MOON

Auckland weather diary, June 2023

June brings average rain, with above normal temperatures and sunshine hours.

It is a month of two halves, with conditions improving after midmonth. The first week is cloudiest and the second week is wettest. Then the third week sees change, with the rest of the month serving least rain, highest pressures and most sunshine. The best weekend for outdoor activities may be 24th/25th. The barometer may average around 1014mbs.

For fishermen, the highest tides are on 5th. Best fishing bite times in the east are around dusk on 3rd-5th, and 17th-19th.

Bite chances are also good for 12 noon of 10th-12th and 25th27th.

For gardeners, planting is best (waxing moon ascending) on 1st-2nd and 19th-30th; pruning on 6th-16th (waning moon descending).

For preserving and longer shelf-life, pick crops or flowers around the neap tide of 27th.

Allow 24-hour error for all forecasting. (KEN RING) 

For future weather for any date, and the 2023 NZ Weather Almanac, see www.predictweather.com