CBD Rail Designation: Government and Auckland Agree

It is hard to see the wood for the leaves and the pages of consultancy documents and media releases that flutter like confetti around Auckland's Rail Tunnel project.

But there is agreement between Ministry of Transport consultants and Auckland Council consultants over one crucial part of that project. Both consultancies agree that the notice of requirement for the designation that will protect the route should be lodged.

Specifically, the Ministry of Transport Auckland City Centre Rail Link Business Case Review states up front:

There is a strategic case for lodging a NoR and it would make sense for Auckland Council to proceed with this.

while the Auckland Council's CITY RAIL LINK Summary Report (prepared with the involvement of Price Waterhouse Cooper, Parsons Brinkerhoff, John Bolland Consulting, Market Economics, Beca, GHD, and Ascari) states:

Auckland Transport and Auckland Council and their advisors are strongly of the view that the overall evaluation results are sufficiently robust to justify the immediate commencement of the designation process, particularly as the CRL is economically justifiable in terms of its transport related benefits alone. This process needs to commence as soon as possible to minimise the potential for any development to increase costs, delay the project, or even prevent its implementation.

I read that as we agree that the designation process should be undertaken now.

No-one is saying that construction should start now.

The Auckland Council report also states:

Auckland Transport and Auckland Council acknowledge that, in line with all major project development programmes, more work needs to be done to further develop the case for funding of the City Rail Link.

That seems entirely sensible, and is also pretty much in alignment with what is stated in the conclusion of the MoT study. This states:

[46] The Review concludes that there is a range of actions that could be undertaken or facilitated by Auckland Council and Auckland Transport which will improve confidence in considering outcomes expected from the CCRL (Central City Rail Loop).

Finalisation and implementation of the Auckland spatial plan and City Centre Masterplan to establish achievable growth projections for the CBD and to quantify where the growth projected for the CBD will occur.

Demonstrating commitment to resolving current and emerging CBD access issues, for example by improving bus operations and addressing capacity issues.

Development of a robust and achievable multi-modal programme for transport in the CBD, which considers a thorough analysis of alternatives and identifies the optimal mix of modes to meet demand.

Beginning implementation of large scale residential developments along the rail corridors.

Implementation of additional park and ride sites, and changes to bus feeder services where appropriate in terms of overall public transport demand.

[47] The implementation of these measures, combined with rail patronage above forecasts and a robust economic case, would provide a strong signal that the conditions are in place to drive the necessary benefits from the project and therefore to reconsider the case for investment.

These points from MoT's consultants are appropriate. Moving Britomart Rail Tunnel project to the next stage after designation - ie getting government funding - will require attention to these areas.

In particular, Auckland Council needs to demonstrate it has the focus and mettle to plan and implement associated land use changes that will deliver the economic developments that justify this investment.

Auckland Unleashed - Part II

Auckland Unleashed generally got the panning it deserved from the media and those who have been immersed in Auckland Regional planning for a long time. (You can see my first take on it here). And while Auckland Unleashed generally respects the Mayor's election vision of rail (Britomart Loop, Airport Link and North Shore Rail), I am of the view that the new Council (Councillors plus Mayor) are only partly responsible for what is actually in the document - with its emphasis on growth and economy and its relative silence on affordable housing, transport energy and Auckland's traditional planning failure to accommodate growth. So who is to blame and where is this huge emphasis on economic growth coming from? I attended the IPANZ event last year where Roger Blakely (General Manager Planning) presented preliminary thoughts about the spatial plan. His use of a definition of spatial planning that was almost 30 years old (from previous failed European regimes) did not augur well. Nor did his use of a map drawn from Metropolitan London's recent planning exercise. I spoke with Ree Anderson (Manager - Regional Planning Strategy) at this event and expressed concern. I challenged the assumptions and approach, and its emphasis on economic growth. She told me the plan needed to be "aspirational". There needed to be things in there that were "exciting". Man oh man. You can see for yourself her views expressed in her presentation to the NZ Planning Institute late last year. These are all about geography and maps and economic growth. No mention of growing pains and other major issues facing the region. I had previously advised Ree Anderson of my work at university on strategic spatial planning. It drew together the strands of Auckland Regional planning, critical assessments of its failures, and embraced modern European approaches. Later I was contacted by Auckland Council Planning staff and asked to produce an Executive Summary of that work and its recommendations for circulation to Councillors. I prepared this. You can see it here. It is highly critical of adopting a regional plan emphasising economic growth driven by Government funded infrastructure priorities. The paper summary was not circulated to Auckland Council. I have tried to find out why. No answer. My thoughts on Auckland Planning are neither here nor there in the big scheme of things - but I know I am not alone in these thoughts. Many others with long memories and long experience share my views, and have their own views in a similar vein. It is hard to escape the conclusion that these alternative views and inconvenient experience are being kept from councillors by senior Auckland Council staff. Or at the very least marginalised. More than one planner has advised me that the mantra in the new Auckland Council planning hierarchy appears to be: "...if the ARC had anything to do with it we won't touch it....". So what we appear to have is a bunch of planning newbies foisting their own ideas on Auckland, without due regard for its planning history, and actively filtering from the political process views which conflict with their own. We might not like Auckland's planning history. But if we don't learn from it we will almost certainly repeat it....

I took this picture of the slide put up at the Auckland Unleashed get-together. It is a summary of the "Auckland Future" workshops. Even without the filtration that I know went into preparing this slide, the emphasis of the day was one of community led development and neighbourhoods. There was a lot of talk about "self-contained" and "complete" communities. There are always the cheerleaders that argue for Auckland to be the "Lead City in the Asia Pacific". You only have to visit Sydney and Singapore to know that Auckland will never be that lead city. I was part of the infrastructure workshop, and if my memory serves me right a tiny minority there argued for Auckland to "internationally lead and shape rather than follow...". That view was certainly not held by the majority of those at that workshop by a long shot. So even the workshop reports are being manipulated. If you think I'm sounding grumpy - then you've read me correctly. Auckland's local government reorganisation may have led to integration and amalgamation, but it is at the cost of severe institutional fragmentation and memory loss, and where aspirational hopes that Auckland can somehow be like London and better than Singapore and Sydney are blinding Councillors to the reality that is Auckland.

Does Auckland Really Need to be Unleashed?

I went along to Auckland Unleashed last week. Big crowd there. I thought the workshops were good. I attended the infrastructure one (there were 5 workshops: can't recall what their names all were now - Infrastructure; Community; Funding & Implementation....) What was good about the infrastructure workshop was the strong thread from most tables about the need for resilience. This partly was driven by Christchurch earthquake, but was also informed by concerns about other global forces like fossil fuel prices and such-like. The upshot was that there was strong support for a poly-centric approach to Auckland's development. ie not put all our eggs in one basket called the Auckland CBD. There was a strong call for "contained communities", "complete communities" (like the Vancouver strategy), and with this was a majority call for distributed and de-centralised networks. One of the issues raised here was the need to reduce the need to travel long distances to work, school, play and essential services. This runs counter to the Dr Arthur Grimes vision of a major effort at building Auckland CBD - almost at the exclusion of the rest of the region (let alone the rest of the country). So. I felt good about that expression from that workshop. Gave me some optimism. Hope it survives the process. Which will be a challenge I think. You don't have to look further than the title of the plan, and its widely criticised economic growth aspirations which are right outside the direct influence of Auckland Council. No matter how super. Auckland Unleashed. Gives me the heebie jeebies, because I think the root cause of Auckland's current disfunction is the fact that developers and development has been unleashed and rampant as a mad dog for two decades now. The light-handed approach to Auckland's development over that time has led to the mess that we are in now. Very inefficient transport systems because land use has not been well planned. It's been ad hoc. The market has ruled. Why would you want to unleash it more? Surely Auckland development needs to be better contained and managed - in the best interests of public and commercial interests. You only need to do a couple of word counts of the 226 page Auckland Unleashed document to see where it's coming from.... Quality + International + Vision = 352 Implementation + Delivery + Funding = 134 With that sort of word count, you can see the emphasis of the document. Long on aspiration - as often the most fluffy Council plans are - and short on implementation. And then there is this comparison. It's where the rubber hits the road in my opinion, because while Auckland might have an economic problem or two (which are not directly within Council control), it has a massive housing affordability problem, a growing carbon/fossil fuel dependency problem, and increasing stress on local ecologies (all of which are core business for Council)...

Development+Economy+World = 421 Affordable Housing+Carbon+Ecosystems = 23 That word count gives a good impression of what Auckland Unleashed is really about. It is so far off the mark of what Auckland needs from Auckland Council right now.