Photo / NZ Herald
A city with a rapidly growing number of residents has every reason to try to cut commuter traffic and create a public transport culture. Any notions of an exceptional level of liveability will soon be rendered redundant if Auckland continues on its car-centric way.
Change, however, will not come without a degree of manipulation. Auckland Transport believes it has an answer in a raft of changes to parking fees, limits and practices. But many of these are so problematic that they seem hardly likely to represent the most effective response.
Take the proposal, over time, to introduce paid parking or time limits into metropolitan and fringe centres such as Takapuna and Ponsonby, and other suburbs of the likes of Howick and Avondale.
The outcry from local businesses fearing a loss of trade would be deafening. They would accuse the council of revenue-gathering, a claim they could reinforce by pointing to the limited number of people who use such centres for all-day parking. Similarly, the idea of charging motorists to use expanded park-and-ride areas around bus, train and ferry facilities has an obvious flaw. At the very least, it will cause present users to reassess what they are doing; at worst, it will send them back to their cars.
There also seems little point in reprising the concept of a levy on employers who provide staff with free parking. When it was put up by the Government last year, it was halted in its tracks by an unlikely alliance of employers, property owners and trade unionists, largely on the basis that the levy would net far less than the compliance cost. If other parts of Auckland Transport's proposals - reduced parking on arterial routes and the reserving of 60 per cent of street parking in fringe suburbs for residents with permits - seem far more sensible, it adds up to a far from compelling package.
Two other approaches are likely to prove far more effective. The first, aimed at implanting a public transport culture, requires a considerable improvement in bus, ferry and rail travel. A jump in patronage would be the inevitable consequence of public transport that was quicker, more convenient, more reliable and more frequent, and easily affordable. The introduction of electric trains is a step in the right direction, but much still needs to be done.
The other side of the equation, cutting commuter traffic, would best be tackled by the introduction of some form of congestion charging. In London, as an example, this has discouraged many people from bringing their cars into the city centre.
That city, of course, boasts an excellent public transport system, which gives motorists every reason to consider leaving their cars at home or parking them outside the charged zone and away from permit areas. In fairness, therefore, Auckland's public transport would have to go some way towards a similar standard before motorists faced congestion char-ging.
Even then, it would be unpalatable to many of the people who will pay the cost.
But those same people know that Auckland's traffic predicament is worsening by the day. Virtually overnight, there would be less congestion on the roads.
Far better that than an assortment of parking penalties, most of which will also be hotly contested and most of which will do little to unclog Auckland's roads.