Editorial: Commuters need motives, not bullying

After much unseemly local-body squabbling, Auckland finally has a draft business plan on which to base the modernisation of its passenger rail network. And just in time, too. With the new Britomart station due to open in six weeks, the disagreements over the track ahead were reaching farcical proportions. Now having collaborated in the drawing-up of the plan, it is imperative that local authorities, and the Auckland Regional Council in particular, get behind its implementation.

The draft plan has two particularly eye-catching features - the choice of electric heavy rail over diesel and light-rail options, and the target of 25 million journeys by 2015. The latter is clearly ambitious, given that the present annual figure is 2.2 million. It need not be impractical, however. The choice of electrification is a good start towards providing the quick, comfortable, convenient and frequent rail service that will be necessary to lure Aucklanders from their cars. Electric rail beats diesel on the basis of operating cost, noise and, perhaps most important, emissions. It also does not have the capacity constraints of light rail.

If there is an area of contention in the draft plan, it is the belief that more than just a modern and efficient service will be required to meet the patronage target. Thus, we have what is euphemistically known as travel-demand management. This comprises devices that will push, rather than pull, people out of cars and onto trains - and provide revenue to help drive the modernisation. Included as possibilities are a $5 toll on driving across the isthmus, a doubling of parking fees, and a doubling of the price of petrol, through the auspices of a fuel tax. Proponents of these devices, and others of the like of central London's congestion pricing, regard them as an increasingly tenable means of combating gridlock. But those suggested for Auckland seem so heavy-handed as to represent a gazumping of an alternative means of transport - the car. They amount to a style of anti-competitive behaviour that supposedly was part of a dreary, monopolistic yesteryear.

The thrust of Auckland's railway development must be to provide an attractive option to the car - not to drive people onto trains through artificial, and unfair, mechanisms. Reasonable congestion management can obviously go hand in hand with the development of a public transport alternative. It should not, however, be the means of making that alternative viable - or an important source of funding. In no way could a doubling of petrol costs be justified on the basis of generating rail passengers.

It should be enough that Aucklanders are already incensed by the frequent instances of gridlock and, in many cases, will need little incentive to leave their cars at home. But they must be attracted to rail, not beaten into submission. The North Shore bus service provides a worthwhile example. It is proving increasingly popular because dedicated transit lanes ensure bus transport is quick and relatively trouble-free - luxuries not enjoyed by drivers stuck in car lanes.

The draft plan draws much from Perth, a similar-sized city to Auckland. There, the number of rail trips surged from 7.5 million to 30 million in six years following the modernisation of rail services in the 1990s. The parallels may not be exact; the West Australian city was probably a more readymade candidate for cure. It benefits from a layout which sees a major settlement, Fremantle, as the logical terminus of a much-travelled line. Nonetheless, Perth is an example of what can be achieved. It should inspire local authorities to back the creation of a similarly efficient passenger rail service here.