Rudman's city: Road-fixated AA ought to butt out of transport plans

By BRIAN RUDMAN

Back in March I berated the Automobile Association for wasting my subscription fees on extremist pro-road political campaigning. It attracted a flood of support from equally grumpy members.

It even had an effect on the AA, though not exactly the one I'd hoped for.

Instead of getting the message and directing membership fees into doing something more useful, like hiring another breakdown mechanic or two, the AA went out and hired veteran Auckland journalist Mark Scott to craft new ammunition for the anti-rail campaign. And very busy this one-time reporter has been.

His latest effort is a broadside under the name of northern regional manager Stephen Selwood, carefully timed to do maximum damage to the credibility of the $1.08 billion public transport grand plan just launched by Auckland's political leadership.

It's a sound plan that has been agreed to only after years of research, consultation and debate among regional politicians, transport planners, interest groups and fellow citizens.

The Scott-Selwood response is to label it "a grandiose Auckland rail scheme that will have virtually zero impact on congestion." And that "it's highly unlikely the rest of New Zealand will pay $1 billion for it."

The response incorrectly labels the plan a rail scheme when everyone but the AA zealots knows it is a combined bus, light-rail and heavy-rail scheme. It is also part of an overall regional transport and roading strategy that includes new motorways - which the AA management craves - as well as a revived rail system.

As a spoiler tactic, this further attack could not have been better timed. It comes on the eve of crucial meetings by both national road funding body Transfund and local funder Infrastructure Auckland to consider applications for the money needed to make the vision come true.

It also raises again the question I asked four months ago: where do the AA leaders get their mandate for such extremist blathering?

It certainly didn't come from this long-time member, who has never been consulted on the issue, and if I were, would tell my organisation to get back to its knitting.

I would also refer them to the Auckland Regional Council's just-completed report, "Housing Demand and Supply."

This report underlines the population explosion that will continue to test the region's transport systems over the next 20 years, and serves as a timely reminder of why we will need the combined road-rail public transport system proposed.

In just two decades, the regional population will reach 1,558,250, a 41 per cent increase on 1996. With shrinking household sizes forecast, this means a 56 per cent increase in the number of households over the same period.

Put another way, between 1986 and 1996, 69,729 new houses or flats were built, taking the grand total to 353, 844. Between 1996 and 2021 the experts say we will need another 201,000 new dwellings. That's 8000 a year and they have to go somewhere. Either upwards or outwards.

The planners are proposing some of both, predicting the main areas of growth as Dairy Flat, Albany, Swanson-Ranui, East Tamaki, Clevedon and the Auckland City centre.

The quarter-acre paradise will be, for most, an unknown - or long forgotten - experience. The experts say that by 2021 population density across a large part of Auckland City will be over 15 households a hectare. At the same time "densities outside the metropolitan urban limits will also be increasing. This will place pressure on the relative authorities to provide urban facilities and infrastructure in these areas."

The just-released rail-bus transport scheme is one part of that blueprint.

The AA is so fixated on bus travel that it's even reviving the long-discarded proposal to put a busway along the western rail corridor. If the AA had done its research, it would have discovered that proponents of that option abandoned it after the true costs of laying a new shared rail-roadway were calculated, and the risks of mixing heavy trains with light buses examined.

If anything has been researched and litigated to a standstill it is Auckland's public transport woes. The AA has had years to press its case. The region's politicians and transport planners have listened and come to another conclusion, one on which there is rare unanimity.

As an AA member, I say that my organisation should accept this and butt out. From the response I got in March, I suspect a lot of other Auckland AA members agree.