Owen McShane: Water-shuttles perfect for our harbourside lifestyle

Owen McShane

Transport planners tell us we need trains because we need a balanced transport system, even if the trains are not economic and effective.

This is a curious argument, because if we take it to its logical conclusion we should have public helicopters, balloons, motorcycles and monorails and a bit of every transport system ever used anywhere in the world.

Curiously, this argument seldom runs to the balance which could be genuinely provided by waterborne transport linking the many centres on the edges of our harbours and the gulf.

One reason Auckland is unsuited for the radial public transport systems we find in the great cities on the plains of America and Europe is that not only do Aucklanders choose to live at low densities along the coastlines, to enjoy what the region has to offer, but also a huge chunk of the urban catchment is occupied by two large harbours which have zero-population density.

For land-based public transport these harbours pose a problem.

For waterborne transport, these harbours are an opportunity, as Rodney's Mayor John Law has recognised in his proposal to provide more wharves and jetties along the edge of the Hauraki Gulf and the harbour.

As he points out, the Rodney coastline already has an abundance of wharves and jetties and Whangaparoa's Gulf Harbour development is about to add yet another, serving a new private harbour and associated buildings - a kind of Venice of the south.

To achieve his dream, Mayor Law will have to overcome two strange attitudes which will otherwise drag his vision down into the tidal mud.

Our transport planners tend to ignore the useful contribution taxis and shuttles make to our public transport market share.

Our bureaucrats assume public transport must be publicly owned or publicly controlled. This is nonsense.

The most efficient, safe and effective public transport is provided by the aviation industry. Taxis are a close second. Our transport planners fantasise about some future day when trains might carry 20 million rides a year.

Taxis are already providing that without any demands on the public purse.

Free shuttles also contribute to public transport's market share.

During my last short trip to the United States, most of my kilometres were in planes or private cars, but I took 18 rides in shuttles, two in taxis and two on Bay Area Rapid Transit (Bart).

Yet nobody bothers to count the shuttle trips here, even though Auckland's shuttles must carry many thousands of riders to and from hotels to the airport every year.

So if Mayor Law wants to see his connectivity develop between all these wharves and associated hotels, shops and restaurants, he should think water-shuttles and water-taxis, not ferries.

However, for that to happen, he has to encourage us to get over our strangely ambivalent attitude to coastal land which goes something like this: we all love the coast and must guarantee public access to our beaches and therefore we have to make sure nobody going about their normal daily business can get anywhere near them.

Where can you sit outside a restaurant in a beach suburb and see the water and sand rather than a carpark or a road? Typically, the sea is on the other side of the road and a grass or sand desert makes casual connection impossible unless you want to change your shoes.

So Mayor Law will also have to change his district plan to allow intensive development round these wharves so that public buildings like hotels and shops will be encouraged to provide free shuttles from wharf to wharf and centre to centre.

The ARC's proposed Plan Change 6 puts most of these seaside centres off-limits for further growth, because they are not served by major rail or bus routes.

The shrewd way for the mayor to cut through this nonsense and allow his citizens to live and play where they want - and most of us do not pore over the real-estate pages looking for our railway yard in the sun - is to turn these seaside centres into genuine public transport nodes which will transform them from planners' pariahs into truly blessed vital and dynamic mixed-use communities.

We should all wish him the best of luck. He is going to need it.

* Owen McShane is director of the Centre for Resource Management Studies.