Rudman's city: Political rides begin and end at Britomart project

Here we go again. Three years ago it was Christine Fletcher, independent candidate for the Auckland mayoralty, who was leading the charge against the incumbent council's grandiose $376 million Britomart project.

At a pre-election meeting at Auckland Rotary, she spoke glowingly of an alternative "excellent and modest" $18 million transport terminal plan that the bigger scheme had replaced.

Now Ms Fletcher is the incumbent, championing an anything-but-modestly-priced $262 million son-of-Britomart.

And sniping away from the cheap seats is an as-yet-undeclared mayoral rival, councillor Victoria Carter.

Mrs Carter has suddenly taken it upon herself to declare, "we're being railroaded into Britomart ... The justifications for going ahead with the terminal are just not robust enough."

Try as I might, it's hard not to catch the stench of electioneering in all of this.

Mrs Carter has been fighting hard to be identified with the proposed $100 million Quay Park arena project. It's an enterprise that Mrs Fletcher has consistently argued must be shelved until her baby, son-of-Britomart, is underway.

Now Mrs Carter has given the mayor a taste of her own medicine.

Until now, Mrs Carter has gone along with the new Britomart. Indeed, as recently as March 15 she joined a majority of councillors in endorsing a $75 million blowout in costs that increased the bill to $249.5 million.

Why, you might ask, if she had doubts, didn't she join the four Citrat councillors who voted against the cost increase that night.

They argued that it was irresponsible to endorse the scheme without a cost-benefit analysis.

Mrs Carter, in an e-mail to me from Seattle where she's on a council-funded trip, replies weakly that "sometimes it seems pointless to vote 'no' without good reasoning and at the time I didn't have it."

Her central concern is that most of the money to be spent will go on rail - the Cinderella transport mode.

She doesn't enhance her case by using different patronage figures in each of three recent press statements, but given the amazing paucity of passenger numbers included in the recent cost-benefit analysis, I'm not surprised at her confusion.

As far as I can work out, about 2700 commuters use the existing Strand railway station daily and a similar number use the downtown ferry terminal. In contrast, more than 17,000 a day use the Britomart bus station.

Mrs Carter argues that the $262 million pricetag is "too much money when rail is the one mode of public transport that has seen the least growth in the last 10 years. Aucklanders prefer the bus or the ferry but they're not getting a specially built terminal."

She claims the council has become hypnotised by rail, and suggests it would be cheaper to give people taxi vouchers or set up a door-to-door shuttle service.

Perhaps if she had been caught in the gridlock caused by last Wednesday evening's storm, Mrs Carter would have become a little mesmerised by the promise of rail, too - and of the futility of adding more taxis to our clogged streets.

Transport planners and politicians are hypnotised by rail for good reason.

Running like arteries through the region, the scandalously under-used rail corridors provide an ideal solution to the growing people-moving problems.

It is defeatist to judge future demand for rail services on what has happened over the past decade. During that time the monopoly rail operator seemed happy to let the already pitiful passenger service decay even more. No wonder demand grew little.

But back to Britomart. Sure, the bill sounds huge. But given public support, after extensive consultation, for an underground train station on Queen St, what does Mrs Carter suggest in the way of cost-cutting?

To get the price down to $262 million, councillors have already hacked $13 million off the cost of the underground "concourse" that will take passengers from Queen St, below Custom St via the rail station, then under Quay St to the Ferry Building.

She could save another $22 million by abolishing the concourse altogether. And the $390,000 worth of lifts to carry the disabled up from the train platforms - do we really need them?

I'm sure that Mrs Carter's sudden crisis of conscience over Britomart is heartfelt. But coming so close to election time, she's going to find it harder to convince those of a more suspicious nature than myself.