www.keithrankin.co.nz/kra01AucklandTransportDemand.html

16 April 2001
 

Aucklanders make too many journeys within Auckland, and a very high proportion of those journeys cannot be made conveniently using public transport.

While we do make some journeys for pleasure, especially in weekends, most of our journeys represent a cost; a private cost to the journeying persons and a social cost to everyone else in the city. A significant proportion of journeys within Auckland are made by commercial vehicles.

While it is important that the growth in demand for journeys is slower than the population growth rate, it is imperative that there is a significant growth in the proportion of journeys that in future could be undertaken, with convenience, by public transport. That means higher density housing in certain parts of Auckland must replace peripheral growth.

The existing Auckland sprawl is in large part a consequence of the lack of convenient public transport. (It all began in the 1920s when the central rail station was moved to Beach Street.) In turn the inability to provide convenient public transport is largely a consequence of the sprawl, and the patterns of demand for journeys that sprawl has created. It is this vicious circle that we must break.

The solution is to develop public transport that is in tune with the prevailing demand for journeys, while raising the opportunity cost of cross- city private transport. Future demand patterns will differ from demand today only if today's public transport initiatives catch on.

Public transport planners must learn the lessons of places like Portland (Oregon, USA); places in which public transport solutions were implemented without sufficient regard to demand.

Perhaps the most costly journeys that Aucklanders undertake are those commutes from Waitakere and North Shore cities to Penrose and other locations in the southeast. There is only one marginally convenient route for most of these journeys; through the central city motorway system.

What can we do to reduce the quantity of cross-city journeys through central Auckland's Spaghetti Junction? Auckland's future depends on our response to this question.

Complex journeys of the sort that many Aucklanders make are not easily undertaken by public transport, and they will never be easily undertaken by public transport until popular public transport initiatives evolve into a mature system.

We reduce the desire for such through journeys by raising their opportunity cost; by making such journeys through the central city motorway interchange more expensive while at the same time opening up an alternative route.

The most immediate option is to introduce a peak-time electronic toll to the section of motorway just after the Nelson Street off-ramp (or after Cook Street for south-bound traffic). Part of the high social costs of commuting from North Shore to south Auckland should be borne by those who demand such journeys.

When the southwestern arterial (or motorway) is complete, a similar user charge should be placed on the link between the southern and northwestern motorways. The completion of the southwestern route is crucial to resolving the Spaghetti Junction bottleneck.

Whereas existing motorways helped to create the sprawl that is greater Auckland, the southwestern route will be different. It will connect a number of established parts of Auckland, rather than opening up new suburbs. Of particular importance, the southwestern route links the existing industrial/commercial zones of Penrose, Manukau, Onehunga, Mt Roskill, Avondale and Henderson. As such it will take huge amounts of diesel traffic from both existing suburban roads and the present motorway bottleneck.

The southwestern route will generate economic and population growth in Waitakere City and the western bits of Auckland city. Both the New Lynn and Henderson areas are natural public transport hubs, well suited to high- density housing. In the longer term, the North Shore to Penrose commute will diminish while more people will commute from Auckland's west to southeast. That will eventually open up the market for substantial public transport expansion in the southwest, including a rail connection from New Lynn to Onehunga (where the existing railway has not been used, as far as I'm aware, for 50 years).

Once the demand for journeys through Spaghetti Junction abates, all journeys - by public and private transport - to the central business district (CBD) will become less inconvenient. All journeys to the CBD are capable of being undertaken by public transport.

So a key part of a transport strategy must be to increase the demand for (and/or decrease the cost of) journeys to central Auckland. Thus it makes more sense to reduce rather than to increase the cost of car-parking in central Auckland. That will create conditions where substitution from private to public transport is possible.

There are some other things we can do to attract more employers, commuters and visitors to central Auckland. In particular, in the morning (eg 7:30 - 9:30), we could introduce a free Queen Street bus that would meet every commuter ferry and every train arriving at Beach Street or Mt Eden stations. In the evening, such a service would operate as a shuttle every 5 minutes.

The other thing we can do right away is to charge passengers on a per journey rather than a per ride basis. Transferable tickets would remain live for say two hours, meaning that a passenger could board any number of buses, trains or ferries within that time.

We need to develop a demand-driven transport solution whose success itself modifies future demand. A virtuous cycle favouring public transport can replace the existing vicious cycle in which the excessive demand for complex cross-city journeys generates the congestion that induces the sprawl that in turn generates ever-more demand for motorway journeys.
 

Rankin File