Rudman's city: Blatherings of the AA cut a different track

By BRIAN RUDMAN

As a longtime member of the Automobile Association I am becoming tired of my organisation's ceaseless criticism of a solution to Auckland's transport crisis that involves anything other than roads and roads and more roads.

Where do the AA's leaders get their mandate for such extremism?

The latest blatherings come from public affairs director George Fairbairn, who claims that Transfund NZ's decision to give Auckland $22 million towards the cost of leasing the region's railway lines is robbery of the roads accounts.

Tomorrow, the AA bosses are at it again, siding with the big truck operators at a conference in Auckland called "The Case for Roads."

Organiser and trenchant pro-roader David Willmott reveals how one-sided it's going to be in a letter to media offices.

"This seminar is a cry from the heart from commercial sponsors at the lack of progress in developing the arterial and motorway networks ... " it reads.

He wallops the region's "apparent determination" to pursue a multibillion-dollar light rail system "which will not reduce congestion one iota and may marginally exacerbate it." He fulminates about "environmental values being pursued regardless of feedback effects on society and its economy."

The backers of this petrol-heads conference are the sort of organisations you would expect: Allied Concrete, Foodstuffs (Auckland), W. Stevenson and Sons, Winstone Aggregates. Them and, of all people, the organisation of the middle-class car owner, the AA.

I'd never thought the truckies and we car owners had much in common, particularly when I'm being passed at well over the speed limit by a water-spraying leviathan.

Obviously the AA bosses think differently. Not only have they teamed up with them at this conference but they've sponsored one of the more cor-blimey of the overseas speakers, a chap from St Louis, USA, called Wendell Cox.

The Austin Chronicle calls Mr Cox "the attack dog for groups opposing public transportation projects - especially light rail and commuter rail." On his website CV Mr Cox proudly claims to have helped to defeat rail projects in Orlando, Phoenix, Seattle, St Louis, Denver, Aspen, Austin, San Antonio and Salt Lake City.

His love is roads. For metropolitan Atlanta he proposed a grid of arterial roads six to eight lanes wide, not more than 1.6km apart. In addition, he said, another grid of freeways should criss-cross the region.

He wanted underground freeways with double-deck tunnels. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said: "Cox calls it a 'New Vision' but it's more like a regressive hallucination."

Now if the truckies want to invite such people to town, who am I to say how they spend their money? But I do object to the AA using my subscription money to encourage such one-sided debate.

When challenged about what consultation with members had taken place before this political position was taken, Mr Fairbairn pointed to a random poll conducted in Auckland late last year. But that, he conceded, was of all Aucklanders, not just AA members.

This argument also ignored that the AA, in conjunction with Road Transport Forum New Zealand, had, several months before the poll, commissioned Mr Cox to prepare a paper on light rail in the United States.

As the AA's northern manager, Stephen Selwood, noted last November when the poll results were released, Aucklanders want new motorways blended with public transport. He would have also noted that 28 per cent thought a new western corridor should carry both cars and trains.

As for the hysterical response to Transfund's $22 million grant, that was just childish. Transfund has a statutory obligation to provide money for "alternatives to roading."

Even if the AA can't see it, Transfund did see the benefits to road users of maintaining Auckland's existing rail services.

First, if the system collapsed, the existing passengers would end up adding to road congestion. Second, an improved rapid transit system would eventually take further traffic off the roads. Finally, Transfund saw benefits in replacing the present monopoly rail system with a service based on competitive tendering.

None of this is robbery, or the "gross abuse of road users' money" that Mr Fairbairn would have us believe.

As a member of the organisation that he purports to represent, can I suggest that the next time he feels the need to mouth off, he consults us, his employers, and not his truckie mates?