The Campaign For Better Transport

The WWF have released a Colmar Brunton public opinion poll which shows seven out of ten New Zealanders want to see more Government money going to fund public transport improvements. The release goes on to say:

Only 1 percent of total land transport spending is allocated to new and improved public transport.

In Auckland the rate is even higher with 78 percent of people in agreement that the government should spend a greater percentage of its Land Transport Budget on improved public transport infrastructure in major urban areas or cities over the next decade.

“The Roads of National Significance and other roading projects are currently gobbling the lion’s share of government transport money, when what New Zealanders want is more investment to make public transport in cities better,” says WWF-New Zealand Climate and Energy Advocate Lee Barry.

“The futility of building more roads is not lost on Kiwis – they know fuel prices will rise and new roads will not help them.”

In the survey they point out that new or improved road infrastructure accounts for 59% of total government spending over the next decade, while new or improved public transport infrastructure accounts for 1.1%.  The chart for the current year looks like this:

Click for larger image

For some time now I’ve been meaning to put together a “FAQ” page to cover the commonly asked questions in relation to public transport.  Fortunately Josh Arbury has done some of the work for me in this post over at Kiwiblog:

OK so there are two questions here. The first is “why should rail be subsidised?” and the second is “why should Auckland get a bigger chunk of the pie than it has in the past?”

The answer to the first question is, quite simply, that road users benefit hugely from people using public transport – particularly during peak times, particularly for CBD-centred trips and particularly for long trips. It just so happens that rail trips are CBD centric, are long and a pretty big chunk of them happen at peak times. NZTA has calculated that every peak time rail trip in Auckland generates $17 in decongestion benefits. Benefits that are enjoyed by road users. Here’s NZTA’s table showing public transport benefits: http://transportblog.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/economic-benefits-pt2.jpg

The answer to the second question, as campit has already mentioned, is quite simply that Auckland is growing way way way faster than the rest of the country. Between now and 2030 over 60% of New Zealand’s population growth is in Auckland. Between now and 2050 around 75% of NZ’s growth is in Auckland (in those past 20 years the rest of the country’s population effectively stops growing whereas Auckland keeps growing due to its younger population and the fact that most migrants settle here). Over the next 40 years Auckland’s population will grow by a million people whereas the population of the entire rest of New Zealand will only grow by a third of that. More details on population growth here:

So really a significant majority of the country’s “new transport infrastructure spend” should be in Auckland. No offence to places like Invercargill, but if your population isn’t growing chances are you won’t need too many new roads or too many new railway lines. Of course we need to maintain your existing roads, but the new infrastructure need is likely to be fairly low.

NZTA spends around $3 billion a year on transport throughout New Zealand. That means over the next 15 years (the timeframe for Len Brown’s three railway projects) NZTA will spend around $45 billion on transport. Three rail projects with a combined cost of less than 20% of that total doesn’t actually seem too scary any more when you think about it – especially when ratepayers are obviously going to make some contribution to the projects.

The money is there, we’re just spending it on the wrong stuff and in the wrong parts of the country compared to where the need is.

For those out there interested in what the government, through NZTA, is going to be spending your petrol tax dollar on over the next few years, there is an interesting chart that shows what projects are hoped to be constructed over the next 5 years. There’s another chart that shows all projects that NZTA wishes to progress into a design phase over the next 5 years too – although for these ones construction will be further down the track. The government’s huge push to build state highways and ignore everything else (including local roads, maintenance of roads, walking and cycling initiatives and public transport) becomes fairly obvious with a bit of analysis of these proposed projects. In particular, the projects that are due to be investigated and designed over the next 5 years is a pretty amazing list.

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