The Campaign For Better Transport

The Herald’s Editorial asserting that the ARC’s transport plan “ignores reality” for its focus on public transport is remarkable for its poor grasp of what current realities actually are.

The reality is that significant roading projects such as the revised $1.8bn Waterview extension and the $2bn+ Puhoi to Wellsford motorway have not been subject to any economic benefit-cost analysis. Projects such as rail electrification have long been established as being more effective at reducing congestion in Auckland. The need for faster, quieter, low emission electric trains was established as far back as 2002 by Boston Consulting in an independent report.

The reality is that the prioritised list comes not from the ARC, but from the Regional Transport Committee which comprises representatives from the local councils, health and safety, the police, the AA, the freight industry and cycling and public transport representatives.

The Minister of Transport has been recently calling for “joined up thinking” in relation to transport planning, but the reality is that this thinking is already well represented in the Regional Growth Strategy, ARTA’s 10 year plan and now a transport plan designed to take Auckland 30 years into the future.

John Roughan’s anti-public transport articles are becoming tiresome of late.  Most recently, he opines that the “active retired do not need free public transport.”

What he fails to acknowledge is that public transport provides choice.  Thanks to free ferries and public transport after 9am, SuperGold card holders now have the choice of spending less money on petrol, car running costs and parking and more on the cafes of Devonport, the wineries of Waiheke or, for that matter, food, heating or gifts for the grandchildren.

Mr Roughan is right to be concerned about the cost of providing off-peak travel to seniors.  His article would therefore have been more useful if he had investigated why tax and ratepayers are paying millions more to transport operators for providing off-peak travel to SuperGold card holders, when the marginal cost must be close to zero.

Perhaps there are improvements we can make to the public transport contracting model. Perhaps the Public Transport Management Act isn’t working as intended.  Perhaps we get greater economic returns from free off-peak travel than we realised.  Unfortunately from Mr Roughans’ article, we’ll never know.