Posts by Joshua Arbury
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Superb post Patrick, puts together every reason why Roughan's article was completely silly.
The CBD tunnel is needed for many many reasons, perhaps the biggest being that unless we build it we can't ever expand the rail sytem beyond its current extent.
Angus raises some interesting points, though I think generally I would disagree that Mt Eden or Grafton can be adequate CBD replacements. The last thing you would want is people getting off the train there and then bussing to their destination. The CBD is already clogged with buses at peak times, imagine what it would be like with twice the number. It simply wouldn't work.
I will post a full discussion/response later this evening.
Thanks for all the kind words in the comments everyone.
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Sacha, thanks I'll have a good read through that.
Yes it does refer to the road reserve, and potentially non-transport activities that council might want to conduct on it. I can't think of too many examples off the top of my head, but I doubt "shared space" would be one of them (it really is transport after all).
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Roger, yes I agree that even when the planners do their jobs properly and integrate land-use and transport, usually the funding isn't there to back it up.
I can't see that getting much better though, just look at the mismatch between the ARC and the government when it comes to transport priorities.
Sigh.
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I'd prefer you didn't play Humpty Dumpty and found some other more accurate term, or invented one.
Steven Joyce is Humpty Dumpty ;)
I've had a more detailed look through the bill and it would seem as though Auckland Transport and the other CCOs will have to conduct their business in public, and we will be able to go along to their meetings.
Phew. http://transportblog.co.nz/2010/05/25/will-the-ccos-be-able-to-operate-in-secret-or-not/
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While it's usually not particularly constructive to throw heavy words like fascism around, it is worthwhile having a look at what making the CCOs exempt from sections 59,60, 64 and 74 of the Local Government Act, as originally proposed by this bill, would have meant.
In short, council would have had almost no control over the CCOs, the CCOs would not have had to be responsible employers and would have been able to ignore their statement of intents (thats what section 59,60 and 64 do) while Auckland Transport would have been completely exempt from the local govt OIA equivalent.
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It's great we're getting passionate, because this stuff matters more than most people seem to realise so far. I am heartened by Joshua's comments because I respect his thorough and consistent engagement with this.
I'm still quite skeptical of the whole Transport CCO idea, not because it won't have any advantages (having the same agency putting in bus lanes and using them will probably mean we might finally see some further extension of our bus lanes network, for example) but because there is a fundamental problem with splitting off transport "stuff" from the other "stuff" that councils do.
In my opinion, many of the problems that Auckland faces at the moment are the result of a mismatch between our land-use planning and our transport planning - for example why the heck are we planning to put 40,000 people out in Flat Bush when there's no railway line, busway or motorway within cooee?
Splitting planning off from transport, as the local government reorganisation does, has the potential to only make this situation worse. Instead of planners within council going "oh I'll just got have a chat with transport down the hallway about this", that will be a whole separate agency. With different plans. With different priorities and so forth. So expect the misalignment between planning and transport to continue, or more likely, worsen.
Another good example of how the split is problematic is if you look at perhaps one of the best initiatives in Auckland in recent years - shared spaces, which create high quality pedestrian oriented environments within some central Auckland streets. This will be rolled out over the next year or so. But my question is - who the heck would do "shared streets" under the new syste,? A council might want to - to improve pedestrian quality - but they won't have the powers to. Auckland Transport probably won't give a damn because all their senior management positions are likely to be filled with road engineers...... so we won't see that kind of integrated project happen. Which would be a damn shame.
So overall, while the select committee changes make the bill "less bad" in terms of CCOs in particular (I haven't looked at the rest of it in too much detail, though the Spatial Planning part is quite interesting) I still think it's a fundamentally bad decision to split up planning and transport.
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Christopher, it would seem as though the history of rather difficult relations between ARC and ARTA would back that up. In theory, the ARC has a lot more control over ARTA than it seems Auckland Council will have over Auckland Transport (although that disparity is reduced by the select committee changes)... so I imagine it'll be a pretty big challenge for Auckland Council to control such a big and powerful CCO.
I get the feeling that it'll take council firing a few directors who don't do what the council wants for the message to get through about who's actually in charge.
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You're right Graeme, the Royal Commission's proposal was certainly flawed in many respects. From memory it has 6 local councils and nothing at all underneath them, so potentially the most local council that you'd have would end up being bigger than your current city council... with community boards being history.
That said, the Royal Commission's report was probably the most comprehensive study of Auckland's problems in decades, and I hope that it doesn't just become the biggest door-stop ever. There is much useful information in it to inform Auckland's future spatial plan, and other planning documents.
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My feeling is that this is definitely a step in the right direction. The removal of clause 38(3), which would have make Auckland Transport completely unaccountable, is a huge improvement.
Some effort seems to have been made to give the local boards a bit more power, but it's still really up in the air.... surprisingly so actually. I do wonder why the government is so reluctant to just legislate the local boards some powers to shut people up. I mean it's not like that'd be the end of the world?
I still have concerns about whether the CCOs will be subject to public scrutiny. The NZ Herald article says that they'll have to have their meetings in public - a change from the original bill - but I'm not convinced from reading the bill itself.
More thoughts: http://transportblog.co.nz/2010/05/24/transport-cco-more-accountable-but-still-secretive/
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I think the main reason the Rosebank alignment of SH20 was abandoned was because it had an estimated cost of around $3 billion, even more than the fully tunnelled version of Waterview. Plus, building a giant interchange on Pollen Island would have been pretty nasty from an environmental perspective.
I am sure the Road Transpot Forum will be dusting off the 1965 De Leuw Cather transport plan for Auckland as we speak. It would fit in nicely with the government's transport mentailty.