Instead of speeding up the investment to electrify the rail line to Pukekohe, AT recently announced it would like to reduce the speed limit on 251 roads in my electorate. Photo / Richard Robinson
Instead of speeding up the investment to electrify the rail line to Pukekohe, AT recently announced it would like to reduce the speed limit on 251 roads in my electorate. Photo / Richard Robinson
Opinion
COMMENT:
One of Auckland Council's most influential Council Controlled Organisations (CCOs) is playing havoc with our rural roads.
In scale, Auckland Transport dwarfs all of the 67 other councils in New Zealand. Auckland Council's ability to control it is limited and there seems little accountability or incentive to work collaboratively.
The effects of that are evident in my Hunua electorate which spans from the top of Awhitu Peninsula across to Beachlands and Orere Point on the Waitemata. After three attempts, I finally got Auckland Transport's chief executive to spend a morning visiting parts of the electorate to talk about areas where investment was required to improve the safety of some of the roads.
I also wanted to highlight the appalling trend of Auckland Council planners to require new subdivisions in rural areas to have narrow streets with limited parking. Emergency services dislike them because they can't get fire trucks down them, and police believe they create future crime areas as criminals can hide and escape easily through multiple exits.
I also wanted to explain my efforts to re-establish a ferry service on the Manukau Harbour as well as the need to increase ferry services out of Beachlands and connect the bus services to the ferry arrival times. Given Auckland Transport's focus on other forms of transport, I thought this might fall on receptive ears. I was wrong.
Where is the money and why is it not being spent in the area where it is generated? It is certainly not being spent in the rural parts of Auckland.
Instead of investment to improve the safety of specific roads or in additional ferry services, or speeding up the investment to electrify the rail line to Pukekohe, Auckland Transport recently announced it would like to reduce the speed limit on 251 roads in my electorate.
When I posted news about the proposed speed bylaw changes on my Facebook page, more than 53,000 people viewed the post. Many made submissions opposing these wholesale changes.
Now I understand Auckland Transport has refused to allow even the Franklin Local Board, part of the Auckland Council, to see the results of the submissions. This is bad – bad for democracy and bad for good decision-making.
I can almost guarantee that Auckland Transport will impose all of these speed reductions and that it will not announce any investment in our unsafe roads. And I doubt we will be getting any new ferry services any time soon.
Andrew Bayly. Photo / Supplied
What is worse is that my electorate is one of the fastest growing areas of Auckland, where a huge number of new houses have been, or are planned to be, built. That means Auckland Council is receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from development levies every time a new subdivision opens.
The 2014 amendments to the Local Government Act require councils to clarify and narrow the range of infrastructure that can be financed by development contributions and require those contributions to be spent in the area where they are generated.
My question to Auckland Transport and Auckland Council is where is the money and why is it not being spent in the area where it is generated? It is certainly not being spent in the rural parts of Auckland.
In the meantime, it would be great if Auckland Transport would just read our submissions.
