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Opinion by Simon Bridges
OPINION:
Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown has entered office on a promise to shake things up, and there’s plenty of anticipation — and speculation — about what this will mean for council decision-making, particularly when it comes to transport infrastructure.
So far, Mayor Brown has put Auckland Transport on notice, andidentified a handful of policy priority areas — some sensible, some a little confused — but he is yet to put forward anything approaching a programme.
As a transport infrastructure policy and advocacy organisation, the Auckland Business Forum is less interested in the detail of the mayor’s plans, and more interested in the strategic thinking that underpins it.
As far as we’re concerned, fixing Auckland’s transport system should start with the following five principles.
1. Focus on the outcomes, not the projects
Too many times over the last decade, we’ve seen politicians champion a favourite large-scale project, without saying what problem it’s meant to be solving. This approach is completely back to front and never ends well.
The starting point must instead be to identify a set of desired outcomes (economic, social, environmental) for the city, and develop a set of projects that best deliver those outcomes. Mayor Brown is not big on visions — and, to be fair, many Aucklanders have had a gutful of them too — but he still needs to paint a picture of the future he wants for Auckland, so we can work out the best mix of infrastructure projects to get us there.
Before investing in large-scale new roads and rail lines, greater effort must be made to improve the performance of the existing network. This means dealing with chronic delivery failures like the bus driver shortage and the rail shutdown; investing in smaller-scale interventions (like intersection upgrades) that can get the road network humming, and moving ahead with demand management tools like congestion pricing.
3. Maintain the investment pipeline
Squeezing more juice out of the lemon is good, but it can’t be all that we do. Auckland is still badly in need of new infrastructure — to fill the gap created by years of under-investment, to prepare the city for an inevitable return to population growth post-Covid, and to ready ourselves for a low-carbon transport future. Mayor Brown’s apparent scepticism towards “transformational” investment is laudable, especially given the current economic climate, but it must not translate into a situation where we shut up shop on building critical big-ticket projects. We can’t lose sight of the cost of under-investment for future generations.
4. Greater emphasis on infrastructure as an enabler of growth.
There is a critical role for quality infrastructure to play in stimulating Auckland’s economic recovery post-pandemic, and its growth into the future. But for that role to be fulfilled, economic benefits will need to be given much more weight within the project assessment process. Over recent years, an increasing focus on non-transport objectives such as climate change, public health, and place-making, has crowded out the consideration of growth- and productivity-related objectives. Travel-time benefits for general traffic and freight, and other metrics that speak to the contribution of an efficient transport network to economic performance, need to be brought back to the centre.
Simon Bridges, Auckland Business Chamber CEO. Photo / Jed Bradley
5. Put customer benefits front and centre
Infrastructure isn’t about making concrete and steel objects, it’s about providing solutions that make people’s lives better. Mayor Brown’s calls for Auckland Transport to be guided by a much stronger understanding of customer needs and expectations are right on the money, and this needs to flow through to investment decisions. Project performance must be regularly measured through post-implementation reviews, and user benefits proactively fed back to the public (who, of course, are also the funders). This is how decision-makers earn the right to keep investing in the future.
Simon Bridges is CEO of the Auckland Business Chamber and Chair of the Auckland Business Forum, a policy and advocacy organisation focused on Auckland transport infrastructure issues.
