Brian Rudman: A little present from downtown trains

A Ministry of Health review is proposing giving worried people living near a Kaitaia timber mill personal air pollution kits to monitor the emissions from the neighbouring smoke stacks.

While they're at it, the men from the ministry might consider throwing a few of these kits together for the apartment dwellers living alongside the new downtown Auckland Britomart train station.

For while the 49 fans and 564 sets of specially developed filtration bags of the underground station's super new ventilation system will provide a pristine-quality air supply to those within, the air pumped outside through the two exhaust towers will be untreated.

With the vision of a rail system "with modern trains serving modern stations every 5-10 minutes at peak times" it is just as well the aim is to replace the current heavy diesel locomotives with electric units by 2009.

Auckland City planning manager John Duthie emphasises that the air being pumped out of the station will contain only 117 micrograms of gunk per cubic metre of air per hour, which is well within the 200 microgram permissible standard and not much worse than the 77 micrograms per cubic metre already floating about at street level.

Also, the Britomart exhaust will be pumped out well above ground - eventually, that is, after office blocks are built with the venting flues incorporated in the structure.

But if you add the 117 micrograms to the existing 77 and throw in the regional council's Big Clean Up Campaign, which, among other aims, is trying to get us to reduce air pollution, then it's not a very good example for our local government masters to be setting.

Talking of setting examples, it warmed my heart to hear Mayor John Banks declare on National Radio that he caught Stagecoach's Remuera Flyer, door to door, from home to work.

I know the more cynical among you suspect a certain bending of the truth here on the part of our leader, a fleet-footed riposte to quieten down one of Morning Report's notorious ankle-snapping interrogators.

The mayor, at the time, had been put on the spot as to his personal commitment to his claim that public transport was a key part of beating Auckland's congestion crisis.

Myself, I prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt and believe he's bussed to work at least once, perhaps one day when the Roller and the Ferrari were both in for a valeting.

With Britomart opening for business in just over a month, the site is at that "how will they ever finish it in time?" stage. Wire hanging from the ceiling, scaffolding to hit your head on, puddles where they shouldn't be. But there's enough of the bones to suggest a pretty spectacular butterfly is about to emerge.

The new station alone should act as a magnet for those looking for an alternative to the congested motorways.

But the authors of the draft business plan on the rail upgrade project, which was released last week, know that a shiny new station and improved train services will not be enough to achieve their target of 25 million passengers by 2015.

To win that sort of patronage they're emphasising the need for "travel demand management" policies that are designed to "influence the behaviours of motorists and to create additional incentives to use public transport".

Examples canvassed include congestion pricing (introduced to central London recently), road tolls, carbon tax, fuel taxes and parking fees.

The North Shore blitz on drivers illegally using the Onewa Rd transit lanes shows that a genuine commitment to travel management does get people out of cars. By ensuring only buses and car-poolers travel on the dedicated transit lane, morning rush hour travel time in that lane has been reduced from 30 minutes to seven minutes. As a result, bus patronage has rocketed up, and interestingly, congestion has also reduced in the car lanes.

It's a wonderful example of congestion-breaking that shows that the road lobbies' dream of new motorways is not the only solution to Auckland's traffic woes.

Another proposal not suggested by the rail report authors is a tax on staff car parks.

As well as using the stick to get commuters out of their cars, I'm a great believer in the powers of leadership.

What an inspiration it would be to find Mr Banks regularly on the Remuera Flyer. And to read that Auckland's local councils had abolished free car parking for councillors and staff.

And even if it didn't get commuters out of their cars it would at least ensure the trains and buses ran on time. The ones our masters now caught anyway.