OPINION
When the City Rail Link (CRL) opens in 2026, there’s a railway level crossing in Penrose that will be closed to cars during peak times for 45 minutes in every hour. Imagine the chaos.
Crossings like this were going to be modified, with an overpass or an underpass, so the trains don’t stop the traffic. But that work is not funded under the new Government Policy Statement (GPS) on Land Transport and there is no indication it will be.
It’s just one sign among many that transport in this city is heading for disaster. I don’t mean public transport, I mean all transport. This is about cars.
Funding is being cut, and what remains is being channelled to a few megaprojects that will do little to help most travellers.
The impact will start to be felt within months. Within a few years, we could see hundreds of thousands more car trips on our roads every week.
The problem is not just the GPS. From July 1, cuts to Auckland Council’s funding of Auckland Transport (AT) will kick in. Also from July 1, the regional fuel tax (RFT) will disappear. Population growth and Government policies on housing will both have a big impact on the roads.
Simeon Brown, Minister of Transport and Minister for Auckland, talked a big game in front of a business crowd at the launch of the Herald’s Project Auckland last week.
The GPS, he said, “will unlock the infrastructure investments that are needed to help Aucklanders get to where they need to go, quickly and safely”.
But the GPS will do the opposite of that, and gridlock won’t be the only outcome. Carbon emissions will rise, road safety will decline and so will public health.
Still, for the moment, let’s stick to congestion. Freeing up the roads, after all, is Brown’s own priority.
Here, in brief, are 11 causes of the catastrophe heading our way.
The minister told the Project Auckland launch that “a bus rapid transit network connecting Auckland’s east and west” is “the heart of our plan for Auckland”. Completion of the City Rail Link and Eastern Busway are the focus.
But the GPS allocates most of the transport spending – $20 billion over the next three years – to roads, including four new Roads of National Significance (RONS) in Auckland.
The bus transit and CRL will definitely ease the pressure but the RONS won’t, and they will consume most of the money that might be spent helping with all the other clogged-up roads. AT told the council in early March that arterials with planned improvements now at risk include Glenvar Rd in Torbay, Devonport’s Lake Rd and Allans Rd and Smales Rd in East Tāmaki.
It’s been estimated that existing public transport services will be $500m short over the next three years.
And because that money is met dollar for dollar by the Government, the full amount being lost is $1 billion. One councillor has suggested AT could lose 30 per cent of its public transport budget from July 1 this year.
If this happens, it will destroy the goals of reliability, frequency and breadth of coverage. A lot of people will just give up on the buses.
When the minister opened the new Rail Operations Centre in Ellerslie last week, he said the Government wanted “to develop a more sustainable funding model, including user pays”.
The GPS contains the same message: the Government wants transport authorities to raise fares.
By one calculation, if AT was to retain the existing level of services, fares would have to double.
Infrastructure and Housing Minister Chris Bishop told the Property Council last week: “We will be advancing policies that smash urban limits, that allow more greenfields growth, and that make housing growth easier.”
There will be improved rail services in the south and a rapid transit service in the northwest, and this is welcome news. But urban sprawl, always and inevitably, puts more cars on the roads.
AT’s director of public transport and active modes, Stacey van der Putten, says AT wants to minimise this with new feeder bus services to transit stations “such as the three new train stations in Franklin and the Rosedale station on the Northern Busway”.
But it doesn’t have the money to do it.
Auckland’s commuter trains currently carry 13 million people a year. When the CRL opens, KiwiRail expects that to rise immediately to 22 million and, by 2030, to 41 million.
This is great news. But KiwiRail has $159m of unfunded work in its Rail Network Rebuild to complete before the CRL opens.
In addition, there are 48 level crossings that need upgrading. Most require “grade separation”, which means an overbridge or underpass to separate road and rail traffic. Some will be closed.
But only six are funded.
New apartment blocks are coming soon to Alexandra Park, with 193 dwellings, 164 car parks and 204 bike parks.
In most respects this is an excellent brownfields location, rich in nearby parks and recreational facilities, close to shops and commercial centres. But Green Lane and Manukau Rd have heavy congestion, limited bus priority lanes and almost no protected and connected bike lanes.
With little chance of funding to improve those things, residents will feel encouraged to drive.
This story repeats with new housing projects all over the city. AT is often poor at integrated planning, but that also comes back to funding. New projects could be hardest hit.
AT’s new pop-up NX1 bus service on the northwest route is “already beginning to experience some capacity constraints at peak times”, says van der Putten.
The problem is that there’s no road space for more buses. At the Te Atatū interchange, AT will “potentially run into space and fleet constraints … if we are not able to find the funding to add space for more buses”.
At the urging of Mayor Wayne Brown, 11 arterial roads have been identified as candidates for “dynamic lanes”, like the moveable lanes on the harbour bridge, and there are 51 intersections where “bus booster” redesign could give buses priority.
There’s no funding for much of this work.
Rail freight is mentioned in the GPS only to note that it will lose funding. There is nothing to suggest the Government wants more freight carried by rail, so the number of trucks on the roads will continue to grow: that’s a congestion multiplier, right there.
In a recent Herald column, former Transport Minister Richard Prebble extolled the virtues of Tokyo’s transport system, suggesting the city of 43 million had built enough roads to make driving “easy”.
What nonsense. If he’d thought about it, he would have realised they couldn’t possibly rely on roads to move that many people around. The bulk of the work has to be done by mass transit – in Tokyo’s case, it has the best train system in the world.
But the GPS confirms that the Government has no plans to add to the commuter rail network in Auckland. Bishop told RNZ last week that Auckland’s now-abandoned light-rail project was “not needed”.
He was right to reject it as a tunnelled project. But a surface light-rail option, such as the one rejected by Labour, can carry 8500 people an hour. That’s twice as many passengers as a busway. It’s the equivalent of 6.5 lanes of traffic, or 6000 cars.
If you’re going to devote land to a busway, why not go the extra step and make it light rail?
Related to this, the GPS says the Government wants to build a new harbour crossing that, “at a minimum, provides for additional road connections between Auckland’s North Shore and the CBD”.
A new harbour crossing that is not primarily designed for mass transit will put many more cars on the road.
The GPS commits the Government to progress on “time of use” or congestion charging. But if public transport services are collapsing, will drivers have a realistic alternative to paying the fees?
Statistics NZ predicts we’ll get to 2 million by 2033, which means 300,000 more people in a decade. That, says Auckland Transport, is equal to two Taurangas. By some estimates, the growth could be even higher.
American transport planner Janette Sadik-Khan was in Auckland last week.
At a public meeting she quoted the early urbanist Lewis Mumford: “Building roads to fix congestion is like a man trying to control his weight by letting out the waistband on his pants.”
All you do is encourage more eating – or more driving. “If it worked,” said Sadik-Khan, “congestion would have been solved long ago.” (More on Janette Sadik-Khan’s visit coming soon.)
In my view, we can manage congestion only if we make the alternatives to driving attractive to a lot more people. Good, fast, frequent, cheap and reliable public transport for everyone. That’s mass transit, but ordinary public transport also has to be all those things. And we need good safe cycling and walking too.
I think the evidence is clear, not just overseas but right here in Auckland. And I think doing this is an urgent priority. But if you also keep building roads, then you will put more cars on the road.
Okay, I know, not everyone accepts this analysis. If that’s you, tell me. We’re getting 300,000 more people in the next 10 years. What other approach will prevent our roads from becoming gridlocked?
Auckland Council will debate its submission on the GPS on Wednesday, March 27. The live stream will be available here.
This story has been updated to remove a reference to Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop’s views on growth. While he has been widely reported saying the size of Auckland should double, that was not accurate.
Simon Wilson is an award-winning senior writer covering politics, the climate crisis, transport, housing, urban design and social issues, with a focus on Auckland. He joined the Herald in 2018.
Officers were photographed helping to paint protest signs.