Too little being built near Rapid Transit Lines

This came in last night from Auckland Council on how well (or not) our residential builds are doing:

Auckland Monthly Housing Update for March

Auckland Council’s Research and Evaluation Unit (RIMU) has released its Monthly Housing Update for March, bringing together the latest significant Auckland housing-related statistics.

Key findings:

• 1128 new dwellings received building consents in January.
• In the year ending January 2019, 13,272 new dwellings were granted building consents in the region.
• 46 per cent of new dwellings consented in January 2019 were houses, 30 per cent were apartments and 25 per cent were townhouses, flats, units, retirement units, or other types of dwellings.
• 1062 dwellings consented in January 2019 were inside the Rural Urban Boundary (RUB). Over the past 12 months, 94 per cent of new dwellings consented were inside the RUB.
• 28 per cent of dwellings consented in January 2019 were within 1500m walking distance of a rapid transport network
• 132 dwellings were consented on Housing New Zealand or Tāmaki Regeneration Company owned land in January 2019.
• 480 dwellings were ‘completed’ by having a Code Compliance Certificate (CCC) issued in January 2019.
• In the year ending January 2019, 10,577 dwellings were issued with a CCC.

The full report can be found on Knowledge Auckland here.

Commentary from Auckland Council Regulatory Committee Chair, Councillor Linda Cooper:

“In January 2019, 1128 new dwellings were issued with building consents, up from 938 in December and more than 400 above the 718 new dwellings issued with building consents in January 2018.

“This is a fantastic effort from the council’s Building Consents team and shows that we are continuing to facilitate much-needed new housing for Aucklanders.”

Source: Auckland Council

Good to see high levels of residential consenting and builds are inside the Rural Urban Boundary. What is not good is this:

• 28 per cent of dwellings consented in January 2019 were within 1500m walking distance of a rapid transport network

That number is too low for Brownfield developments full stop. Even if we factored in Frequent Service Routes like the Great South Road 33 bus the number of new builds close to RTN and FSN (Frequent Service Networks) should be well over 50%.

Delays in new projects like City Centre to Mangere Light Rail won’t help however, what really won’t help is the lack of coordination between Council, Auckland Transport, Panuku and Government on encouraging more Transit Orientated Developments where the existing and upcoming RTN lines (including Airport to Botany RTN) will be.

All of our Metropolitan Centres will be sitting on a Rapid Transit Network line by 2028 one way or the other, yet planning to make sure we have quality TOD’s in the Metros so that they can capitalise from the transit network is still very poor (apart from Manukau thanks to Our Manukau).

Simply put unless you are within 1,500m of a transit line (including a feeder bus) there is a high chance you will no be catching transit (urban park and rides trigger congestion and should be reviewed). So to have 28% of new builds within 1,500m of a transit line is deeply worrying!

In the end some good news with residential builds but also bad news as well. In other words we are doing more of the same which originally got us in this mess!