Dialogue: Grave doubts plague Son of Britomart

The Britomart transport centre has been presented as the answer to Auckland's transport woes. But, asks VICTORIA CARTER*, are Aucklanders being railroaded?

The Auckland City Council's draft annual plan signals the start of spending on the $260 million transport interchange formerly known as Britomart and now called the Waitemata Waterfront interchange. The dream is that the interchange will be the central place for people wanting to get a train or, in future, to travel by light rail. Buses and the ferries are on the outside.

Are we dreaming? Who knows? But should we be building a terminal in the hope that the people will come or will the interchange become Auckland's field of dreams?

People have been saying for years that Auckland City needs trains to come into Queen St. It was only thanks to a strange quirk of politics that the railway station was built at the Strand, kilometres from Queen St. But is it too late? Even the Prime Minister has said that most Aucklanders don't live within a cooee of a rail station.

Queen St has suffered from the movement of many businesses to the suburbs and to low-rise buildings with lots of carparking. The number of people who come to the central city to work has been decreasing for years. Now, more people travel around the city on the motorway system to get to their work or homes.

There is also the question of the patronage numbers that Auckland City councillors have been given to support the case for the terminal. When the terminal opens in 2003, an extra 400 people are expected to use the train. That's a $260 million building for an extra 400 people in the first year.

Is an extra 400 people a year or projected growth of 13 per cent a year on trains sufficient justification for spending this huge amount of money?

Beca Carter has told the city council that by 2021 we can conservatively expect 10,000 people to use the terminal.

But we have no idea where the trains will run from in the future, what sort they will be, who will use them, whether they will be used by Auckland City's ratepayers, or even if this is a mode people will choose to use.

History shows that even with new rolling stock and timetables, rail patronage is not increasing to the same degree as bus use.

With the cost of building the interchange increasing every year, ratepayers must ask: do we need a grand terminal like this? We must all ask ourselves whether we are really going to get out of our cars and on to a train. Or do we think it is our neighbours or the other person we pass on the motorway who should be using public transport?

The Auckland Regional Council reports that 34,000 people travel in cars or by bus to the central business district each day. Thirty-four per cent of people use public transport, the majority of whom - 81 per cent - use buses. A further 13.5 per cent use ferries and a mere 5.5 per cent use trains.

The use of ferries and buses has grown strongly in the past few years, so shouldn't we be making them more attractive for users?

Last year, more than 2700 people came to the city centre each day on a ferry. Just over 17,000 used the bus - an increase on the previous year.

That tells me that people are comfortable with buses and that perhaps we should be spending the region's and ratepayers' money on more modern, low-to-the-ground, quieter, environmentally friendly buses instead of a bus station.

We must also ask whether building the terminal is, in fact, the best way to encourage public transport use.

With the annual plan out for debate, ratepayers must say whether they want the city council to put those millions into a new or improved bus system and do a much simpler interchange.

I want to know if anyone has worked out whether it would be cheaper to subsidise a mini-bus service that runs like a bus system with regular pickup times and dropoff at the door.

Perhaps a city our size cannot afford a grand central railway station. With a population our size, we must look very carefully at the level of ratepayer subsidy going into public transport.

Of course, we need a solution, not just for our quality of life and the environment. But which should come first, the transport to get us out of our cars or the building?

If you don't want the new costly underground Britomart interchange, you must let city councillors know quickly before the annual plan is confirmed.

* Victoria Carter, an Auckland City councillor, is at cr.carter@akcity.govt.nz