Radio New Zealand News: "A 'Green Card' would be created, which would also provide free off-peak travel for tertiary students and those doing apprenticeships.
Under the policy all people with a disability on a supported living benefit would also be eligible for free public transport.
The Greens' transport spokesperson, Julie-Anne Genter, said the policy would cost $70-80 million a year.
"That would buy about 1km of the Puhoi-Warkworth motorway, if we look at the announcement made by the National government for $10.5bn on a few highways - that's 100 years of free public transport."
Ms Genter said the cost of transport should not be a barrier to getting to class or going on a family outing."
Auckland Transport (AT) is dumping its staff on trains and increasing
'security measures' to stop 'fare cheats.' The current 160 on-board 'train
managers' (guards) will be replaced by 18 transport officers, who are already being recruited. AT expects a law to be
passed this year, giving the officers greater powers, including the
ability to issue penalty notices to fare evaders. Why bother? Why
not eliminate fares altogether if we REALLY want to encourage people to
get out of our cars and onto public transport big-time, & find other ways to share the cost?
Below is an article reflecting on Canadian experiences, entitled 'Transit cops or Free Transit?'
After the February murder of Winnipeg transit operator Irvine Jubal Fraser, and other violent attacks, there is a push for transit cops to be introduced in Winnipeg. Conducted a month after Fraser’s murder, a survey has now been widelypublicized
finding 64 percent of respondents favour the introduction of transit
police, despite 75 percent believing Winnipeg Transit is safe. Those who
“strongly” or “moderately” feel safe drops to 49 percent for night
buses with 38 percent feeling unsafe. Winnipeg’s transit workers and riders
deserve safety, but are transit cops the answer? It certainly seems to
be the only question being asked. The news reports about this survey do
not appear to ask any other question about safety measures. Were survey
respondents asked about protective shields for operators, improved
lighting and safety design of transit stops, emergency phones at transit
stops, or a concerted public safety initiative? If we are serious about reducing
violence on public transit, we need to examine the leading source of
violence against transit workers: fare disputes.
Fare disputes are the biggest problem
A 2016 survey of transit operators
by the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) found 74 percent of assaults on
operators arose from fare disputes. Survey respondents were allowed
multiple answers. “Inadequate service” and “high crime area” were the
second most cited reasons, but they were a distant 35 and 32 percent,
respectively.
After
a series of vicious attacks on transit operators in 2013, Detroit’s
transit workers conducted a “sickout” – an illegal strike which
effectively shut down transit for a day.Another more extensive 2005 survey of
seven Canadian ATU locals found fare disputes the source of 60 percent
of physical assaults and 71 percent of verbal assaults (cited on p.17-18 of this study). If fare disputes is the leading
reason for verbal and physical violence against operators and fare
collectors, then we need to look seriously at eliminating fares from
transit services. Not looking at this option is simply irresponsible.
Can we provide the service free at the point of use and fund it like
other free public services through progressive taxation? This question
is not even being asked but now is the time to raise it. But let’s look at what’s being pushed right now: transit cops.
Transit cops: solving or causing problems?
The fact is transit cops simply
cannot be on every single bus and at every single transit stop. They are
not going to stop those determined to make an attack on operators. Nor
will transit cops be able to stop every attack that erupts with a fare
dispute. The Toronto Transit Commission employs dozens of “Transit
Enforcement” officers but this hasn’t stopped an average of one transit
worker being assaulted each day. Where transit police don’t exist,
local police are involved anyway in violent attacks. This means transit
cops actually spend most of their time focusing on fare evasion which is
an enormous expense. Yet, just like a regular police
force, transit cops are placed in an adversarial position with the
public and it is “the usual suspects” who are going to be on the
receiving end of their main job of fare enforcement. Poor people,
Indigenous people, people of colour are going to be these usual
suspects. Racial profiling and overreach by transit cops is already a problem where they exist. Transit cops in Vancouver, for example, go far beyond their mandate in reporting hundreds of suspected illegal immigrants to the Canada Border Security Agency.
This is the sort of police conduct that Trump is trying to enforce by
repealing “Sanctuary City” policies in major urban centres like Boston,
New York City, Seattle, Los Angeles, Miami and numerous other cities, as
well as Toronto, Hamilton, Montreal and London, Ontario (There is also some movement in Winnipeg to become a Sanctuary City).
The Sanctuary City policy is simple: municipal workers do not ask
people’s immigration status. Nobody is doing the CBSA’s job for them.
This raises all sorts of questions about what Vancouver’s transit cops
think they’re doing. (It is worth noting that in the
labour movement it is a widely common practice among union organizers
that we do not ask about people’s immigration status when talking shop
and signing cards. Our goal is solidarity, not strengthening the hand of
bigots.)
Video
of a UBC student beaten and batoned by Vancouver transit cops in 2011.
One officer was forced to quit. The other pleaded guilty to assault and
was suspended for 8 days without pay.Transit cops in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and numerous other cities have all been involved in incidents of excessive force, misuse of tasers, and even deadly shootings. A tragic example of this is the murder of Oscar Grant by transit police on the Bay Area Rapid Transit in Oakland. Transit cops also cost a lot of money
that could otherwise put people to work providing direct transit
services, from maintenance to station attendants to operators. It is
money that could go to better use. For example, in 2014, Metro Vancouver Transit Police cost $34 million.
The operation employed 167 sworn officers and 67 civilian staff. That
same year, two transit expansion proposals were left unfulfilled. A $28
million per year plan to add 11 new B-Line express bus routes was
abandoned. A $59 million a year plan to lift overall bus service by 25
percent was scrapped. Transit police costs could have covered one and
contributed to the other.
Other safety strategies
As with any public space, safety is
of incredible importance. But transit cops will not solve the problems
of violence. They never do. In a handful of incidents they will make a
difference, but they’ll also drag in a whole number of other problems,
problems that plague every police force: targeting of stereotyped
people, excessive force, and big costs. We already have police forces
anyway. There are other safety measures that
we can also take, safety measures that routinely neglected by transit
management and politicians. First,
improved transit infrastructure means improved safety. Far too many
transit stops have terrible lighting and only major transit stop have
emergency phones. Second, night services need to be
more frequent and more extensive. Night buses often serve areas only
hourly, leaving us waiting alone at stop for long periods of time.
Similarly, they serve too few areas, leaving us to make longer walks
than usual to our final destination. For low-wage service workers,
janitors and other workers dependent on public transit, bus service
often dries up between 10pm and 6am, leaving us to spend money on cabs. Third, we need sustained public
safety campaigns for public transit. Posting public safety procedures on
buses, trains, bus stops and transit facilities is nothing new. It is a
good idea to encourage riders and transit worker to look out for one
another instead of feeling helpless and being useless when something bad
happens.
Fourth, transit operators need better training and support from
transit management. The same 2016 ATU survey cited earlier finds 48
percent of transit operators “rarely” get training or instruction on
emergency procedures. A shocking 56 percent say female transit operators
won’t report incidents of sexual harassment because they “will not be
taken seriously.” This is damning evidence that management is failing
workers. In terms of protecting transit
operators from attacks, protective shields may prove useful. The ATU
survey finds 60 percent support. Some transit operators who have been assaulted believe it is the answer,
but many transit operators, including Winnipeg’s, have explored the
option and understandably don’t want to work behind them, cut off from
riders and boxed in. Perhaps transit operators should have the choice to
work with them.
Eliminating transit fares
One serious solution to safety
problems on public transit is eliminating transit fares. Again and again
transit workers and their unions have pointed to fare disputes as the
single largest source of antagonism and violence between rider and
operator. Survey after survey bears this out. However, the concept of transit fares
are so ingrained there is virtually no discussion about eliminating
fares. Most operators will tend towards enforcement mechanisms for fare
payment. This simply shifts the problem to someone else, in this case
transit cops who enforce fares backstopped by the threat or use of
force. This policy is an utter failure.
A
2012 armed robbery at a TTC fare collector booth. The worker was shot
in the neck and shoulder and is still on disability five years later.
The suspect is at large.Even with transit cops, operators
will remain susceptible to the same sort of violence over fare disputes,
with fare collectors targets for armed robbery, which can sometimes result in the shooting of transit workers. Eliminating fares is not about
excusing bad behaviour but removing the immediate source of an
escalating fare disputes or robbery.
Free transit isn’t free
Eliminating transit fares will mean
paying for them some other way. Like other public services that are free
at the point of access, public transit costs can and should be
fully-funded by progressive taxation. But eliminating fares also frees
up money and resources.
This can’t be good: Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne promotes Presto.Fare accounting costs, ticket and
pass production costs, and various other costs associated with fares
could be eliminated. Immensely expensive transit pass programs can be
buried. Even with tokens and tickets eliminated, the Presto card system
in Ottawa and the Greater Toronto Area has been enormously expensive.
While transit users will save a bit on fares with Presto, the province’s
auditor general says hundreds of millions have been blown on its installation. All these resources could be freed up
and focused on better transit services, more jobs, and better
infrastructure. Transit workers can be redirected to other parts of the
service, such as attendants at major transit stations, retrained for
operating, maintenance and other services.
Can it be done?
Tallinn is an experiment we can learn from and improve upon.Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, is considered the “free transit capital of the world”.
With a population of 550,000, it is not much smaller than Winnipeg. The
free transit experiment started in 2013 after a 76 percent of residents
voted in favour in a special referendum. The experiment is still going strong.
The service is a hit with residents, ridership is up, and the transit
system is even turning a profit. With 1,000 Euros per registered Tallinn
resident being directed from income taxes into the system, transit
costs are covered. Registered residents are then afforded a pass card
that offers limitless travel. We can learn from what has happened in Tallinn. We don’t need to replicate the same funding model or require pass cards. Some experiments with free transit have also taken place in Canada. Last summer, the Cape Breton Regional Municipality
conducted a free transit experiment. The Mayor declared it “successful
beyond anyone’s imagination” with ridership growing 200 to 300 percent –
far beyond the 20 to 30 percent that was expected. The experiment
showed that free transit will be a hit. It also showed how existing
transit fares are major access barriers.
The free transit experiment in Cape Breton showed the huge possibilities of mass transit if fares are eliminated.Another limited experiment in free
transit has unfolded in Kingston, Ontario and points to how free transit
could be gradually expanded if it weren’t implemented immediately. Over four years, thousands of high school students were phased in to free transit. Kingston is also conducting a one-year free transit pilot project for the city’s 3,000 welfare recipients. There are other larger benefits of a
campaign for eliminating fares. It is a blow against years of user fees
being imposed on our public services. User fees are linked to the same
policies that have deprived public transit of major capital funds for
the past three decades, and sapped money from desperately needed transit
systems for rural and remote areas. Cutbacks in services to fund tax
breaks for corporations and the wealthy have been partially offset with
user fees as costs have been downloaded from federal to provincial,
provincial to municipal. The disgraceful destruction of the Saskatchewan Transit Company is the latest example of this attack.
Last but not least, we can strike a blow against climate change by
creating transit systems that actually get people out of their cars and
create momentum towards significant transit expansion. Free public transit at the point of
use – paid for entirely through progressive taxation – is the way to go
not just for improving our transit services, but also for eliminating
the single largest point of tension between transit operators and
riders. Transit cops won’t do this. They’ll only bring in more problems.
Let’s tear out the fare boxes and let’s ride together in a new
direction.
Free public transport in London is the only way to save our environment
While short-term measures alert Londoners to air pollution that is already high, our car-centric culture needs to be challenged to permanently tackle air pollution.
Paris has a long-standing reputation as the home of free thinkers and this week the city took the inspired step of making its public transport free of charge during a desperately high spike in air pollution.
In London, our own pollution spike recently led to warnings to keep babies away from traffic-heavy roads and to avoid strenuous exercise. Joggers and vulnerable people are choking in London’s dirty air, which also worsens heart and lung conditions and can cause asthma.
With London also blanketed by a thick layer of brown air
mainly caused by cars, vans and lorries, free public transport is one solution.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has already
taken some short-term measures to tackle pollution, such as erecting signs
advising people not to drive and to walk, cycle or take public transport
instead. He also deployed signs telling drivers stopped at traffic lights to
switch off their engines to protect the health of drivers in vehicles behind
them. It is an often overlooked fact that air pollution exposure is often
higher inside cars than it is out on the streets.
While short-term measures alert Londoners to air pollution
that is already high, our car-centric culture needs to be challenged to
permanently tackle air pollution, not just deal with it on 'spike’ days.
The Mayor is introducing an Ultra Low Emission Zone in
London to make the most polluting vehicles pay a charge to drive in the zone.
This is good as far as it goes – but once people pay their daily charge there
is no encouragement to keep journeys short. In fact, quite the reverse: people
may drive as much as possible to get better value from the charge they have
just paid.
Obviously the most effective way to cut pollution is by
slashing the number of car trips made every day. Pollution is measured in grams
per kilometre, so cutting the distances driven will cut emissions whatever the
vehicle.
So there is a good case for making all public transport
free, or at least very affordable, to encourage people to ditch their cars and
get about town in the most sustainable way possible.
When public transport is free or very cheap, there is a
clear financial incentive to taking the bus or tube rather than running a car.
If the Mayor was to follow Paris
and make public transport free – even as a stunt during particularly high
spikes – the potential health benefits of getting Londoners out of cars and
onto buses, trams and tubes, or onto their two feet, would [offset] the lost
revenue.
Roads could still pay their way even with public transport passengers
travelling for free under a road pricing scheme, but this idea has been laying
in the long grass since 1999.
The Rocol (Road Charging Options for London) report suggests
charging by time of day, road driven on, distance travelled and the emissions
of the vehicle being driven to manage demand for road space and keep on top of
pollution and congestion. So it would be very expensive to drive a polluting
car in central London at rush hour whereas in the middle of the night in outer
London with few public transport options it would be much cheaper. The
Federation of Small Businesses, London First, the Royal Town Planning
Institute, the Institute of Civil Engineers and the Royal Academy of
Engineering all support a system of road charging, but no Mayor has yet had the
guts to act on this despite a healthy list of eminent supporters.
Until we take some serious action on transport choice,
whether you think they are gimmicks or not, London will see more pollution spikes
and the worsening health of the people who live there.
Caroline Russell is a Green Party member of the London
Assembly and national transport spokesperson for the UK Green Party.
How General Motors Derailed Public Transportation to Sell
More Cars
Pacific Electric Railway 'red car' streetcars stacked in Los Angeles awaiting demolition, 1956. Tram services in NZ were scrapped in the early 1960s. Many trams were sold off as little beach-side holiday homes. Auckland's trolley buses were removed in the 1970s.
by Earth Talk
Dear EarthTalk: Did the car companies really conspire to
kill the trolleys and streetcars of bygone days to force us to become dependent
on automobiles instead?-- Taylor Howe, San Francisco, CA
Indeed, in the 1920s automaker General Motors (GM) began a
covert campaign to undermine the popular rail-based public transit systems that
were ubiquitous in and around the country’s bustling urban areas. At the time,
only one in 10 Americans owned cars and most people traveled by trolley and streetcar.
Within three decades, GM, with help from Standard Oil,
Firestone Tire, Mack Truck and Phillips Petroleum, succeeded in decimating the
nation’s trolley systems, while seeing to the creation of the federal highway
system and the ensuing dominance of the automobile as America’s preferred mode
of transport.
GM Bought and Dismantled Streetcar Lines Nationwide
GM began by funding a company called National City Lines (NCL), which by 1946
controlled streetcar operations in 80 American cities.
“Despite public opinion polls that showed 88 percent of the
public favoring expansion of the rail lines after World War II, NCL
systematically closed its streetcars down until, by 1955, only a few remained,”
writes author Jim Motavalli in his 2001 book, Forward Drive.
Buses Were First Step to Ending Streetcar System
GM first replaced trolleys with free-roaming buses, eliminating the need for
tracks embedded in the street and clearing the way for cars.
As dramatized in a 1996 PBS docudrama, Taken for a Ride,
Alfred P. Sloan, GM’s president at the time, said, “We’ve got 90 percent of the
market out there that we can…turn into automobile users. If we can eliminate
the rail alternatives, we will create a new market for our cars.” And they did
just that, with the help of GM subsidiaries Yellow Coach and Greyhound Bus.
Sloan predicted that the jolting rides of buses would soon
lead people to not want them and to buy GM’s cars instead.
Automaker Used Political Clout to Build Roads for Cars
GM was later instrumental in the creation of the National Highway Users
Conference, which became the most powerful lobby in Washington. Highway
lobbyists worked directly with lawmakers to craft highway-friendly legislation,
and GM’s promotional films were showcasing America’s burgeoning interstate
highway system as the realization of the so-called “American dream of freedom
on wheels.”
When GM President Charles Wilson became Secretary of Defense
in 1953, he worked with Congress to craft the $25 billion Federal-Aid Highway
Act of 1956. Referred to at the time as the “greatest public works project in
the history of the world,” the federally funded race to build roads from
coast-to-coast was on.
Public Transportation is Regaining Popularity
Today, many eco-advocates and urban planners alike yearn for a rebirth of
public transit. In the face of nightmarish traffic tie-ups nationwide,
widespread urban sprawl, loss of open space, and the global warming we owe
largely to automobiles, will we ever see a return to mass transit as the
dominant mode for moving people?
According to the Public Transportation Partnership for
Tomorrow (PT2), mass transit ridership has grown 21 percent since 1995—faster
than both vehicle and airline passenger miles logged over the same period.
“Public transportation is a…means of helping our environment
and conserving energy,” says the PT2 website. “If one in 10 Americans used
public transportation regularly, U.S. reliance on foreign oil could be cut by
more than 40 percent--the amount we import from Saudi Arabia each year.”
GOT AN ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTION? Send it to: EarthTalk,
c/o E/The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; submit it
at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/thisweek/,
or e-mail: earthtalk@emagazine.com.
EarthTalk
is a regular feature of E/The Environmental Magazine. Article updated June 2014.
French city makes the town heart beat again with free public transport
Mary-Liis Arujärv,
France Dunkerque town [Dunkirk, France] goes completely over the next autumn for free
public transport to the city residents to rejuvenate and revitalize
the city's heart. Already, there can be a free rides on the weekends.
Tallinn's delegation, headed by the executive Mayor Taavi Aas the [group]
visited France for Dunkerque city, going over the next year from
September to complete a free public transport. So far, they have experimented with free public transport on weekends, and the results are positive.
"Thanks to free ride on the buses started to use more of both young and
older people," said the head of the Department of the Environment
Dunkerque GHESQUIERES Cedric, who said they plan to free public
transport throughout the city during the redesign. "We want to make the whole town, and it's a big job," he stated. "We want to change the heart of the city once again an attractive place not only to change modes." Went to study in Tallinn (capital city of Estonia) Dunkerque city official said was that they set up for free public transport, a major role to play in Tallinn. "We had to find an example in which the free public transport running," said GHESQUIERES.
"Tallinn was a big enough city, and we looked at how it works with you.
You are, after all, the pioneers. We were also people who doubted the
idea, but the first results are not yet dissipated. Dunkerque expects
the number of public transport users to double."
The total includes a free shuttle to the area of 200,000 inhabitants,
with a population of 90,000 as of Dunkerque is introducing free public
transport, not only the city, but it also extends to the neighboring
region. Public transport in France is funded by private companies.
All companies with more than 11 workers, paying the relevant tax
authorities, for transport or movement of people better, after all,
businesses will bring in more customers.
Tallinn executive mayor Taavi Aas said that the representative of the
city of Dunkerque pioneered last year in our study of the transport
system.
"They visited us and watched as free public transport in Tallinn is
organized. Without a doubt, they have learned something from us. Now it
was our turn to look at how these things are going." Buses run gas
Tallinn Transport Department director Andres Harjo said Dunkerque
problem lies in the fact that most of the people living in the city by
the sea or farther from the heart, which is why the city is trying to
put people back downtown to visit a free transport. "Trade is, after all, mainly in the center," said Harjo.
"And in the course of conversations with the French revealed another
interesting fact - if the person to be downtown by car, there he spends a
lot less time than if the bus."
Tallinn's representatives also presented at Dunkerque bus fleet, which
is planned before the final transition to overhaul the public transport
free of charge. Harjo said the likeable that Dunkerque has brought quite a lot of new lines of buses.
"Over 50% of buses using gas as a fuel - it shows that the local
authorities take care of not only the people but also the environment,"
says Harjo. "True, these diesel buses are now much older than our buses."
In addition to upgrading the cityscape and massive road construction is
planned to raise the level of public transport as a whole.
"We are not important for the simple fact that public transport would
be free of charge, at the same time we want to improve its quality,"
said GHESQUIERES. "We plan to free public transport in relation to invest a total of approximately 65 million euros."
Also, the entire route network of free public transport before final
deployment to reorganize the buses would move more often and more
appropriate places, or people would be available to them. Among other things, it is planned to introduce more high-speed buses.
A deputation from Tallinn, led by Mayor Taavi Aas, visited Dunkirk bus terminal recently
Also renews Tallinn bus fleet Taavi Aas said that the idea of free public transport is spreading ever more widely. "Europe is already quite a lot of cities that are planning the introduction of the free shuttle or already doing it," said Aas.
"In France alone is already a few dozen such cities in Poland and is a
free public transport in the city from 20 to 30 over the past. Tallinn
is planning this year to further upgrade its bus fleet -, we will buy 50
new buses, including 20 particularly environmentally friendly hybrid
buses, trams and the renovation of ten." Andres Harjo said that the idea of free public transport in Tallinn further. "People, it is important that the ride would take the least possible time," he said.
"By public transit must generate ever greater advantage of other
transportation front, from the traffic lights prioriteedisüsteemidest
and new bus lanes was, and why not also think of fast bus lines. This
all lead people to public transport access. One good example is the
Pirita bus path, but they could be more of a difference." Free public transport in the promise of the 2014 elections was the current mayor of Dunkerque Patrice Vergriete main promise.
As the city population is decreasing, thanks to the media arose the
interest of Tallinn, where, thanks to a free public transport is the
official number of inhabitants has grown to nearly 400,000 people.
Overflowing buses, long delays to the airport and chaos
downtown: Transport planning is a complete bloody mess and most of the big
things needed to fix the problems are delayed or are being ignored altogether.
And meanwhile, a battle is growing between different parts of council over what
to do. Why are we putting up with this?
In the last five years pedestrian numbers on Queen St have
doubled, to 60,000 a day. No other city in the world has seen such growth on
its main street. There are now 45,000 people living in the central city: that’s
the number the planners said we’d reach in 2032. There are 22 percent more
people working in the CBD and the number of commuters arriving on public
transport has risen from 13,000 to 40,000.
There are now more people living in the city centre than
drive in by car. In fact, the number of cars in the central city hasn’t grown
at all.
Walk down Queen St these days and you’ll find the pavements
stuffed with people. Drive down, and you could well have a clear run – who,
apart from service vehicles and taxis, takes a car into Queen St anymore? Yet
it is still a four-lane road from top to bottom.
As for High St, there are now so many people there it’s
almost impossible to walk its length – it should be a shoppers’ haven and yet
cars, and carparks on both sides, continue to get priority! Why?
The inner city is not what we thought it was going to be
when the council adopted the City Centre Masterplan (CCMP) in 2012. Change has
been faster and far larger than anyone predicted.
Now it’s time to revise the plan. But guess what? Although
car numbers are static and bus and walker numbers are way up, the planners are
not going to change tack. To the dismay of many councillors, no big rethink is
on the cards. Auckland Transport appears to believe all we should do is delay
some plans and rejig some others. The government, which controls most of the
money, thinks much the same.
Meanwhile, further afield, things are arguably even worse.
Did you know more than half the peak-time commuters on the harbour bridge now
ride to work on a rapid transit bus on the dedicated busway? That’s great.
These are North Shore people, who supposedly would never get
out of their cars, and yet somehow they have.
That’s rapid transit in action, proving its worth. So why,
if we look west, did the widening of the northwest motorway not include a
dedicated busway? That one’s on NZTA, the government’s transport funding and
planning agency. The word for that decision is: incompetent.
Around the suburbs, many commuters complain on social media
about the number of full buses driving past them. Regular train commuters to
Britomart know all about stopping to wait for a rail line into the terminal to
come free, because there are only two. In the east, where public transport is
worse than anywhere else in the city, they wait in vain for better service of
any kind.
And in the south, on highway 20A leading to the airport?
Those roadworks cause havoc now, but things will hardly be better when they’re
done. Demand grows at a furious pace: more than 20,000 people work in and
around the airport, there are 18 million airline passengers a year and both
those numbers are rising fast.
So the government has confirmed there will be no rail line
to the airport for another 30 years. And it dressed up this announcement to
pretend it was progress. What?
Transport planning in Auckland is laughable.
At least it would be, if you weren’t stuck every day in
traffic on the motorway, or taking your life in your hands on a bike, or just
trying to walk along High St. And the reason for all this is both simple and
appalling. It’s not just that the politicians and transport agencies have
consistently underestimated how we might grow. They have neglected to future
proof their plans by allowing for growth. They have not just refused to believe
we might change our behaviour and get out of our cars. They have refused to
change their plans even when confronted with the irrefutable evidence that we
will do that.
The reason our transport planning is a mess is that the
people responsible for it are profoundly out of touch with the way the world
now works. Worse, they lack the wit or imagination to conceive that things
might be different in the future. They can’t plan, usefully, because they can’t
look ahead. Instead, they focus on solutions that might tidy up the past.
Who is it doing this? First and principally, it’s the
government, because when it comes to transport they control most of the money
and most of the decision-making power. The government has badly underfunded
public transport in Auckland and, adding insult to injury, has refused to allow
the council to raise money for transport by other means. And it is the
government that believes most strongly that the key to solving congestion on
the roads is to build more roads.
Actually, favouring private vehicles by building more roads
is the key to making things worse – nobody in transport planning anywhere in
the world now seriously disputes that. Certainly the evidence for it is very
clear in Auckland. Yet more roads is the foundation of the government’s
transport planning.
Next, NZTA, the enablers and in many cases the drivers of
that government myopia.
And there is Auckland Transport itself. Wretched, befuddled
and blind. A thousand people work at AT, and a great many of them are there
because they dare to hope. They’re encouraged in that by the chair of their own
board, Lester Levy, who talks a good game about the future of transport in the
city. But the hopes and skills of the staff are betrayed by the reality: their
bosses are out of their depth. They cannot see what’s wrong and they cannot see
how to fix it.
AT is a council-controlled organisation, although it also
answers to government. So what’s Auckland Council itself doing? It shares some
of the blame for the mess we’re in, not for wrong-headedness, because its own
future planning on transport is pretty good, but for timidity.
Why isn’t it reading the riot act to the board of Auckland
Transport? AT can’t build better public transport capacity without government
support, but why doesn’t the council insist that it make fast and fundamental
changes to fix the mess in the central city?
Auckland’s transport list of incompetence and shame
Ten things the planning agencies need to face up to now:
1. The City Rail Link will not be big enough.
At a council Planning Committee meeting this week, Cr Mike
Lee noted the build-up of buses arriving from the northwest and clogging the
inner city, and asked, shouldn’t they terminate at Karangahape Road, where
passengers who want to go further could catch the City Rail Link (the
underground railway now being built)?
The officials’ answer was that the CRL will be at capacity
and not able to take more passengers at that point. That means this $3.4
billion transport project is being built with no capacity for growth. What?
Not surprisingly, Mike Lee seemed pretty angry.
2. Streams of buses are subverting plans for the inner city.
Following an agreement signed last week by Auckland
Transport and NZTA, we’re going to see 140-160 buses an hour in Queen St, many
of them articulated or double-decker. Possibly for the next 30 years.
For this single reason, the plans set out in the 2012 City
Centre Masterplan to pedestrianise parts of Queen St and to create a “linear
park” along Victoria Street have been, and are still, on hold. Despite both
proposals being extremely popular when the CCMP went through public
consultation in 2012.
At the Planning Committee, mayor Phil Goff asked, did the
delay mean there would be “more traffic lanes and less green space”?
Daniel Newcombe from AT said no, it wasn’t about cars, just
buses.
Goff: “But it still compromises the vision for greening the
area?” He was clearly pissed off too.
“It’s a matter of timing,” said Newcombe.
Timing? He meant that the City Rail Link is so disruptive,
nothing else will be done until it’s built. For downtown, that’s a couple of
years off. But he also meant something else: long-term rail planning has
stuffed up shorter term plans for the central city. See the next point.
3. The airport railway plan is wrecking downtown Auckland.
Not the fact of it, but the timing. Under AT’s own plans,
the way to get the overload of buses out of downtown Auckland is to build a
light rail system: modern trams. It would run up Queen St and then, initially,
head off down Dominion Rd. AT used to say work would start in 2016.
AT also wants light rail to the airport, and that’s would
probably be the same line, extended from the bottom of Dominion Rd. But there’s
the problem: the government has confirmed rail to the airport won’t be built
for another 30 years and the whole light rail proposal is on hold. They’re
going to secure the route, but they’re not going to build it.
Take a moment with that. If the government gets its way,
there will be people living on Mars before we have a railway line to the
airport. It would get built more quickly if we employed a couple of guys and
asked them to dig out the route with a pick and shovel.
In the meantime, our inner city streets will become
nose-to-tail bus yards. And it doesn’t end there. Rail to the north shore is
also on a slow track, so the Northern Busway will also continue to spill buses
into the central city for decades to come.
When the reality of all this became clear at that Planning
Committee meeting this week, Cr Chris Darby, chairing the committee, made a
speech. “That is not my vision of Queen Street,” he said. “The decisions of AT
are problematic and are at odds with the City Centre Masterplan. Completely at
odds.” He was furious.
“Hear hear,” said Mike Lee.
Ludo Campbell-Reid, the city’s “design champion” and head of
the council’s design office, sat there with shoulders hunched. Pedestrianising
Queen Street was “the number one project with the public,” he said, referring
to the consultations they did over the CCMP in 2012. “But,” he muttered, “doing
that has not been achievable for various reasons. It’s frustrating.” He seemed
to be in despair.
“We need to address that,” said Darby. But will they? How
will they?
4. The airport rail options are complicated by the future of
the port.
The government and AT want light rail to be the long-term
solution for connecting to the airport. But others favour heavy rail – the
electric trains we have on our suburban lines now. The council does not yet
have a position.
Heavy rail will cost more, but would be less disruptive to
build because it requires merely an extension of the existing line from
Onehunga or Manukau. You don’t have to start laying a line up Queen St.
Heavy rail will also make sense if the container port
shifts, as was proposed last year by the Port Future Study, a consensus working
group involving all major stakeholders. The two options are Manukau and the
Firth of Thames, and both would involve new heavy rail links from port to
airport and the port’s inland storage facility at Wiri.
5. The chaos caused by the CRL is absurd.
Building an underground railway under a city is disruptive.
We all get that. But does it have to be as negatively disruptive as the CRL is
right now? Essentially, AT is acting on the principle of let’s pretend it isn’t
happening.
Buses and private vehicles still flow everywhere they can,
but the crosstown traffic gets held up because the flow is restricted to single
lanes. Shops still open when they can, even though pedestrians can’t easily see
them and foot traffic along the edge of the construction sites is badly eroded.
Retailers are in despair.
For heaven’s sake, why has AT not taken the chance to
rethink inner-city traffic? Why aren’t they trialling all sorts of things,
building on the ones that work and scrapping those that don’t? They could:
Roll out a
programme of street closures, aiming to leave open only those needed by buses
and commercial vehicles, and some designated arterial routes.
Convert some of
the closed streets into markets for the nearby retailers. Every shop hidden
behind a construction hoarding should get a new, easy-to-access market stall
site to do business from.
Closed streets
could also become city gardens, malls, entertainment stages and food stall
sites.
Whip up some
peripheral park-and-rides around the inner city, so people could drive only so
close and then, if they don’t want to walk or hire a commuter bike, catch a bus
the rest of the way. A free bus, that is.
Convert
substantial parts of the roadways to cycling use, and mount a really big
campaign to encourage walking and cycling.
Incentivise
businesses to close their carparks and provide employees with HOP cards. Or
penalise those that don’t?
Exclude general
traffic from many of the “shared space” streets like Fort St, O’Connell St,
Elliott St and part of Federal St. Almost none of the cars using them now has
any good reason to be there: they’re just looking for a short cut and
undermining the potential of the streets.
Reduce Queen St
traffic to one lane each way. Effectively, turn it into bus lanes, but allow
the few cars left after all the other changes above to share it. Do it with
temporary barriers first to see if it works.
Concept drawing for the proposed East West link, June 2016.
6. There’s no good reason to build the East/West link.
The proposed new road linking SH20 with the industrial zones
of Penrose and Otahuhu has no good business case. The last publicly available
assessment, which was done in 2015, suggested the economic case was weak, and
that was when the route was different and the costs were much lower.
This is extraordinary. The only reason to build this road is
economic: it’s for freight trucks. But the economics aren’t good enough. The
government is avoiding this by calling it a “road of national significance” –
weasel words designed merely to disguise the fact it is pandering to sections
of the construction and freight industries.
7. Parnell station: you can leave but you can’t arrive.
There’s a new station on the rail line from Newmarket to
Britomart, at Parnell. Hallelujah. But like a bizarre bad-joke, some trains
stop there in the evening but not the morning, or is it vice versa? You can get
home from work, but you have to make your own way in.
It’s on account of “efficiency” of the overall line, but
really? Is it a service or just a tease?
8. Will the new board members be any better than the old?
While all this manifest absurdity is going on, Auckland
Transport is getting three new directors. It will also, a bit later this year,
say goodbye to its retiring CEO, David Warburton. And in two years’ time the
board chair, Lester Levy, will also step down.
That’s all a bit exciting, right? A chance for some new
talent, new ideas, new skills? They need it. The current board members (five
men, one woman) all have a traditional business background, several of them in
the vehicle-focused transport industry.
In an interview late last Lester Levy said the new
appointments would be strong in digital systems and urban transformation. Will
it happen? The recruitment process is being handled by Sheffield Consulting,
which has a long tradition of putting predictable people onto boards.
But it’s not their call, or Levy’s. The council makes the
decision. For councillors concerned about transport in this city, these
appointments are among the most important decisions they will make.
As for a new CEO, these days there are some exciting
transport sector leaders in many cities, many of them mentored by the famous
former New York Commissioner of Transportation, Janette Sadik-Khan. Can we
please, please, please have one of them?
Bike lane on Beach Road, Auckland. Photo: nzta.govt.nz
9. Despite the green paint, cycling is not prioritised.
There’s some good work happening for cycling in Auckland.
More dedicated cycle lanes, more protected routes to schools, some campaigning
to get people onto bikes. But it’s far too little. Here are some things they
could try:
On all the wide roads (many of which used to be tram lines) put out cones and create temporary cycle lanes.
At every primary and intermediate school, establish cycle routes and set up programmes with parent and whanau support for kids to use them. Start with the intermediates.
Work with schools to establish car-free safe zones.
Incentivise companies to promote cycling among their staff.
10. Last but not least, will they ever make the bus stops
better?
Every caught a bus at the Midtown stop, or on Wellesley St,
or at any of the other big mid-city stops? At peak times the pavements get
crowded, at some there’s not enough shelter when it rains, at none of them are
there enough seats. Big bus stops are merely little bus stops, designed for
three people to sit down in, with everyone else hanging about and getting in
the way of people walking past. That’s even true at the newly renovated stops
like Customs St heading east.
Why is this? Why, especially at night, don’t they make
customers feel both safer and more comfortable? Why aren’t the stops a bit of
fun, with entertaining material on the walls?
If we’re meant to be using public transport instead of
driving into town, why do so many bus stops carry this very clear message: if
you have money or brains you are not supposed to be here.
At that Planning Committee meeting, Cr Richard Hills shared
the dismay of Goff, Darby and Lee. “We can’t keep doing this,” he said,
“cutting bits off and hoping for the best and then going crap, what are we
going to do now?” True that.
Hills reminded his colleagues that in New York, there were
4.5 million people living either side of the Brooklyn Bridge and yet somehow
they managed to have “miles and miles of parks”. More people doesn’t equal less
quality of life – unless you give up and don’t plan for it.
Mike Lee said, “Transport should serve the city not the
other way round. We want to preserve a city that is not damaged by transport.”
True that too.
Design champion Ludo Campbell-Reid was asked what they
should do. He said, “You’re right to be worried. It’s about getting into a room
with AT and working it out.”
Sadly, it’s about a great deal more than that. They’ve got a
battle on their hands.
After the February murder of Winnipeg transit operator Irvine Jubal Fraser, and other violent attacks, there is a push for transit cops to be introduced in Winnipeg.
First,
improved transit infrastructure means improved safety. Far too many
transit stops have terrible lighting and only major transit stop have
emergency phones.
First,
improved transit infrastructure means improved safety. Far too many
transit stops have terrible lighting and only major transit stop have
emergency phones.
