Tag: Auckland

Chicken or The Egg

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What First with Transport

 

And

 

Do We Hold The Key to Better Transport?

 

The Herald ran a rather academic story on transport this morning and its relationship with the human body. To be honest the article is rather heavy for this time of year and looks like something err geeky from the blog next door. You can see the Herald article in the link below:

We hold the key to better transport

Some forms of getting from A to B are badly affecting the health of humans.

Incorporating the human body into transport design and planning could save millions.

 

We demand and expect our transport systems to get us where we want, when we want to be there, and as fast as possible. We are, however, human beings. And as with any other built system, we have to ask whether our fast and efficient modes of travel are necessarily always good for us.

And it goes on…

 

However when it came to solutions, yes they are under way but with Auckland‘s case it has a long way to go:

From the same article

 

…

For all the human health impacts of the modern transport system, there are obviously substantial benefits in the form of greater economic productivity, vastly increased spatial access and mobility, and even health gains, such as increased ability to get preventive and other medical care.

All technology imposes health risks of some sort. So a purely negative focus on these is unhelpful. Nonetheless, it’s useful to ask whether our transport technologies, policies and investments are good for us. If not, we need to adjust and redesign our transport accordingly.

Positive changes, many of which are currently underway, include:

  • A greater focus on redesigning congested urban spaces to encourage walking and social interaction and to lower automobile use and speeds. This could achieve many health and safety outcomes simultaneously.
  • Traffic calming – a range of techniques ranging from speed humps to pedestrian malls which create attractive active transport environments.
  • Road pricing and increasing parking fees, or eliminating parking altogether to encourage public transport use and walking.
  • The expansion of bike-share schemes, where public bicycles can be rented and dropped off from multiple locations.
  • Further safety improvements to automobile safety design for new car models.
  • Prioritising action on “black spots” on roads and highway “geometrics”, which includes improving lines of sight at intersections and around curves.

These reforms need not involve costly or radical overhaul. Road safety used to be a neglected policy; small but significant changes there have saved millions of lives. A broader incorporation of the human body into transport design and planning could save millions more.

 

Urban design and continued evolution of vehicle mechanics will go someway in addressing a more integrated system where transport and urban design are interwoven rather than treated separately as they are now. However the chicken and egg analogy comes up for the point I highlighted in bold: Road pricing and increasing parking fees, or eliminating parking altogether to encourage public transport use and walking. 

It is a case of do we slap on road pricing and increased parking fee measurements to build an adequate mass transit system that people would take as first choice rather than a forced choice (as of current), or do we build the mass transit system and get that running up first before slapping in the road pricing measures. It is actually a tough question and one who would have to provide a very good justification to the tax paying public no matter which of the two options they take.

 

But sadly Auckland seems to be in a bit of bother at the moment with is road and (in this particular case) mass transit systems. Take this article piece from the Herald (the post I have on it is sitting on ice at the moment):

Experts called in to fix rail slump

By Mathew Dearnaley

5:30 AM Friday Dec 21, 2012

Auckland Transport is resorting to professional help for a strategy on how to stop losing patronage from trains and buses. Chief operations officer Greg Edmonds has promised to provide his board with a plan early next year on how to staunch bleeding which saw a 17.2 per cent decline in train boardings last month compared with the previous November. That followed concern raised by Auckland Council transport leader Mike Lee, which was acknowledged by new board chairman Lester Levy, about a need to lift service performance. Mr Lee said patronage, which was boosted last year by the Rugby World Cup, started “flat-lining” in March and the organisation was starting to see a distinctive downward trajectory. “I don’t think this is sustainable without Auckland Transport intervening in a decisive way,” he said. “One of the measures of quality is punctuality or train performance and, while the price of our services is high, quality tends to be poor consistently.”

…

Mr Lee said the board, on which he is a council appointee, had been assured a new timetable would improve rail performance and that the rollout of the new Hop transport card on trains would combat fare evasion. But the board heard that train punctuality deteriorated last month to 84.1 per cent of services running to schedule, compared with 87.1 per cent in October, and he said rail staff were having difficulties stopping free-riding passengers. He had been told of fare evasion as some people were presenting their Hop cards to train staff to avoid paying their way. This did not apply to Britomart or Newmarket, which have become gated stations. “Busy, harassed train managers trying to collect fares are shown a Hop card and they move on,” he said. “The person may have paid $5 [in a since-expired half-price opening deal] for a card and, according to rail staff, they are using it to evade fares. “There are electronic checkers but they are slow and cumbersome and there’s not enough of them.” Dr Levy said he agreed there was a need for “critical measures” to be adopted and Auckland Transport needed to be far more customer-led in creating a demand for its services. “From the board’s point of view, this won’t go away – it’s the number one issue,” he said.

 

I think at this rate Auckland will be some way off before coming to the Chicken and Egg question on new infrastructure (which is where the point in bold above comes in) when we can’t even get the basics right on existing infrastructure.

 

Hopefully our transport planners and politicians will have some time to think over the summer holidays and have a solution, however as my iced post would stipulate; that might be asking for Mission Impossible. So in that case “WE” might be very well holding the key to better transport!

 

City Centre Future Access Study

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City Centre Future Access Study – The Reports

 

And so Auckland Council has released the City Centre Future Access Study or CCFAS. Now you can find the files from the Auckland Council website or (and I know one of the files is pretty chunky in size) you can read the embeds below to save on your bandwidth:

 

CCFAS – Graphic Summary

 

CCFAS – Section 1 of 2

 

CCFAS – Section 2 of 2

 

As I said in an earlier post, it shall take some time to go through all this before I run commentary on it.

But for now – happy reading

 

 

 

 

Be Right Back

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Coming Soon

 

Apologies for the lack of posts recently – things have been a bit more flat put than I like at the moment, diverting my attention away from BR:AKL commentary.

 

In saying that, things going on behind the scenes and across Social Media have still being happening with myself engaged in a constructive conversation with Ports of Auckland over the port review and future plans for our port. As of today I am also now reviewing the release of the City Centre Future Access Study which has just been released by Mayor Len Brown, and already spun for their own agendas by Councillor Brewer and the NZ National Party (which is currently in government). While Auckland Council has released the report (the pdf files are at the bottom of the webpage), my initial reaction until I have personally reviewed the files are the following:

Yes I am seeing the spin from all sides on the CRL debate after the CCFAS report was released by the Mayor. Conclusion, time to get someone else to bring the project through on a much better delivery plan that includes timetable and costs...

 

So not to worry folks, as soon as things calm down and normality is restored I shall be back running the commentary again – especially around Port of Auckland and the CCFAS Study.

 

Be seeing you soon – oh and love this hot summer weather here too 😀

 

And the current position I am taking on the CRL can be found currently HERE!

 

Advancement in Rail

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Pukekohe Electrification Builds Steam,

 

While

 

City Rail Link is Safe

 

 

Okay the subtitle for this post – Pukekohe Electrification Builds Steam is a nice play on words seeming the trains will be electrics, not steam engines.

Puns aside I managed to attend the back-end of the Transport Committee today after attending the first part of the Papakura Local Board meeting this morning. As I walked into the Transport Committee meeting this morning I must have just come into a pile of excitement and some Auckland Transport “moments” as there was quite a pitched debate going on. Now with the AT moment – I shall cover that in another post but for the moment let’s talk Pukekohe.

 

It has been mentioned since I reported on the November Transport Committee that steam is building (all hail the English language) to get the rail line from Papakura (where the current electrification will end) to Pukekohe electrified, as well as building two new stations at Drury and Paerata – both complete with bus bays and Park and Ride facilities. Now the cost of this project stands at $102m and has a Benefit Cost Ratio of 2.1. So for every dollar put in, you get $2.10 in investment return. Now for more on the actual project, please read the agenda below AND the case for Pukekohe Electrification also below.

 

Now apart from Councillor Casey’s sidetrack into the V8s in which depending on class of train, you can move between 284-700 passengers per train between Papakura to Pukekohe (answering that question of hers) the Transport Committee has thrown their full weight behind the Electrification and Station building project which (as Councillor Fletcher put it) an exciting moment for those in Counties (and in part South) Auckland. Now of course at $102m, Auckland Transport and the Council Strategy and Finance Committee (who oversee all things money within Council) are going to have to err rearrange budgets and finances to get the project within the current (oh I hate this saying – thanks Ruth Richardson) 2012-2022 Long Term Plan Fiscal Envelope. That is unless a special request is done to lug the project in there and seek extra money from the ratepayers – a move not wise as it creates precedent and makes the LTP a redundant exercise.

So Council and AT are going to have to have a long conversation on all things money as something from the budget is going to have to be dropped or put back. Nasty I know but hey, even Rebekka and I have to do it to our budget and finances at home when a capital project comes up outside the standard project – something else in that budget is just going to have to be put back.

 

However the wheels of progress are turning and fail the Governing Body doing a total back-flip, we should see the electrification extended to Pukekohe by 2018. Exciting times ahead

Oh any chance of squeezing in the $4m Manukau South (Rail) Link to be included with this project – just asking.

 

As for the City Rail Link

 

Ladies and gentlemen, I can safely say and be personally reassured that the City Rail Link is safe on the Council side of things (Central Government is something else) and that the project will advance from the Council side – although what exact time frame won’t actually be known until around 2014 when the new Council is installed and up and running. Now this is of course we do not get a total flip-out on Council and have every single new Councillor anti-rail.

However conversations I have had has given me this personal reassurance that the CRL will advance – subject to Central Government funding of course and that this project is supported by the majority of the Centre Left and Centre Right despite rumblings in the media and social media.

I am pleased ideology is being put behind in a particular case and that pragmatism and forward vision is rather in play instead. And whoever did release that draft report which curtailed the CRL has probably done more harm than good out of the exercise, so I am not particularly impressed and neither are others.

 

So we go forward and work continues on this multi-billion dollar mega project. Yes there are questions and work still be needing to be answered and done – but at least come hell or high-water this critical project continues to advance.

 

I give a nod and thanks to a particular individual for giving me that reassurance – for that I am thankful for (and I believe the city would be as well).

 

Agenda for Transport Committee – December 2012

 

Pukekohe Electrification Case

Summer Holidays

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Getting Ready for a Summer Holiday

 

Summer is here, Christmas is three weeks away and 2013 now being four weeks away. And as so businesses and civic institutions close down and people go away on holiday.

Apart from Christmas day itself I will be working through the holiday season and will be taking Annual Leave again in March next year as Rebekka and I head to Australia for our holiday. But in that regard BR:AKL will also be on Summer holiday too from December 21 until Wellington Anniversary weekend (somewhere mid January) before firing up again next with more of that commentary and analysis, plus the campaign to Papakura Local Board 2013.

 

However before we all go, just a couple of things cropping up at the moment as the year winds down:

First being tomorrow’s Auckland Council Transport Committee in which you can go read all 220 pages in the embed down below. I shall be present at that Committee meeting keeping an eye on proceedings and hopefully catching up with a couple of Councillors and wishing them a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

The second thing being is that I still have one Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act request outstanding in the Manukau Parking Building that I am awaiting the information from Auckland Transport. I am also in the process of writing up another LGOIMA request on a particular issue I have been keeping a close eye on.

And the last thing being is that I have finished reading the report into our Upper North Island Ports (including Port of Auckland). I shall write commentary up on that in the New Year including continued pushing for having the port moved down the South East coast.

 

So hope your Christmas preparations are all going well – and here is the 220 pages of all things transport in Auckland (seeming most of us are going to be stuck on the roads one point or another in the run up to these holidays)