"Chris Bishop’s primary responsibility is reforming the RMA. ... The bureaucratic class has magnificently undermined his agenda."

"[Chris] Bishop’s primary responsibility, other than completing Steven Joyce’s highway from Warkworth to Whangarei, is reforming the RMA. ... [G]iven how central the reform of the Resource Management Act has been to this government, it defies comprehension that National didn't arrive with a draft ready to go. ...

"The excellent folk at the NZ Initiative have done an analysis of the two proposed [replacement] laws [which eventually emerged]: the Natural Environment and the Planning Bills. Nick Clark, the researcher, concluded, '...in the translation from principles to legislative text, something has gone wrong. Key elements have been weakened, complexity has crept back in, and an extraordinary amount of the systems' substance has been deferred to secondary instruments that do not yet exist.' ...

"The desire to place property rights at the heart of the legislation has been superseded by placing mana whenua into their customary central role in managing the land. ...

"[Also, i]f passed, these bills will not be the final word. That will be left to ‘secondary legislation’, or regulation; binding rules made by the minister of the day that determine how the law is to be applied. The proposal is for parliament to delegate its authority to the executive with minimal oversight. This time next year, Minister Swarbrick could use this secondary legislation to mandate her own vision into reality.

"Did we vote for that? ...

"[T]he bureaucratic class ... has magnificently undermined his agenda. This should have been self-evident thirty months ago ... "

~ Damien Grant from his post 'Chris Bishop has emerged as the main pretender to a shaky crown. How shall we assess his performance?'

Auckland can't afford a second crossing ... or can it?

OVER SUMMER ONE ALWAYS gets a few ideas. Some good, some questionable. Some that just seem obvious once they've occurred to you. 

Here's one of those.

Let's start with three propositions: 

1. Auckland can't afford new infrastructure.

2. But Auckland would like to move its port. (But Auckland can't afford new infrastructure.)

3. Auckland will soon need a second harbour crossing. (But Auckland can't afford new infrastructure.)

Auckland can't afford that new infrastructure. Can't it? Perhaps it can.

Let's see what happens if we put those three problems together. As architects like to say, the solution is often contained within the problem ....

LET'S START WITH A CONTROVERSY from a few years ago when then-mayor Phil Goff complained about the Ports of Auckland steadily encroaching on the harbour with its ongoing reclamation work at the Ferguson container wharf. We joked that if they kept going, the Port would eventually end up in Devonport ...

A good joke.

But what if the wharf—or some part supported by the wharf—somehow did end up there?

Might that be a good thing?

Let's think: at the moment (see below) 

• the gap between Devonport and Port is just 800 metres -- that's compared to the 1000 metre length of the existing Harbour Bridge
• the rail line to Britomart passes right beside the container wharf
• the Grafton gully motorway points in a straight line down to the container wharf
• RNZ Navy land takes up some of the best land in the country to house the world's most ineffective navy
• existing tidal wetlands and greenspace on Belmont/Devonport (Charles Reserve, Hauraki Primary, Philomel Reserve, Bayswater Park, Plymouth Reserve, Hill Park, Ngataringa Park) offers scope to avoid simply dumping traffic on Lake Rd, and instead to link up with existing Northern Motorway at Takapuna.

Could we all win?

I think we could.

So the project could feature

• elegant new 'gateway' bridge for road, rail and foot
• new spur rail line from existing Quay Street rail line to Devonport
• new Devonport railway station, with platform under bridge (with a later link to Takapuna as well?)
• new road connection to existing motorway at Takapuna and at Grafton
• new apartments and marinas on and around existing container wharf (southside) and on former naval base (northside)

The latter (i.e., apartments) would pay for the former (i..e, everything else) --- and for the port and the naval base to move. They would have to.

The port is important, make no mistake. But viable plans for the port to move have already been drawn up. And there's no reason for New Zealand's Navy, who would be second in a fight with Switzerland's, to be there at all—squatting on some of the country's most expensive real estate rather than hanging out somewhere much less expensive. If you must keep them in Auckland (why?) then dredge the Manukau. Removing them will help to some small extent in removing pressure from Devonport's housing market -- as will new apartments built around what will be a new transport hub there.

IN ITS FAVOUR:

• very little distance to build the crossing (just 800m at present, compared to 1000m for the existing bridge, which could still be further reduced)
• done well, the bridge and apartments together become a gateway to the city's inner harbour, framing it and re-defining it
• curved bridge which, like San Diego's renowned curved Coronado Bridge, would be high enough for ships to pass under, 
• and/or, like Santiago Calatrava's magnificent structures, delicate enough to enliven the harbour, which would be both structurally elegant and appropriate as a harbour-side gateway to the city
• even a 'utilitarian' suspension bridge or cable-stayed would suit (we have plenty of great bridge designers here)
• removes some proportion of traffic from existing Harbour Bridge 
• easier Devonport road connection, removing congestion from Lake Rd
• immediate foot, cycle, and rail access to/from Devonport
• high-density apartment living on former container wharves, enjoying spectacular harbour views, a new marina, and easy walkable access to city wand waterfront
• high-density apartment living on former naval base waterfront living enjoying spectacular city views, with a marina, an easy commute to city and beyond (and public transport direct to city via new spur rail line!), and easy walkable access to both the waterfront and to Devonport...

What's not to like? Even Wayne Brown should like it, because he'd get to bully the Navy, the Port authorities, AT and ministers of transport and defence.

San Diego's renowned Coronado Bridge

Sharq Crossing, Doha, by Santiago Calatrava

PROBLEMS?

• Nimbys, of course, in Parnell, in Devonport and in Belmont
• some property in Belmont and in Devonport will need to be bought, voluntarily -- or perhaps the air rights bought
• Parnell owners already regularly whinge about the existing container wharf anyway
• work on coastal wetlands
• that said, this would be an ideal opportunity to fix (properly this time) some of the drainage issues around these areas
• new location needed for the container port, and imported cars...
• not an insignificant cost, but relocation also paid for from apartment sales...
• bridge needs to allow large cruise ships underneath
• so it needs to have some height!
• cost

Cost is always the biggest problem. And too much taxpayer money has been wasted already. But that's the benefit here: these apartments on both sides, sit on over 100 Hectares some of the most valuable real estate in the country -- currently occupied only by cars, containers and a Navy that needs to bugger off. At even just 50-100 dwellings per Hectare that's still between 5-10,000 apartments to be sold. Multiply that number by a few million dollars or so, and you're in the ballpark for your project budget.

The revenue from the new development (apartments, marinas, hospitality etc.) should more than pay for the project -- and have the added benefit further helping intensify the central city (a god thing), and bringing down house prices all over the(a great thing!). 

The only major problems I foresee, apart from the bureaucratic haggling about which branch of government owns what, is that government (central or local) would set themselves up as the developer. Which never ends well. And that, inevitably therefore, given the glacial rate of progress of recent projects around the city, it will be the next half-century before anything is ever completed.

One step forwards, three steps back.

"Oops." Luxon-led policy-making takes a tumble

It's a rule in politics. The devils is not always in the details. It's often that the details reveal the real devilry.

If the large print ever giveth, then the small print will surely taketh away.

Let's look at a few examples in an area I know something about: Building.

*** Building Minister Chris Penk seems a jovial character but unfortunately he knows little about his subject area. His first move was to promise faster building consents. Exciting. Encouraging. Mighty work.

Here's hist first step: "requiring councils to submit data for building consent and code compliance certificates every quarter." There are no other steps.

He adds "hope" to the idea of anything being faster. Council inspectors "must" issue building consents in a timely fashion, he insisted.  And yet every council inspector ever employed knows how to legally delay a consent application. In fact, if you fine a council for being legally overtime, they'll just legally delay applications for even longer to give themselves some head room. Which is what they've done.

Score One for the Grey Ones.

*** Another move by Building Minister Penk was "remove barriers to overseas building products." At least, that's what it said in the headline. His idea, sensible enogh on its face, is that if enough similar jurisdictions to ours have passed a product (places like Canada, US, UK, Europe, Australia etc.) then that product would be deemed to pass here too.

Yay? No, not so fast.

First move by the Ministry who oversees these things was to rent several new floors in Wellington.  Because their idea of this (and it is they who are running it) is to set up a committee who will consider, one at a time, every morsel of regulation passed anywhere at any time to decide of we might be so lucky to have it here. 

So far, in the three months since introduction, they'e okayed some taps from Sydney. Next year, they might look at concrete codes in the US. Done properly, with due consideration, this will take most committee members through to retirement.

Score One More for the Grey Ones. 

** And then the Minister for Regulatory Reform (sic) stepped up to announce a new measure to "liberate" builders and designers. For years, some of us have suggested that instead of applying to councils for permission to build (which asks for more knowledge than council employees really have, and puts ratepayers on the hook for the risk should they fail) we instead use insurance companies to take the risk.

You know, like if you build a hot rod or street racer instead of a bog standard car, then you ask the insurance company to take the risk, and they use their acumen to discern the risk, and charge you accordingly.  

This allows for good design, with risk properly underwritten. 

But you see that word above: instead.

Rather than placing the risk and the onus on designers and builders and insurers instead of on councils and ratepayers, the Minister for Regulatory Reform is doing this as well as. So it's no more "liberation day" than were Trump's tariffs: we end up getting the worst of both worlds: councils assessing risk, and insurers granted a monopoly charging like wounded bulls. And the ratepayers? Still on the hook.

So it's Several More there for the Grey Ones.

** It's like education, where a "regulatory review" by the same Minister for Regulatory Reform intends to "clarify" and "simplify" Childhood Education's overwhelmed sector. One imagines a quick fix might be going back to say, 1996, when things were working tolerably well, and just before regulations began piling on and classrooms and centres became over-regulated, under-performing, and wholly unaffordable for parents.

Instead, the "reform" begins by (and I quote) "establishing a new statutory role, the Director of Regulation, with responsibilities for performing key regulatory functions in the Early Childhood Education system." Which means another red carpet rolled out in yet another floor of a new office building in Wellington.

Back of the Net with another great effort by the Grey Ones.

*** It's a bit like the "cap" on rate rises. 

Let's stop rate rises!! Yay!! Well, not so fast. 

We know that the "cap" will be supplemented for weepy boomers with top-ups for water use, for mayors who plead public transport debts, and councillors who claim infrastructure shortfalls. We also know that the minister "responsible" ( I use the world loosely) is happy with "soaring" council debt, just as long as the effects and the headlines are only felt after he's gone.

Not to mention that the "cap" includes a minimum rate rise as well!

Yes, a minimum. By law, councils must increase rates by at least 2% every year.

It a sop, not a cap.

Grey Ones score again.

** And not to mention that the new-fangled means by which councils can "fix" their bloody awful traffic problems—traffic jams being a clash of capitalism (in the form of car production) confronting socialism (in the form of too few roads). The "new" solution is a tax. A new tax to be called "congestion charging," which will of course not replace any other tax but just be added to all those under which we are already burdened.

And if history is any guide, may help finish off Auckland's CBD altogether.

I'm pretty sure that's a total victory for Grey.

 With this government, as with every other in recent times, it's always one step forwards, and three steps back. Too many ministers with too little nous giving too much help to the unproductive to whom too many of us must seek permission before we can do anything.

I look forward to this afternoon with trepidation.

Another National tax grab

Leadership aspirant Chris Bishop headed to Auckland recently to tell us of the grand plans he will very kindly allow us to build. But before that, a new tax.

David Farrar kindly ssummarises. I unkindly fisk ...

Bishop says: "Congestion stifles economic growth in Auckland, with studies showing that it costs between $900 million to $1.3 billion per year. Congestion is essentially a tax on time, productivity, and growth. And like most taxes, I’m keen to reduce it."

Yes, congestion stifles economic growth. Yet little has been to arrest it. And over the last dozen or so years councils and transport ministries and bureaucracies have done everything to promote it, with transit lanes, bottlenecks, speed humps, speed restrictions, cycle lanes, bus lanes, no-right-turns, no-left-turns, pedestrianisation, beautification ... anything but combat traffic congestion.

Sit beside almost any major Auckland thoroughfare and you'll see that useable traffic lanes at rush-hours have nearly halved, while traffic has nearly doubled. A few nights back around 10pm a friend and I sat beside Hobson St — a near-motorway that once had six lanes or so allowing motorists to get out of the city on her motorways. Those lanes are now halved (with beautification works, don't you know, as part of John Key's bloody Convention Centre white elephant) and even at 10pm motorists were in a jam.

Will Bishop improve mobility?

Will he hell: he intends instead to make mobility more expensive.

Bishop says: "The government will be progressing legislation this year to allow the introduction of Time of Use pricing on our roads."

As commenter Bill says on Farrar's thread: "OK so another tax. Is there no problem the government thinks can’t be fixed without more taxes?

"We the motorists already pay for the roads with petrol tax and registration fees. How much of this money has been spent creating traffic bottlenecks, humps, removing free left turns etc? How is any of that helping with congestion? This latest tax proposal should be vehemently opposed. The money squandered on all the traffic obstruction should instead be spent on facilitating the uninterrupted flow of traffic. It sounds like they want to tax motorists to fix a problem that they themselves created. This is not incompetence, it is villainy."

Bill is right.

Bishop says: "Any money collected through time of use charging will be required to be invested back into transport infrastructure that benefits Kiwis and businesses living and working in the region where the money was raised."

Bishop is bullshitting.

Nicola Willis is so short of the readies already that she'll be overjoyed to grab as much of this windfall as she can. And if not her, then as soon as things are "bedded down," your next finance minister will have his or her hand in your pocket to root around in your small change. Don't doubt it.

Bishop says: "Modelling has shown that successful congestion charging could reduce congestion by up to 8 to 12 percent at peak times."

As every hired modeller knows, modelling will show whatever the modeller's hirer wants it to show; it all depends on the parameters chosen for said model. Sure, make something more expensive and (depending on one's marginal utility) then less of that thing will get utilised. But if the marginal utility of getting around is high enough (and it probably is) then Bishop's new tax will just make getting around more expensive. And we'll still be congested. And poorer.

Bishop says: "New Zealand can raise our productivity simply by allowing our towns and cities to grow up and out."

Well, duh.

Some of us have been arguing for years that up-and-out will make Auckland both more liveable and affordable. (Productive? That's an odd one to claim.) But with developers and builders having to sit on their hands while Bishop's bureaucrats rewrite the RMA to say what councils will allow developers and builders to do — to relieve the uncertainty since Bishop and his boss canned the MDRS — it seems like we're as far away as ever. And that uncertainty is hardly making developers and builders more productive ...

Bishop says: "My aspiration [for Auckland] is ..."

You know, frankly, it doesn't matter a shit what Bishop's aspirations for Auckland are! Because given the piss-poor popularity of his boss, and the pathetically slow promise to abolish and replace the RMA (to protect property rights, we're promised, and to finally give some certainty to those developers and builders) then  it will be too damn late this term for any changes at all to be made, and next term he'll have lost his chance.

And this time, three years from now, we'll all be sitting here in exactly the same position.

Only by then we'll (maybe) have a new train set.

And we will have bloody Bishop's new tax.

New Zealand got its road-building ideas explicitly from American pre- and post-war ideas that highways were "the way of the future," regardless of their cost in the present. (Just think for example of the cost to the neighbourhoods and connections that no longer exist at the top of Auckland's Dominion Rd, or between K Rd and Victoria Park.)

But, asks Thomas Walker-Werth in this guest post, looking at the even bigger picture, did all the highway-building instead close of a better future that could have otherwise happened ...

Don’t Ask ‘Who Will Build the Roads?’ Ask ‘Do We Even Want Roads?’

by Thomas Walker-Werth

When defenders of liberty argue that governments shouldn’t tax their citizens, a common reply is, “In that case, who will build the roads?” There are plenty of good answers to that, explaining the various ways in which private industry might provide a better road network than governments do if left free. But there’s a question that often goes unasked: “Do we even want roads?”

The U.S. Interstate Highway System cost $558 billion to construct (in 2021 dollars). Proponents claim it boosted the economy through faster transportation, and increased house prices and job creation. But, as I explain in my recent Substack article, it also had hugely negative effects, including destruction of the railroad industry, the demolition of vast amounts of homes and other property, and the decimation of inner-city economies.

But these are only the visible consequences. There are also unseen effects to consider. In the words of Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850) in his famous work That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen: 

In the department of economy, an act, a habit, an institution, a law, gives birth not only to an effect, but to a series of effects. Of these effects, the first only is immediate; it manifests itself simultaneously with its cause—it is seen. The others unfold in succession—they are not seen. . . . It almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favorable, the ultimate consequences are fatal, and the converse. Hence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good, which will be followed by a great evil to come, while the true economist pursues a great good to come—at the risk of a small present evil.

What unseen effects did the “small present good” of a new road network mask? For one thing, there are all the lost innovations in transportation that might have happened had government roads not made driving between cities so easy. For example, prior to the explosion of government roadbuilding, American railroads had been improving their passenger services to attract passengers and compete with cars and airplanes. But, after the Second World War, their passenger numbers crashed as new, free-to-use roads sprung up everywhere. Railroad passenger numbers declined from 770 million to 220 million between 1946 and 1964 (government-built airports also contributed). Imagine the kind of high-speed trains and luxury travel America might have today if that hadn’t happened.

Another lost innovation is local aviation. With roads only going where it made economic sense to build them, airlines and aircraft manufacturers might have had an incentive to develop small, vertical-take-off planes that could connect provincial towns and villages to nearby cities, directly into downtown. Airlines could also use these aircraft to provide connections from city centers directly to the tarmac at their airports, making flying long-distance much easier.

Further, experimental technologies such as magnetic levitation trains, monorails, hovercraft, or autogyros might have become much more commonplace. For the “small present good” of the Interstate Highway System, America lost the “great good to come” of an untold wealth of innovations in transportation.

Another unseen effect is the lost opportunity for people and businesses to spend the money the government spent on those roads on something else. This money was taken from people and businesses through force via taxation. Without that, even if it wasn’t spent on other kinds of transportation, the money would have driven more economic growth, further enriching the potential innovations in technology and quality of living we might have seen. Maybe someone would have invented a new means of generating or storing power had they had that money and the commercial incentive to make a product with it. Someone else might have developed a new treatment for a major disease, saving lives and making it so there were even more productive people around to create more new things. Ultimately, transportation and daily life could have benefited in ways barely imaginable today.

Moreover, it’s not simply a question of the government using money that might otherwise have been used differently. It’s also a question of how well that money was used—how well the resulting product reflected what people actually needed. The planners of the Interstates and their urban equivalents (such as Robert Moses) didn’t need to—and indeed were unable to—balance the value of their proposals against economic indicators of whether there was sufficient demand on a particular route to justify a new road, given the existing roads, railroads, or air services, and such barriers as topography or people’s homes and property. As Ludwig Von Mises explains in Liberalism: A Socio-Economic Exposition:

For the construction of a railroad from A to B, several routes are conceivable. Let us suppose that a mountain stands between A and B. The railroads can be made to run over the mountain, around the mountain, or, by way of a tunnel, through the mountain. In a capitalist society, it is a very easy matter to compute which line will prove the most profitable. One ascertains the cost involved in constructing each of the three lines and the differences in operating costs necessarily incurred by the anticipated traffic of each. From these quantities, it is not difficult to determine which stretch of road will be the most profitable. A [centrally planned] society could not make such calculations. For it would have no possible way of reducing to a uniform standard of measurement all the heterogeneous quantities and qualities of goods and services that here come into consideration.

These planners got funding for their roads based on the government’s decision that those roads were needed. They were not responding to market demand, but to the designs of a central planner or committee. 

If roadbuilding had been left to private interests, not only might the roads that were built have been better suited to people’s actual needs (and have avoided bulldozing vast areas of poor, inner-city communities), but they also wouldn’t have been built at all where there was no financial case for them. Instead, the market would have encouraged innovation to find alternative solutions for these situations. We can guess at some of the forms this may have taken, from high-speed trains to helicopter shuttles. But there are others we can barely conceive, because we were denied the chance to ever see them.

* * * * 

Thomas Walker-Werth is associate editor at The Objective Standard and a fellow at both Objective Standard Institute and Foundation for Economic Education (FEE). He is currently writing his first full-length book, 'Reason for Living: A Rational, Fact-Based Approach to Living Your Best Life.' See more of his work at reasonforliving.substack.com.

His post first appeared at FEE.Org.

"On present form, Luxon is looking like a watered down version of John Key, and Willis a watered down version of Bill English."

"The Prime Minister was elected on the basis that his previous career as CEO meant he had a much greater business acumen than Labour's leaders. ... However, yesterday it was revealed .... that the builder of the now cancelled new ferries ... has put in a claim stemming from the terminated $551 million contract ... [and] KiwRail don't know what will be the size of the claim that the NZ taxpayer will ultimately end up paying. ... [I]t's not up to Kiwi Rail's lawyers to decide what is "fair" - it depends on what HMD's lawyers also believe what is fair - and should the two not agree, it ultimately must be decided in court. Furthermore, the government cannot tell anyone what will be the cost of smaller, scaled-down ferries.
    "The crux of the matter is ... the question ... how could PM Luxon & Finance Minister Willis pull out of a billion dollar deal with no idea of the legal consequences?
    "With no idea of the costs of the claims that will arise?
    "With no idea of the price of a replacement deal?
    "PM Luxon talks a big game but has he ever done a three-billion dollar deal before? No. Has he ever pulled out of a billion dollar deal before? No. Elon Musk tried pulling out of a multi-billion dollar deal to buy Twitter. It was a nightmare - so costly that he ended up going ahead with it.
    "If Luxon and Willis don't smarten up and prove they know how to do deals ... show they know [for example] how to do a quality-enhancing health-care reform (rather than pretending abolishing the Māori Health Authority is a reform plan) then we will know in quick order that both are not the real deal.
    "On present form, Luxon is looking like a watered down version of John Key, and Willis a watered down version of Bill English. Labour were so bad that anything is an improvement. But these two are so far looking like not much of one."

~ Robert MacCulloch from his post 'Who, with an ounce of business sense, pulls out of a deal with no idea of what legal claims will arise, and with no idea of the price of a replacement deal? PM Luxon and Finance Minister Willis.'

Climate: Revealed preference

"[A] very large number of voters have a great deal in common with those raised-in-the-faith Catholics who genuflect reflexively before the holy imagery of their religion without giving the gesture much, if any, thought. Like conservatives the world over, New Zealand’s Coalition Government is of the view that although, if asked, most ordinary voters will happily mouth environmental slogans, considerably fewer are willing to freeze in the dark for them.
    "Minister Jones’s wager is that if it’s a choice between watching Netflix, powering-up their cellphones, and snuggling-up in front of the heater, or, keeping the fossil fuels that power our extraordinary civilisation 'in the ground,' so that Freddie the Frog’s habitat can remain pristine and unmolested, then their response will be the same as the Minister’s: 'Bye, bye Freddie!' No matter what people may say; no matter how superficially sincere their genuflections to the 'crisis' of Climate Change; when the lights go out, all they really want is for them to come back on again. Crises far away, and crises in the future, cannot compete with crises at home – right here, right now.
   "The Transport Minister, Simeon Brown, knows how this works. Everyone supports public transport and cycle-ways, right up until the moment their holiday journey slows to a snail’s pace among endless lines of road cones, or a huge pothole wrecks their new car’s suspension.
    "Idealism versus realism: that’s the way the [parties of Luxon's Government] frame this issue; and they are betting their electoral future on the assumption that the realists outnumber the idealists. There may well have been 50,000 pairs of feet “Marching For Nature” down Auckland’s Queen Street [the previous] Saturday afternoon, but the figure that impresses the Coalition Government is the 1,450,000 pairs of Auckland feet that were somewhere else."

~ Chris Trotter from his post 'Numbers Game'

Will Te Huia become extinct today?

Te Huia is the occasional train between a Hamilton suburb and an Auckland one. Today the future of Te Huia is being decided by people who don't use it, on behalf (we hope) of people who are paying for it. (At the rate of $92 per passenger.)

I like trains. I like using them. But using Te Huia is hard work.

Let me demonstrate the problem: It's like it's been designed by people who don't use trains.

First, let's say I've had a meeting in Hamilton (which happens more than you'd think).

Let's say my meeting is in central Hamilton, at the Ibis Tanui overlooking the river, say, where you can watch the river flow and the trains come past. After which I'm coming back to my office in Newmarket.

Here's the first problem: those trains coming past me don't stop in central Hamilton. They keep going. Hamilton's railway station is 19-30 minutes from central Hamilton by bus. And because no bus goes from central Hamilton directly to the railway station (I know, right?), there's no way to avoid a walk of at least ten to fifteen minutes.

Like I say, it's like it's been designed by people who don't use trains. So I'll get a lift to Frankton Railway Station. (Thank you.) And then I have to work out how to buy a ticket. (Turns out there's no way to buy one on the platform.)

Second, problem of course, is getting the damned train. 'Cos there's only two per day (or three on Thursdays and Fridays, none on Sundays). So most recommendations by Mrs Google recommend the bus (which will get me to my office in Newmarket, by bus from Hamilton and then train from Papakura) in 2 hours and 23 minutes. Or car (which gets me there between 1 hour 30 and 2 hours 20).

But let's say I'm keen. Keen for a train trip. So keen I time my trip to coincide with the few daily trips of the mighty Te Huia. That trip on at that train is going to take me 3 hours and 22 minutes. Virtually a whole hour longer than the bus just for the sake of going by train!

Sure, it's a pleasant trip — partly because the train is mostly empty. And the scenery is pleasant. And it only stops a few times, for no particular reason, so we get to enjoy it all the more. And if you get yourself a seat with a table you can work on your computer on the way. But that's not really commuter travel is it.

It gets worse if you want to go anywhere near central Auckland. Which brings us to the third problem. Te Huia doesn't roll splendidly into downtown Auckland, with cafes, galleries, bars and plenty of transport connections on offer. Instead it rolls into an abandoned carpark in Parnell.

Let's say my meeting in Hamilton went so well that I want to head home, skip the office and finish the day in my favourite local bar. That calls for 39 minutes of walking in a 3 hour 42 minute journey! I'd leave central Hamilton at 1:35pm, and I wouldn't be getting to the Northern Line Bar in Beresford Square until around 5:15! (I'd sure as hell be out of my brain on that 5:15!!)

You can see the problem. Te Huia doesn't leave anywhere near central Hamilton, and nor does it arrive anywhere near central Auckland. It arrives at that car park in The Strand, Parnell, with few connecting buses. (And the day I arrived the one bus made sure it had left before the train arrived.) So, just like the other end, most people are getting picked up and dropped off by car. 

It's like travelling NZ Rail back in the bad old days.

Did I say that Te Huia seems to have been designed and put together by people who don't use public transport?

It's like they didn't want it to work. It is, after all, named after a bird that is long extinct.

"Very little driving is frivolous."

"Residents of U.S. urban areas can reach far more jobs in a 20-minute auto drive than a 60-minute trip [by public transport]. The latest data for 2021 reveal that the number of jobs reachable by [public transport] or bicycle was about 9 percent greater in 2021 than 2019, but the number reachable by a 20-minute auto drive was 66 percent greater. ... Of course, jobs are only one possible set of destinations that became more accessible; other social and economic opportunities also became equally more accessible
    "Very little driving is frivolous. Instead, most of it is people trying to get to work, school, shopping, health care, friends and relatives, or recreation activities. Then there are trucks moving freight, bringing construction materials and services to work sites, and so forth. Anything that results in more such travel is a good thing because it means more economic activity, more income for people, and more access to better housing, lower-cost consumer goods, and other benefits. The sign of failure is if the new road capacity isn’t used, not if it is."

~ The Antiplanner, from his post 'The Benefits of Congestion Relief'

 

"One of the first modes of rail travel to face a long-term decline was light rail"

"One of the first modes of rail travel to face a long-term decline was streetcars [aka trams, or light rail]. Streetcar route-miles peaked [in the U.S.] in 1919, a century ago. And streetcar trips fell along with route-miles. There were two main causes: cars and buses. Both had the advantage that they were not on rails. Cars could take their passengers wherever they wanted to go and buses could change their routes in response to changes in demand....
    "[I]f there was a conspiracy to destroy streetcar [aka light-rail] companies, the [government] should 'indict everyone who bought an automobile' between 1920 and 1950....
    "[L]ight rail [by the way] is a misnomer.... 'A typical light-rail car built today weighs about 50,000kg, while a typical subway or heavy-rail car weighs 40,000kg.' Nor are the rails they ride on lighter than subway rails. Why, then, is it called light rail? [Let's consult] the 'Glossary of Transit Terminology'. It’s called 'light' because it has a light volume traffic capacity. In short, light means low capacity. The real high capacity carriers ... are buses.
    "Not surprisingly, 'light rail' does not clearly boost transit ridership. In ten of the 17 urban areas that have built 'light rail' since 1980, trips per capita and transit’s share of commuting fell. Those two measures rose in only three of the 17 urban areas. The Los Angeles County transit agency’s experience is instructive. It cut bus service to minority neighborhoods to fund more-expensive rail lines to middle-class neighbourhoods. The NAACP sued and got a court order restoring bus service for ten years. But after the court order expired, the LA transit agency cut bus service and built more rail lines. Result: the system lost five bus riders for every new light-rail rider. Interestingly, the fatality rate for light-rail riders is four times that of bus passengers.
    "The costs for light rail are eye-popping. Orlando’s SunRail, which opened in 2014, had only 1,824 daily roundtrip passengers in its first year of operation. In 2016, the local government agency running SunRail admitted that fare revenues were less than the cost of operating and maintaining the machines that sold tickets to riders... Orlando could have saved money by giving a new Prius to every roundtrip rider every year."

~ David R. Henderson, from his post Romance and Reality: A Review of Romance of the Rails by Randal O'Toole [Amazon]

 

 

Anti the anti-car agenda

"It’s hard to believe someone thought that adding artificial blockages to roads would free people from their vehicle-addiction. As if making car trips artificially long, circuitous and inconvenient would teach people to love walking?...
    "The idea of a Low Traffic Network (LTN) sounded so apple-pie. Everyone wants fewer cars on the road. So when pollsters asked deliberately ambiguous questions, people would say “yes” they liked the idea. But living with LTN’s wasn’t much fun when it turned out it was their car the overlords wanted to get rid of. [Popular joke: When polled, 95% of people think that other people should take the bus.] And so the protests and petitions began. Under the cover of darkness, people set bollards on fire, attacked them with chainsaws, and even poured concrete in the anchor holes so it was harder to replace them.
   "But what really seems to have got the attention of politicians is when their own party splits and the renegades win. ... [P]oliticians are backing away quickly now after a couple of safe UK Labour council seats went to Labour rebels who left the party and ran on “pro-motorist” platforms....
    "What seems the most astonishing is that the whole plan worked like organised government-vandalism — the tyrants were Building Back Worse. They weren’t building new infrastructure, they were ruining perfectly good roads. They reduced options, curtailed freedoms, and somehow our lives were supposed to get better? But people could always have walked from point A to B, they just preferred to drive. There were no efficiency gains, no better choices or new rail lines, there was just less.
    "And not surprisingly, longer trips meant more gridlock not less, more emissions, and the costs of extra travel meant even getting a tradie to do a house-call became much more expensive...
    "It’s almost like the aim was never to serve, nor to change the weather, just to keep the riff-raff off the road."

~ Jo Nova, from her post 'Build Back Worse suffers a set-back'

'Induced Demand': Nobody says 'don't build a new bus lane - it will just fill up with new buses'

"I've wanted to write for a while about [so-called] 'induced demand,' the specious argument that expanded roads just fill up with new traffic so why should we bother [building more]?
    "Two articles below debunk the induced demand argument in their own ways, but here's my own TL;DR summary: Which type of infrastructure should government invest in: transit almost nobody will use, or lanes everybody will use? Induced demand is a false argument. Nobody says 'don't build a new airport terminal or runway - it will just fill up with new flights' or 'don’t build a new port terminal – it will just fill up with ships'."

~ Tory Gattis from his post 'Induced Demand Debunked' [emphasis in the original]

"On the occasion of the removal of the subsidy to the excise tax on transport fuels"

 

"EXCI'SE. n.s. [accijs, Dutch; excisum, Latin.] A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid."

~ from Samuel Johnson's 1755 Dictionary of the English Language

 

"Railway travelling is at best a compromise...."

"Railway travelling is at best a compromise. The quite conceivable ideal of locomotive convenience, so far as travellers are concerned, is surely a highly mobile conveyance capable of travelling easily and swiftly to any desired point, traversing, at a reasonably controlled pace, the ordinary roads and streets, and having access for higher rates of speed and long-distance travelling to specialised ways restricted to swift traffic, and possibly furnished with guide-rails. For the collection and delivery of all sorts of perishable goods also the same system is obviously altogether superior to the existing methods.
    "Moreover, such a system would admit of that secular progress in engines and vehicles that the stereotyped conditions of the railway have almost completely arrested, because it would allow almost any new pattern to be put at once upon the ways without interference with the established traffic.
    "Had such an ideal been kept in view from the first the traveller would now be able to get through his long-distance journeys at a pace of from seventy miles or more an hour without changing, and without any of the trouble, waiting, expense, and delay that arises between the household or hotel and the actual rail."

~ H. G. Wells, from his 1901 book Anticipations Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought [hat tip Roots of Progress]

"The primary problem with current cities is that they are extremely car-centric. ..."

"The primary problem with current cities is that they are extremely car-centric. We don't realise this because it's just everyday life and we assume that cars make transportation easier and more convenient, but this is false. Car-centric designs are so bad that they make driving worse....
    "Remember this fact: cities and their infrastructure are government funded and planned. The car-centric model was developed because the government mass-funded roads to be built for cars; and the government, as it does for everything, has terrible incentives. So it did not do this because it was more efficient to be car-centric and respond to market demand but because of public choice incentives.... 

    "The primary problem with most urbanists however .[including the video maker above].. is that they are not libertarians. ... [T]here is the market urbanist movement. But it gets little attention....
    "It's important we prove we don't need the government, even the Dutch government, to make cities beautiful. Public choice must get out of the way."

~ SolarxPvP, from his post 'Market Urbanism: Another Panacea'

LINKS:

• What is Market Urbanism?
• Market Urbanism Report
• @Market Urbanism Report on TWITTER 

• Market Urbanism
• @Market Urbanism on TWITTER

What about toll lanes?

"Build it and they will come," you will hear from self-appointed anti-car transport experts like Green MP Julianne Genter and the boffins at Greater Auckland, right up to the real experts like the government's Chief Science Adviser. They do not intend this as praise, but as a complaint. What they're talking about is something they call "induced demand," the idea being that if you build new roads or add additional lanes, say, to an already congested motorway, then all you do is fill those lanes up with additional congestion, and so you're just back to where you started, they say.

As Andrew Galambos observed many years ago however, all this congestion is an example of the collision between capitalism and socialism -- capitalism producing cars faster than socialism and its "planners" can produce the roads. (And he made his observation back when the planners and politicians were trying to build roads, instead of to thwart their construction, as they are now.)

But even on their own terms this idea of "induced demand" is nonsense. That additional congestion they cite consists, of course, of more people going to places they'd like to go to, people who've decided that even if the delay stays the the same as before the new lanes that they'd still like to go there, thank you very much. So more people are made happier, and their lives better, by the additional capacity.

And on top of that, you have advice from the likes of Steven Polzin of Arizona State University, who points out that in fast-growing places, like Auckland and the newer suburbs around Christchurch, most of this new highway demand 

comes from new population, new employment and economic activity (some or all of which may have been attracted by enhanced transportation infrastructure), traffic rerouted from neighborhood streets or congested roads, or travel that has shifted in time to the benefit of the traveling public now that more capacity is available to undertake activities during desired travel times.

He also points out that trips accommodated by an expanded highway can provide a number of benefits l, such as: 

• Residents getting access to better jobs and businesses with better selections and lower prices;
• Businesses having access to a larger labour pool, and larger customer and supplier bases;
• Enabling emergency vehicles getting where they are needed faster;
• Pulling cut-through traffic out of neighborhoods; and,
• Enabling parents to get home in time for family meals and activities.

All these very real benefits to folk are almost entirely ignored or dismissed by the likes of Genter and her bureaucratic we-know-best types.

Characterising induced travel as bad or wasted is a misrepresentation of the value that people derive from engaging in travel. It’s not just wealthy folks making superfluous trips. Residents having access to better jobs or businesses with better selection and lower prices isn’t bad. Businesses having access to a bigger labor pool and potential customer and supplier bases because people can travel farther in a tolerable amount of time isn’t bad. Making supply chains work better isn’t bad. Getting emergency vehicles where they need to go faster isn’t bad. Pulling cut-through traffic out of neighborhoods to travel on a safer highway facility isn’t bad. Having more direct and less congested—and thus environmentally greener—trips isn’t bad. Enabling parents to get home and share a meal with the family isn’t bad. Using transportation infrastructure to shape development or improve economic competitiveness isn’t bad. Being able to engage in social interactions and recreational activities isn’t bad, and contributes positively to physical and mental health.

People do derive value from travel. Even with induced demand caused by new roads or additional lanes, more people can. 

What is true however is that neither new roads nor new lanes are cheap -- and the timidity of NZ's politicians means that new toll roads will be off the agenda until they convince the electorate they're not the spawn of Satan.

But what about toll lanes? Bob Poole at Reason's Surface Transport Innovations team suggests that by adding market-priced lanes instead of free lanes, the new work can be both self-funding and helpful to folks trying to get around.

The pricing will enable high-value trips to take place even during peaks when the free lanes are getting jammed. Those can be personal trips (to the airport to catch a plane, getting to day-care in time to avoid late fees), enabling express buses to run consistently faster and more reliably, and letting emergency vehicles get where they’re needed quickly, for example.... 

In Houston and especially Dallas/Ft. Worth, the express toll lanes are popular and much-used. But even there, where they have proven their usefulness and popularity, regional plans for a whole network of express toll lanes have been thwarted by the Texas state legislature...

 Here in Enzed we haven't even got that far. Instead, in all our major cities it's made harder to get around by car because of things like bike lanes, bus lanes, high-occupancy lanes, and so-called beautification. And if new lanes are ever built, they either take forever (just ask the good people of South Auckland and Franklin how long its taken to make their motorway journey north any better), or they're simply more “non-priced managed lanes.”

In plain language, that means old-fashioned, ineffective high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes. Based on past history, if built, those lanes will likely be either too empty (wasting costly pavement) or too full (fam-pools, cheaters). Without pricing, there is no “management” of HOV lanes.

And with pricing, these additional toll lanes can be almost self-funding, as Poole explains using an example from Texas.

In a recent presentation in Ft. Worth, I pointed out that TxDOT’s current plans to add HOV lanes to I-35 in Austin, I-35 in San Antonio, and I-635E in Dallas total $8.1 billion. On average, revenue-financed highway projects like express toll lanes need only 20% from the state DOT with all the rest financed based on toll revenues. Were those three projects carried out via revenue-financed P3s, TxDOT would save 80% of that $8.1 billion to spend on other projects statewide. That ought to appeal to legislators from smaller cities and rural areas. And it would produce a much more effective and long-term solution for the antiquated I-35 through Austin.

And also for NZ's creaking roading infrastructure. 

"I can’t help but think that Vision Zero is really more about inconveniencing auto drivers than increasing safety."

"I can’t help but think that Vision Zero is really more about inconveniencing auto drivers than increasing safety. Just three policies ... would save far more lives than anything in the adopted plan...."

~ The Antiplanner, from his post 'Vision Zero Accomplishes Zero'

 

It's not really the Auckland Tram anymore, is it ...

Late last week the government announced its new plan to spend billions of dollars on the light rail to Auckland airport it had promised to have completed by 2023. It wants to place nearly half underground. So as the UnCivil Servant points out in this Guest Post, it's not really a tram anymore ...

THE WORLD IS AWASH WITH with poorly thought-out light rail/tram proposals. Some even get implemented -- in places like Newcastle, Australia. Most generally prove to be eye-wateringly expensive money-pits that look nice in glossy renderings, and increase some property values for houses and apartments near stations, but have a negligible transport impact either on traffic congestion or emissions. Auckland's proposed underground light rail is one of these. 

Like most such projects, it is less about transport impacts or economics, and everything to do with ideologically-blinkered politicians ever keen to build monuments to themselves at the expense of our children and grandchildren. 

At least the proposal the Government has accepted, the Michael Wood Memorial Moneypit, is not the inanely stupid street-tram idea, so favoured by the Greens and urbanists, that would remove a great deal of existing road capacity -- that removal being a key reason that car-hating Greens and urbanists want trams so much: which is because they have worked out the main way to stop people driving is by making it much more difficult, expensive and inconvenient to do so, and putting a tram on the road a tram is among the best ways they can think of to make it more difficult, expensive and inconvenient. (It's irrelevant whether or not they or anyone else rides the tram, because its main purpose is not to move people about, but to block people moving about by car, taxi, or truck.)

So the proposal is not as bad as it could be. Indeed, it's even better than it sounds (who in their right mind would ever think of ordering up an underground tram to Mt Roskill?) It would be a piece of public transport that could actually travel quite fast, at least for the tunnelled segments -- but it's the cost to get those segments in which lies the catch: $15 billion!

$15 billion is an eye-watering amount of money. 

• $15 billion is three times the total budget to be spent on public transport by Waka Kotahi and all local authorities for the entire period of 2021-2024 across the entire country.(source NLTP 2021-2024) 
• $15 billion is nearly twice what is spent on transport by Waka Kotahi and all councils in a single year, that’s all road maintenance and construction, all bus and train subsidies, everything. 
• $15 billion is is 23x the cost of building Auckland's Harbour Bridge in today’s money (and don’t forget, Auckland Harbour Bridge was funded by borrowing, and then tolls that paid off the debt).

By comparison, the Waterview Tunnel on SH20 was only $1.7 billion. The sum of $15 billion (almost certainly a gross underestimate) will make even the outrageously wasteful City Rail Link (CRL) cost of around $4.5 billion look like an economical option.

Indeed, $15 billion makes this the most extensive transport project in the country’s history. (By comparison, $115 billion in today's money is what the New Zealand govt paid for the entirety of the Second World War!) Dreamed up on what seems the back of an ill-suited envelope by an ill-informed committee. It will lose money as well, as there is no way the fares collected will ever recover even half the costs of operating it.

IT WAS ORIGINALLY PROPOSED as a way to address two problems:

• demand exceeding capacity on bus routes along Dominion Road; and
• bus overcrowding in downtown Auckland.

It is a very expensive way to fix these two problems -- if indeed it ever will.

Conceived originally to fix these two problems, the "solution" has grown as inexorably as the ego of a newly-elected politician. Politicians love big, flash exciting mega-projects, and (combined with an almost fetishised ideological love-affair that urbanists and city planners have with trams), Auckland's light-rail "solution" has grown like moss, slowly absorbing and taking over more-and-more budget.

Just like the highway planners they criticise, the public transport-planners extrapolate growth in demand to be endless -- so they think they need to plan for ever-expanding capacity for their preferred transport mode. The time and willingness people have to travel within cities however is not endless and, as the pandemic has demonstrated, there is not endless demand for bus trips on this corridor. 

Indeed, there are far more cost-effective ways to increase bus capacity, such as 

• more extensive bus priority lanes and priority at traffic lights 
• pricing peak-time bus travel so that there is actually net revenue from a highly-used service that can be used to pay for more capacity. 

Furthermore, the downtown Auckland bus-overcrowding issue seems to have largely disappeared, in part because there is so much roadspace taken up by building CRL, and in part because Auckland Council has been removing cars and drivers from more and more streetspace by making driving difficult in its own way, such that this simply isn’t an issue anymore (and it isn’t an issue anyway, as trams' capacity on streets is only marginally more than having multiple buses).

I'VE REFERRED TO IT before as the Auckland Tram, but the tunnelled, grade-separated version proposed by Grant Robertson and Michael Wood (and paid for your children and grand-children) really is “light rail”; it is what in Brussels is called “Pre-Metro” -- a scaled-down metro train that doesn’t resemble the slow trams seen in Melbourne and Sydney so much as an underground-lite. This annoys the Green Party supporting urbanists who WANT slow trams to get in the way of cars, but it should annoy everyone who thinks $15 billion can be better spent elsewhere.

So what will it do? The Government press release is informative in what it doesn't say as much as what it does. Significantly for example, it doesn’t mention the cost.

Here's what it does mention:

• Auckland’s growing population will mean they need some way to get around ...  a lot of them, apparently, from the apartments along Sandringham Rd or in Onehunga or Mangere Bridge whose residents will want to travel to the CBD, or the airport, or places in between 
• without this light metro, Auckland will be gridlocked ... even though there is nowhere in the world in which building a light metro line has relieved gridlock; it might take a few buses off Sandringham Road and Dominion Road, but that’s it
• 12,000 cars will be taken off the road ... but where and over what period? total cars in a day, on what roads? Some short sections of motorway have over 100,000 vehicles a day passing over; around 35 million vehicle-kilometres are travelled on an average (pre-pandemic) day by motor vehicle on Auckland’s roads -- so at best this $15 billion boondoggle will reduce traffic by just  0.03% 
• 97,000 new jobs will be created by 2051... by whom? how? Not from the construction or operation of the light metro. Does that take into account the higher taxes on properties along the route? Would the jobs have been created anyway? We are left to guess.
• it will halve travel time for SOME people to and from the airport ... it doesn't say who those people are -- and, frankly, unless you live next to a station on the route, particularly at the southern end, it wont be fast because it will stop many, many times before arriving at your destination

So that's what it says on the tin. Here are some information we're left to work out for ourselves:

• the capital cost or the annual subsidy needed, compared to how much subsidy current services need to keep running
• expected demand, and the proportion of light metro capacity expecting to be utilised at peak (and off-peak times)
• where the people living along the light metro line are expected to be working, or getting educated? (only 1 in 8 jobs in Auckland is in the CBD, and if you add the airport and Mangere, then the line serves only 1 in 7 potential jobs of people who live along it)
• the actual travel-time impacts on existing road traffic, including freight.
• why it isn't connecting either to Britomart, or to the new and also-very-expensice underground train set whose construction is currently disrupting much of the inner-city's life?
• why the Government is proposing light-rail through a tunnel to the North Shore now, instead of heavy rail connecting it to the City Rail Link under construction, so that people from the North Shore might get a train to say Newmarket, Henderson, new Lynn, Sylvia Park, Manukau, Papakura, or Onehunga -- instead of a light metro to that place on almost nobody's list of preferred destinations: Mt Roskill.

Perhaps a clue to that last question is that the chosen route puts it in the electorates of both the Minister of Transport and the Prime Minister ... which we're sure can only be an enormous coincidence.

What’s pretty clear is that this is a huuuge project, with a very long lead time, poorly thought through, that will in no way be even begun in the next two years. Not a chance. So there's still time to get back to problem definition and analysis... What’s the project trying to do? Which people is is trying to move? Do you want value of money, or a sea of big-spending Keynesian helicopter money? Does the city really need another multi-billion dollar monument? 

Even supporters of public transport are left wondering what's going on here. Imagine, for example, if even a tenth of the budget proposed here was spent on upgrading bus services in Auckland! But, of course, that wouldn't proved any sort of ribbon-cutting moment for a politician would it.

'Mystics of Spirit and of Muscle'

"As products of the split between man’s soul and body, there are two kinds of teachers of the Morality of Death: the mystics of spirit and the mystics of muscle, whom you call the spiritualists and the materialists, those who believe in consciousness without existence and those who believe in existence without consciousness....
    "The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man’s power to conceive—a definition that invalidates man’s consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence. The good, say the mystics of muscle, is Society—a thing which they define as an organism that possesses no physical form, a super-being embodied in no one in particular and everyone in general except yourself. Man’s mind, say the mystics of spirit, must be subordinated to the will of God. Man’s mind, say the mystics of muscle, must be subordinated to the will of Society....
    "What is the nature of that superior world to which they sacrifice the world that exists? The mystics of spirit curse matter, the mystics of muscle curse profit. The first wish men to profit by renouncing the earth, the second wish men to inherit the earth by renouncing all profit.
    "Their non-material, non-profit worlds are realms where rivers run with milk and coffee, where wine spurts from rocks at their command, where pastry drops on them from clouds at the price of opening their mouth. On this material, profit-chasing earth, an enormous investment of virtue—of intelligence, integrity, energy, skill—is required to construct a railroad to carry them the distance of one mile; in their non-material, nonprofit world, they travel [across cities and] from planet to planet at the cost of a wish. If an honest person asks them: 'How?'—they answer with righteous scorn that a 'how' is the concept of vulgar realists; the concept of superior spirits is 'Somehow.' On this earth restricted by matter and profit, rewards are achieved by thought; in a world set free of such restrictions rewards are achieved by wishing.
    "And that is the whole of their shabby secret. The secret of all their esoteric philosophies, of all their dialectics and super-senses, of their evasive eyes and snarling words, the secret for which they destroy civilisation, language, industries and lives, the secret for which they pierce their own eyes and eardrums, grind out their senses, blank out their minds, the purpose for which they dissolve the absolutes of reason, logic, matter, existence, reality—is to erect upon that plastic fog a single holy absolute: their Wish."

          ~ Ayn Rand, from 'Galt's Speech' in Atlas Shrugged

          

Let's Get Wellington Moving is more about the opposite, explains The UnCivil Servant in this guest post. In a city, and a country, in which we have a crisis of unaffordable housing, these people are essentially just telling we peasants: 'Let Them Eat Monuments.' Expensive ones ...

Let’s get Wellington moving by removing 'Let's Get Wellington Moving'

by The UnCivil Servant

A RUNNING JOKE AROUND Wellington is the organisation for activist bureaucrats Let’s Get Wellington Moving (LGWM). A running joke, because it is a symbol for how bureaucracy barely let's anything move at all. 

The last National Government foolishly set it up to try to get agreement with local government on fixing transport problems in Wellington. Labour however has since changed its objectives, and painted a wide band of Green all over it. So now it isn’t really much about transport at all.

When set up the organisation's primary objectives were stated as:

to develop a transport system that:

Enhances the liveability of the central city
Provides more efficient and reliable access for users
Reduces reliance on private vehicle travel
Improves safety for all users
Is adaptable to disruptions and future uncertainty

Now, the objectives for Let's Get Wellington Moving barely mention movement, and nothing at all about "developing a transport system":

Our programme objectives [they now say] are:

greater liveability, including enhanced urban amenity and enables urban development outcomes
more efficient and reliable access
reduced carbon emissions by increasing mode shift away from reliance on private vehicles
improved safety for all users, and
resilience and adaptability to disruptions and future uncertainty.

The upshot of this capitulation to blancmange is that LGWM is now less about transport and more about enabling intensification for housing development, and reducing carbon emissions. In fact, almost all about carbon emissions. Note: not noxious emissions like particulates (many of which come from vehicles, and actually DO affect health), but climate change. This ignores that nothing LGWM can do will actually impede or affect that in any case because of the Emissions Trading Scheme (which caps total emissions from transport). 

It is also single-mindedly focused on reducing emissions solely by mode shift. Not by travelling less, not by moving to electric or hybrid vehicles, or by reducing traffic congestion to waste less fuel. LGWM is instead now almost solely focussed on enabling more housing (on one corridor), and on making peasants like you drive less by using public transport more.

While politicians, including the expert on (abolishing car) parking Julie Anne-Genter, might be obsessed with the idea that people need to drive less, and that big expensive public-transport projects are needed to enable more housing, this is demonstrably nonsense. LGWM already notes in its reports that 16% fewer people commute by car into central Wellington in the morning peak in 2017 than in 2000, although 12% more people are travelling there at that time. So there is already a decline in car travel into central Wellington by commuters.

So there isn't a problem of more and more people commuting by car into central Wellington. What there is (about which Genter and LGWM seem entirely oblivious) is a growth in traffic seeking to bypass the city. 

Around a third of all traffic heading into Wellington city is seeking to bypass it. The people bypassing the city are coming to and from the airport, hospital, and the eastern/southern suburbs, and heading to and from the northern/western suburbs, the Hutt Valley, Porirua, Kapiti and beyond. 

THIS -- THE LACK OF ANY GENUINE BYPASS --  is the source of the single biggest transport problem in Wellington. This is blatantly obvious to anyone who isn’t blinded by the Green (and now Labour) Party’s trendy North American urbanist blinkers. These people trying to bypass central Wellington quite simply are not going to change onto trams and buses to double their travel time, and no amount of Neo-urbanist hand-waving will make them. 

The problem is easy to identify: Wellington’s urban motorway ends abruptly at Te Aro at one end, and at the other end, SH1 from the airport stalls at the bottleneck of Mt Victoria Tunnel, with one lane in each direction. This causes congestion all day long and on weekends as well. Plus between 15-40% of traffic along Wellington’s waterfront is travelling to avoid that congestion, according to LGWM, that’s traffic that helps separate Wellington city from its harbour.

The latest draft strategy released by LGWM indicates how it isn’t that interested in fixing that problem. Instead, like Minister Michael Wood, it is hooked on a tram line -- after dumping an earlier proposal from the city to the Airport, the tram fetish this time focusses on a linefrom the city to Island Bay.

However, the putative Island Bay tram isn’t about addressing a transport problem either. There is no transport problem from Island Bay at present that a tram line will fix -- no problem of overcrowded buses, no congestion at bottlenecks fivable by tram. No, the tram line is all about housing. LGWM thinks that without a tram line to Island Bay that could cost $2.2 billion, there won't be enough intensive housing development along the corridor. 

That's $2.2 billion (plus fuck-ups) to solve a non-problem. After all, it's not lack of tram lines that is causing a shortage of intensive house building!

This policy of LGWM is straight out of the North American urbanist planner playbook, which calls for more "PT" (public transport) to induce more high-density housing. A policy that  has had the same success in addressing housing shortages and traffic issues there (i.e., virtually  none) as it would in Wellington. 

At least Treasury and the Ministry of Transport have been on the ball, advising Ministers that any mass transit proposal for Wellington will only produce “secondary” transport benefits that are "insufficient to justify them on their own." In other words, it’s a boondoggle: the costs to taxpayers for these transportation white elephants far exceeding any alleged "economic benefits" from improving mobility. It's a money pit, but a totem for politicians to show off -- a monument-building vanity project.

In a city, and a country, in which we have a crisis of unaffordable housing, these people are essential telling we peasants: 'Let Them Eat Monuments.'

Of course, the argument that you need a tram line to intensify housing is rubbish, as demonstrated by the latest inspired announcement to abolish the need for a resource consent to build a three-storey residential development in major cities. Assuming the rule change works, and it encourages more intensive housing development in Wellington, the idea it will not happen first in Mt Victoria, Mt Cook and Newtown, close to the CBD rather than Island Bay is rather fanciful. Being that close to the CBD encourages walking and cycling and hopping on one of the multiple bus routes that already pass by on the way from the suburbs. 

The tram is a massive boondoggle that neither enables nor is necessary for housing development. It's a fetish of Green activists; it is not rational economics.

AH, BUT WHAT ABOUT EMISSIONS? Minister Michael Wood is particularly keen on cutting emissions, but Island Bay already has a preponderance of electric buses that go some way to do that. 

And it’s particularly ludicrous to talk about spending $2.2 billion on a tram line, when both the Government and the Greater Wellington Regional Council baulked at spending just $53 million to replace some of the infrastructure to keep Wellington’s city-wide trolley-bus network moving. A network that went from Karori to Island Bay to Miramar to Aro Valley to Kingston to Seatoun to Lyall Bay. Anyway, only an idiot, or an MP, thinks any of this will reduce emissions. (But perhaps I repeat myself.)

"But, but..." you say, "aren’t they proposing a second Mt Victoria Tunnel too? ... and doing something called 'grade-separation' at the Basin Reserve?" Sure they are, but the proposals for the second tunnel are ludicrous. One is to build a new tunnel, or to convert the existing tunnel for walking and cycling only. Another is to build a new tunnel, but with one lane each way for buses – when today virtually NO buses go through Mt Victoria Tunnel, because there is already a one-way bus tunnel just to the north that bypasses the congestion. So all of the proposals essentially keep the current road capacity and do nothing at all about the bottleneck. This is straight out of the Green Party “building new road capacity is bad” school of thinking, on the basis people might have the audacity to drive (even with an electric car). One has to suspect the proposals are designed to just be dumped for being uneconomic, because they won't encourage housing, won't reduce emissions, nor encourage people to shift modes.

WHAT ABOUT THE REST OF WELLINGTON you ask? That's certainly a fairer question. Wellingtonians in the western and northern suburbs could certainly be excused for wondering why LGWM has nothing for them. Karori, for example, has a highly-congested tunnel and bus route about which LGWM is studious silent. However, you should stop thinking LGWM's sporadic but well-funded campaigns are really about transport anymore, because they ain’t. What they are is a crusade by activist Ministers and car-hating planners to justify building an expensive shiny new tram line, one that they can claim as theirs -- a monument to their egos -- pouring billions of unnecessary dollars into one lone corridor in a city that has had widespread and ongoing issues with throttled roads, cancelled bus services and, of course, a crumbling water infrastructure.

Meanwhile, LGWM embarrasses itself by its recent focus on “projects” that are nothing more than micro-management tinkering. Its main website notes one of its great successes as …. lowering the speed limit in central Wellington to 30 km/h. For a large intergovernmental project team meant to be focused on major strategic policy ("delivering a shared vision for Wellington" their website grandly proclaims) to be left instead to be noodling around with lowering speed limits is both embarrassing and ludicrous. Which is precisely what LGWM has become. 

Indeed, their proposal to install a pedestrian crossing and lower the speed limit on a four-lane stretch of state highway along which there is zero property access, has seen some call it Let’s Get Wellington Stopping.

They are a joke. But an expensive well-connected one.

If we want to ever get Wellington moving, a first step must be to remove Let's Get Wellington Moving. It must be stopped.

Thereafter, Waka Kotahi should be directed to finish SH1 in Wellington with a second Terrace Tunnel and Mt Victoria Tunnel; to trench the highway under Te Aro; and to grade separate at the Basin Reserve. Wellington City Council should put in place bus-priority measures at strategic points across the network, and this entire folly of a programme dreamed up by LGWM should be ended. All of this for much less than what LGWM is proposing.

Now about Michael Wood’s other tram proposal….

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The UnCivil Servant is neither civil nor servile. He is not however entirely unfamiliar with the civil service.