C.K. Stead: Auckland's mayors singing from the wrong songsheet

COMMENT


Like the three tenors, Mayors John Banks and Sir Barry Curtis sing the same song, though it sounds like something written by a tuneless PR man with little concern that words should mean anything or that facts should be verifiable.

In answer to Tim Hazledine's questioning of the $4 billion cost of the proposed eastern highway, the mayors claim "the benefits to Auckland's economy over time are huge", and will justify the expenditure.

These "benefits", as they describe them, however, are so vague and generalised as to be meaningless: "an investment for securing sustainable growth"; "the benefits, including social multipliers, could reach $46 billion"; "urban transformation and economic development" - these are phrases meant to persuade, but what do they mean in real terms?

The idea that a highway dressed up as a "transport corridor" will magically send New Zealand up the OECD ladder, and that Auckland, therefore, has a responsibility to build this dinosaur for the good of the nation - these are catch-cries, without economic or intellectual substance and they are not to be taken seriously.

There are many ways of measuring costs. The eastern highway is a proposal that would cost us not only in dollars but in damage. Auckland is a beautiful city, rating high on international surveys.

That it attracts tourists is important but more important is that those of us who live in it love it and want to preserve its attractions for our children and grandchildren.

Short of a huge aerial bombardment, a motorway is the most destructive modern weapon against an urban environment, blocking access on either side, dividing communities, destroying housing, waterways, parklands and areas of natural beauty, creating air and (even worse) noise pollution, and in the long term making worse the traffic problem it is supposed to solve.

This latter point cannot be repeated too often, since our civic leaders seem unable to learn the lessons even of very recent history. I am old enough to remember when Grafton Gully was a piece of charming bushland, with old graves and a stream running down towards the harbour.

When it was proposed as the route for a motorway, we were assured that only a thin strip would be taken and that, otherwise, its natural beauty would be preserved. It is now a maze of concrete.

That mistake can't be undone, but there is no need to repeat it along the waterfront, and through Hobson Bay, the Orakei Basin, and Meadowbank.

Never unwilling to make themselves ridiculous, Mayors Banks and Curtis predict land-value rises. Are we to expect real-estate advertisements reading "Come and live by the motorway"? What is most likely is the development of a wide ribbon of low-grade living and industrial degradation, a no-go zone.

Those of us who prefer to use the car (and I include myself) must be disciplined, or at least learn the facts of urban life, one of which is that if you live in a city of a million or more and insist on using your car during rush hours, you must be prepared to spend some time going nowhere.

If billions of dollars are wasted in an attempt to defeat or disprove this basic fact of modern living, the relief will be short-lived, the cost and the damage enormous, and in a very short time the problem will have re-created itself.

There are no exceptions to this rule but there is a way out - public transport, and that is where, if only we had talented and visionary public leaders, all our efforts would now be concentrated.

Mr Banks favours making motorway and harbour bridge-users pay. That is reasonable, but only if the money gathered goes into public transport. If driving your car is a pleasure at public expense, it is a pleasure that should be taxed.

To make bridge-users pay for the eastern highway would be wrong. To make them pay for a cheaper ferry service, on the other hand, would be fair and reasonable.

Similarly, if cars are taxed for using existing motorways, the money gathered should subsidise public transport. Systems of this kind are working in European cities, including London.

"We have been around Auckland's incomplete roading network problems for at least 25 years," the mayors tell us. If that is so, they must bear some of the responsibility for the failure to get on with the kind of public transport system that Mayor Robinson was calling for in the 1960s.

Now they are rushing to solve the problem by adding a highway that runs parallel to the existing motorway and eventually converges with it.

One of Auckland's problems has been a centralised bureaucracy in Wellington, run largely by civil servants who saw to the capital's needs before they gave any thought to New Zealand's largest city.

It was noticeable a few years ago when Auckland had its power crisis that we had four main cables into the city while Wellington had 10. Similarly, the old NZ Railways made sure that Wellington had a viable commuter rail service while Auckland's remained relatively undeveloped.

These are facts of our city's past that have to be recognised and met. We are a long way behind in public transport, and should have maximum help from the Government in correcting the deficit.

The west coast of North America offers lessons from which we should learn. To the north is Vancouver, a city of comparable size to Auckland, with the ocean to the west and the mountains rising behind.

It has recognised that motorways solve nothing and that there are values and qualities to be preserved for the future. Vancouver has spent money on public transport, including its excellent skytrain services, and is reaping the benefits.

To the south is Los Angeles which preserves a few havens of comfort and beauty for the rich (Santa Monica, Brentwood, Beverly Hills, Bel Air) and is otherwise a network of clogged motorways, with their attendant smog, low-grade commerce, dingy housing and industrial wastelands.

These are the futures Auckland must choose between. Our two mayors are pointing us in the wrong direction.

* C.K. Stead is a Parnell novelist and poet.